Hi, my name is Sari! / they/them / 30s / Pansexual / Autistic / ADHD. Multifandom blog. Mostly reblogs + my fic and art sometimes. nsfw tagged as #goodoldlemons, triggering stuff tagged (ask if you would like something tagged)
Hi, my name is Sari! They/them. 30s. Pansexual. Autistic. ADHD. Disabled&chronically ill. Writer. Trying to get back into drawing and painting but bad at it for now.
Safe space for ALL queer people including trans, ace, aro, intersex, polyam, etc you name it! For disabled and neurodivergent people, for Muslim and Jewish people and BIPOC. Pro-kink, pro-sex work.
I use tagging and blacklisting a lot, this means that if everthing on your blog is untagged, unlesss your blog is strictly about 1 fandom, I’m unlikely to follow you back. This does NOT mean I don’t like you, and you can still hit me up to chat anytime.
If I blocked you it’s because you posted something I didn’t like, could be as little as a really stupid take about my favourite character or as big as a homophobic rant. I don’t care. My blog is my safe space and I don’t want to see stuff that I don’t vibe with on it. I use the block button very liberally and I think that’s very healthy and sexy of me.
Any hate or discourse in my notes or askbox gets blocked. I don’t feed trolls.
I was depressed and suicidal for 10+ years and have PTSD. I know what it’s like. If you’re in a bad place and you want to talk to a stranger, I’m here (yes, really). If you’re looking for a sign not to kill yourself or self-harm, this is it: hold on one more day for me. Eat something and drink some water. Remember to take your medication.
Oh, and please just install uBlockOrigin (blocks all ads on youtube and tumblr) and stop using chrome!
Be prepared to get comments like "Your hair is so pretty. You wrote her hair so pretty. Why is she so pretty?" And "Your writing is so good. I can really tell what he's saying and oh he smells so nice. That's a cool looking bag. Your beta has awesome shoes I bet. What's her name?"
I mostly disliked the episode because I felt very little happened? Like, almost every second in lestat's mind does... nothing to further the plot or character? Lestat is talking to himself. to different voices in his head. about things the viewer already knows, that have already been discussed this season. it's just so boring.
Like, yes cool he arrives at the conclusion that if he failed it means he tried and he reassures himself with the lie he didn't fail louis (lmao. like absolutely you're made for each other, but you did fail him. multiple times. over and over)... but that didn't need all that imo. A much shorter scene would have been more than enough, and more time could have been spent on showing literally anything about the concert. I get it, it will be explained in a future season, like what got armand in the mental space he's in, but give us something at least.
it really didn't feel like a season finale, is my problem. absolutely the season was about lestat and his mental journey, great, we did that, but let's not pretend that was the only plot going on this season
I mostly disliked the episode because I felt very little happened? Like, almost every second in lestat's mind does... nothing to further the plot or character? Lestat is talking to himself. to different voices in his head. about things the viewer already knows, that have already been discussed this season. it's just so boring.
Like, yes cool he arrives at the conclusion that if he failed it means he tried and he reassures himself with the lie he didn't fail louis (lmao. like absolutely you're made for each other, but you did fail him. multiple times. over and over)... but that didn't need all that imo. A much shorter scene would have been more than enough, and more time could have been spent on showing literally anything about the concert. I get it, it will be explained in a future season, like what got armand in the mental space he's in, but give us something at least.
it really didn't feel like a season finale, is my problem. absolutely the season was about lestat and his mental journey, great, we did that, but let's not pretend that was the only plot going on this season
You know, an interesting tumblr transformation that's happened gradually, and which I've seen no one talk about: ask-culture has essentially dropped off to nothing.
By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.
