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viviansternwood · 5 years

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How do you make a gif?

What a fantastic question.

This will be a full-blown tutorial, and I’m going to do my best to keep this as beginner-friendly as possible, but if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask via inbox or DMs or whichever way suits you.

You will need Photoshop to be able to follow this tutorial. I will be using this particular gif as an example:

The rest of the tutorial is under the cut.

Step 1. Download

First we download the video we’re going to gif. It always has to be in HD quality, preferably 1080, but sometimes 720 can work too, but no less. Gifs will not look good if the video you’re giffing is in bad quality.

The idea is to use torrent as little as possible because of the consequences, so, depending on what I want to gif, my method of download will vary. If it’s a relatively recent and well-known movie/tv show, then I usually check out this website for movies, and this one for tv shows.

If it’s something more obscure than that - say an old movie - you’ll have to use torrent, unfortunately.

For youtube videos, I use this app.

Step 2. Screencaps

Now that you’ve downloaded your video, you’ll need to make screencaps. The app I use is MPlayer OSX Extended - it works only for Mac. For both Mac and Windows, you can use MPEG Streamclip, but I prefer the former because it can be used for any format, whereas MPEG Streamclip only works with mp4.

I actually don’t have MPEG Streamclip anymore, so this tutorial will only show how I personally make screencaps, so with MPlayer.

The steps are simple:

Open the video

Find the scene you want to capture

Pause the video

Hold ‘command + shift + S’ until the scene ends

Make sure you choose a folder in which you want your screencaps to save (before you start capturing). To do this, while your video is open, go:

Mplayer OSX Extended > Preferences

This window will open:

At the bottom, where it says “Save screenshots to”, you can choose your location.

Step 3. Importing Screencaps

Once the screencaps are done, we open Photoshop and go: File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack

Next it’ll open a browsing window, and you find the folder in which you saved your screencaps. At this stage I like to make sure I only upload the shots that will be on my gif, leaving out the extra ones I may have captured (like the beginning of the next scene, for example).

Use Shift to choose a lot of shots at the same time:

Then click OK.

While they’re uploading to photoshop, make sure you don’t click anywhere until the process is finished because otherwise it might not upload all the shots.

Step 4. Editing

Once your screenshots are in, the first thing you need to do is decide on the size of the gif. There are specific sizes which tumblr supports so that your gifs don’t appear blurred. I’m going to make a list of all possible combinations that I know. This will go from largest possible size a gif can be to the smallest and will show how it will look in gifsets (all the gifsets will be mine, sometimes from sideblogs).

Any number of gifs, one in a row:

540x540 (example)

540x450 (example)

540x320 (example)

540x240 (example)

An even number of gifs, two gifs in a row, side by side:

268x404 (example)

268x350 (example)

268x300 (example)

268x268 (example)

268x220 (example)

268x192 (example)

268x150 (example)

9 gifs:

177x177 for side gifs and 178x177 for the middle gif in each row (example)

In this case, I will be making a standard 540x240 gif.

First we resize the image. Because these are caps from a movie and not a TV show (resolutions are different for TV), the cap is wide but short, that means that I change the size of the image by height. To do this:

Image > Image Size

This window opens:

Where it says “height”, we type in 240 and click OK.

Then we zoom in to a 100%.

Next, we make sure the timeline is open. To do this:

Window > Timeline

Once that’s done, down at the timeline, we click “Create Frame Animation”:

At the right of the timeline, right under the layers, we click on this little thing:

And choose “Make Frames from Layers”

The frames will now be in reversed order because that’s how the layers always upload, so we click on that little four lines thing in the upper right corner of the timeline again and choose “Reverse Frames”:

And now is the time to have a look at your frames and see if you need to delete any. Make sure that if you delete a frame, you delete a corresponding layer as well. The gif will have to be under 3mb for tumblr to display it correctly, so make sure there aren’t too many frames. But this isn’t a huge issue because once you’ve saved the ready gif, you can always reopen it and delete some frames.

In this case I have 36 frames, and I’m going to take it down to 34 just to be safe. This is what the gif looks like at this stage:

Once that’s done, the next step is to set the delay. Every giffer does this according to their personal preferences, but I personally do this. If your gif doesn’t involve any talking - so you won’t be adding text, then set the delay to 0.07. If it involves adding text later, don’t touch the delay at all at the moment, it’ll have to be done later.

Because this gif doesn’t involve adding any text, I’m setting the delay to 0.07. Again, hold Shift to choose all the frames.

The slowed down gif looks like this:

Now it’s time to crop! Choose the cropping tool and type 540x240 where it says “ratio”:

Choose the crop positioning to your liking and press enter.

The gif at the moment:

Now we do last preparations before colouring. For this, click at the little four lines again:

And choose “Convert to Video Timeline”.

Then choose all the layers and go Filter > Convert for Smart Filters.

Then go Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen:

Which will open the window for smart sharpening, and here are my settings:

This is another one of those things that is down to each giffer, but what I usually do is, if it’s a really small gif, like 268x150 for example, I set radius to 0.2. If it’s a huge close up to a person’s face or a really big gif, like 540x540, I set the radius to 0.4. For all other gifs I always keep it on 0.3.

Then click OK.

Next, go Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Here are my settings for this:

Then, move the noise layer under the sharpening layer (I don’t know if this changes anything, but I always do it this way lol):

The gif ends up looking like this:

Now the editing is done, and it’s time to colour!

