#lightwoodsbanes

[anthony-kate]

MALEC ADVENT CALENDAR 2018 | December 11th by @lightwoodsbanes 

Malec + You carved your name into my heart

[meliorn]

4, 14, 27, 37, 48!

4. a set that flopped but deserved better“flopped” is obviously v subjective but this set deserved better, yes

14. how long does it usually take you to make a setanswered here!

27. have you ever made a set, decided you hated it and deleted it? what was itoh i for sure have! it’s been a while and i can’t think of one off the top of my head but i know i’ve definitely done it a few times

37. what sets if any do you have planned to make in the futurehow long do you have lol? i’ve got a thousand plans tbh. i like to jump between projects to keep it interesting and i’m a very whimsical person in general so i just do whatever i feel like that day, but some stuff i’m working on atm: outfits meme, LGBTQ meme, the good place season 3 series, and i’m also itching to gif some shadowhunters so i’m probably gonna make a colorful set for that show too pretty soon!

48. how would you describe your giffing styleit’s a pretty generic answer but i guess colorful? when i primarily giffed for shadowhunters i was suuuuper into the high contrast, lots of black space and shadows aesthetic, but now that i’m branching out into more brightly lit shows i’m a lot more into a brighter and more vibrant aesthetic, but the common thread is always that i love working with color

ask me about gif making!

[meliorn]

Hello again! I just wanted to thank you for your help with the rainbow sets because it really did make a huge difference. Keep up the great work!

i’m so glad i could help 💕 it’s so gorgeous, you did an awesome job!!

[meliorn]

Hi there! First off, I just want to say that your gifsets/psds/icons are absolutely beautiful and I love them a lot. Secondly, I was wondering if you could possibly help me out? I've been trying to do one of those big rainbow sets and, no matter what I do (eyedropper tool, different blending changes, ect), I just can't get the colors right for the life of me. So, if you don't mind me asking, how exactly did you get the colors for those sets? Thank you!

hello! thank you for the support, it means a lot 💕

first off i just want to say that time, practice and patience makes all the difference and trying again and again will help you get an eye for color that will make it a lot easier to see what adjustments you need to make to get a particular shade. it can be very frustrating but in the end it’s worth it to experiment, play around and test new things, and most importantly to just keep trying.

but that’s more of a general idea. as for some more practical tips:

☁️ TIP 1 ☁️i don’t know how you’re making your rainbow sets, but when i make mine i always base it on my previous sets (the first one i did i used this set as a template instead, which is where i first got the idea to make one), and i use the PSD for my old set as a template to make my new one. i think it’s easier to show than to tell, so this is what my PS layout usually looks like (cleaned up a little for this tutorial, i’m usually messier):

to the left, i have my template, i.e the PSD for a previous gifset. to the right, i have the new gifs i want to color. i don’t really decide “this gif will be this exact shade” from the beginning. instead, i experiment and see how it goes; if one gif doesn’t want to be turned into a certain shade i scrap it, pick a new gif and maybe try to turn that first gif into a different shade later on.

now, to what you actually asked about: matching the colors. to make this visually easier for myself, i like to place the gif i’m currently coloring on top of the gif i want it to replace in the old set, like so:

now when i’m coloring that gif, i can more easily check with the neighbouring gif that the coloring matches! the goal is for the new gif to blend in as seamlessly into the old gifset as possible; when it’s the same or a very similar shade as the ones next to it, it’ll look like it belongs there, and that’s when you know you got it right!

this is how i personally like to work because it takes the guessing out of it and i can just check then and there if the colors match up. feel free to use my gifs as templates in this fashion if you want, just don’t claim them as your own.

☁️ TIP 2 ☁️

if you don’t want to work with a template and just want to make your own coloring with no outside reference, another alternative would be to do something like this:

this set-up still allows you to look at the gifs you want to be matching right next to each other which makes tinkering around with the coloring a lot easier! so when you’ve created a coloring you like for one gif, you can just place your new gif next to it and try to mimic that coloring.

