#i just worry for younger artists who are growing up on art youtube or are on art tiktok

[dimeeasy]

10 Legit Ways to Build Passive Income Online

Whether you are a student looking to make some extra cash, a working professional wanting to build a side hustle, or a corporate escapee and whosoever who is starting to build an online business need to have some cash inflow for the further smooth flow of your business.

There are many sites out there saying make money like $100 a day with surveys, with google sites, etc. Of course, they may make you money for a certain period of time but are not long-term and passive.

You always need to look out for ways to make money that are passive. You need to earn money every month and double it. Here are my top creative ideas to make money online. These real methods have worked in past and will work now and then too.

Freelancing

You would have heard a lot of this from others. But yes, this is the first best way to earn some cash before starting out your business. It will help to get some extra money into your pocket as well as fund a little for your software if you are starting out. You can start freelancing with no investment upfront. It's FREE. You can make money online freelancing.

Don’t worry if you think you don’t have any skills. You can learn small skills by taking a free trial in skillshare. There are tons of gigs people are looking for to get their work done and with the right process, you can make money as a freelancer.

By the year 2027, freelancers are projected to make up the majority of the workforce in the United States, with 50.9% of the working population. In fact, at the current growth rate, it’s estimated that 67.6 million Americans will be freelancing by the end of 2021. That’s 42% of the American workforce! (Website planet).

What are you waiting for? Search in-demand gigs on google keywords and search trends. And yes, patience is the key. You need to wait a few weeks while you get your first gig. Start promoting your services on social media and find your spot.

Starting a Blog

As of 2021, there are more than 570 million blogs on the internet, based on activities reported by WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, Wix, Squarespace, and Medium (and this number is constantly growing) (firstsiteguide).

Now do not get overwhelmed, the one thing is though blogs are growing rapidly, and so are people reading blogs. Of course, blogs are saturated, but when you niche down and find your audience then you can achieve your space in this sea of bloggers.

Starting a blog, yesterday, today, tomorrow, is possible as long as you are using proper rules, like optimizing your SEO, giving unique content to your readers, and more. But, the best day to start blogging for your profit is today and now.

Let us look at some stats on why you should start your blog today

61% of online shoppers in the US say they made a purchase after getting a recommendation from a blog post

Companies that blog actively have 126% better lead growth

80% of bloggers say that they see positive business results from their blogging efforts

Blogs affect customers’ buying decisions as 47% of them go through 3 to 5 blog posts before the buying process (Firstsiteguide)

Give me a better reason why you should not start a blog after these mind-blowing facts.

You can start a niche blog, review blog, cooking blog, gaming blog, parenting blog, and more. Just write what you know or keep an eye on your competitors and outperform them. And blogging is the best for your long-term passive income.

Starting a YouTube channel

Now as we’ve known how YouTube has evolved to be like a video search engine, the platform has grown considerably and is been growing millions of YouTubers.

Again, let’s talk about some statistics about YouTube. YouTube has 2.3 billion users worldwide.

79 percent of Internet users have their own YouTube account.

YouTube viewers watch over a billion hours of video on the platform every day and generate billions of views. (YouTube, 2021)

YouTube is localized in more than 100 countries and is available in 80 languages. (YouTube, 2021)

Every day people watch one billion hours of video on YouTube (source-Oberlo)

Now, the real question is how to make money out of YouTube? Well, there is enough space for you to sink in. Are you a coach, fitness enthusiastic, a person with good communication, or even just an individual with no skills at all? You can make videos, monetize your YouTube account, and earn from AdSense and affiliate marketing.

Umm! Some people may say that YouTube is not for me. I don’t know how to make and produce videos. I don’t have any skills. Well, I have a solution for that. You can make money from YouTube absolutely by not showing your face at all.

Here are some of the niches you can make videos y not showing your face.

If u do not want to record videos, you can head up to free stock videos or images and give a voice-over and start making content.

If you feel shy to start, you will never get ahead. So, the one thing I want to tell to everyone who is shy to make videos and for my younger self, stop doubting yourself. Just do it, don’t care about criticism, success will follow you

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when a person earns a commission for referring a product to others. For eg: You register yourself as an affiliate to promote certain products, when the person you promote the product click on your unique affiliate link and purchases through your link you earn a commission. A commission can range for each and every product.

And the affiliate marketing model is the best, safe model for beginners. You can drive traffic for free and for paid as well. You can be an affiliate marketer if you need a passive income, you don’t need to have any other customer support, you can work from home at your own comfort.

Now, how to register as an affiliate. First, think of what do you like the most. What products do you love using? Type the name in google and see whether there is an affiliate program or just see other affiliate programs in your niche. Choose the one you love so that you don’t feel tired and exhausted in the long run.

There are many other sites where you can choose your products from. You can take products from Click bank, Digistore24, Share a Sale, Jvzoo, and similar other platforms.

Here are the best affiliate platforms for you to choose from

How do you want to promote is the next question?

Well, you can create landing pages in click funnels, kartra, or builderall and promote them through ads. If you are on your budget, you could start a blog and promote it. You can write blogs for free on medium.com. It is a cost-effective way to sell your products. You can create a YouTube channel, talk about how you love using those products, and promote them, you could even use Pinterest to promote your blogs and landing pages.

We all know that Pinterest is a visual search engine and no doubt you can get quite a good sale from affiliate marketing in Pinterest

Once you get your first sale and testimonials you can start your Instagram page and build trust with others to promote the products and scale your business.

Instagram Influencer

Do you love making TikTok videos, always want to be active on social media? Then here is your chance to start earning being an Instagram influencer.

You can start by creating content about the topic you want to talk about the most. If creating a YouTube channel feels a bit challenging, grow your audience and monetize them through Instagram. Feel free to talk about what you feel.

Collect your follower's email IDs. Once you become consistent with the audience and platform, the content you are generating makes a digital course or something you think to monetize your people. Giveaway a lot of freebies, checklists, and many other things to lead your audience to the product you are offering. Build trust with them and try to use all of Instagram's available channels. Use carousals, reels, IGTV, go live to show behind the scenes of your work, and more!.

Staying consistent is the key to grow your audience on Instagram.

Starting a T-Shirt Business

Whether you’re an artist, writer, designer, or entrepreneur, physical products can be the perfect canvas for monetizing your creativity. Yes, you heard that right. You can start your own merch for free. Starting an online T-shirt business is booming in this era an why don’t you be one of them. You do not need to hold any inventory, just design your t-shirt online and publish it.

Let me make it clear. So what is print on demand? How to start your free t-shirt business

Print on demand is a process where you work with a supplier to customize white-label products (like baseball hats or tote bags) with your own designs to sell them on a per-order basis under your own brand.

That means you don’t pay for the product until after you’ve actually sold it, so there’s no need to buy in bulk or hold any inventory yourself.

Plus, with print-on-demand services, everything after the sale, from printing to shipping, is handled by your supplier. Once you’ve set everything up, it takes only a few clicks to fulfill an order once you’ve made a sale.

You can use print-on-demand services to:

Test a business idea or new product line for an existing business without the risks that come with buying inventory.

Monetize an audience you’ve built. Printing on demand is a great option if you’re a YouTuber, cartoonist, or social media influencer who wants to spend your time creating content instead of fulfilling orders.

Create original products for a niche of customers. For example, apparel for people who are passionate about gaming.

Easily print one-off items—t-shirts, books, shoes, bags, wall art, phone cases, clocks, laptop skins, mugs, and so much more. You can send these as gifts or keep them for yourself and your team (source-Shopify)

You can get started with print on demand for almost free with teespring, redbubble, printful . Or you can start your online store on Shopify and sell them as a custom branding.

Do not worry if you are not a pro in graphic designing. You can design your t-shirt on canva and paste the design on your t-shirt too. This is a legitimate and easy business for beginners online. You can promote your merch by using SEO, keywords, and various social platforms.

Let's take a look at the print on demand statistics:

This statistic depicts the market value of the custom t-shirt printing market worldwide from 2016 to 2025. In 2016, the global custom t-shirt printing market was valued at 1.16 billion U.S. dollars, and was forecast to reach a value of 3.1 billion U.S. dollars by 2025.

This is insane amount the industry is making from print-on-demand only.

COVID-19 impact Fabric face mask accounted for 11.14% of all goods sold through Printify in September 2020. (Printify)

A 2020 survey revealed that about 96% of millennials and Gen Z have concerns about how the ongoing pandemic will impact the economy. (BigCommerce)

With more people staying at home and focusing on home improvement projects, the Home & Living category is on the rise, with the first 6 months of 2020 seeing a 243.77% growth. Both canvas gallery wraps (2.19%) and premium vertical posters (1.35%) are in TOP15 products sold by Printify merchants. (Printify)

According to Merkle’s report in 2020, roughly 79% of consumers plan to be more conservative with how much they will spend shopping online during the pandemic. (Merkle)

In the first 6 months of 2020, Printify monthly active users have grown by 69%, with registrations up 39%. (Printify)

62% of sellers in the United Kingdom changed their marketing plan because of the pandemic. Moreover, only 14 percent of businesses have decided to stick with their original marketing strategy for 2020. (Statista) ( All sources- Printify) Read more at: https://printify.com/ecommerce-statistics/ And these are just stats alone. Don’t wait now. Start your print-on-demand business right away.

Online Tutoring

Again, online tutoring is gaining massive demand in this digital age. During the pandemic the online tutoring business was a boom and it will be more in the coming years. Just teach people what you know. There are many people in this world who want to learn and are ready to pay for it.

