#castyel

deancas + “untitled”, @cardsharps:  this piece is one of my absolute favorite works from ely, so ofc i had to make a gifset of it for their birthday! that shot of dean knocking over the angel is easily in my top ten shots in spn history, and i went back and forth on which of cas’ deaths to use for the second part of the poem lol. ultimately went with the s12 death since it featured dean kneeling, and decided to mess around with a double exposure style to add some grittiness and sense of disorientation to the edit. very simple overall but i really like how the colors and effects came out.

deancas + “jesus at the gay bar”, jay hulme: for the sake of being honest with myself, i gotta say that i am not very happy with this gifset. i had so many plans for spn pride week and i wanted to make something for all seven days, but due to work and personal reasons, that ended up not being feasible. but even though i was so stressed and tired and just,,, not feeling good about myself or my place in the community at the time, i still pushed myself to make something for the event because i felt an obligation to do something. like it was expected of me ig?? though i’m not sure who exactly was putting that expectation on me other than myself lol. and because i was feeling that (self-inflicted) pressure to deliver something, i kinda just. threw something together. don’t get me wrong, i love this poem and it’s been in my edit inspo folder for forever, and i’m so glad i got to use it since it fit the day one prompt perfectly. but i made the gifset look super basic and i rushed through the coloring and i pretty much just gave up on the font entirely, and it’s obvious (to me at least) that barely any time and effort was put into this. idk i guess i’m just disappointed in myself for  putting something out that i’m not even 75% happy with. even if i’m not entirely happy with how the final product came out, i can usually at least say that i did my best to make something that i can be proud of, but that’s not the case this time. idk. maybe i’ll remake this edit once i’m feeling more inspired. 

cas against humanity (part two): another gifset i made for spnprideweek. feeling slightly better about this one than the previous edit, even if i did just reuse an idea from last year’s pride event. again, was really not Feeling Great so this coloring is borrowed from a different gifset i’d already made with some minor tweaks and adjustments. i do think it at least looks good, and the saturated color scheme works really well, and doing these kinds of crack gifsets are always fun. but like the previous gifset, there’s definitely some stuff that i could’ve fixed and made cleaner that i just,,, didn’t. i told myself that i wouldn’t force myself to make edits for the sake of making edits this year, and so far i’ve been pretty good about cutting myself some slack and taking breaks when i need to. yeah this past month was disappointing, but at least i know now how putting this kind of pressure on myself can affect my creativity and output. good lesson learned. and now some of my favorite edits, fics and art from this past month:

pride!cas by @citruscas this cas + rarepairs edit by @altarofrowena this cas art by @marlborocas this dean art by @lavendervulcan they are blowing off some steam by @sheepstiel the divine creation by @transexualcowboy trueform!cas by @limbel this dean art by @lamiasage this jack art by @moondisasters this dean and cas art by @imeaglejd

trueform!cas, [ luke 2:8 ] : some slight body horror for @carrotfricker​’s follower celebration ~ genuinely might be one of the most difficult gifsets i’ve ever made. i knew i wanted to do something inspired by liv’s incredible trueform graphics, and getting that gritty, scary otherworldly aesthetic involved a lot of layering and blurring and coloring effects that i had never done before so it was a fun challenge to learn new ps effects. what wasn’t as fun was the fact that i had to do a lot of those effects layer by layer lol these three panels took 15 separate gifs and nearly 40 hours to make. the coloring alone was 3 hours of trial and error. even though there are a LOT of things that i still could’ve done better in hindsight, however, i’m very happy with how this edit turned out and i’d love to do more trueform stuff like this in the future. new series maybe?