Step 5. Colouring

This is by far the hardest thing a giffer has to do, so if you don’t immediately get the hang of it, don’t be upset. You’ll learn eventually. I’m still learning, personally.

Again, all of this is very much down to each giffer, but here’s the way I do it.

Press the little “fill layer” button and choose Curves:

So the way I use curves is to even out the entire shot’s colouring. So if the scene is too red or too green or too blue or too yellow, it gets rid of the excess of that colouring and brings it down to normal. Can help so much in some cases.

What you do is choose the middle pipette in the window, which is to sample image to set grey point.

There’s also the option to set white point (bottom pipette) or black point (top pipette), but I don’t use those because it screws with your lighting too much.

To choose a point, I usually use the person’s eyebrows or hair. Sounds ridiculous, but it does work. In this case clicking on Dunkleman’s eyebrow makes the image too green:

So what I do instead is click on his hair, where it’s reddish brown, somewhere here.

This makes the image noticeably less red compared to the original:

But also, it made the image less vibrant, so we’re fixing that next. Fill layer > Vibrance:

And then I set Vibrance to 100, always. If the image is still not vibrant enough for my liking, I set saturation (in the same window) to 10 or 25 in some cases. And for this gif, I will set saturation to 10.

Here’s how the image ends up looking (just make sure it doesn’t make their faces ridiculously red or something, but if there’s some excess of colour, don’t worry):

Now go Fill layer > Exposure.

Here are my settings for this gif:

With exposure, it’s just a matter of keeping that balance between lightening it as much as possible but without their faces or bodies looking as bright as a christmas tree, and then adding offset and gamma correction to return normalcy to the picture.

Here’s what the image looks like now:

It’s obvious right now that their faces are a little too red and too yellow, so we’re going to fix that. Go Fill Layer > Selective Colour:

The task here is to make their faces appear as if they’re stood in normal daylight with no other filters. So as close to normal skin colour as possible. Be careful when giffing people of colour so that you don’t whitewash them.

In this case, I’m adding cyan in reds:

And taking down yellow in yellows:

And here’s what the image ends up looking like:

I’m quite satisfied with this result, so I’m going to leave it how it is, but sometimes I will tweak things more and use colour balance and other things.

Step 6. Add Text

Make sure you group your colouring layers at this point and then add your text as the top layer.

Step 7. Save the gif

To save a gif moving, you go File > Export > Save for Web:

This window opens up, and make sure that in the bottom right corner, where it says “looping options”, it’s set to “forever”:

As the last step, I add dither because it evens out the edited colours in the background. I tend to use “pattern”:

Then we press “save” and our gif is done!

Step 9. Reopen

If you added text to the gif and followed my advice, you wouldn’t have touched the delay back at the beginning. This is because converting to video timeline kicks the delay either into 0.03 (too fast) or into 0.07 (too slow for speaking gifs). So you have to reopen the gif now and set the delay to 0.06 (that’s the speed I like for my gifs where someone’s talking on them).

This is also a good time to delete some frames if your gif is 3mb or over. Remember it won’t move if it’s not under 3mb!

Hope all of this makes sense, and let me know if you have any questions!

#asks #ellediaz #ps tutorial #tutorials #tall girl netflix

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bladekindeyewear · 5 years

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Boots reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 6 - Meat Page 16

==> (Whoa, went a long while before splitting posts, there. Dangerous, with how often I’ve lost stuff to Tumblr page reloads in the past.)

Oh, you’ve realized Zazzerpan’s relevance as foreshadowing for the trolls or whatever, Rose?

Oh my god, PLEASE don’t put Rose inside a fucking robot. >:|

Oh SHIT wait. That one wizard Roxy named her cat after who wanted all the knowledge in the world, got overloaded and then crushed by the giant textbook or whatever??? That’s disturbingly Rose-similar here. D:

Rose, puns. Please.

Hm, you think it applies to you all now instead of the trolls? Huh. Do you think some of you might become villains and get Just deaths?

..Huh, wait. Numerological significance? Are we actually learning what 413 means? Or learning that it was meant to be bullshit all along instead? I’m “Hmmm”ing loudly either way...

Ow, ouch. So a Light player wasn’t designed to properly live outside of canon significance, or??

Ooh. She’s not sure that if she opens herself up to all the knowledge of her other selves, that it’d be “her” anymore. A pretty legitimate fear... and one Dirk is perfectly disposed to disabuse her of. As a Heart player, he’d understand better than most that the entire combination of one’s various states over all timelines IS you, and the unique direction your will and uniqueness embodies across whatever it touches. Or something.

...Wait, wait a minute. Before I keep reading........ I didn’t actually CLICK the candy button yet. What if Candy just redirects to AO3 or something. Like, the candy bit is all of our fanfics. Oh jeez.

Okay reading on before that possibility drives me insane.

DIRK: I’m not sure anyone should be allowed to have that much foresight. Especially a guy like me.

...Mhmm, especially since in part that’s how we got Doc Scratch, yeah.

Reading to the end of this page, and........

Yeah, what the FUCK just happened.

So... is this Dirk BEING a villain? Doing some sort of weird almost cherubic Eye thing to kind of supplant Rose as he becomes a Scratch-like fanfic narrator or... Let me reread these last few paragraphs a couple times...

Is he really sort of “puppeteering” Rose? Is this like the birth of a god-tier villain or just a temporary respite he’s giving her sort of underhandedly for an actual good cause to help her out of her situation?? Or is “death” or a death of the self the actual solution he had for her mess??? I mean... the metatextual awareness bit that he’s speaking through in the last sentence is clearly something like what comes of ascending completely and going beyond the story to be able to write it like Caliborn or Doc Scratch might or... y’know what, fuck it. I’ll understand it in later pages. I have to keep reading if this is going to make sense to me.