Whether you know to speak English, or drawing, graphic designing, marketing, business, or anything that matters, turn your own skill into a business

You can tutor in paid platforms like cambly, Oakary, iTutor, or just start teaching in YouTube and create tour own course and sell it. You can create courses and teach in udemy too. People all over the world are searching to learn skills and may be you can teach them what you know and monetize your skills.

Amazon KDP [ Selling E-books and low content books ]

As I told you print on demand is a big thing and so does amazon KDP is too. What is KDP? Amazon KDP is nothing but kindle direct publishing. KDP allows you to self-publish eBooks and paperbacks for free. Amazon gives you direct access to your book on Amazon and allows you to create a product detail page for your book. It also gives you the option to expand your book’s availability on a global scale, making it more accessible for readers around the world. Publishing with KDP gives you full rights to your book, which is not something a traditional publishing house typically allows.

What types of content can I publish through KDP?

KDP allows you to publish eBooks (Kindle) and paperback books. However, KDP does not allow the creation of magazines, periodicals, or spiral-bound books.

Content types typically published using KDP include but are not limited to the following:

Novels

Book Series

Children’s Books

Comics

Cookbooks

Journals

Poetry

Textbooks (source: amazon.com)

Selling Photography

Are you a photographer? Are you making enough money? If no then this will help you , if yes you are gonna make an extra dime.

You can sell your beautiful photos on Getty Images, Pexels, Shutterstock, Adobe Stock and many more sites and earn money whenever your image is downloaded. If it is a subscription-based site then your earnings will be more. You can post your beautiful images on Instagram and become famous. Ultimately you can collaborate with various brands for their product photography.

If your camera is lying there near you, take it and start clicking pictures and sell your photos online.

Selling on Etsy

Etsy is an online market place that works as an intermediary between customers and artists, crafters of handmade items or collectors of vintage products. The company engages in customer to customer (C2C) or peer to peer (P2P) e-commerce in which both the seller and the buyer are private individuals or micro-businesses. This is in contrast to other forms of internet commerce such as B2C or B2B (source: Statista).

Let's head to our facts about how profitable it is to sell on Etsy

Etsy had over 2.5 million sellers at the end of 2019, and we can only expect that this number has increased.

Etsy sellers live all over the world, in 234 countries

62% of Etsy sellers are based in the US.

California is home to the most Etsy sellers with 14% of US-based Etsy shops. (credits: veeqo)

Etsy is a huge commerce platform, with an especially strong US presence. Plus, the fact that most sellers are multi-channel retailers—and also selling their products on marketplaces like Amazon and Shopify sites—suggests that the platform isn’t just for amateur makers. It’s for eCommerce businesses.

So if you’re already selling handmade or vintage products on another platform, it’s worth it to expand and start selling on Etsy.

If you’re starting a business, it’s important to run the numbers before setting up shop—or at least quitting your day job. Etsy does have associated costs, though it’s worth noting that the listing and transaction fees are lower than other platforms, like Amazon and eBay. (cre: veeqo)

So, if you can start your print on demand you can sell it on Etsy too. If you are good at handicrafts Etsy is the best place to promote.

Conclusion

So here are the top 10 ways where in you can make legitimate money online. You can try all these methods one by one. Well, everyone will look for quick methods to make money online, but those won’t suffice for long run.

If you should build a strong business online you need to stay consistent no matter what. Staying consistent will help audience grow along with you on your journey to make money online. For beginners starting out these methods will help you in starting out to make a dime or two.

One thing I need to make particular is you will not see results instantly. You need to try and try, keep on trying. Whether it is 2 weeks, 1 month or 3 months, you should not stop. Keep up that grind and let’s start the digital lifestyle. Start by making money online fore free with these methods and start investing in ads and make the business run for you in long run.

[skullsandwineglasses]

Hi! There is a show: ZYW and some other guy travel for 3 days. From what I've seen, it's his morning routine to warm up his vocal cords Also ZYW is hugging trees and basically most of the time they eat lol Also they talk a lot, so I guess it should be cool to understand. When you have two minutes, could you tell us what this show is about in general? The name on youtube: 《仅三天可见》[第六期] 姜思达 周一围｜一个冠军给我带来了无妄之灾 Perhaps they're visiting some place important to ZYW? Thank you so much for all your help!)

Yeah, so in brief, the show is about the host, Jiang Sida (JSD), who spends 3 days with a celebrity in each episode to try to understand them better. 

ZYW in particular is a celebrity who really interested Jiang Sida because of how quickly ZYW gained popularity after Birth of an Actor, and also because of all of the negative rumours swirling around his personal life. ZYW is often insulted by the media for being 油腻, which means greasy. Greasy is an insult used to describe older, middle-aged men who are sleazy, self-absorbed, and on the heavier or chubbier side, although sometimes this insult can be leveled at younger, in-shape male celebrities too who come off as kind of douchey. 

It’s sad because even though ZYW doesn’t often express it, you can tell that the rumours do get to him. For instance, during the first meal in the show, he wanted to use a toothpick, but he was wary about using it in front of the cameras so he pocketed it away. The host noticed this and sympathized and playfully said, “Ah, too protective of your image. Stop the camera. Let’s go upstairs to the third floor, I understand you.”

The vocal cord warm up (that occurred during the hike before that meal) happened because ZYW asked JSD “you studied production right, not broadcast? If you studied broadcast, this would be a good place to practice your sound”, to which JSD replied, “show me” (or, “give one”). ZYW proceeded to demonstrate a dantian qi exercise. 

In the voiceover during the hike, JSD  said that even though they were friendly, things were still a little awkward and distant between them since they hadn’t gotten to know each other yet. 

On the third floor rooftop, JSD opened up to ZYW about a film he wanted to write about. JSD shared his ideas to ZYW, saying that the film would tell the story of his father who spends a year away at sea fishing. ZYW then shares his feedback, saying that it’s a really meaningful story because it’s about the loneliness of a man out at sea. Basically, this conversation is what finally allowed JSD to connect to ZYW because they were finally talking about deep and thoughtful topics like the art of storytelling and life lessons. ZYW said to JSD, you need to think about what kind of perspective you want to show. Is the story about the son’s feelings about his father’s return, or is the story the father’s story at sea, and the son is just an observer meant as a stand-in for the audience? ZYW then said that he was pleasantly surprised to learn about this side of JSD because he now knows that JSD is able to understand him. He also encourages JSD to keep pursuing his dream of wanting to make this movie. It doesn’t matter whether the end result is good or not, but it’s a joy to be able wake up everyday and pursue your goal. JSD says that he spends everyday thinking about this story he’s creating, because he wants to get to know the story better since it’s still so unfamiliar and foreign to him. 

During the tea segment, JSD asked ZYW if he was bothered by the things the media says about him and he kind of just shrugs it off and says that it grounds him. They talk about how he used to love karaoke (KTV) when he was younger, JSD asked him what his wife likes about him, and ZYW said that you have to ask his wife why. ZYW mentioned how people would call him PUA, or “pick up artist”, and then JSD if those things bothered him. ZYW said that he learned to ignore those things, but they do bother his wife. The tea segment ends with them noting that it looks like it’s about to rain soon, and ZYW says, when it rains, you can choose to stand in the rain, or avoid it and go indoors. 

During the evening meal, ZYW is asked again about how he feels about what people say about him and why he doesn’t address the rumours. ZYW says that it’s pointless because his voice alone isn’t going to make all the rumours stop. JSD says that it could be cathartic to be able to yell back at people, and ZYW laughs and says it’ll only be for a moment’s satisfaction but it won’t change anything. When asked if he is a person who likes to win, ZYW said that he likes to finish things, but does that make him someone who likes to win? He doesn’t compare himself to others, but he just wants to do what’s expected of him. JSD then tells ZYW that the director of the show asked him if he was worried that netizens would accuse him of trying to use this show to try to rescue ZYW’s image (洗白, which means to “wash white”, or clear someone’s name). JSD tells ZYW that his goal is to present celebrities in an honest and genuine manner, and if it just so happens that the celebrity is actually a better person than what netizens thought, then that’s the truth and he’s not fabricating anything. 

The following evening, they have a conversation about happiness. ZYW says that he doesn’t compare between the years in his life or classify certain years or decades as being bad years or good years. He doesn’t wish to forget the bad years. He says, why would you need to forget the bad years?

By the river, ZYW asks JSD if he ever thought about what kind of animal he wanted to be. JSD says that it doesn’t really matter what animal, but if you asked him if he would rather become someone else, he’d say no. ZYW says that not wanting to be another person is a pretty good answer. 

During the final sit-down interview, JSD starts off the conversation by saying that ZYW looks relaxed most of the time, but he’s actually 绷 (”beng”) on the inside, meaning stretched-tight. ZYW asks how so. JSD says that ZYW is constantly noticing things around him, and avoiding things and people and cameras. ZYW says that it’s part of his job to notice more details more than the average person. In terms of avoiding cameras, he’s constantly being scrutinized, there are always cameras around him. Even during this interview, they have to put on a show of being relaxed in casual conversation, even though there’s a whole sea of cameras and people with mics and earpieces around them. So it’s only natural to want to try to find a balance between reel and real life by being a little aversive towards cameras and people’s scrutiny.  

JSD then says that ZYW seems like he has a lot of thoughts that he keeps to himself. JSD says ZYW is 拧巴 (”ning ba”) , which kind of means uncomfortable, awkward, restless, wanting to do something but not doing it, like for example, being uncomfortable with rumours but not addressing them. ZYW says that what’s the point of explaining? How is it meaningful? Will explaining something change you as a person? You are still you whether you choose to explain something you not. Likewise, you are still you despite the rumours. The rumours (no matter how bad they are) don’t change who you are. Only you know who you are.