netflixnatural: february was a month of time-intensive gifsets for me apparently (that’s why i feel slightly less bad about myself for only making 3 edits lol). this gifset was almost as difficult as the trueform!cas was, if only due to the sheer number of gifs and coloring/aesthetic styles i had to make. i knew i wanted to do a netflix-style edit as soon as i heard that @deanskitchen and @dadstiel’s milestone celebration was highlighting fanfics, and narrowing down which fics to use was so incredibly difficult - i had a spreadsheet and everything with 15-20 of  my favorite works, plus what potential scenes i could use to emulate the story, what kind of coloring/aesthetic the fic’s “series” or “film” would have, etc. i ended up narrowing it down to 8 fics that were a mixture of what could be considered “drama”, “indie”, “romcom”, etc. (it was gonna be 9, but i ran out of time and i decided not to do any fics with OCs in the interest of only using SPN/SPN actor scenes, so unfortunately i wasn’t able to include the italian boyfriend scene :( next time!) from there, it was a matter of putting the clips together (with as much effort to pick scenes of dean and cas that were time-relevant to what seasons each fic took place as i could make work), creating different color gradings/editing styles to differentiate each series/film from the others, and adding effects as needed (i.e. making cas look like a ghost for “ghosts that we knew”). what ended up being a lifesaver when making all of these mini show/film reels was the fact that i actually made the posters for each work first -  they helped establish a vibe for each particular fic that i was able to match in the gifset. that being said, the making the posters was by far the hardest part of this edit; i looked at a lot of A24 posters and other indie/alt film promotional material for inspiration. and finally once alllllll of that was done, i put together the netflix layout, added in all the gifs, wrote up fake show/film descriptions, and added little fun touches like the different way each member of tfw 3.0 wrote their user name. piece of cake. i didn’t sleep for three days.

destiel, [ first meeting, 4.01 // genesis 1:1-5]: ngl, i was pretty burnt out after making the first two gifsets of this month and i pretty much had no creativity or energy left to think about what to make for the first destiel wedding anniversary. but like,,,, it’s not like i can’t not make anything for this, right? so i left one part of my brain thinking about what to make for this while i was working on the netflixnatural set, and i finally settled on my go-to trick of using bible verses. traditional first wedding anniversary gift is paper so originally i was gonna do like a bible/scrapbook thing of dean and cas scenes overlaid over bible pages of different gospel verses, and the gospel verse would be “changed” or “written over” by other characters to edit the bible verse into something related to destiel (i.e. “the gospel according to luke sam winchester, who had to watch his brother make heart eyes at an eldritch being for over a decade”, etc etc). that ended up not happening bc i couldn’t find a way to make it look right in the roughly 20 hours i had left before valentines day. (though, as an aside, i do still want to try and make something like this eventually). so instead i decided to focus on the book of gensis and the story of creation - something about it being the first book/verses of the bible, the creation of man, dean and cas’ first wedding anniversary, cas (re)creating dean from hell,,,, idk like i said i was floundering at this point lol. but i think it turned out all right in the end, overlaying bible pages on clips from 4.01 (again with that theme of firsts, their first time meeting), and the verse itself fit surprisingly well to the barn scene. i did go back and forth with the coloring (i tried a purple-ish red scheme to try and make it look more “valentines-y”) but the blue/green is pretty much synonymous with destiel and that episode in particular and i’m glad i went with that in the end. not a bad edit to end the month on.  

and now some of my favorite edits, fics, and art from this past month:


“i love you”    despair | 5 nov 2020:  if i think too hard about it being year since the confession i’ll burst into tears. i actually cried while making this (though that might’ve also been because of me being sleep-deprived and anxious about con weekend lol). i almost scrapped this idea, tbh. i had been stressing out the entire last week of october/first week of november bc i couldn’t think of what to make to commemorate the confession anniversary, and then when i landed on this concept, it didn’t feel right bc i knew i wouldn’t be using much footage from 15x18 itself. the more i thought about it though, the more i kept returning to this idea so i just decided to go for it and maybe make something else that was more 15x18 specific. as usual, because i spent too much time worrying about it, i ended up having to make it around 10:30pm the night of the 4th, after traveling all day :)))) coloring wasn’t bad, especially after making the early decision to have two panels be in black and white (both to save time and to keep the gifset from looking too overwhelming). hardest panel to make was the second to last one, bc i wanted to parallel the drinking scene from the s8 finale to the drinking scene from s15 but there were no aesthetically pleasing, no-talking shots of the two of them during that bunker scene (andrew dabb, i am once again cursing your entire production crew). i think that one panel alone took me two hours. made it work tho, and that’s all that matters