This next button better not lead straight back to the fucking selection screen again.

==>

Oh shit, a giant Dirk section. Only fitting that he might have been writing most of this all along possibly.

Undercurrent of narrative significance. Oh shit. Is he going to go off about Light, about the story parts not mattering? Or that the fact that this IS a story and... from what I accidentally skimmed in sentences below before reading further, how we’re trapping them in a story by reading it or something??? Hence the idea that their existences are being “blighted” by the subtext of narrative significance, and would be better FREE of it?

Huh. Is this really going to work? As, like... a body slam of people who were too caught up in the forest of narrative purpose to see into the trees of the point he wanted to make with the finale? It’s practically Andrew talking to the audience from within the story about their frustrations, heh.

Yeah, this whole rant is pretty awesome so far. I forgot to mention it a few paragraphs ago, but when you look at the story list, the Epilogues are listed as “stories of dubious authenticity”, so is this whole thing like... how DIRK might have written the ending out? Just to emphasize further that this whole thing is kind of pointless compared to the infinite possibility that was the reward for their escape from the confines of such story-stuff?

Cool. Sounds like we’re seeing the “good end” that Dirk would have written for this story if he were to write one that still answers plotlike questions, or something similar to it. That and/or he’s also engineering things in-canon -- or as “canon” as the victory planet is -- to follow all this for the end result he has in mind, and it comes across as practically Doc Scratch-y in the way it ties in metatextual awareness and stuff. Either way, it DOES feel like Andrew might successfully be making his point.

==>

Pff. This is going to be a bit interesting. And, of course, unstuck-in-canon John can hear the narrator speaking.

And now John has ANOTHER story to get annoyed at the narrator of, heh.

The tooth is poisoned? Really? Did you just make that up or?

Okay, why suddenly the wallet, fanfic writer? Is he going to find touching pictures or just captchalogue the black hole?

This is all starting to feel a whole lot less serious, and I can’t help but figure that’s the intent.

==>

Pff, back to the B plot. Yay Jade! --Please don’t be metatextually aware like John and let’s get more actual story.

Phew, seems to be the case

...Is Karkat going to remake this post-scarcity society to be more Communist? Is that where we’re going here?

Alright, Roxy’s gonna be all voidy and Neutral and not want an impact on the election, from the sound of it?

GAAAHHH Jade is in love with all her friends and afraid of being alone. AAAH FEELS

--Oh huh, so because Jane’s been in the distance putting on the Perfect act she thinks she has to pull, she’s gone down in her friends’ opinions even if that isn’t really her??? That’s pretty reassuring as an alternative, actually. Leave it to Roxy to see everything crystal goddamn clear as usual.

Ooh, pronoun mishap.

Holy SHIT Roxy’s gonna go along with it. That’s nonbinary-awesome! And Dirk’s just fucking flabbergasted, I love it.

Pff, Dirk’s screwing it up outside too

yep, everyone ectobiologically had kids with everyone, really.

Oh, ow. Something about the whole black hole green sun thing is fucking with her. That, or, like... Huh, might the whole metatextual ascension thing mean that she actually BECOMES that other Jade floating about for a hot minute, the one in the A-side plot??

==>

Ow this excellent narrative is pretty painful. Like, empathetically inducing pain through really good description of pain and angst. Ow.

Oh shit, alt!Calliope has a plan. Maybe she’s able to use this black hole to re-begin Paradox Space and close the loop once everything’s absorbed or something, and needs a Jade’s help for it?

==>

Phew, some relative silliness with some of the others. That vivid description of a Jade’s suffering was starting to give my stomach a cramp. Actually, ANY vivid description of Jade’s suffering gives my stomach a cramp. Or any allusion to it, even, heck even without WORDS. I saw a Jadey song redux show up on my Youtube dashboard a few nights ago and had to turn it off after less than thirty seconds because I was about to throw up listening to the tune and staring at the image from my stomach clenching SO HARD. I am WAY too attached to Jade in particular to tolerate her suffering without serious emotional feedback on my part.

Okay, breathe. Breathe deeply, and keep reading...

....PFF, yes, Karkat. Finally acknowledge it’s disgusting. Birth is disgusting from any species really.

Yaaaay Kanaya! :)

Pfffff, Dave does record scratches with his hands mid-conversation like a fucking dab. He would.

KANAYA: I Am Impressed That You Managed To Be Seen In Front Of That Many People Without Spontaneously Bursting Into Flames

I’m laughing

We internalize and project the quality in very different ways, however, which is why I’m going to win.

Win?!????

Win WHAT, the election??? Is that your only grand plan or... I mean fuck, way to be Doc-Scratch-like ominous! Reading on...

...Yeah, Feferi was definitely a proto-Fascist too. :)

Oh, huh. “Power Corrupts In Small Steps”... is this whole President thing going to be a big-ass metaphor for gaining your God powers without abusing them?? And pointing out that Jane is hella abusing her status in a way that COULD become villainous if it goes too far? Victory is supposed to give you the ability to create a universe, but you’re not necessarily supposed to lord over it with an iron fist...

KARKAT: WHEN I HEAR ABOUT HOW HUMAN GRUBS CHEW THEIR WAY OUT OF THE FEMALE MATESPRIT’S ABDOMINAL HOLE BEFORE CONSUMING THE WOMB MEMBRANE IT MAKES ME WANT TO VOMIT.