This really reminds me of what Xiao Qi said in episode 64 of TRP: “If there’s anything that needs to be explained, then no matter how much you try to explain it, it’s never going to be explained away. Let them spread the rumours.”

ZYW explains that there is no way that a single word or statement from him can possibly fend off the tens of thousands of words from netizens, so there is no point. In addition, rumours are only momentary and they ebb and flow. The netizens are always going to look for a new rumour or scandal to talk about anyway, so the uproar about him is only temporary. 

ZYW also says that there will always be rumours. There’s no truth. He will never expect that a single interview can change people’s minds. First of all, the viewers can’t experience the conversation in the same way the he and JSD are currently experiencing the conversation now in this moment. The audience will be watching it through a screen. The audience will only seeing an edited recording of the conversation, but they will never be able to know or understand the “true” nature of the conversation that he and JSD are having right now because the audience isn’t here with them. This is actually some really deep and philosophical insight from ZYW lol. What is real? What is the truth? 

JSD asks ZYW is this means that he’s disappointed and lost faith with the audience. ZYW says no, this is just reality. We can only hope to influence people who are able to influence, like people in our immediate circle, but when it comes to noise or mass opinions, you don’t have control over that. 

JSD then asks about fatherhood. JSD says that most men would talk about how fatherhood has changed them. ZYW says that most of his friends talk about this, but he doesn’t. But if he doesn’t talk about it, does he think about it? ZYW pauses to reflect. In another interview, ZYW noted that all kids have their own life “scripts” that they act out and deal with (this was in response to how he doesn’t seem to be home often to be with his kid). In that interview, he said that that was the way in which he had to grow up, figuring out his own script (and essentially not relying on anyone), so he doesn’t expect it to be any different for his own child. This once again result in the media backlash against him and questioning his role as a father. Which is why when faced with this question from JSD now, ZYW has to pause to think carefully about how to answer. 

JSD asks why can’t ZYW give a straightforward answer for the audience. The audience doesn’t want to hear an answer buried in layers of meaning, but they just want a simple answer to things. ZYW says that sometimes he isn’t completely sure of what the answer to something is, and so he can’t give a straight answer. It would be easy to give the answer that the audience wants, but he needs to be able to give answer that is genuine and resonates with him. 

JSD asks how ZYW would respond if the audience calls him self-absorbed. ZYW turns the question back to JSD and asks him to provide a response for him because he doesn’t know how to. ZYW said that he would just not respond and let it pass. On top of that, ZYW says that he doesn’t think of himself as being self-absorbed at all. He’s actually dissatisfied with himself in a lot of ways, and all he wants is for the audience to not pay attention to him so that he can be peacefully left alone. 

JSD asks if ZYW is he is more afraid of being criticized or being forgotten. ZYW says that being forgotten would mean that there is a problem with his acting skills. In terms of being criticized, it would depend on the criticism. He would mind criticism towards his acting because he would want to improve any problems in craft. However, if it’s personal criticism, then he doesn’t care. 

ZYW says that someone he admires once said, it’s a complicated world out there, so find a comfortable position, change positions, and learn to live with it.

JSD’s second last question to ZYW is whether he’d rather choose a comfortable position/posture or a beautiful position/posture. ZYW said that he would choose a comfortable position. JSD asks if ZYW thinks his current “posture” looks good (i.e., if his current standing and image is favourable). ZYW asks that you’ll have to ask someone else in order to know. 

The last question asked whether ZYW can predict how this interview will be received by audience. ZYW says that they touched upon many deep topics, but it’s hard to say what kind of effect it will have on the audience, or how the audience would choose to interpret it. He’ll welcome thoughtful discussion, but it would regretful if the audience took away very superficial things from the discussion. 

JSD asks if ZYW is happy with the discussion today. ZYW says that if it weren’t for the cameras, they could have gone deeper into some topics, but because there are cameras, he has to have impose boundaries on the things he’s willing to reveal. But he says that he would be interested in having more private conversations with JSD.  

JSD ends the episode saying that ZYW is an old soul who knows himself, knows what he wants, and already has his own “world” (meaning he already has what he needs). 

lol I was at first only going to summarize the first few minutes of the episode, but I ended up watching the whole thing because I was so memorized by ZYW’s insights, so here you go, a scene by scene summary of the episode. 

For those curious, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzt31O7imS4

[bluedaviau]

「 cherry. rachel hilson. cis female. she/her. 」 are you ready for the time of your life, BLUE DAVIAU? the TWENTY ONE year old FINE ART graduate from tulane is ready to HOT AIR BALLOON  in DUBAI this semester. close friends would describe them as IDEALISTIC and CREATIVE, but there’s really only one way to find out. get ready for what august has in store for you, BLUE ! 「 pepper. twenty one. est. she/her. 」

ABOUT THE MUN.  the 2000 claymation film chicken run radicalized me

what up, i’m pepper, i’m twenty four, and not to flex but i’ve had writer’s block for two str8 months !! but i’m hoping to change that right here right now with one ms. blue daviau so thank you for coming on this journey with me friends it’s gonna be wild. a bit about me is i’ve gone to the mall literally every day this week and honestly, i am Exhausted from it so i apologize for the mess this intro is about to be. i’m a taurus with a libra moon and libra rising so do with that information what you will. my favourite pokemon is mewtwo. growing up i had a massive crush on danny phanton and ben 10, like i loved those lanky boys that could transform to fight crime for some reason?? i can’t tell you why. also when i was a child i thought god looked like king triton from the little mermaid. alright that is enough about me, moving on to blue. 

BIO.  if you use my coloured pencils you better put them back in rainbow order

this is going to be the short version of her bio but if you want to see the long rambly messy version you can find my google doc/app here ! which i recommend you looking at for no other reason than to see how cute the little cherry doodle i inserted in there is. it took me so long to get that in there and looking cute. it’s baby’s first fancy google doc 😌 anyways sdjhdsjh 

blue was born and raised in hawaii! her mother, stormi, was miss hawaii state at one point and her father, reggie, was a pro surfer! however before blue was born her father had a surfing accident that left him in a wheelchair. he turned to art to try to cope with the trauma of this accident and the reality of never being able to surf again, and he even opened up his own gallery! his gallery became a tourist attraction in hawaii and pretty well known in the art community and after passing down her crown blue’s mother became a news anchor. so the fact was blue was the daughter of two local legends in hawaii and the expectations were high!

not to mention the fact that all of blue’s elder siblings were amazing too. blue has five older siblings and all of them are successful in their own right and in their own niche. they’re also all named after colours funnily enough. the daviau parents had big hippy energy in case you were wondering. 

so growing up blue was always just kind of the ‘other’ sibling. all her older siblings had showed their talents at a young age and grew into them pretty quickly, while blue was just kind of... there. she was an artist, but she wasn’t a groundbreaking artist. she could sing, but her voice was simply pretty, not lifechanging. she could surf, but she was average at best. to put it simply, blue was the daviau sibling who wasn’t at all special. which ironically, made her stand out like a sore thumb. 

blue didn’t mind too much though, at least not when she was younger. she kept to herself anyways. all blue wanted do when she was younger was read, draw, and explore hawaii’s wild life, so she had everything she could possibly need to be happy right at her fingertips. life was good for her despite her inadequacy, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t aware of it (and wouldn’t develop a complex about it later).

when blue was six though her parents decided that they needed to have sweet, sweet, baby number seven to save their marriage. they named that sweet boy gray. he did not save a damn thing, but he sure was cute. blue was eleven when her parents finally divorced and that pretty much marked the end of blue having any kind of parental guidance. 

long story short, both of blue’s parents went kinda buckwild the moment they were single and most of the responsibility to take care of five year old gray fell on blue. blue was the one to make gray’s meals. blue was the one to give gray a bath. blue was the one to tuck gray in at night and get him into his school clothes in the morning. blue was the one to help him with his homework and hold his hand as he crossed the street and honestly pretty much do everything for him until she was about seventeen. both her parents simply checked out on that front, and it the end blue was more of a mother to gray than either of their parents were. 

the pressure of having to not only take care of herself but also gray when she wasn’t even legally an adult yet, was honestly way too much for blue. her anxiety skyrocketed, and the pressure she put on herself only grew. the only way blue could really cope with it and calm herself down was by 1. losing herself in nature, 2. drawing, or 3. reading, or rather most likely, doing all of the above at once. using art of an escape pretty much guaranteed that blue’s love and passion for it grew, and with that her talent for it. by that time blue was seventeen she had a full portfolio ready to send off to any university outside of hawaii that would take her. because you bet your bottom dollar your girl was getting the hell outta there!

as we all know blue got accepted to tulane. it was hard to leave gray and her family behind, but blue set her mother and father straight before she left, ensuring that gray would be well taken care of in her stead and hoping that some distance between herself and her family that was so dependent on her (her mother never new how to cook so blue made all the meals, her father never knew how to handle gray so he was always coming to blue to advice, gray was absolutely lost without her, etc) would lift that pressure off her shoulders. 

it didn’t at first. the first few months were tough with all the calls blue got from home. that plus the schoolwork she had on her plate almost left her more stressed than before. however, slowly the calls began to fade and slowly blue was able to put her full focus in her art program, and later, her animation programs. 

sorry folks my brain is fried, we’re gonna stop here!