I'm not saying this in a vying-for-attention way but instead in an observational way: I used to get way way more asks in like 2015, even with a fraction of my follower count. I wonder if it's due to the homogenization of social media sites? There's a lot more of this divide between "content creator" and "consumer" instead of just a bunch of peer blogs who would talk to each other. "Asks" aren't really a thing on twitter, are they? And as I understand it, the closest thing to an "ask" on instagram or tiktok would be a creator screenshotting some comment and responding to it in a new reel or video or whatever those content mediums are. Are asks just too tumblr-specific? Is that aspect of the site culture dying out as more and more people converge to using all their social media sites in the same way?
it's probably from assholes making asks a minefield of trolling/harassment for years with no real blocking ability, which turned people off from allowing asks on their blogs so as a whole the site moved away from it
but now that we do have better blocking, we should try to revive it.
Now that everyone is discussing Nolan's Odyssey movie, I feel like it's a good time to let non-Italians know that the production dumped plastic props into the Italian sea. Weirdly enough I could not find any article in English about it but it's a fucking problem nonetheless.
I might translate this article later today. This one was the most complete one, even in Italian news it's not talked about that much.
Non è la prima volta che la produzione solleva un vespaio in Sicilia. A Lipari una squadra di sub sarebbe però già impegnata a bonificare i
They dumped plastic skeletons in environmentally protected areas, against the literal contracts they had to sign to get the permits to film in environmentally protected areas. Like they not only did a bad ecological thing that freaked out some divers, they literally broke environmental protection laws and their contract with the Italian government
frankly the coolest facet of Irish mythology turned into speculative religious practice
short enough to read in one sitting
✨FREE✨
Then The Story Keepers is for you! Read it on my Patreon (for which there is only a free tier and I would love it if you signed up for it. There will be more stories coming. Time travel! Disability and superheroism! Aroace ghost hunters! etc. etc.)
hello and welcome to my tutorial on how to create gifs like this one! full explanation under the cut, but if you wanted to take a little peek at the gifset attached to this tutorial, here ya go!
for the purposes of this tutorial i am assuming you know
how to make a gif
what vhs footage looks like
STEP ONE: MAKING YOUR GIF
choose your footage and plug it into your desired software of choice! i use photoshop for this so i can only attest to the efficacy of these methods in that context
as for shot selection, you could feasibly choose anything. however, i prefer shots without too much movement in them - makes it look more like a home video.
because of the heavy amount of colors and filters, i'd recommend a gif somewhere around the 40-50 frames! but of course you can play around.
oh i also set the frame delay to 0.08 seconds. this is slower than most gifmakers tend to set theirs, but it makes it run buttery smooth imo.
STEP TWO: MAKING THE COLORING
here's where we get vhs specific. if you're unfamiliar with vhs footage, i recommend clicking through this youtube playlist! if you're not interested in the coloring, skip to step three (smart object fuckery + filters)
now while making a set i tend to choose some primary colors for my gifs. in the gifset i linked above, i chose to work with blue and orange-y yellow. in some of the other gifs i'll be using as examples (from an unfinished set) i chose green and yellow.
to create the above coloring i generally use these steps:
1) curves
i'm a maniac so i use the same curves layer to initially edit the luminosity AND colors of my gifs. the purpose of this layer is to edit brightness/contrast like i normally would and already start the process of changing the colors a little bit. this is my curves layer for the blue house gif:
to make the gif go from the left image to the right image:
as you can see i used the brightening curves to make the footage a whole lot lighter. i also increased the reds to get rid of the cyan tint a lot of blue footage has, slightly increased the blues, and once again decreased the greens to get rid of any cyan. this does make the blue hue a bit more purple, which is a nice bonus!
as for the gif of the boy, that one's a little harder to show a before and after for, but i'lls how the curves for good measure:
the original shot was already quite bright so i only edited the brightness a litttle bit. because i knew i wanted the gif to be green and yellow, i increased the greens, decreased the reds (except in the shadows), and decreased the blues (to get yellow)
2) channel mixer
now the channel mixer layer takes a little getting used to so i recommend experimenting. ALWAYS USE THIS LAYER ON THE COLOR BLENDING MODE for a more even result.
i use channel mixers to sort of... unify the colors a bit more. for the house gif, for example, i increased the blue channel to +110% blue, but decreased the blue in the red (-12%) to retain the yellow in the window.
if you want me to explain this more in depth, send an ask! it'll be kinda longwinded though
before / after of the boy gif with curves/channel mixer.