Pffffffff

KANAYA: He Is Beloved In The Troll Kingdom For His Perky Ass DAVE: seriously? KARKAT: I TOLD YOU IT’S NOT JUST ME! KANAYA: It Has Some Terrible Arcane Power KANAYA: I Have Never Seen Anything Like It

I am laughing out loud here

pff dave’s doubtlessly imagined this at least as much as the rest of us

YESSS make fun of ship names some more, especially the ship names I’m not a fan of even though I’m such a fan of the pairing :D

KANAYA: Im Going To Call My Wife And You Are Going To Stop Talking

Why do I love that sentence so much. Is it just because it has the word wife in it. Probably.

At the other side of the cavern, Dave and Karkat bicker about what their combo kids would look like, in the event that they decided to stop being such laughable wusses and began fornicating like two cartoon animals of different species who have given into their lust.

Pffff. Yeah, Dirk would put it that way.

Pffffff. Not as adept at handling all sides of the story at the same time as you were as part of Doc, eh?

==>

Reading reading reading... Oh, adorable, he tried to slip a fish pun into Meenah’s name but couldn’t think of one.

...Oh SHIT, is he going to give Meenah the ring of life she wanted??? :D

Oh pff, that works too. :D

==>

Okay, time for maybe at least a SLIGHT explanation of whatever the FUCK Dirk might have or might not have done to Rose or something????

...Huh. What exactly are you trying to “fix” about Kanaya and Rose’s relationship, Dirk? Something that didn’t fix itself with just the two of them together?

I mean...... Rose’s substance abuse never fixed itself when it was just two of them together on the first-run meteor. And she’s been taking pills and trying to stave off her destiny out of fear while her wife hasn’t really been digging into her insecurities... I mean maybe he has a point.

SHADOWS around her?????? D:

==>

Yeah yeah, John drifting. I just remembered what one of those “server beacons” they were mentioning actually is, too, visually. Knowing it had an escape route helped.

What are you even gonna do with the slippers, gift them to Terezi when she comes flying in? (Also, right, just remembered he’s a Breath player so it’s only natural that he actually finds whatever there is to find “coincidentally” around here, like that wallet.)

Ooh, you REALLY were thinking about Terezi over the past years from the sound of it. And here she is or whatever. :)

1 C4N ST1LL TOUCH TYP3 1N H3R L33T SP34K W1THOUT 4NY 4SS1ST4NC3 3XC3PT C4PS LOCK ON 4FT3R 4LL TH3S3 Y34RS >:]

==>

Okay okay okay wait. Her shadow is talking??? Is this, like... Jungian shadow stuff? Inversion shadow stuff? What the fuck is going on. It better not be Inversion-related.

Let me read that again.

Her shadow has faded to light behind her, assuming the shape of a Rose-like apparition. I nod to her, and she continues. When she speaks, it’s almost as if it’s the apparition that’s doing the talking.

That’s weird and I don’t entirely know what it means. I’d better just keep fucking reading.

Fun philosophical banter. I didn’t know what “Hegelian dialectics” were until I read some big rant on someone’s Fallout New Vegas playthrough earlier last month.

ROSE: I think free will is a thing, sure. DIRK: Are you sure about that? ROSE: ... DIRK: Haven’t we spent the entire day having a feelings jam on how none of us got here by accident?

Ah, here we’re going with some Ultimate Riddle-y stuff.

Or wait, are we adding a bit on to that concept now? Because it now seems like a large PART of the Ultimate Riddle stuff I covered (FUCK dropbox for breaking all the images) that might be revealed in this part of the damn epilogue is the whole the-only-way-to-have-true-free-will-is-to-escape-the-narrative-imposed-on-us or something along with the rest of it.

Hm, that whole “become One God” bit that Dirk ranted about in the beginning of one of the John sections... is that his ambition here? I didn’t comment on the rantparagraph earlier because the “one” part of it threw me as possibly just some philosophical stuff he was musing about, but it’s like... I mean Dirk is the narrator right now, and it sounds like he wants to *BE* the narrator. Like, become the one truly in control of this whole story. With his orange Andrew-colored text or whatever. Is that what he meant by “win”, winning control of the entire narrative, turning everyone else in the story into mere extensions of himself that he was “writing” by virtue of being the only author?

And him getting thwarted in that task, showing that it’s better if there really is NO narrator and the characters can do whatever they imagine in infinite branches and our imaginations, is the victory that proves the point of the story. Or something. Hmm.

Also, huh. Like... I mean that IS a natural extension of a Prince of Heart if he were to turn to villainy. A grand ambition to destroy everyone’s individuality until they’re nothing but Himself. Right?

DIRK: Your Ultimate Self, that which is revealed when the mind’s partitions are stripped away, and all potentiality of who you are and what you could have been flow together. DIRK: Those are the experiences and processes that are refusing to stay bundled, that’s what your body can’t endure. The unbundling itself is your mind coming apart. DIRK: Because you’re not as strong as me. Not yet. DIRK: But you can be. DIRK: I’m working on that.

Because she’ll “BE” you? Because you’ll be everyone? Hm.

DIRK: But for now, I’m focused on stabilizing you with my own expanding consciousness. DIRK: It’s enveloping you now, in a way you can’t see. Keeping your thoughts solid, your identity anchored to your physical form as it strains to hold itself together. DIRK: You can’t see it, what I’m talking about. But I can help you. DIRK: I can help you see what I see, if only for a little while. DIRK: All you have to do is open your eyes. DIRK: Maybe what you see will help you through this.