HEADCANNONS. on all levels except physical i am sitting on top of the moon with my legs swinging back and forth

Blue’s father is in a wheelchair from the surfing accident that made him take up art. His past as a professional surfer is actually part of the reason why his gallery is so popular though honestly, because the accident was televised and after that tragedy many of his fans and the public wanted to support him. He just also so happened to be really talented. But yeah, Blue’s father was really talented at surfing, he was even invited to the summer olympics in the nineties! But he was also the type to refuse to go because ‘surfing should be freeing, the olympics have so many restrictions, it takes away from what surfing is!!’ dkjsd he was that type yk? I also imagine Blue’s parents were the type to be on the front lines at protests. As it is, Blue is the same, very passionate, definitely has made some bomb ass posters and t-shirts for every women's march she’s attended.

Blue can play the ukulele really well and she honestly has a really pretty singing voice. However she can’t dance even a little bit. Honestly, she could literally break a bone. Really wants to throw it back though 😔

Loves to bake and cook because they’re relaxing activities with built in rewards. Learned to bake and cook because of having to take care of herself and her brother's meals when she was younger, that is if she didn’t want them both to literally get diabetes. As it is though, now that she doesn’t have to worry about her baby brother’s diet as well as her own, she will make a whole chocolate cake just cause she’s a little stressed and proceed to actually eat it. But she will share though. Catch Blue coming to your hotel room with sweets.

All of Blue’s elder siblings are adults now, but Gray is still about sixteen. They exchanged letters from Hawaii to Tulane and Blue always spends hours decorating hers and including little snacks and cute little knick knacks in them, despite the fact that Gray is now an angsty teenager and does not find these things as entertaining as he used to. Despite that, they are definitely the closest out of their siblings for the most part.

Blue’s siblings' names are Sage, Jett, Jade, Ruby, Rose and of course Gray. Jade and Jett, and Ruby and Rose are both twins.

The type to cry easily honestly. Also the type to carry other people’s problems with her. Like if you tell Blue that someone hurt your feelings last week she will remember and she will check on you the next time she sees you. Very empathetic, almost to a fault though because she’s constantly being careful of everyone else’s feelings rather than her own. The type who’s a good listener though. Also the type to give either really good advice or really odd advice.  

Art still tends to be her happy place, something she got from her father. Trying to find her own place outside of her father's shadow. She wants to get into the world of animation and cartoons but the whole task is a bit daunting. Is planning to work her ass off for it though! Spends a lot of time in coffee shops storyboarding and making animations. I think she may have a contract going on with a cartoon network of some sort, like they may have picked up a show of hers? Because I imagine her putting out some of her first shorts on Youtube and that might have gotten a bit of attention and led to her getting a deal for a show, so. She’s probably working her ass off towards that, and is honestly probably 1.doubting if they really picked up her show because of her talent or her father’s name, and 2.wondering if she can really do this.

Loves water in all shapes and forms. Since she can’t go to the beach everyday, the small bath in her tiny ass apartment??? Suddenly heaven. That said, Blue is either terrified of the ocean or loves it and I can’t decide which. Standby on that.

Makes a great coffee cake. Like it’s to die for.

Is VERY passionate about the environment. Is a pescatarian. Goes to the farmers market to pick out fresh produce. Loves to hike.

Always has the urge to sketch or paint after she reads poetry or novels. Highlights her favourite bits and has the tendency to read them over when she’s sad. The parts she loves are usually the parts that leave her wanting something.

Draws when she’s sad too. Claire Saffitz energy when she’s cooking but also just through life. Very friendly, but an introvert when it comes to gathering her energy.

Lives for libraries and bookstores, and has stacks on stacks of books in her old apartment. Loves old children's books honestly, like The Secret Garden, and poetry. Like whimsical and fantastical fiction with flowery words that just brings you to another place? Blue’s freaking jam. Falls in love with someone in fiction every five days, and desperately wants to be in love in real life, hence all the tinder dates and blind dates. I don’t think Blue ever has fallen in love though, like not really.

An absolute baby when it comes to the cold. Literally there could be a slight breeze and Blue will be acting like she’s suddenly in the arctic.  Any cold destinations will be greeted by a bundled up Blue’s Clues.

Made her first painting out of her own feces at six months old. Her parents proudly framed it. It’s probably still up in the attic in their Hawaii home.

Won her first art show at six but was unsure whether it was because her art really was something worth awarding or because of her father’s name. The award got her on the front page of the Honolulu Tribune but with her father proudly at her back and the title ‘Following in her father’s footsteps’ above her head. Blue just wants to find her own footing in the art world, and be her own person.

Keeps a journal and has since she was a teenager.

WANTED CONNECTIONS. i’m the friend that needs help opening water bottles. 

coming to theatres near you soon!

[bananonymity]

oh dear a hetalia university au

THE PROFESSORS

Alfred Jones - Film Studies

-Specializes in genre film, especially film comedy

-Class participation points is if you livetweet your observations and thoughts on a film that you watch in class with the hashtag #JonesJokes1100 (1100 is the course number)

-If you go to him for office hours he will spend half of the time recommending cult films to you

-Will find any excuse to screen at least one (1) Fast and Furious film in any of his class

-Hides snack food in the (public) classrooms he teaches in, will share with the class if a student finds it first

-thinks jean-luc godard is a punk bitch who weighs 20 pounds soaking wet

Arthur Kirkland -  Literature

-Children’s Literature and Fantasy specialization

-that one professor who bumbles into class in sweater vests and an entire teapot 

-”Hi everyone, class is canceled today. I couldn’t find a fucking parking spot.”

-Bring up in his class that Lord of the Rings is an allegory of WWII. I dare you.

-YouTube autoplay defeats him every time

-”IT’S. IN. THE. BLOODY. SYLLABUS.”

Ludwig Beilschmidt - Advisor

-Poor man is responsible for arranging the schedules and eventual graduation of 18,000 students who eat spaghetti out of a shoe when they run out of plates

-Takes every panicked and not necessarily sober student’s frantic emails about a major change with weary stride

-Definitely drinks in the office

-Brings his dogs to campus for therapy dog Thursdays. Then proceeds to pet the dogs himself for two hours

Francis Bonnefoy- Studio Art (all credit for characterization goes to @thedisappointedidealist12 )

-A tortured contemporary artist who needs to teach millennials/gen Z students to appreciate and critique modern art

-makes it a goal in life to baffle and infuriate his students, but once in a blue moon would make a really good point in his lessons that blows everyone’s minds

-Forces students to go to gallery openings and art exhibits with him for extra credit so that he can talk to death about what he thinks about every piece to them

-will fail anyone who said ‘I could have painted that.”

-bonus: argues with Alfred all the time about the merits of French new wave cinema

Gilbert Beilschmidt - Political Science/History

-Leadership class to study famous leaders in history, how they exercised and spread their influence to the people.(is it just me or does Frederick the Great take up a lot more of the syllabus than the other topics?)

-Seemingly easy-going and a human disaster but once add-drop period is over your nose is on the grindstone and you realize that this man actually knows his shit plus some and also you might fail but hey, you’ll have fun doing it

-if his class survives the semester he will take them to the bar and buy them all shots

-”Dear Professor Beilschmidt, This is Xiao Mei from your Political Psychology class. Would it still be okay for me to take the final tomorrow at 12PM? Thank you for your time! Regards, Xiao Mei.” “whatever -- Sent From iPhone”

Elizaveta Hedervary- Gender Studies

-on one hand, she’s the professor who will invite students to her home to spend the holidays if they cannot go home for break

-on the other hand, there is a reason why No Other Faculty dares to take her parking spot

-she and Gilbert use the same class room back to back, which has led to petty territorial rivalries and pranks

-Will publicly drag you and your unfounded opinions in class in the gentlest, most ruthless manner

-You can skip the test if you beat her in arm wrestling in front of the class (spoiler alert: you can’t)

Lovino Vargas- Dining Hall Manager

-Makes it his life goal to change the campus’ perception of the dining hall food by working hard and cooking delicious food

-WILL complain with every breath about budget, quality of groceries, poor pay, and college students who think putting spaghetti-os on a piece of bread is a meal

-on the flip side, very attentive to the students, especially female students, and keeps an eye out for any sign of unhealthy or eating disorder and encourages them to eat wholesome meals. if he catches a student skipping meals because of workload, he will shove a bruschetta in their hands and glare at them until they eat

-a bit too scared to go on strike over pay, although Francis encourages it wholeheartedly

Antonio Carriedo- Librarian

-In the past, he and Arthur were rivals to graduate summa cum laude in their programs. now, Antonio is taking it easy

-Still unironically uses nineties style catalogue cards because it relaxes him, also his computer mysteriously malfunctions every time he tries to use it to locate a book for someone

-if you ask him for a book he will somehow have you sharing your life story right at the help desk for a good fifteen minutes. he WILL forget what book you were asking for

Yao Wang - Business

-Uses memes to stay relevant with the youth (“Don’t forget to YEET”)

-Often invites students to a group lunch after class is over and remembers all his old students’ names

-Don’t even think about trying to leave class early. He may not call you out but expect a threatening Office jpg to airdrop into your phone

-loves it when students bring their children to class, will hold the baby while lecturing

THE STUDENTS

Emil Steilsson - First Year Undecided Student

-Freshman from Iceland, first time leaving his home and struggles to put himself out there to make friends or meet new people

-Raised in a large and close household but because he’s quite a bit younger than his brothers, doesn’t always feels like he belongs

-Also, his first time being away from his brothers, which gives him an anxiety that he will never admit

Leon Wang - First Year Film Studies Student

-Freshman from Hong Kong and Emil’s roommate

-Professor Wang’s kid brother; Yao Wang will bring him tupperware of home cooked Chinese meals every Thursday which Leon will not admit to deeply appreciating

-He will share all his food with you, but he will also eat all your food in return

-A bit of an age gap between him and his brother, and he was raised mostly in boarding schools in England growing up, so he doesn’t get to see his parents often and therefore unconsciously deals with a complex of feeling unwanted or shuffled around

-If he wasn’t such a nice kid Emil would probably have a nervous breakdown having Leon as a roommate (their tidiness levels are Very Different)

Michelle - Second Year Art Student

-Sophomore from Seychelles and fast friends of the boys

-Has a work study job at Professor Bonnefoy’s department

-She has trouble fitting in with the other students and often feels a bit left out from her peer group, despite her friendly efforts

-Because she pursues art, she often worries about her future job prospects, and lacks much confidence in her skills in any other field

[awed-frog]

When you say romance should be 18 and over do you mean the brand of romance we know today (aka toxic) or romance as a whole? If we wrote healthy romance aimed at younger crowds or presented unhealthy behaviour as unhealthy behaviour in regular romance (for older crowds) would that be a good solution?