3) levels
this is where it starts looking more vhs-y! vhs footage has light shadows and dark highlights.
first, set your levels layer to luminosity blending mode to retain your beautiful colors.
then, crunch the hell out of your gif to make it very... mid.
this may feel a little wrong at first but i prommy it'll look okay at the end. a before/after for the boy:
now that's starting to look familiar right?
4) color fill/gradient map
because i want to unify my colors/make sure my gif is saturated, i usually add either a color fill or gradient map layer. in the case of the house, i chose to go with a dark blue color fill:
because the coloring of the boy gif was a little more complex, i decided to go with a brown to green gradient map.
this will make the shadows yellow, and the highlights green.
BOTH THESE LAYERS ARE SET TO OVERLAY. i usually fiddle with the opacity of them until i like it, but it's anywhere from 7% - 17% depending on what i feel like that day
5) curves (again)
this layer is probably useless but i do it anyway to make myself feel better. this is just a regular curse layer to up the brightness a tiiiiny bit and amke sure everything's clear. also it helps counteract the darkness your overlay color will add in.
6) color balance
this is my most subtle layer so i won't be able to show before and after but i fiddle with the color distribution a little until i'm satisfied. set this layer to color blending 'cause that's what you wanna affect!
i decided i wanted the house gif shadows to be a little more purple, for example, so i added in red (+3), magenta (-1) and blue (+1). etc etc. do what feels good!
STEP THREE: SMART OBJECT FUCKERY AND FILTERS
OKAY that was a lot. sorry or you're welcome. but good news: now's the fun part. convert your animation to a timeline, then select both your coloring and gif layers, right click, and select convert to smart object.
now that your gif's a smart object, i usually crop it. i tend make vhs aes gifs a 4:3 ratio (so 540 x 405 px) because that's what vhs footage was usually recorded as! crop your gif, resize, and then we can continue.
1) color bleeding
vhs footage usually bleeds its colors - this manifests as a short of... weird subtle halo around any object. the way to recreate this in photoshop is to duplicate your smart object.
set your copied smart object to color blending. now move it to the side a couple of pixels (i usually do around 5px, but you do you!)
as you can see, the tree and chimney (and everything else but less prominently) have a yellow shadow to them. this is exactly what we want!
2) filters
now's the time to add your filters and make it look like shit (but on purpose!) first, select both smart objects and convert to smart object again. this will ensure the filters apply to all layers evenly.
i use the following filters:
unsharp mask (amt 35%, radius 4px) - this will subtly add some sharpening but only on the edges of objects
add noise (amt 7.5%, distr. uniform, not monochromatic) - this will add the signature vhs grain.
box blur (2px) - i edit this to be 75% opacity with the little arrows to the right, just to make sure you can still make SOMETHING out when you're looking at the gif. MAKE SURE THIS FILTER IS ON TOP OF YOUR NOISE FILTER. tumblr will kill your gif otherwise
4) ONE LAST THING
usually at this point i'm not happy with either the saturation or levels. (usually the levels). so on top of your smart object, add another saturation or levels layer and fuck around!
in the case of the house gif, i thought it was too bright still so i set my output levels to 13 and 216. for the boy, i thought the shadows were too dark, so i set my shadow output to 11.
BEFORE & AFTER:
aaaand that's it! thanks for reading! if you have any questions, feel free to come to my askbox, i'm always happy to explain my process. happy giffing 🥰
is anyone else annoyed that "ai" encompasses both chatgpt and tools we train to do repetitive tedious work for us. and by the ripple effect of articles like "scientists develop ai to detect cancer early" that make people argue for the merit of chatgpt or become anti-medicine. and by the general state of the world and society