deancas, “21 guns”:  so after a stressful week of pre-con prep, and a stressful day of traveling, and a stressful 6 hours of gifmaking, i probably went to bed asap to get enough rest for the first day of con, right?.... right? well. i did say i wanted to make something else that was specifically about 15x18. in my defense, i had been thinking of a 21 guns spnedit for a while, though it focused on all of tfw 2.0 and not just dean and cas, and reconfiguring the gifset into a destiel edit didn’t take long (i was actually thinking about it while making the first nov 5 edit lol), so i figured it wouldn’t take that much time and effort to just make something that focused on only one epsiode and one specific scene. i mean, it would have a more consistent coloring i that i could work with, the shots would be easy to grab since there’s actually very few shots from the confession scene that are aesthetically decent, i had it all planned out in my head anyway, it should be easy af, right?.... right? well. i really need to stop assuming anything i plan is gonna work out. panels 1, 2, and 4 took almost no time, but the third panel took me another two and a half hours after what i had planned on doing for it (and the back up to that initial plan) ended up looking like shit. honestly, i’m not even sure if i actually like how the third panel finally ended up, or if i just settled for it bc i had to start getting dressed to go to the convention center. overall, though, i do like the edit as a whole, esp the coloring and shadows i was able to achieve. definitely a memorable set of edits from this year, if only for the context in which they were made.

(the good) supernatural finale (that lives in my head) : 15.20 “cry no more”:  hooo boy. can’t believe i can finally put this in a round up, i’ve been working on this edit on and off for fucking months.  i first got the idea after making my supernatural/live-action scooby doo manip edit, and wanted to challenge myself to see if i could make the spn finale that we deserved. turns out, it was a lot harder to do than my scoobynatural one, considering i had both much more and much less material to sort through. first, i had to make sure that all the scenes i pulled from were from later episodes to keep every character’s age/look consistent in relation to each other; easier said than done when characters like garth and claire are barely in anything past s13. that’s unfortunately the reason why i couldn’t put characters like bobby, patience, alex, kaia, and max barnes in the bunker panels, even though i mention them being there in the inspo post — i just couldn’t find shots of them that worked. once i found enough workable shots of the rest of the characters, put them together in a single shot took a lot of trial and error, and the compositions of almost all of those panels changed at least three times each before i was able to figure it out. surprisingly, the first panels i was able to finish were the rowena/jack/and amara ones, even if it was a pain in the ass to add the forest backgrounds to those shots. coloring ended up being the easiest part of the entire process, with only a few tweaks here and there depending on the scene. the dialogue was another nightmare to figure out, and walking the line between realistic-for-spn dialogue and more-suitable-for-spn-fanfic dialogue was a struggle (thank you to all the people i showed rough drafts to who offered their advice). i had way more panels planned for this gifset (including tfw 3.0 actually in the empty and talking to empty!meg, dean going through cas’ memories, and them saving not just cas but crowley, balthazar, anna, meg, etc.) but i wanted to post something to commemorate erase the series finale, so i guess i’ll just have to make a part 2 to this edit 👀

deancas, “easy on me”:  some purgaytory angst for @spockcoded‘s birthday. actually really like how this came out, i originally was only planning on using footage from the s8 but i figured a little bit of divorce arc never hurt nobody. making that middle panel and getting the timing of the fade transition took some time but the effect came out pretty well, and any kind of purgatory coloring that doesn’t make their skin tone look sickly is a win in my book. 

and now some of my favorite edits, fics, and art from this past month:


this thanksgiving fic by @one-more-offbeat-anthem still waters run deep by @thisisapaige defining heaven by @demonologist-in-denim this megstiel ficlet by @themauvesoul

castiel + food by @ne8ula sylvia plat + three women by @angelfishofthelord this rainbow cas graphic by @jactingjoices this spn + falsettos graphic by @davyperez this archangels graphic by @carrotfricker this spn + “i wanted to leave” amv by @angeltiddies

supernatural | 05.04 “the end”:  literally THEEE episode. i swear even when i wasn’t active in the fandom during my college years, this episode lived in my mind rent free. definitely in my top five of the series, and my all-time go-to comfort ep if i don’t feel like watching scoobynatural i would do anything for endverse!cas. i think “the end” being one of my favorite episodes is what made this gifset so hard for me to make, actually. i was so indecisive about the whole thing, from what shots to gif to what quote to use. originally the gifs were colored with a red/orange/gray color scheme and the vibe was completely different lol. even though the gifset was technically alright (as in, consistent coloring, decent aesthetic, etc.) it didn’t feel right to me so i ended up completely changing the scenes and coloring two hours before it was scheduled to be posted sasldkfja. very glad i did it though, the bright blue fits the episode much better imo.