☁️ TIP 3 ☁️as for the coloring itself, i can link you to some of my coloring tutorials, here and here, because i don’t really do anything other than what i’ve shown in those tutorials when it comes to color manipulation. it’s basically just a combo of painting on new layers set to ‘color’ (if you don’t know what that means it’s explained in the tutorials) and a whole heck of a lot of selective color layers. nowadays i also use vibrance and hue/saturation a bit more so you can try playing around with those layers too, but i don’t cover that in the tutorials nor did i use those layers for my own rainbow sets. but everyone colors differently and i know some people who are die hard fans of the hue/saturation layer for colorful gifs, so it’s worth a try! maybe that’s more your cup of tea. you can get the same result with a lot of different techniques so you just gotta find the one that works for you!

[jamesvaldez]

❤️ + Clary Fray, Ollie Wilson, Isabelle Lightwood / Persy, she/her + "but you and me, we always seem to find our way back to each other."

welcome Persy! you’ve joined as Clary :’)

wanna join my fandom family?

[carmenlire]

"When I look at you, I see my world and that scares the sh*t out of me." for Malec ohohoh

Ahhhh this was so much fun!! Thank you!!

read on ao3

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Goddamnit. God damn him. He was a fucking assassin. A killer for hire. He carried a tattoo for every man he’d ever killed and he had more offshore accounts than most people had dollar bills. He was very rich and very skilled and now here he was protecting his target against another threat.

The Institute was going to kill him and then kill him.

Alec ducks a swing from one of the men, adjusts his grip on his knife before slicing through the man’s shirt, hitting skin underneath in a shallow cut. It does nothing more than piss them both off and Alec’s well aware that the only way to win is to live.

He takes a deep breath, bellows out, “Run,” and watches in relief as he sees Magnus take off from his peripheral.

If he makes it out of this, they’ll talk. If he doesn’t, at least he made it so that Magnus would live another day, so that he wouldn’t have to see Alec get eviscerated by his own blade.

In the fight for his life– for both their lives– Alec knows he’s pathetically and tragically distracted.

He thinks about the past three months. Magnus was a rival, a fellow assassin who’d get any job done as long as the check cleared and the men were guilty. The first weeks had been a comedy of errors. They’d danced around each other, lost in the game between them, both determined to win this duel of wits.

But something had changed. First Magnus had earned his respect, and then Alec had started noticing things about him. The way the light hit his eyes and turned them golden. The way he carried his signature weapon, a nine millimeter pistol, with ease and elegance. There’d been barbed jokes and leading questions.

Each day that Alec let Magnus live was another day that his team back at headquarters grew more confused, increasingly antsy.

But Alec just couldn’t do it. For fuck’s sake, they’d shared a hotel room two weeks ago and murder had been the last thing on his mind. No, Alec and Magnus hadn’t traded veiled threats. There’d been no wariness, no questioning. They hadn’t slept all night but it hadn’t been a precaution– they’d been far too preoccupied to wonder whether the other man would stab them in the back before morning.

Which brings Alec to now.

The life of an assassin is doomed. It’s a fact of life and something that Alec’s long since accepted.

Things are different now, though.

Foolishly, Alec had been planning to walk away from it all. Take his offshore bank accounts, grab Magnus’s hand, and run away from the only life he’d ever known.

How unfortunate that the bad guys never act according to plan.

Alec groans as the henchman lands a lucky hit that’s quickly followed by an expert stab to his thigh. As his leg collapses underneath him, Alec hears a single gunshot.

He’s in too much pain to wonder where it came from, though. He knows there’s no hope for him and that his idealized future is going up in smoke as his consciousness wavers.

He’s laying on the ground when he feels gentle hands on his face.

“Alexander, darling, stay with me. Do you hear me? You’re not allowed to leave me.”

Groggy, Alec slurs, “I thought you left. You were supposed to leave. Run, Magnus.”

“Hush, Alec. You’re safe. Aldertree’s goon is dead and it’s just you and me. I’m not going anywhere.”

Alec only hears every third word and he’s growing more disoriented by the minute. “You ran away. You left me. You’re supposed to be gone. I need you safe.”