Well - I see three questions here, all of them incredibly complex and beyond interesting: should art be political and is censorship ever a good idea and also is the romance genre okay? The answer to all of them, in my opinion, is ‘no but’.

1) Should art be political?

The stupid thing is, art is inherently political, whether you want it to or not, but art that’s deliberately political tends to be awful, and that’s a universal truth both for left-wing stuff and for right-wing stuff. When you willingly create political stuff, what you’re crafting is propaganda, and proganda is generally sad and bad. I guess there is propaganda that’s also good art - Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs comes to mind - but the problem is, not all of us are Victor Hugo. 

That said, since whatever we create is political (because man is a social animal) and will have some kind of moral message, yes - ideally we want more art with an ethically ‘good’ moral message than we want garbage, because art (and here I include everything: books, movies and so on) is perhaps the most effective and impactful mind-shaper ever. That’s why Disney is doing its very best to be a monopoly, after all. But: I don’t have a good solution for how to ensure art is nice. I think art is nice when artists are nice, and artists are nice when they grow up in good, healthy societies. So the more a society rots from the inside out, the more likely it is you’ll find art that’s also rotten. I mean, while romance as a genre was always a bit dodgy (see below), what that article was talking about - the rise of the possessive, violent boyfriend and domestic abuse as the great love story - is sort of a recent phenomenon, and goes hand in hand with the deterioration of women’s rights in (Western) society. 

(As an aside, I’m not sure I agree (young) women are necessarily misogynistic for reading crap like Fiftfy Shades: I think (young) women are exhausted. Fifty Shades is, more than anything, an ode to undeserved capitalism - the only kind that seems open as an option today. After all, we know trickle-down capitalism doesn’t work and most of us will toil and toil for very little; Christian Grey is the antidote to that, the guy who shows up, basically kidnaps you, and smothers you in a life of riches for which the only thing you must do in return is give up. Having someone else decide on your job, your car, your possessions and clothes, where you’ll live, what you’ll eat and when, whether you’ll take birth control (lol: obviously not), when you’ll see your friends and family plus when and how you’ll orgasm - what women tried to escape for generations is suddenly the dream for many of us - not because of any new political ideology, but because we’re beyond tired. Women, like men, are now crushed in a neverending cycle of bs, underpaid jobs, and are apparently fed up enough in taking responsibility for anything that not only romance and ‘superhuman’ characters are booming, but a very specific kind of subset of that: essentially, slave fics. 

Just give up your agency, and you’ll be taken care of and cherished - forever.

I understand a kink is not the same as your actual political opinion, but still - I’m not enthusiastic about this trend, and I’m even less enthusiastic when it gobbles up young women who haven’t had time to experience real life relationships.)

No, I think that in the end, the answer is - if you reverse the rotting of society, automatically - statistically - you’ll get healthier artists and a healthier audience. So, really, the fight is always the same: better paid jobs, better (and free) schools, more opportunities for continued education of any kind, more democracy and transparency, more green spaces and better living conditions.

2) Is censorship ever a good idea?

Sadly, no. You’d think the logical conclusion of what I just said would be, ‘In the meantime, let’s ban the most dangerous stuff’ or something, and while part of me is tempted to support that, censorship has a way of ending very badly no matter how good and noble your intentions are.

(Self-censorship should be more of a thing, though: not everything that goes through our minds deserves to be seen and shared.)

What sucks at the moment is that on the one hand, capitalism is operating its own censorship; and on the other, its desperate search for new markets has led to a disastrous disintegration of actual human interactions.

So, problem one is that we only publish and market what makes a lot of money, and while that’s normal, to an extent, the result today is that everything is ‘almost the same’ as the previous thing (think sequels, prequels, remakes, obnoxious book covers for books that are basically all the same). So if ‘asshole boyfriend who beats you up’ suddenly makes money, it becomes very hard to escape the trope, because what will be offered to you everywhere is exactly that. This was less of a thing back when our main sources of entertainment were shared (movie theaters, the one family TV, school libraries and so on); now, it’s an epidemic, and as we see with Youtube algorithms, a dangerous one, because this obsession with watching and rewatching ‘almost the same’ inevitably leads to more and more extreme stuff.

Meanwhile, problem two is that the more tailor-made our entertainment is, the less we connect to real people. I know I sound about 90 here, but when all family members are glued to a different screen - mom watching the 50th remake of Eat, Pray, Love, dad down the rabbithole of lizard conspiracy theories, big brother now exploring some milk&peanut butter weirdness on Youporn and younger sister 30 fics deep into Stucky high school AUs - what do they have in common? What do they talk about? What can they even learn from each other? Until recently, and for aeons, fiction was shared, and its primary goal was to form a connection between group members. Now, that’s gone. We destroyed it, without even realizing what we were doing, in the space of twenty years. And yeah - I know you can create new communities, but a) these communities are virtual (which means, for the most part: not real) and b) they tend to connect like with like, which is comforting, perhaps, but not very useful. The whole point here is that we need to learn how to feel empathy and trust for those who’re different, and build a community with them - instead, what the internet is doing is isolating us inside our little bubbles, so much so that any minor disagreement is now seen as good reason to break off contact.

Censorship, however, doesn’t solve any of this. For starters, we need more regulation on how big corporations can get, what social media companies can and can’t do and who can access what kind of material. And it’d be great if we could all unplug a little, but uh - fat chance of that.

3) Is the romance genre okay?

Again, just my opinion, but personally, I mistrust it. There are no romance books for men? Instead, books for men feature a Main Character doing stuff and improving himself while accidentally meeting a Sexy Lamp he can go home to at the end of the story. And, well, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but isn’t this a healthier way to look at life? While good relationships are very meaningful (or even the most meaningful) part of any human life, if your goal is to get them, they won’t grow right. You shouldn’t be hyperfocused on finding love; I think it’s much better to be like Main Character: you work on your drawing skills, try a new sport, read poetry, defeat evil Russians, thus developing inner happiness and self-confidence, thus leading you towards towards a partner who’ll fall in love with who you are - not a partner who was looking for some empty shell to fill with their own expectations and preferences.

And I know - romance books and movies are full of exciting non-romantic events and stuff - but still, the fact they’re classified and intended as romance does imply that finding a romantic partner is the ultimate goal. Which, I don’t know, I don’t think it’s healthy, and is a particularly inappropriate message for young women. After all, why is it okay that young men are encouraged to go on ghost hunts, study dinosaurs and save the world while young women are taught to wait around for a broken (possibly violent, but it’s not his fault) bad boy only they can fix? It’s messed up, is what it is, and I may be extreme here, but even the tamest, sweetest romance revolves around the same message: that you’re not complete on your own, and that you should focus on relationships as a way to become a better, happier human being. 

Now, as much as I love this quote -

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.” — Oscar Wilde

- obviously there’s no direct cause-and-effect here - you don’t read one book and become a mindless Stepford wife - so I’m not saying, ‘no one should read romance ever’. It’s just - as I said in that other post, we should all enjoy diverse stuff. Read your romance novels, but also read the classics, read some philosophy, a random poem, a badly-written thriller - read Stephen King, read how the OED was written, or a Wikipedia article on the French resistance - anything and everything. Because of capitalism, because of this push towards personalized entertainment, we’re being forced and pigeonholing ourselves in smaller and smaller cages, and the worst thing is - we’re comfortable inside them, because this is the awful truth: cages are comfortable, and that’s why we need to get out before we forget what cages are for.

[As a final point: you say ‘if we wrote’, does it mean you’re an aspiring writer? If so, you shouldn’t worry about any of this. You write what you want, you write the stories you want to read. Just remember to get out of your cage as well - experience, discover, grow, read, dare - and then put all that into your books. I’m sure they’ll be great, whatever your favourite genre.]

[tessatechaitea]

Cerebus #3

Time for some good chafing gags!