Okay so maybe this all ain’t TOTALLY fucking sinister. Just partially. Hmm.

I’m not going to describe what she sees. First of all, that would be spoiling it. Unless you already know, in which case, I guess what’s taking place here qualifies as something closer to dramatic irony. But if you really want to see it for yourself, stop what you’re doing, flip the whole thing over, and begin again. I’ll be right here when you get back, waiting. Trust me, no one’s going anywhere.

Hahahahah. So the candy part IS written. I mean I was pretty sure, but it’s nice to have it acknowledged here. Pretty awesome. I won’t stop here to read it, I’ll get to the candy part eventually as a nice dessert.

All she needs is a nudge in the right direction.

We’re family. We belong together. And after years of micromanaging the inconsistent and confused desires of total imbeciles, wouldn’t it be a relief to have someone by my side who understood me?

Stop being so incestuous. Dirk, you’re just getting off on the CONCEPT of incest being part of the flavor of all this, aren’t you. That’s why you kept pushing things this way, you want it to be as uncomfortable as possible.

...wait, yeah he’s just talking about being a metatextual ascended, isn’t he.

Her body should be dead now.

I’M SORRY WHAT THE FLYING FUCK.

And Rose has... what, ascended but somehow given in to Dirk’s puppeteering of existence, or? Ugh.

Next post, I wanna keep reading already to get through all this bullshit. Then once I’ve figured it all out, I can rest comfortably back with the Candy side which Rose practically just promised me is potentially TOO SUGARY which is really enticing as a prospect.

#Homestuck #Homestuck Epilogue #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #bladekindeyewear #BlastYoBoots

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emmett-mccarty-cullen · 5 years

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Who ordered the late night sad nonbinary-loving-women aesthetic? I found a backup of photos I took in California last winter, so I'm screwing around by making okay-ish aesthetic photos of them. Text colors are based off of @/non-aligned-sapphic 's orbisian flag, but picsart wouldn't cooperate properly and let the text match the stripes right.

New banner image, perhaps.

Edit: click on it to see it in decent quality. Tumblr effed it up on the upload

Cool to reblog, but please don't repost/claim as your own.

[Image description: a sunset picture of the tops of two palm trees. There is also the text "going to California with an aching in my heart. Someone told me there's a girl out here, with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair" on the image in the nonbinary loving women/orbisian flag. End description/]

#my aesthetic #original content? in my household?#orbisian aesthetic #nlw aesthetic #nblw aesthetic #i dont wanna put this in posi tags cos this is kinda emo tbh #also this was my first time writing an image id #i hope i did okayish?

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thewatchau · 5 years

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Watch AU Fun Fact #25

I just realized that King Sean's castle is a huge shell keep, AKA the stone version of a motte and bailey castle!

This is SUPER cool because I did a project on motte and bailey castles in sixth grade. Not only did I learn everything I could about these structures, but I also actually built one. It was small, made out of paper mache, coffee cans, uncooked pasta, and sticks, but still! I’ll see if I can track down the pictures we took of it. And that’s not even the best part...

The best part is that I still have the powerpoint from that project.

So, without further ado, please enjoy a brief summary of what King Sean’s castle probably would have been like, courtesy of eleven-year-old me! Click the images for better quality; tumblr, as always, hates pictures.

TL;DR: Motte and bailey castles were structures built around a big hill, with the main keep on the top of the hill and the city area below it. The hill was often man-made using the dirt from digging the moat around the entire castle. Eventually, people stopped using wood for these castles (because wood + fire = bad castle) and started using stone instead, creating these things called Shell Keeps.

And that’s what King Sean’s castle would have been!

I’ve mentioned before that King Sean’s castle sits on the top of a hill that really, if we’re being honest, shouldn’t be there. I didn’t realize this at the time, but having a single hill in a relatively flat area is not how geography works. Therefore, the hill must be man made. Plus, I had already mentioned that the Guardian River (screw it I’m not calling it the complicated name anymore) had been diverted slightly to fill a moat around the capital... and that’s when I connected the dots.

Obviously, King Sean’s capital city as a whole is far larger than a normal motte and bailey or shell keep. I think I estimated it to be about 10 miles across at its widest point. However, the castle itself and the area around it would fit the bill. The city would have then grown up around it.

And you know what? That’s kinda cool.

#Duilintinn's Culture #watch au fun facts

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amorremanet · 7 years

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10 facts about meme: Lucy? And Adelaide, if you don't mind doing two?

send me one of my oc’s and i tell you ten facts about them

This is the shitty, “I fell asleep instead of doing this last night, and then, when I was almost fucking done, trying to make tumblr instant messenger stop doing something made it decide to click over somewhere else, and Firefox apparently doesn’t let the Lazarus extension work anymore, so I lost everything and am completely skimming out of frustration because the original was detailed and cool, and I lost basically all of it” version

LUCY

1. Has never completed a Pokémon game with a grass or water starter. She just doesn’t bond with them as much as she does with the fire starters, and any time she tries to pick a grass or water starter, she inevitably gives up, restarts, and picks the fire starter instead.

2. Since she turned 18, she’s made a point of giving blood as often as possible, because she’s type-O negative (the universal donor), and the Red Cross is pretty much always running short on blood, which can leave a lot of people totally screwed when they need to get transfusions.