castiel, “this is gospel”:  made this for @rambleoncas​‘ creator celebration, mixing cas’ storyline and some autumn-y colors for the “fall” prompt. ngl, i’ve really be struggling with gifmaker’s block these past few months - maybe it’s just me putting too much pressure on myself or me being just burned out in general, but i’ve felt soooo uncreative lately and any time i’ve tried/forced myself to make a gifset, i’ve ended up hating it and second-guessing everything i’m doing. (that’s probably why the number of gifsets i make per month has been dwindling down. really really upset with myself that there’s only four edits on this month’s list :/ ). looking back at this cas edit at the end of the month though, i’m actually pretty happy with how this came out in the end. i’ve always associated this song with spn/cas since i was first in the fandom, so i wanted to lean into the biblical imagery of the lyrics and make the panels looks like a triptych of sorts. the coloring is actually based on the bible i got during my confirmation back in high school, this dark red and blue hardcover with gold gilded pages. the first panel took me over 5 hours to make, and blending the three scenes of cas “falling” was so time-consuming i ended up having to adjust it almost frame by frame to keep it from looking weird. the third panel was also stressful to make just bc i wasn’t sure if the overlay affect would look good, and it also took quite a bit of adjust to make the two scenes overlap in a way that didn’t look crazy lol. again, still not completely happy with it, but i’ve learned to love it (even if i did accidentally post it with a MASSIVE typo that took me an hour to notice :)) ). 

 deancas x l. munir, “lazarus”: a lil birthday edit for @pumpkindean​! hmm how many times can i use the prisoner hand grab  and that dean shot from goodbye stranger until i get accused of being a one-trick pony? only time will tell i guess sjaasdjdfsljk but in my defense, those shots are so fucking stunning and they really do fit the quote quite well. i based the coloring around making sure that the blood in all three panels really stood out as dark and red, and then i just kind messed around with the saturation and tones to get that bluish-purply tone, which in turn made the shadows and lights reflecting off their faces look a little less flat. love how things work out sometimes. 

castiel, 1 thessalonians 5:2:  some rapture appreciation for @castumes​‘ creator celebration. i knew i wouldn’t have time to make any more edits this month after this, so i put all of my spooky halloween energy into this gifset. like i did with my this is gospel edit, i leaned into the biblical/religious aesthetic but darker and scarier. there’s something about the deep dark red and pale fluorescent blue color combo that really appeals to me, and mixing that with the pure black shadows and bright white text resulted in a pretty grimy, otherworldly effect that imo emphasized the heaviness and gravitas of the biblical text. again, still not fully happy with this, but i am kinda proud with how that first panel came out. maybe i’ll like it more in hindsight as well. 

and now some of my favorite edits, fics, and art from this past month:


this cas graphic by by @floral-cas​ this edit by @jeremy-carver​ this cas edit by @lengthofropes​ this dean edit by @endverse​ this deancas edit by @honeystiel​ possessed by @chapeldean​ when the levee breaks by @carrotfricker​

this fic by by @its-maddiec this fic by @deanspurpleflannel i know what you did by @angelfishofthelord this fic by @bend-me-shape-me this fic by @wormstacheangel on the correlation between weariness and bravery by @tootiredmotel this stanford era!dean fic by @jrmycrvr turning trauma into art by @babyjacktruther power is a fickle thing by @mochadean

jimmy novak, “saint jimmy”: calling it now, this is gonna be one of my favorite things i make all year. i’m honestly surprised it took me this long to make a green daynatural edit, considering that i listened to this album religiously when i was in middle school (and making this made me realize how not middle schooler-appropriate this song is lmao). i was going for the really colorful, grungy, almost messy kind of vibe that i associate with the american idiot musical’s lighting and set design that served as inspiration for the whole set’s aesthetic. i also wanted to experiment with the ripped paper effects that i used since those had been the bane of my existence back when i was a baby gifmaker first joining tumblr, and i think they came out pretty well!