I love Cerebus. Once I began buying the monthly issues, I stuck with it until Issue #300, no matter how bored I had become with Cerebus's explication of Genesis. I stuck with it because it had entertained me so much and because I loved the idea of a comic book series with a character who grows and changes and eventually dies as an old, decrepit, huge delusional mess. Or was he delusional? Yeah, I think he was. By the end, I think we're supposed to realize Rick was the protagonist? Whoops! I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm still in the issues where I don't have to think too hard about anything and can just sit back and laugh at jokes about chain mail bikinis and a woman who will only fuck somebody who overpowers her physically! What I meant to say before I interrupted myself like usual, I kept with the series because I loved so much of it. Not all of it, of course. Who could love all of it?! Dave Sim was writing things that kept himself interested and wasn't too worried about, say, keeping the audience that loved Church & State while writing Melmoth, or expecting people who loved Guys to be enthusiastic about Coming Home. I appreciated this comic book so much that it's the only reason that I kept purchasing monthly comic books as I entered my thirties. I had gotten to the point where my brain was having too much trouble remembering all the different comic book story lines with a full month long gaps between each twenty-four page bit of story. So at some point just past the year 2000, I decided I'd stop reading monthly comics altogether after March 2004, the final issue of Cerebus. After that, I kept up with Fables and Walking Dead via collected editions. But I was done reading monthlies (until The New 52 somehow dragged me back in to do that blog project!). So yeah. I was (and still am!) a huge Cerebus fan. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to be critical of the series and the writer. Dave Sim makes a lot of mistakes and I'm going to have a lot of fun pointing them out! You might not think they're mistakes but I ask that you hold your comments until the end (you know, my review of Issue #300!) because why would I want to argue on the Internet with other huge comic book nerds? We're the worst! One person I'll never criticize because I don't think they ever do anything wrong: Gerhard! That fucking work horse nails it throughout the entire series! Nothing much to say about Deni's "A Note from the Publisher" since all she says is how she has nothing to say. I was hoping she'd admit to rubbing one out over one of Dave's finished Red Sophia pages but my horrible male nerd projections about how women act once more didn't come to fruition. How is it everything I learned about women from female comic book characters turned out to be so wrong?! I refuse to believe it's because most of them were written by men. Men are so rational and logical! They wouldn't have steered me wrong!

I should probably do a little research on Frank Thorne.

Frank Thorne was best known for his work on Marvel's Red Sonja. Yes, I lifted that directly from Wikipedia. But I typed it myself! Another thing I learned from Wikipedia (I'd do more research than just Wikipedia but I don't want to wind up on YouTube where I'll not only learn about Frank Thorne's artistic history but also that the American Democratic party runs a pedophile sex traffic ring and also something about cannibals? I mean, it sounds like something I'd like to believe!) is that Thorne wrote a book called How to Draw Sexy Women. So, you know, he's probably one of my heroes? Frank Thorne is currently 90 years old and he might have the most adorable picture of anybody on Wikipedia.

I want to be best friends with him right now. Six year old me would have been over the moon in love with him (I had a Grandfather Fixation when I was really young that probably had nothing to do with my father leaving when I was two).

This issue not only introduces Red Sophia but also the wizard Henrot. That's an anagram of "Thorne"! Red Sophia is an anagram for "Hi! Do Rapes." I don't agree with that at all. I'm just the anagram messenger. I'm also not suggesting that Dave Sim knew what he was doing anagrammatically! I mean with the Red Sophia anagram. He definitely meant the Henrot/Thorne one! Cerebus has returned to civilization but now needs some quick cash because one thing Cerebus always needs is quick cash. He's only wealthy a few times and those times don't usually last long. He goes to see Henrot (who allegedly gets his power from two of the five Spheres of the Gods! So now we kind of know more about those things even if it is just a rumor) to question him about any paying mercenary gigs.

You might think the missing word in Henrot's dialogue was a mistake by Dave Sim but later we'll probably learn in, I don't know, Issue #143 that Henrot's first language is Borelean to account for this seeming error.

Cerebus doesn't usually take assassination or torture jobs because he finds them distasteful but he needs the money. Sure, he'll take any job that has him killing people in battle or invading private wizard's towers to murder the owner and steal the owner's stuff. But assassination and torture? So wrong! Once Cerebus takes the job, he learns that he was to take Henrot's daughter, Red Sophia, along with him. The target besmirched her honor so she needs to watch him die slowly and painfully. Is this where the MeToo hashtag goes?

Red Sophia drawing tutorial: Draw some big tits, some big lips, and a big mass of hair. Connect them with some kind of woman shaped lines. Ta-da!

Red Sophia chatters incessantly and dances around while Cerebus carries all of the gear. It's funny because female characters get to represent all women instead of being a unique character! Ha ha! Women really do talk a lot, right? And they're always all, "Carry my purse for me!" And guys are all like, "Stifle your emotions like a normal person! Carry your own purse! Stop dancing around whimsically and try to act tough and cool like regular people do! Play some sports already! Take care of me like you were my replacement mother!" In the "A Note from the Publisher," Deni wrote that since the first issue (remember the first issue? So many issues ago!), Dave had wanted to write a story where Cerebus interacts with a female. She doesn't say Dave wanted to write a female character. He just wanted Cerebus to interact with a female. So I guess that's what this is! Cerebus interacts with a female stereotype who is also a sex fantasy. Not because she's hot but because she constantly tries to fuck Cerebus throughout their adventure! What sword and sorcery reading nerd didn't dream of that three or four times a day in a dark room? I'm being harsh on Sim because it's more fun than lavishing praise on him. You can tell Sim realizes the inherent problems with Red Sonja because that's the bulk of his parody. The problem isn't Dave's take on the character; the real problem is simply the character Red Sonja! In 1978, Sim was already commenting on the ridiculous armor artists draw on women (there will be chafing jokes!)! And in this story, Dave Sim expresses how ridiculous it was to create a female character who was raped and then given great fighting skills by some Goddess with the catch that she can never fuck a man unless he beats her in fair combat. Just looking at it from a guy's point of view, I'd probably be all, "You know what? I don't want those powers. Could you maybe just strike down the asshole who raped me and let me not have to attempt to beat up every woman I'm attracted to?" Is that enough hot takes on Red Sophia? Cause I want to get to the part of this review where I can admit that I fucking love her so much. Later Cerebus meets Elrod who is really just Foghorn Leghorn. I'm pretty sure Red Sophia was less Red Sonja than Pepé Le Pew. I know, I know! There are probably some sensitive reasons why I'm not supposed to like Pepé too! But he was my mother's favorite Looney Tunes character! Anyway, I can't blame Dave Sim for making his first female character about 75% stereotypes of women. He's still a young writer! You've got to give him about another 183 issues to really clarify his stance on the interactions between genders! I'm sure it'll be more layered, nuanced, and rational.

Cerebus might be an Earth Pig but he's not a chauvinist pig. He doesn't take sexual advantage of Red Sophia here; he just makes her carry all the gear. It's a good joke that I'm ruining by explaining it instead of scanning in the punchline!

Just for comparison, let's take a look at a modern interpretation of Red Sonja by Ed Benes. I bet just that artist's name alone gives male comic book nerds a chubby. Not a full on hard on though. Those are probably reserved for hearing the name "Frank Cho."

What do they teach in art school? Women can turn 180 degrees at the waist? Not that I'm complaining! Dark room, here I come!

Oh shit. I forgot I was reading this comic book! Okay, um, so Red Sophia attacks Cerebus for besmirching her honor. Or Cerebus attacks Red Sophia for knocking him into a bush with her ass. Maybe it's a little bit of both. Anyway, Cerebus defeats her so Red Sophia begins throwing her ample bosom at Cerebus every chance she gets. Cerebus is not interested for some reason. Maybe it's because he stuck a sword in his vagina when he was younger? That happened, right? Or was that a flashback about him having his period? Now that I'm thinking about it...what the fuck is this comic book? I think maybe I hallucinated some of it! Cerebus isn't a fucking slut, man! He doesn't just fuck any hot woman whom he defeats in battle! He needs to fall in love and/or get completely wrecked on Peach Schnapps. So he has no interest in Red Sophia. I suppose a woman trying to kill you is a bit of a turn off. And then later, when she gets you into a fight with Thugg the Unseemly, it's less of an aphrodisiac than you might think.

I think Borelean might be Red Sophia's first language as well. I mean, she is Henrot's daughter.

The Letterer part of Dave Sim has already fucked up twice this issue. I bet he was too busy having his sword and sorcery fantasies in a dark room to pay close attention to the script. This is probably why Dave Sim eventually gave up masturbation. Later, Red Sophia feeds Cerebus granola and it totally cracks Dave Sim up. He said so in the Swords of Cerebus essay! Didn't you read it? I, for one, prefer the joke on the following page about Cerebus being a cannibal. Or an aardvark who eats human meat, anyway. I think that's close enough to cannibalism. We learn later that aardvarks can have offspring with humans so I feel like the aardvarks in this book are less sentient funny talking animals and more severely deformed human beings.

Red Sophia's tent. If this we were well into Mothers & Daughters when this tent made an appearance, I'd think Dave purposefully drew it this way. Since we're only on Issue #3, I think he was just feeling horny when he drew it.

If at any time during this review I've referred to Red Sophia as Red Sonja, just remember that English is my second language. I'm Borelean. I apologize to Dave Sim for earlier suggesting that Red Sophia was simply a bunch of female stereotypes mashed together into a character. As I said, I love her. I figured I probably started loving her after she makes several more appearances but I'm pretty sure this is the page where I knew needed more Red Sophia in my life.

How can you not be completely charmed by the "I'm pretty good at hand-holding" line?