3. Doesn’t believe in astrology and dismisses most of things in that vein as a cold-reading scam that’s based on exploiting people’s ability to project themselves onto anything…… but she does have an interest in dream interpretation.

4. She finds recipes confusing, and is even more befuddled by the Food Network and, “how to make [x baked goods]” videos on youtube, to the point that she finds them more stressful than getting a, “We need to talk” text from her parents. And yet, she is not confused by instructions in a chemistry lab.

5. She loves her red hair, but hates being called, “ginger.” It’s not that she thinks the word is offensive or anything; she just thinks that it sounds weird and slightly disgusting.

6. One of her favorite forms of, “teenage rebellion” was watching televangelists (or more accurately, having them on while she did other stuff because it’s really easy for Lucy to tune them out), which Lucy wouldn’t have liked so much if she’d actually paid attention to any of them (because of how televangelists exploit their viewers’ pain and suffering, get rich off of it, and don’t have to pay taxes on most of that money because they call it, “religious donations”) — but it did successfully annoy her very Catholic parents and very Catholic, “he’s a legit priest and everything” uncle.

7. A horror movie can be as political or politically coded as it wants. Unless it does something truly novel with the genre, like Get Out, then Lucy will probably just roll her eyes, complain about how many people value, “edginess” over quality, and then go watch The Great Mouse Detective for the umpteenth time. It’s not even that she gets squicked by horror movies, because she stops at dismissing all of them as edgelord garbage and doesn’t give them a chance.

8. She has even less patience for the films of Christopher Nolan, and literally the only one that she doesn’t go in too hard on is The Dark Knight, which only gets any consideration because Heath Ledger died not that long after making it, in ways that were pretty heavily associated with the movie in popular culture.

Not that she really cares about Heath Ledger, or even about the taboo on speaking ill of the dead, but she figures that he isn’t Ronald Reagan levels of terrible, or worse, so it’s easier to just not get into it with people over Heath Ledger when all that she wanted to say was that The Dark Knight isn’t actually that great

She will, however, talk shit about Ronald Reagan pretty much any time she’s given an opportunity, and especially if her Mom and Dad are around (because they were big Reaganites, back in the day, and annoying them with her hatred of the Gipper keeps them from paying attention to things like how her, “best friend” Sara Grace is actually her girlfriend)

9. Her answer to the question of whether she prefers cats or dogs will probably be something like, “iguanas” because she hates the assumption that it’s not possible to love cats and dogs more or less equally, but she also has better things to argue with people about.

10. She can’t whistle, she’s not really a very good dancer, and the last time she tried to tie a cherry stem in a knot with her tongue, she wound up swallowing it.

ADELAIDE

1. At 5’11”, Addie is taller than her big brother and their Mom (who are both 5’10”), and when standing up as best man when Max and Linda got married, she didn’t try to make him feel short, but she did wear a nice pair of heels and didn’t really go out of her way not to make him feel short, either.

2. By all rights, Addie probably should’ve been diagnosed with ADHD a while ago, but because her childhood and adolescence lasted from about 1986-2000 (when she turned 18), and because in 2017, ADHD is still badly misunderstood and under-diagnosed in AFAB kids, Addie got missed and made it to 33, thinking that all of her ADHD symptoms are just personal quirks or failings.

3. Her favorite color is purple. The darker the shade, the better.

4. Her ability to interpret song lyrics is often questionable. Like, on one hand, she’s totally made the mistake of hearing, “There’s a bathroom on the right” instead of, “There’s a bad moon on the rise” during the chorus of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising”

—and on the other hand, she completely missed that most of Missy Elliot’s “Work It” is explicitly about cunnilingus until Pete asked her what the Hell she thought the lyric, “Go downtown and eat it like a vulture” was referring to, especially given its proximity to Ms. Elliot talking about shaving her chocha. (All Addie has to say for herself is that she got caught up on the, “Girls, girls, get that cash / If it’s 9 to 5 or shakin’ your ass” verse.)

She also thought that Spice Girls were singing about group sex in “Wannabe,” rather than singing about making sure that your significant other can get along with your gal pals, and she kept thinking this until mid-September 2012.

5. As far as her family knows, Addie almost got arrested on her 18th birthday and had to run from the cops while she and a few friends were kinda drunk and screwing around in New York City. What really happened was that her birthday was on a Saturday, so they signed themselves out of school for the weekend, went to NYC, and saw the revival of Jesus Christ Superstar because her parents bought them tickets.

Then, they used fake ID’s to get some alcohol and got kinda drunk. Then, while they were screwing around in Brooklyn instead of going to cousin Jeremy’s place and crashing for the night, they wound up going by a gay bar, where Addie tripped over her own feet and got caught by a cute butch lesbian who happened to be dressed as a sexy cop for a themed party at said gay bar and had gone outside for a smoke break.

Then, one of Addie’s friends mistook this poor woman for a real cop and insisted that they run, and despite putting it together in the cold, sober light of day that there had been no actual danger, Addie told Sebastian the, “We so totally almost got arrested” story because she thought it sounded cooler, and at this point, it’s been 15 years, and she doesn’t see a point in correcting her family when her younger cousins get the, “Don’t get too rowdy on your 18th birthday or you may end up running from the cops like Adelaide” cautionary tale.

6. She would probably try to play real-world Quidditch, if she could get anyone to play with her, but that’s not going to happen, because everyone who knows her also knows that Addie is competitive as fuck, and that playing “muggle Quidditch” with her is a good way to get at least mildly injured.

