I Currently Follow 40; Most Of Them Are Gotham And I’m Trying To Diversify, Though. I Want To Follow

Here you go friend. Enjoy :)

SOMEONE FIND ME THE HOW MANY NIMONS SCENE CAUSE I CAN’T FIND IT PLEASE AND THANK

I was thinking about how a lot of people who are into the Vampire Diaries are also into Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and how there are some obvious parallels between the shows and between the relationships of Angel & Buffy and Stefan & Elena and then Spike & Buffy and Damon & Elena, but obviously they aren't exactly the same ships or characters, and it's made me curious. Fans of both, is there a correlation in what you ship?

I figured I ought to tell the story of my blog background (which gets into the story of my blog) and give credit as best I can for the picture I used to make it. Also I should probably warn you here and now that I tend to ramble. 

So, first off, I have to admit that I can’t give exact credit for the original picture I used; I got it from Google Earth a long time ago, and now that they’ve changed the photos layer, I can’t find the original anymore. I’ve tried a reverse google image search, but it doesn’t come up. All I can tell you is that it came from Narrows, Virginia, or the surrounding area, and it’s of the New River. So, if you’re the photographer who took this picture, let me know how you’d like to be credited (or if I need to find a new background image). 

I love this picture, though, with the tranquil water reflecting the mountains and that lone tree jutting up on the left. It has a nice balance, or perhaps a good visual flow, and it reminds me of home. (I’m originally from Blacksburg, Va, and Narrows is a little over half an hour west and a smidge north of home.)

Anyways, I’m also posting the various stages of my photoshopping (well, actually, I just used the “markup toolbar” in Preview on my Mac to edit the color of the image, but that doesn’t work as a verb as well as photoshop does). 

Aside from my general love of all things purple, I also wanted to tint the picture purple so that it would be a picture of “the Lande of Violet Mists”. The Lande (with an “e” for artistic flair) of Violet Mists is a fantasy land and somewhat of an in-joke going back to the blogspot blog I made Sophomore year of high school. It has a vague mythos on said blog--in bits and pieces, such as the one I have in my blog description here--but it’s mostly more of an aesthetic theme than a properly developed literary location, though I have written bits and pieces set there. Remind me to dig some of those back up and see if any are worth sharing here, actually. 

At first made this edit for aforementioned high school blogspot, and I did try to set it as my background there, but I couldn’t get the formatting to work. When I started this tumblr, though, I was happy I had it in reserve. 

So, basically I tinted the picture pink and turned the temperature towards cool (aka blue) to make it purple. I think I also decreased the sharpness to give it that atmospheric haze and boosted the saturation some to intensify it. I decided the first one wasn’t purple enough, so I made the second one, but that one just looked too unnatural (and a bit too pink) so I went back to the first one (each time I started a new edit, I made a copy of the original so that I could have each step as a separate image) and made it just a little more purple. I liked that one, and I just inserted a translucent square to have that more opaque region in the middle where posts go. That wasn’t wide enough, though, so I actually took a screenshot so that I’d have an image in proportion with my computer screen and copy-pasted the image onto that and stretched it wider, and that’s how I got the final image. I suppose this isn’t necessarily specific enough to be helpful as a tutorial, but hopefully it gives the gist of how I edited my background picture. When in doubt, add purple :)

Ooo I love this idea!

Although I could also see Ghoul really enjoying a kick wheel too, because there's just something so delightfully tactile about giving big leg-flopping kicks against a large metal disk to make your pottery spin... I always found it more satisfying than the electric wheels so maybe I'm just projecting, but I feel like Ghoul would also vibe with the sensation of using kick wheels.

Ooh, and also, if they couldn't make it out to the kiln sometimes, they could always try a pit firing! It would be a good excuse for a nice big bonfire with the crew, and then the pottery would have a cool, smokey look to it, even unglazed (I think?)--like this:

(Image source) [Image ID: a short stout clay pot with an almost watercolor-esque swirling and speckled pattern of rust, dark silver, smokey grey, and maroon splotches on its surface resulting from a pit firing. End ID]

Of course, the bonfire might risk drawing the attention of Dracs, but then again we know they do canonically have fires at night sometimes... Ooh I just decided my new headcanon for the campfire scene in Na Na Na is now that they were doing a pit firing! (Or you could always just pit fire during the day when it would be less obvious, but I’m just enjoying the thought of this.)

Anyways. Fun Ghoul does pottery. There’s a wheel in the diner, and they got it to operate off battery power, and they drag Kobra out on clay-finding missions, since he’s got such a skill for finding water. They make all their own tools for it, and stuff is mostly unglazed. There’s a working kiln at a studio in Zone Two, and every other month they load up the Am with one of the others and drive out to it.

They’ll make functional pieces whenever someone breaks a few too many plates by mistake, or clay shells for certain kinds of bombs, but mostly they make abstract, rarely-useful pieces, all warped and twisting, halfway between sculpture and dream. Sometimes they handbuild pieces on after throwing it on the wheel.

The other ships will still be looking to us, to the Black Pearl, to lead, and what will they see? Frightened bilge rats aboard a derelict ship? No, no they will see free men and freedom! And what the enemy will see, they will see the flash of our cannons, and they will hear the ringing of our swords, and they will know what we can do! By the sweat of our brow and the strength of our backs and the courage in our hearts! Gentlemen, hoist the colours!

Anyways, here’s a rather more heartwarming Mother’s Day fanart piece of young Loki learning magic from his mom :)

“You [Thor] and your father cast large shadows. I had hoped by sharing my gifts with Loki that he could find some sun for himself.”

OMG MOM UR SO COOL HOW DO YOU DO THAT WOWOWWOW

Heck yeah, I listened to this album literally like 8 times today!! I also took the garbage to town and I dressed in lowkey Killjoy fashion to celebrate going out among humans :) 

The current state of the world is making me appreciate post-apocalyptic concept albums even more & I pick my music carefully on the rare occasions when I need to drive my car

I found it here for non-spotify folks, too :) The whole thing is really a pretty fascinating listen, but they start talking about the catering and its massive barbecue around 16:25 and then about barbecue bands, including MCR, at 18:35.

Anyways I am now sad for a music festival that ended 2 years ago without me knowing about it, but oh well. At least MCR is back :)

Screenshot IDs: “serendysm: Early on it was more for baby bands to do it, it wasn't meant to be mean and BBQ bands were mostly happy to cook for fellow band mates. It might have changed later to more of a rotation thing. At least for MCR it was right as Three Cheers was released and they were not popular quite yet as they were also the breakout band that year.

serendysm: But yeah for sources on specifically MCR the radio episode can be found on Spotify under "The Ongoing History of New Music" episode name is 24 Years of Warped TourActions”

I love the fact that MCR was such a small baby band that they were the 2004 Warped Tour official BBQ Band™ whose job was to cook barbecue for all the other bands in order to be allowed to play, like imagine these punks making you a hot dog before going on stage to play I’m Not OK, 2004 was a wild time y’all

THIS IS A TUMBLR HUG! PASS IT ON TO 10 OF YOUR FAVORITE FOLLOWERS AND DON'T BREAK THE CHAIN! HAVE A LOVELY DAY🍀

Awww :) Thank you, this is sweet! Hugs are nice <3 

I’m not actually certain I have 10 followers who aren’t bots, but... I’ll try!

 (I just checked my follower list and it says I have 30, but I only see 16 names listed and at least five of those are clearly bots... there’s also a few I’m not sure on... So, if you get this and you’re not my follower, or if you are my follower and not a bot but you don’t get this, sorry!)