This is a good reminder that I shouldn't be judging early Dave Sim by Issue #186 Dave Sim and beyond. He should always get the benefit of the doubt and, even after #186, he should retain it. I need to be reading the material both with fresh eyes as if reading it for the first time and with the knowledge of the whole in an attempt to understand it better. This scene is just so fucking charming that I hate that it might be ruined for many people based on their "knowledge" of Dave Sim. I put knowledge in quotes because, really, how many people who think of Dave as a misogynist have actually read Cerebus or Tangent? How many have just heard they're supposed to despise him because he's been called a misogynist? I mean, sure, you just have to read a bunch of his Biblical explications to understand you're dealing with something other than neurotypical! But it'd be nice if more people came to their Dave Sim conclusions themselves instead of just jumping on the bandwagon. I'm not saying people who think he's a misogynist aren't automatically wrong! Dave thinks they are but come on. He eventually gives out a lot of slack with which to make quite a few nooses to hang himself with. Um, okay, back to not judging Cerebus based on future Dave's rants about the Marxist/feminist/homosexual axis! Cerebus and Sophia finally reach the target where Cerebus discovers that the target, Tanes Feras, loves Sophia. And just like that, he figures out how to get rid of Sophia while also torturing Feras (possibly to death? Time will tell!). He commands Sophia to marry Feras because she must do whatever he asks. Sure, she thought it would involved his super long tongue and her metal-chafed butthole. But that's the great thing about love! It doesn't care what you want. Henrot seems to accept this conclusion for now. He'll definitely be back later. And so will Red Sophia. I can't wait!

The map of Cerebus's world by Deni's brother, Clovis. He ran out of ideas when he got to "Ocean Sea."

I'll have to remember to keep referring back to this map throughout the series. Although I'll probably only need it for the first twenty-five issues. And then maybe after Mothers & Daughters. Nothing noteworthy in Aardvark Comment this month. Just some Canadians saying things like, "Glad to see a Canadian comic book from Canada about Canada!" Which is confusing because I didn't realize how much of Cerebus was representative of Canada. I've really got to rethink my Canadian stereotypes. Now I'll be sure to picture Canadians as 50% Cerebus and 50% Joey Jeremiah. Cerebus #3 Rating: B+. Sim's art remains a bit more on the amateurish side than the professional side. But that's to be expected. Already you can see improvements in the consistency of Cerebus's look and I think maybe his snout is already getting shorter and girthier. This was the first issue where he drew a woman so I can't fault him for drawing a blow-up doll in a chain mail bikini. Why would I? I'd never fault anybody for drawing a blow-up doll in a chain mail bikini! I also just thought up a new category to search on eBay. This issue begins to show where Sim really excels: his characters. The first two issues basically highlight Cerebus dealing with a few generic characters. But Red Sophia (and Henrot to a lesser extent) captures the spotlight this issue. Ignoring some of the shallow aspects of her character creation (if you even believe those exists. Don't take my super-professional critical opinion on it!), she's really rather charming and a competent foil for the Earth Pig. Just knowing that she's the tip of the iceberg in the gallery of recurring characters excites me more than those fantasies I keep having in my dark room.

[chocolatemillkk]

Glad You Came (JS)

A/N: trying to beat my writer's block and writing the first thing that came to me :////

It was your first art show and you were buzzing with nerves and excitement. You felt like throwing up and shouting at the top of your lungs in the same breath-you supposed it was possible. But you resist the urge and greet everyone with a flash of a smile instead.

Most of the people who came out, you didn't recognise. A lot of other artists and friends milled about but you had told your friends to invite anybody they knew, which resulted in a mix of people. But it was nice in a way, you liked the thrill of walking past people talking about your artwork without a clue that you were the artist.

Your childhood in the country and the shift of adulthood in the city played a role in the traditional work and prints you'd made. It was whimsical and sometimes nostalgic, you'd poured your heart into it and it was like your baby finally being revealed to the public.

"Babe you've got like two sales so far." Kira whispers beside you.

"That's amazing!" You squeal but a small part of you curls into itself. You didn't want to let any of these pieces go, but you'd made art with the purpose to share it. And you also seriously needed the money.

"That cute bloke over there could take convincing but I bet he would buy," Kira points to a blonde-ish guy who was wearing a black jacket, black jeans, and black boots. You look down at your own outfit which mirrored it except your boots were heeled. What was the harm?

"You think?" You ask as Kira pushes you towards him.

"Chat him up, he looks interested."

The two of you freeze when he turns around and looks over his shoulder as if he'd heard you two. But he glances around the room before looking back at the painting.

"He looks interesting too," you giggle. His face intrigued you. And the fact that he was alone.

Kira gives you one last shove and you move towards him, standing beside him for a moment as you both look at the piece. This one was about the chaos of adulthood, multiple blocks of colours coming to the center in a black dot.

"What do you think?" The guy speaks up before you could. You look at his nametag-everyone wore one including you. Joe. "Do you like Y/N's work?"

He knew your name. Who was he?

"It's interesting," you say as you discreetly cover your nametag with your jacket. "What do you think?"

"There's a lot going on," Joe chuckles and you bite back an awkward smile. Here comes the brutal honesty. "A bit shocking to look at but when you look at the center it evens out-I like looking at it."

You're speechless. You didn't expect this very attractive stranger to give such an accurate analysis of your work.

"Do you know the artist?" You ask.

"Y/N? My friend's friends with her but I don't know her personally."

"Thought so," You say, no longer covering your smile or your nametag.

Joe raises an eyebrow before looking down at your shirt.

"You're the artist."

"Yup!" You say gleefully.

"You made me...."

"It's a little trick I like to do," You laugh. "Don't worry, a lot of people weren't as nice as you."

"I..." Joe is still speechless. He looks you up and down, opens his mouth and then closes it. And then finally: "You're younger than I thought."

You can't help but laugh at the unlikely comment, shaking the awkwardness off as he joins in.

"I'm Joe," he finally introduces himself. "Byron invited me to the opening."

"Oh! You're Byron's roomate!" You realise you'd heard about Joe. He was a Youtuber. "He's mentioned you-I haven't seen him though."

"He had a thing in Manchester and his train got backed up so he asked if I could go in his place." Joe explains.

"Oh he could have just texted me-you didn't have to come all the way down here." Warmth envelops your heart for Byron's commitment-and this new friend apparently.

"Ah it's nothing," Joe says humbly. "I've never gone to one of these-it's nice. I can see why Byron likes the art crowd."

"Don't let it fool you though," you say. "It can get really pretentious really quickly."

"Like the way I'm drinking this champagne even though I hate it?" Joe holds up his flute.

"Why are you drinking that!" You grab Joe's arm and try to ignore how strong they felt under your hands. He lets you lead him to the bar. "What do you drink? It's covered."

You return the champagne and hand him a beer, grabbing your own glass of pretentious champagne. Joe looks a lot more relaxed as he drinks his beer and the two of you find a dim corner to lean against the wall, staring out at all the people who'd come out.

"This is really impressive though," Joe says after a while. He places a light hand on your waist so you could hear each other better and you move towards him an inch. "You should be proud."

"Yeah," you blush. "I'm overwhelmed with all the support. I poured my heart into all this."

"I can tell," Joe's gaze remains trained on your face. "I look around and it's like I know you. The paintings from your childhood remind me of my own. You're really good at what you do."

"Wow," you press a hand to your beating heart. "That's really...nice to hear."

"Where'd you grow up?" Joe asks and you tell him. "That's not too far from me..."

The two of you bond over the simplicty of childhood and how boring it also got sometimes.

"...so I climbed a lot of trees," you laugh as the two of you share your childhood hobbies. "My mum was always yelling at me for getting my hair in knots."

"I've climbed my fair share," Joe replies. "It's perfect for tearing holes in all your clothes isn't it?"

"Especially on your way down!" You say and the two of you laugh as you show him a scar from when you fell off a tree.

As the laughter subsides, you sneak a glance at Joe while he's not looking and feel your heart hammering. He was handsome and kind-the type of boy your mum would approve of. But more than that, he had an infectious smile and he was so easy going you were surprised every person in the room hadn't already asked him out.

"I bet I could climb a tree faster than you-I was champion in my class." You say suddenly. Maybe you just wanted to see him again, or maybe this was your way of flirting. But Joe responds appropriately.

"Not a chance, I would beat you by a landslide."

"Oh it's on," you say seriously. "You are so on."

"Yeah?" Joe leans in. "What happens when I win."

"Oi, it's if you win not when you win."

Joe lets out a hearty laugh, laced with a challenge.

You cross your arms, "You don't think I could do it but once I change into my sneakers-I'll have bragging rights from now until infinity."

Joe wipes his eyes, "We'll see, love. I'm going to actually set this up."

"You can record it too! So no one's cheating!"

"Are you calling me a cheater," Joe grabs your hips again and this time the touch is familiar as you fall closer to him with a smile.

"Heyy," Kira suddenly walks up and Joe drops his hand, turning his attention to her. "Cozying up with the artist, I see."

"Oh uh," Joe laughs awkwardly. "We've just agreed on a tree climbing contest."

"A what?" Kira looks between you two and you know she wouldn't get it. As a city girl, your tree climbing escapades were a funny anecdote for her. "As long as you make sure her arms are still intact by the end of it."

"I've actually seen artists paint with their toes," you say which earns an odd look from both Kira and Joe. "Just saying."

"I'll leave you two," Kira glances at you and shifts her eyes to Joe. You shake your head subtly-he was a friend now-not a potential customer. She shrugs and leaves.

You turn to Joe. "Sorry, Kira can be a little hard to warm to."

"That's alright," Joe shrugs. "I'm used to meeting all sorts."

"That's right-you do Youtube right? How do you like that?"

"It's great. Really rewarding-I wouldn't change it for anything."