7. She can see where the dislike that a lot of people in her life have for the All-Stars comes from, but personally, Addie doesn’t buy into it herself. She doesn’t really care to defend them, either, but at this point, she feels like most of the world’s problems can’t be solved with super-strength or heat vision, and they’re more complicated than the All-Stars’ image would allow them to handle, so it’s best to see the All-Stars as entertainers, rather than actual heroes.

Not that she begrudges anyone their annoyance with the fact that the All-Stars make, “we are actual heroes” a cornerstone of their so-called “brand,” but if you ask Addie, it’s not all that much different from how U.S. politicians lie up one side and down the other about basically everything, and how much of U.S. politics is increasingly little more than a theatre spectacle to cover up what’s actually going on

Oddly enough, Addie is accidentally on to something with that, because a lot of the supervillains in this universe are not truly participating in any shadowy conspiracy…… but they are being manipulated by members of one, and alternately being used as a source of talking points, or as distractions, so that the folks in said shadowy conspiracy (who are a mix of mutants and not) can push through their own agendas and try to secure their own power at the expense of anyone who gets in their way

Not that it’s really here or there at the moment, but this is totally going to bite them in the ass, partly from the people they’ve been exploiting and screwing over for decades putting shit together and pushing back, and partly because they decide to bank on installing a puppet who isn’t as easily controlled or as easily made to serve their agendas as they think. Anyway, as I was saying.

8. If Adelaide hadn’t gone into the family business and started vying with Max to see who’s going to become CEO when their Dad retires, she probably would’ve gone into advertising. If not that, she most likely would’ve gone to law school.

However, despite the fact that her Mom and several of her cousins are lawyers, Addie’s notions about how being a lawyer works are mostly derived from Legally Blonde, Ally McBeal, and Law and Order: SVU, so it might be a good thing that she has no idea what she’d actually want to do at law school.

9. Popular wisdom holds that she only isn’t the worst driver out of her siblings because Sebastian is the one who should’ve racked up multiple DUI charges by now, by all rights shouldn’t have his license anymore, and rarely uses it these days anyway because he, “doesn’t have PTSD, he just doesn’t like driving okay, it kinda freaks him out” (…which it does because of the PTSD that he allegedly doesn’t have but that’s another matter)

Addie holds that this popular wisdom is misogynistic bullshit being passed off as familial teasing, because actually, she’s a much better driver than all three of her brothers (with both cars and motorcycles, though only she and Seb have ever driven one of those, so it’s a little unfair to Max and Ambrose)

—and she may not know how to fix more complicated car problems, but she can at least get a better grasp on what might be wrong than, “I don’t know, it keeps making a thunka thunka thunka sound if you go above 60 mph” and she has more than once fixed something for her brothers that turned out to be something like, “You were driving with the parking brake on, dumb-ass”

10. Her go-to karaoke night songs are Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” — the latter of which would be funnier to Adelaide if she’d intended to sound hella bi when she first started doing it, rather than picking it because she was kinda drunk and knew all the words, then getting really into singing it and having no conscious idea where those emotions were coming from

#builttobalance #ask box tag #memes for ts #ocs tag #that story with the mutants that i should find a working title for fml #adelaide moncrieff: ambitious disaster #lucy murphy: hemokinetic disaster #alcohol ref//#ten facts meme

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swelldomains · 7 years

Text

The Ideal Content Marketing Mix for the Evolving Social Landscape

Larry Kim tried to warn you.

The owner and also CTO of WordStream said on Inc. that Google+ will certainly pass away. Kim likewise repeated on his own blog that the rumors are true. He stated Google is breaking its Streams and Images into standalone items, as well as Bradley Horowitz will certainly manage them when he made the news on, fittingly, Google+.

Is It True?

Kim stated while Horowitz didn't point out Google+ by name in his message, the writing is on the wall. Kim said these two items make up much of the Google+ network user experience, and also their splitting up spells the end of Google's foray into social (a minimum of on its end).

If individuals had actually taken notice of Kim from the obtain go, this would not come as a surprise. There's no uncertainty if you're reading this for the very first time, it is a large one. As is the situation with Web marketing, some will certainly stay in denial and also say it won't happen. Also when it does, some still won't believe it. That's a topic for another day.

Kim speak about what Google want the social media network, such as using it for marketing just. As Kim said, if it seems crazy, that's the appeal of Google.

But what concerning you as well as various other material marketing experts that utilize Google+? Exactly how does this influence exactly what you do?

It doesn't.

The loss of Google+ indicates following to nothing for content marketing experts. It offers you more time to concentrate on the content you create as opposed to sharing it.

If what you write is high quality, individuals will certainly still discover it. If your sole technique for material advertising and marketing is Google+, you remain in problem as well as require to re-evaluate your technique. Somebody must have done that long back. The fallen short experiment with Authorship need to have been your very first hint.

That exposes the question everyone in Web as well as web content advertising lookings but can not pertain to a consensus. It is one of the most fiercely debated subject in both industries.

Is one of the most vital aspect of material the top quality or sharing?

Quality vs. Sharing

Both have arguments to sustain their insurance claims however one gets ignored like a red-headed stepchild.

Where you fall in the argument is subjective and also based upon just what you think is the most essential (or exactly what you excel at).

The individuals who say sharing the content is the most essential subsequently state the top quality doesn't really issue. If you recognize just how to share as well as get individuals to click your material, you're gold. If it looks awesome, has incredible GIFs as well as memes, people will eat it up.

