i love you, asshole

Gradient Pack #2 by demirpt.

I decided to help a bit, and here’s a few gradient psds for you guys. Likes and reblogs are appreciated. If you use one of them in a theme makeover, please mention me somewhere.

p s d   p a c k   b y   i t s p h o t o s h o p

so many people has been wondering where are we and the truth is we are so busy with high school and college, every time we have a break all we can do is answer some questions and check the tag :( anyways we wanted to make it up for you so here is a nine gif psds pack we hope you like! it includes:

pastel psds for arrow and the flash (work in light scenes - pastel coloring in dark scenes is kind of impossible) as requested. they should work on every the cw show or well, any show basically

psds for music videos (examples requested) and photoshoot videos

a psd for shameless dark scenes (should work on other shows as well) as requested

the psd we used in our sidebar gif because madagascar is life. a pastel coloring for animation movies and shows

→ download it here (da) or here (ge.tt)

please, like or reblog the post if you take the pack

Writer’s Block

Music is love in search of a word. Find the words.  

Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a critique about this song. Write something about this song.

THIS TIME IT’S A PHOTO HUNT OF; THINGS THAT COULD BE PRIZES FROM A CARNIVAL/FROM CARNIVAL GAMES. THERE ARE 60 IMAGES IN THIS HUNT AND THERE IS A KIND OF CREEPY BABY LOOKING ONE IN THERE SOMEWHERE SO SORRY ABOUT THAT.

Tropes are not necessarily a bad thing. A trope is a device or element of a story that a writer can reasonably expect most readers to recognize. A trope may become a cliché when it’s overused, though I am a firm believer in the philosophy: “it’s not the concept that matters but the execution”.

Here’s the TV Tropes page on Werebeast Tropes.

And here’s the one on Wolves.

Most of the werewolf clichés I can think of have to do specifically with werewolves and romance. I tried to come up with some other ones though:

Female lead falls in love with werewolf. Werewolf is the alpha, always the alpha. His fur is also black, because black is mysterious *wiggles fingers*. He’s also the only black wolf.

Male lead werewolf is always astonishingly beautiful, not rugged, or scarred or anything, because clearly werewolves don’t fight each other, nope, nope. Personally I like my werewolves a bit more gritty, Underworld style.

Surprise! The female lead is also a werewolf. She has white fur and has some sort of amazing power. Perhaps she sparkles in the sun… wait…

There’s a dog in the story. The dog is the only thing that recognizes the werewolf character is, in fact, a werewolf.

Remember that being a werewolf is an affliction. It’s become a thing recently in media to only portray them as people who can shapeshift. The part about the pain tends to get left out, and I think that’s what makes werewolves interesting and complex.

I’m pulling this one out of Twilight, but imprinting is creepy. I don’t think it’s a cliché yet, and I hope it doesn’t end up being used enough to become one.

Constant references to the moon, whether in speech or in another form, that try to elude to the fact that your character is a werewolf, but ends up smacking the reader in the face instead.

When a character watches a werewolf transform and ends up standing there instead of running, shooting, or doing anything other than staring, even if that character already knew beforehand who the werewolf was, and shouldn’t be surprised.

Werewolves, and what constitutes the symptoms of being a werewolf as far as popular culture is concerned, are known well enough by the general public to be recognizable. I dislike when a character notices there are symptoms and then goes to look them up as if they have never heard of a werewolf before.

Werewolves not actually using their wolf instincts — otherwise known as “werewolves who should know better doing stupid things and not thinking like the predators they are”. This includes getting caught in traps, not using their keen senses to avoid danger, running straight at someone with a weapon, etc.

Magical Native American werewolves. Both cliché and offensive.

When a character becomes a werewolf and suddenly loses his memory of the transformation once he’s human again. Or ends up in the forest naked.

I wouldn’t consider most of the actual werewolf lore to be necessarily cliché though.

Full Moon Transformations - This became part of the werewolf lore when The Wolfman was introduced in the 1940s. A lot of writers use the full moon as the point of transformation for a werewolf character because it’s convenient. I’ve seen some instances where the werewolf character feels the pull of the moon whenever it’s out, not just when it’s full. There’s also been a ton of garbage pseudoscience used to attempt to explain how the relationship between werewolf and moon works, and most of the time it just ends up being confusing. There are stories that have full moon transformations and werewolves who can shift whenever they please, so it makes the full moon seem unnecessary. I’d like to see some more original concepts and/or executions of werewolf transformations. You may want to consider using the entire lunar cycle.

Weaknesses - Some commonly accepted/used lore weaknesses are: silver, wolfsbane, lunar eclipses (losing their power), losing themselves to their curse, and decapitation/dismemberment.

Different Forms - Werewolves have taken many different forms, including: Half man/half wolf, giant wolves, normal wolves, anthro (garou, the form we’re used to seeing), and everywhere in between. Feel free to be creative with the level of transformation your werewolves can attain. These forms may provide the werewolf with different abilities like increased speed, strength, enhanced senses, etc.

It’s a Curse, Damn it - Becoming a werewolf is often caused by the infected bite or scratch from someone who is already a werewolf. The transformation is painful, personal, and the fear of losing oneself to the beast is present. 

Pack Mentality - Werewolves, like actual wolves, have some sort of pack connection, and a pack hierarchy. As such, they may also form a bond with a dog or actual wolf that becomes a companion. With this part of the lore, sometimes the concept of having a mate comes into play, and sometimes it steps in to the territory of being cliché as a lot of writers handle it as “my mate is my destined true love”.