12.23, “all along the watchtower”: not much to say about this one, since i made this in literally 30 minutes lmao. i don’t normally make script gifsets like this just bc it’s not really my thing and so many content creators do it much better than i do sdkjfsdl but the script dropped pretty late at night and after waiting for about an hour for someone else to make this gifset bc i wanted to reblog it, i was just like “fuck it i’ll do it myself”. cue the most frantic 30 minutes of my life trying to make two gifs while having an emotional breakdown over “on dean. shattered.” i remember i was physically shaking. unwell behavior. unhinged, even.

deancas, “godspeed”: pridenatural my belovedddddd <333 getting to be a mod for spn pride week was honestly the highlight of my month, all the drama and stress aside lol. between helping prep for that and work/personal life, however, i basically had no time to make any edits for the actual event so i ended up doing a mix of simple and technique-heavy  gifsets throughout the week so that i would have time to finish everything. this was one of the simpler ones i made, featuring one of my favorite frank ocean songs. getting consistent coloring between all four gifs took a looot of patience, but i love how the teals came out. the text effects were also a split second decision in an effort to make the edit a lil more interesting - it kinda reminds me of how karaoke screens look. idk i thought it looked cool lol.

castiel, “legends never die”: mark this down as another edit that is sure to be one of my favorite things i make all year. this edit and the dean “i want to break free” edit took a collective 25+ hours to make over the course of several days. first of all, i think cas would LOVE orville peck by virtue of him being a gay cowboy, PLUS this song featured certified Pop Girlie Shania Twain, PLUS this song is a banger to begin with so i definitely had to use it for a castiel-centric pride gifset. choosing the scenes for this edit took a surprising amount of time as i wanted to find parallels of cas throughout the entire series to show how he became more comfortable in his own skin (aka, “pride”). initially the coloring of this was completely different; it was more purple/orange/blue and i finished the entire gifset using that color scheme (trying to get consistent coloring across all these different scenes/seasons/lighting styles made me want to rip my hair out), only to realize that it looked too similar to the dean edit’s color scheme :))))))) thank god i was off that day, because i spent almost 8 hours redoing the whole damn thing. i’m glad i did though, because the green/blue/red fits the vibe of the song much better and compliments the dean edit’s coloring (more on that later). god i love this edit. really proud of this one.

deancas, “it’s okay to cry”:  a lil transnatural for my beloved @holyroad​‘s birthday! sophie (rest in peace) was a trans musican/producer whose songs are catchy as hell, i highly reccomend checking their work out. this song in particular was such a deancas song, i honestly couldn’t believe how easy it was to find scenes that fit the lyrics. obviously, i colored this to match the colors of the transgender flag but i kept the shades darker than the actual official pantone colors to match the mood of the song better. the pink panels were the hardest to color just bc pink is not a commonly occuring shade in the spn universe so i had to get a bit creative with how to pull it off lol. the pink lighting in the second to last panel came out so cool, that’s probably my favorite part.

dean winchester, “i want to break free”: god. this edit. this fucking edit. first of all, this bitch took me over 15 hours to make the first time. bc like the cas edit earlier, i ended up having to remake the whole fucking thing to completely change the coloring (and some of the layout tbh). remember how i said that i had to remake the cas edit bc it’s original purple/orange/blue coloring was too similar to this one? i was making both of those edits at the same time bc i wanted them to almost look like a series, like how they have a similar layout and design style. once i decided to change the cas edit’s coloring, however, it ended up looking too different from the original version of this edit so i had :))) to start :)))) over :))). so instead of purple/orange/blue, this became green/blue/red as well, but with more emphasize on the blue while the cas one was more green-heavy. i also changed the font style and the gif blending techniques to be a bit messier and scratchier (compared to the cas edit) bc i felt like the song and the overall vibe of the edit called for a “messier” aesthetic. if you can believe it, the hardest panels to make were the boring, more muted ones bc i had to make them still fit the look of the whole gifset while keeping the coloring/effects more simple to avoid the edit from looking too overwhelming. to be honest, i’m not 100% happy with how this one turned out, just because i can see all the little coloring and blending issues that i wasn’t able to fix in time. it’s not that big of a deal in the long run, but,,,,, ehh. idk. maybe i’ll remake this one again. or i’ll use this song for a different edit, bc it is one of my all-time favorite songs. 