What if those individuals you attract to your web content read it as well as the story is pure garbage? It's packed with grammatical mistakes, went down words and reads like a person cannot put 2 words together? It reads as if it was developed in five mins as well as they can tell.

How does that market or re-market to potential customers?

Isn't that the point of this?

You have one shot to win somebody's company, so you ideal make certain you toenail it the very first time. No matter the number of clicks or page views a story gets if you can not convert those clicks or web page sights right into profit as well as revenue.

Far also usually, individuals in Net as well as content advertising get blinded my rubbish. They are so caught up in the number of individuals see their material they forget exactly what actually matters. If you get one million web page sights however just 1 percent convert to earnings, just how does that help?

It would certainly offer your business or your customers much better to have a greater conversion rate.

This leads to one more common issue for marketers - impatience. They want all of it and also they desire it today. Whatever is the easiest and fastest way to obtain outcomes, they want it. If they have to be person as well as place in the time, initiative as well as job, they desire none of it.

That's why so numerous content online marketers push the "sharing your content is the most important" rubbish. All you need to do is toss a story with each other, include some amusing GIFs or memes, toss it up on Outbrain, Stumble Upon, Reddit (if you have the karma to do so) and also every other site you can and enjoy the web page sights flow to you.

The firms that do it appropriate are person, take pride in what they produce as well as realize that obtaining outcomes that drive profits and also incomes takes time. They understand getting tried and tested and constant outcomes requires a whole lot of tension and hard work.

The numbers for clicks and page views by themselves are vacant and imply absolutely nothing, and up until more material marketing professionals concern that realization, this discussion rages on.

That's not to state you do not desire those numbers, yet unless they drive your commercial property, why does it matter? If you have a high bounce rate and individuals leave your site without a purchase, exactly how do those one million web page views aid the bottom line?

Aim for the Right Mix

Instead of quality OR sharing, make use of a mix of both. Be bold. Do not adhere to the line at chow time.

Why does it need to be one or the other?

Put the time into producing excellent content, and afterwards placed in the moment to share it. Till the high quality exists, hold off on sharing it. When you obtain people to your blog, you wish to keep them there. When you share it, you construct the credibility as well as reliability of your company or customer. If the high quality of the content is regular, people will start to trust you and also seek you out.

Over time, people will certainly simply flock to your blog site like deer in the rut. That's when you produce the registration listing and also monetize your blog. The only method to get to that factor is to have high-quality web content and create it at a consistent clip.

Remain individual, do it the proper way as well as you will certainly see clicks, page sights, revenue as well as profits all concerned you in droves. The only means to get there is to concentrate on the high quality of your web content. Put the time in to make it as wonderful as it could be. Take pride in just what you do and also people will see that. If you take satisfaction in exactly what you produce, those individuals will eventually take pride in it as well.

How might you anticipate people to provide you their company if you don't take pride in just what you create?

Far frequently firms view clients as well as clients as buck expenses. Client service no more matters. The quality of the material or items does not issue. All they respect is cash and ways to obtain even more of it (in the easiest and fastest means possible).

Prove to individuals that you care. Verify to individuals that they typically aren't simply dollar bills you place right into your checking account. If you place in the moment, as well as do so regularly, people will compensate you for it by giving you their business. They intend to provide you their money, you simply need to ensure you do not screw that up.

That's where individuals and also business fall short. When you see their commercial property version and also research study what matters, it's not difficult to determine why.

Instead of stressing either wonderful content or sharing, do both.

Produce that constant, premium material and also the remainder will certainly fall right into location. As tough as it is, remain patient and battle need to take the simple escape. It's tough work as well as it requires time, yet it deserves it in the end.

Twitter Gets Better

You can still make use of LinkedIn, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest and also, the finest, Inbound to share your web content. But content marketers have to maintain an eye on Twitter.

In very early February, it was reported by Bloomberg that Twitter struck a manage Google that makes tweets from its 294 million customers instantaneously searchable.

The offer increases Twitter's reach past just Bing as well as Yahoo! As Mashable claimed, this is much more significant offered Twitter regulates 75 percent of the web search market and is the No. 1 most-trafficked web site globally.

This relocate gives Twitter larger distribution than Facebook, but also allows Google. Before 2011, Google did index tweets, and after that launched Google+ to contend against Twitter (yet another indication the writing gets on the wall surface).

This suggests your tweets will quickly show up in Google searches (that suggests more prospective eyeballs on your content). That means you need to make certain your tweets get on point and appropriate. The last point you want is a tweet that makes you look bad or removes potential leads when they show up in a Google search as quickly as you tweet.

That's just the start.

Will hashtags play a role in this?

Will Tweets influence your rankings?

Will Twitter and Google exercise an added agreement where links become followed? Currently, Twitter re-directs you to the website as well as the Google Robot cannot map them (as is the situation with LinkedIn).

Either method, this bargain is much more proof that material marketing professionals should not invest much time on Facebook (unless you just desire empty clicks that bounce right away). It means material marketing professionals need to spend a little bit more time on Twitter given the potential reach you will certainly have with this brand-new offer. Given the unknowns of this, you may intend to invest even more time on the social network.

This also places the final nail in the coffin of Google+. If you have paid focus, this isn't really a surprise.

The bigger growth is that Internet as well as content online marketers have to focus on both the high quality as well as sharing of exactly what they produce - not one or the other.

#business #marketing #search engine marketing #social marketing #social media #social media news #social media statistics #social network #the social network #web marketing

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