Alec’s eyes are closed so that he doesn’t see Magnus’s lips tremble. He’s so far gone– the man had hit an artery and he was bleeding out– that he doesn’t feel Magnus’s shaking fingers ghosting along his cheek.

“When I look at you, I see my world and that scares the shit out of me. I learned a long time ago that friends were a liability and anything more was pure stupidity.”

He brushes Alec’s hair back, almost collapsing as he hears the ambulance’s sirens a few miles away. “But you’ve changed me, darling. You’ve opened my eyes. I’ve known since that first night. I’d slipped into the courtyard behind you and you didn’t hear me. I could’ve killed you then. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t understand but I left you out there, in the rain and the cold and I disappeared. And we kept running into each other and every time you smiled and every time you let me leave unscathed, my world grew a little warmer.

“You can’t die on me, Alexander. I decided a few days ago to take you and run as fast as I can as far as I can. I can’t go back to a world that’s black and white and a million shades of gray. Not when I know how extraordinary you look in color.”

A smile ghosts on Alec’s lips. Magnus leans down and chases it, terrified when Alec, always warm and verging on hot, is ice cold.

He tries to stop the bleeding but there’s just so much and Magnus is perilously close to growing hysterical. It was absurd how much things could change in just a few short months but he wouldn’t change any of it. He wouldn’t change goddamn thing as long as at the end of the line, Alec and him were standing together, whole and well.

Alec goes limp just as the ambulance pulls up in the abandoned parking lot.

They work on Alec as Magnus clings to his hand, all the while shooting poisonous looks at the dead man lying just feet away.

Magnus follows Alec into the ambulance. It’s a long night and he has to explain everything a dozen times– to police officers, claiming to be federal agents, and to Alec’s family. They’re surprised, scandalized when they realize it’s Magnus Bane calling them but they rush to the hospital all the same.

When they reach the waiting room and see Magnus sitting in a hard plastic chair, dazed and covered in their brother’s blood, the puzzle completes itself. They remember Alec’s furtive looks and the tension that hadn’t left his shoulders in months.

They see the reason for the sudden light in Alec’s eyes and know that Magnus is on their side.

When the doctor walks in and informs them that Alec is conscious and out of the woods, Magnus sways where he’s standing. He doesn’t even look at Jace or Izzy as he follows the doctor to Alec’s room.

When he crosses the threshold, he breathes for the first time in hours as he sees his love awake and alert.

“Alexander,” Magnus murmurs, gently pushing his hair off his forehead. In the next minute, he’s leaning down until their noses brush. “I love you,” he breathes.

Alec looks a little groggy but his grin is a million watts as he replies, “I love you, too.”

They share a kiss and when Magnus pulls back, Alec hums. He looks up, expression just a hint mischievous. “I seem to remember someone saying that I looked like their world.”

Magnus laughs and ignores the edge of tears in it. “Who would have thought that two rival killers for hire would fall for each other?”

Alec’s quiet for a minute as he looks at Magnus, serious. “I’ve known since the first time I saw you that something was different.”

Magnus smiles softly and kisses Alec again. They’re interrupted by a loud harrumph and pull back to see Alec’s family at the door.

What follows are three days of intense planning. Jace and Izzy scheme along with them and keep The Institute out of their hair and out of their lives. For good.

Magnus and Alec solidify their feelings, sharing intense discussions and heated debates.

Alec’s released from the hospital seventy-two hours later.

He’s never heard from again and no one can pin down the man who never left his side. When questioned, Jace and Isabelle claim ignorance. They’re eventually cleared and it’s only months later that both are honorably discharged from their organization.

They lead a civilian life, living half a world away and forming their own families.

By a stroke of luck and sheer coincidence, they choose the same city as Magnus and Alec.

Magnus’s world grows unimaginably rich and fuller than he could’ve dreamed. When their kids ask how they meet years later, both Alec and Magnus share small smiles and just explain that they were business rivals, remaining tight lipped on the details.

Everyone lives happily ever after.