spn women, “you don’t own me”: if you couldn’t tell by now, i made a point to use songs by lgbtq+ artists for all my pride week edits, so of course i had to honor thee lesbian icon ms lesley gore for wlw day. again, this was another simpler edit in terms of layout and techniques used, but finding shots of the four of these women that were close-ups of their face in half-decent lighting took,,, a while lol.  not much to say about this edit, i’m pretty happy with how it turned out and it was a nice challenge trying to sharpen/color gifs that are so,,, concentrated? in terms of their content, if that makes sense? idk, but the definition in their hair and their eyes make me happy i have no idea how i did that but i’m obsessed with those lil details.

casmick, “don’t go breaking my heart”: listen. LISTEN. i will NOT apologize for casmick truthing, so go ahead and jot that down. let cas have a silly lil boyfriend with a silly lil accent! they drink tea together! they watch documentaries! they listen to elton john and dance around the living room! i love this edit so much, and if you don’t then get well soon :)

max banes, “sun goes down”:  when we first started planning pride week and i personally started planning what gifsets i wanted to make for what day, i knew that i wanted to do something for max. max is one of my favorite one-off characters -  i’m forever mourning the banes twins-spinoff that never was. and for pride, i wanted to find a way to honor the sadder, more solemn side of pride, for those who are not out or those who have struggled/are struggling with their sexuality, for those whose pride month might not always be a time of celebration. it’s a type of pride that i and many other queer POC have had to deal with , so i felt this lil nas x song that deals specifically with those types of struggles was a good fit. 

cas against humanity:  had to end spnpride week on a fun note, so i finally got around to making an spn-version of the good omens x cards against humanity edit i made years ago on my gomens blog. tbh, the hardest part of making this was picking ten panels, i had a whole list of card pairings and scenes that i wanted to do (some of them nsfw kdskdjh). it did take a bit of time to make though, so maybe in the future if i have another 4 hours to kill i can sit down and make a follow-up. 

castiel x the consecration of saint joseph: oof, the catholic upbringing jumped out on this father’s day edit lol. something about cas being the foster father of thee son of god just,,, really gets to me, man. :(   i wanted the gifset to look like those saint prayer cards/novena cards we used to get in sunday school, hence the flower borders. i also made the outer edges of the gifs black and white to draw all the attention on the center of the cards, and i made sure the coloring and saturation levels were very intense to give it an almost-stained glass effect. idk, i like it. very very happy with how this one came out.

supernatural + tarot card series (crowley, amara, chuck, mary): guys, we’ve almost made it. literally LITERALLY the final countdown, i’ll be posting the LAST tarot card this coming saturday. holy shit, i can’t believe it’s almost over. these past month’s tarot edits were some of the most difficult i’ve made the entire series, tbh. there was a lot of gif doctoring and creative cursing involved just to get these completed. i had to build amara a whole fucking bench aftter i moved her from right to center frame, and don’t get me started on the mary edit ughhhh. still, i’m pleased with how they all came out, more or less, and i’m so excited to complete this series once and for all lol.

and now some of my favorite edits, fics, and art from this past month: this meg and cas fic by @crystal-doesnt-watch-spn​ father’s day by @one-more-offbeat-anthem​ painted nails and pride by @expectingtofly​ moments of glitter by @casenergies​ my life is a song for you by @angelfishofthelord​ this fic by @deanspurpleflannel​ this fic by @thekingslover this fic by @perlukafarinn this fic/hc by @deanpdf blend by @friendshapedcastiel