That’s all I have for now. I hope that’s useful to you.

A lot of people use semi-colons wrong because they know there’s supposed to be a pause in their sentence that they know isn’t quite a comma, so they think it must be that mysterious semi-colon. Usually, it’s actually supposed to be an em dash (—), which in some ways is more mysterious!

The em dash is the longest of the three dashes and most often used for interruptions. Interruptions in speech, in action, in thought. It’s also a great syntax addition for fight scenes, since it makes the narrative seem quick and unexpected and jolting from side to side like a fight scene should be. Read your em dash sentences out loud until you get a feel for how its pause compares to the pause of a comma. It’s a heartbeat longer. If a comma is one beat of pause, then I see an em dash as two beats of pause.

In this first example, the em dash is used to give an aside to the reader. It’s like a btw sort of moment, which can sometimes be replaced with commas or parenthesis. I think the em dashes are most suitable when your aside is decently long.

Her neighbor, Frank, is always blasting music.

Her neighbor—the one who always blasts the music—is named Frank.

My mischievous neighbor, Vince, seemed to have a knack for graveyard cavorting.

Vince—more often called (in a raised and angry voice) Vincent Price Ramsey—seemed to have a knack for graveyard cavorting.

Next up, here’s the em dash as a replacement for the semi-colon. Kinda like a slang or shortened sentence. Semi-colons have to connect two independent clauses—meaning each side of the semi-colon could stand alone as its own complete sentence. If you don’t want to do that, try an em dash:

I thought hanging out would be great—a chance to finally see the city, just like Aunt Lillian wanted.

I thought hanging out would be great; it would be a chance to finally see the city, just like Aunt Lillian wanted.

There was a headstone hardly a foot from where I’d emerged—dark grey stone a few inches thick and maybe as high as my knee.

There was a headstone hardly a foot from where I’d emerged; it was made of dark grey stone a few inches thick and maybe as high as my knee.

Sometimes, you can use an em dash to have a speaker correct themselves, or interrupt themselves to amend their sentence.

I could see the blur of the graveyard behind him—through him—

Similar to the last example, it can be used to interrupt a sentence in order to add additional information about the sentence. Often you can use a comma in this situation, too, so try to think of syntax and how that additional beat of pause changes things. In this case, Alice has just seen a ghost for the first time, so her mind is a bit too shocked for the normal pause of a comma. Read both. Doesn’t the one with the em dash sound more shocked or surprised, while the comma makes it sound like a simple observation?

He was glowing pale—almost tinged in cold blue.

He was glowing pale, almost tinged in cold blue.

Of course, it could be an interruption. It could be someone interrupting another in speech, one action interrupting another, or a character’s thoughts interrupting themselves. Here I’ll include the sentence with the em dash and the sentence following, so you can see the thing interrupted and the interruption.

You can have an action interrupt a character’s thoughts. For the first one, Alice is in a creepy situation and completely focused on something else, so when something touches her elbow, she’s shocked out of her thoughts. For the second one, Tristan is listening for an enemy when the enemy makes a move and startles him into action.

As far as I could tell it was some kind of berry—

An icy contact on my elbow broke my resolve, and I screamed until an equally cold hand clamped over my mouth.

The night was still, and yet—

Something whistled through the air. Tristan jerked backwards, narrowly avoiding an incoming dagger.

Here we have one character interrupting another in dialogue. Pretty self-explanatory.

“I’m not going to—”

Mom’s voice in the receiver cut me off. “At least consider it.”

“After all, you’re only a—”

“If you even say girl,” I interrupted, “I’ll stab you, I swear.”

The next one is part of a fight scene, so Alice’s thoughts are interrupting themselves as soon as she thinks them. She throws up an idea, “iron,” but interrupts herself from further exploring that idea, and instead casts it out. In a fight, you don’t have time to think out long, eloquent ideas. Your thoughts should come in fragments. Stab. Punch. Dodge. Swing. Would this work? No. How about this? Maybe. The em dash can help get across this uneven jolting of thoughts.

Iron—no use. I’d dropped the knife when her damn vines ensnared me, and the nails were in my pockets and out of reach. Blood—there were possibilities there.

Continuing in fight scenes, em dashes can have action interrupt action. Don’t just throw them in willy nilly, but if you have a chance for an em dash, jump on it. Instead of a word like “suddenly,” it makes it feel suddenly. Ups the tension. Em dashes are about interruption, and what is a fight scene but two people interrupting each other’s attempts to kill the other? This is especially useful for the last line in a paragraph during a fighting scene, because it’s a nice place to have one action interrupt another.

I snatched it—slit across my hand—

And stabbed her through the heart.

His swords whistled through the air—

A clean “X” appeared on the imp’s back, severing its body into four neat chunks.

So yeah, I’m basically obsessed with em dashes and I use more of them than the majority of writers. (At 72k words, my current project has 22 semi-colons and 344 em dashes. So. Yeah. Not to mention the length of this post…) Em dashes are way cool and can add a lot to your writing even though they’re just another form of punctuation. Syntax helps your reader into the mindset you’re going for, and em dashes can be a great, powerful part of that syntax!

PSD MADE BY PSPRETTY NUMBER SIXTY-EIGHT - {DL}

500px posts

Four customizable links

Come to me if you need any help

sweater weather, [listen]

a cute fall mix.

S’mores Bars

EMS'S MASTERLISTS ⇢ STARTERS

yeah so starters suck so here