"So I should check your work out now that you've seen mine," you tease.

"Oh it's nothing compared to this."

"Maybe I can learn something about you?"

"Maybe," Joe says with a wry smile. "I can tell you anything you want to know about me now though. Including how good I am at climbing trees."

"I already know that particular bit-you're good but not as good as me," you inch closer. "What I want to know is if you have a girlfriend?"

"No," he says. "It's...it's complicated."

"Oh," you step back, red flags shooting up. "Oh-okay I-"

Joe laughs and you shift uncomfortably but he yanks your hand towards him. You stumble closer to him and he curls his hand around the back of your waist.

"I'm kidding-I'm very very single. No commitments. No complications. And yourself?"

"Oh, you had me...jeez." You chuckle. "Same though. I'm uh-I'm very single."

"Hm," Joe nods slowly, his eyes memorizing your face. "Anything else you want to know?"

"Um," you bite you lip, enjoying the way Joe seems to linger on your features. His icy eyes were art in itself and his gaze was suggestive of another kind of art. "That's all I can think of right now."

"That's it?" Joe smiles.

"Well," you finally rest both arms on Joe's shoulders and he shifts to wrap both arms around your waist. "What were you doing after the show? Say, around 10?"

"Hm," Joe smiles lazily, moving you closer to him. Your heart hammered away yet you couldn't move away, you knew what was coming. As his blue eyes and slight stubble came closer to you, you glance at his lips and back up at him, knowing he was going to kiss you. He tilts down and you let him press his lips to yours; they're gentle, his lips soft on yours and your hand curls around the back of his neck in response as you push yourself closer to him. You didn't really want him to be a gentleman right now.

"We'll have the artist present her statement on this collection...." the loud voice booms around you two and Joe pulls away. Your hand goes to your lips and you stare at him, startled, as you remember that despite the dim area you were in, you two were still in public. "....Y/N? Can we get a short final speech?"

Shit. "Um," you widen your eyes and Joe laughs, lipstick smudged slightly on his lower lip.

"You'll be fine," his eyes crinkle with a smile. "Go."

You swipe at his bottom lip and squeeze his hand before stepping out in view of the gallery's collector.

"There she is!" He holds out the mic and you rush to grab it. Your eyes search for your friends as you thank everyone for coming after explaining your statement.

"Here's to more art and here's to more friends," you hold out your empty champagne glass which you were surprised to be still clutching. You find Joe as you say your last bit and he's leaning on the far wall with his arms crossed. Even though his body language showed no interest, he looks at you with a shining happiness.

"So where are we headed after this?" Kira asks after you hand back the mic.

"Do you mind..." you glance at where you saw Joe last. "I might head out with the guy I met."

"The one I pushed you to?" Kira squeals.

"Yeah sure," you roll your eyes. "Take credit."

"Obviously," Kira says and the two of you laugh. "Have fun-you've earned it babe."

She kisses you on the cheek and heads to another friend as you look for Joe. Many people side track you including the gallery owner who tell you you made five sales in total. You bounce away, feeling like you're on cloud nine.

Looking for Joe, you eventually find him near the entrance, on his phone.

"Ready?" Joe asks you and you grin, too excited for words. "I was thinking about a bottle of wine I have at home-would you be interested?"

"Sounds perfect," you hurry out with him and let him hold your hand. First art showing down and many more to go-you hoped.

With that thought you glance at Joe who's getting the two of you an Uber. Maybe he could be there for the many more to come...right after you beat his ass in tree climbing.

"What are you smiling at?" Joe asks you as he catches you looking.

"Nothing," you shake your head, your smile turning into a grin. "Just really glad you came."

[scullyeffect]

how do you feel about younger people in fandom? like the youngest side that are probably on tumblr i.e 13/14ish?

i don’t know if you mean in the x-files fandom, or just younger people getting involved into fandom stuff online nowadays so i’m just going to go with a generalization. 

i’m nobody’s mother and interests are healthy, and honestly i’m 23 so i don’t know anything about anything yet, but i will say that i live with a 15 y/o girl, a 13 y/o girl, and an 11 y/o girl, and i find myself very sad when all they want to do is go on a phone and watch youtube videos and be online instead of doing something more creative or intellectual.

we had a birthday party for 11 last night, and we had to take phones away from like six 10-11 year olds, which is ridiculous. i do understand that we live in a big city (paris, which isn’t exactly the safest) and lots of kids do things independently (walk to school, walk to friends’ houses, take the métro) so sometimes i worry about 11 (who doesn’t have a phone) if she needs to take the métro alone or walk somewhere alone, and i wish she did have some way to reach me if ever she got lost or something, but 11 is so young.

i think in a world that’s become so increasingly digitized and almost making it necessary to be connected in some way, kids are growing up faster, and some of the posts online and on tumblr talk about things they might not understand yet, and cause them to form opinions based on a text post some 18 y/o wrote. i’m even guilty of this. i’ll get too lazy to keep up with the real world and get my politics from tumblr sometimes, and that’s probably not good, even though mainstream news sources can do the same thing. my mom worked for the washington post, and that’s pretty much the only place i get my news from.

i probably got my first tumblr account when i was 15, and honestly i regret it. i was a pretty sheltered kid/teenager who really enjoyed reading, doing art, writing, and watching sad european dramas about dead sovereigns and suffering artists. i somehow discovered pro-ana blogs (blogs that share and encourage eating disorders to the point where healthy people can begin to actively attempt to follow insane tips in order to lose weight), and since i actually had been having trouble with my own eating habits but never really known that those behaviors were bizarre, i self-diagnosed and was part of that “community” for awhile. 

i was interested/ in love with lots of actors and actresses, and as i made it out of kind of the pro-ana area which i realized which was unhealthy lol i found out about stan culture and just real obsession with movie stars/celebrities. when i was a younger teen i was “obsessed” with meryl streep, which at that time meant that i watched all her films repeatedly. i didn’t realize people cared about the actors/actresses’ personal lives until i got on tumblr, and at the time it was really exciting to discover things about my favorite celebrities (i mean, being a fan of someone obviously isn’t new, but it was to me). now that i’m 23 i find it very invasive and somewhat creepy that we’re so interested in someone’s life, sometimes even more than their body of work. we’ll probably never meet that person, and if we do they’re not going to think about you or remember you forever, because there are thousands of other people out there who feel the same way, and they just can’t keep track (at least the huge stars). 

on the flip side, i think it’s good to have role models and people to look up to, but sometimes there’s a thin line there. i’m blonde, but i dyed my hair brown in my first year of high school because i was obsessed with marion cotillard and wanted to look like her. i kept the brown throughout high school because i liked it, and sort of forgot i ever did it because of her, but now i’m blonde again and it looks so much better haha. ALSO i got really interested in france/speaking french because of her (and juliette binoche), although i had a fantastic and enthusiastic french teacher in high school to help fuel my desire to speak french. and now i’m fluent in french and live in france. wow. so, if there are people you look up to in the public eye and they’re influencing you in positive ways, that’s great! i do get suspicious when very influential celebrities share their political views, though. i think we have a tendency to follow in people’s footsteps either subconsciously or in full awareness. that could be in any field. i like certain authors, and sometimes my own writing is heavily influenced by their work. it’s a natural thing that happens. but voting really should be an informed decision...just my opinion.

let’s talk about “just my opinion”. online bullying is real and can sometimes be rampant if there are dividing views on someone and their perceived private life. for example, in the x-files fandom we will, for the most part, absolutely convince you that mulder and scully are fucking like bunnies, when the show’s own creator won’t lol. but there are also people who think that gillian anderson and david duchovny (the leads) were/are/could be at some point in a romantic relationship with each other. they (anderson and duchovny) even cater to the fans a bit, but at the end of the day that’s their business and they don’t owe us an explanation, and a lot of people in fandom sort of act like they do. the point of this example was that because people in fandom are divided about this point of view, if you talk about one side or the other, there are some people who will come at you and say mean things for not agreeing with you, and try to convince you of a truth they have no real authority to speak about. this is obviously just an example, but online bullying is rampant and is often taken personally and can really affect the person being bullied, especially someone younger who may or may not be already facing that in real life at school lol.

i think tumblr is a good place for people who suffer from mental illness to come together in a healthy way to talk through their problems (god i hope i’m telling the truth), and there’s definitely tons of awareness and support that you’ll get on tumblr that you may not find in the real world. for example, i don’t know anyone irl who has epilepsy who i can talk to about mine. on tumblr i’ve talked with people who understand what i’m going through. i think that self diagnosis online, just as much on tumblr as it is when i cough and search “signs of throat cancer or tuberculosis’, read up on web md, and immediately fear my days might be numbered, is a problem. on tumblr i think we’re introduced to concepts and can sometimes treat mental illness lightly, when it shouldn’t. if you’re suffering from a mental illness, the online world isn’t going to be the place that can completely help you (says the girl who refuses to go to therapy and instead complains online about how she’s not getting any better). 

being online immediately takes us out of life and into a different world. we become observers instead of experiencing the world. there’s good stuff about observation, but being online and attached to a website that is more or less just a vice for people will often make us choose to be on our phones instead of doing stuff in real life.

all of these points being said, i’m guilty of a lot of the “bad/unhealthy” facets of tumblr, but as i’ve “grown up” (unfortunately still staying on tumblr for a good portion of that time) i’ve grown out of a lot of these things and can see the good and the bad that the online world has to offer, and know which parts to stay away from. i can recognize that spending too much time on here does nothing for my desire to stay inside and not experience the real world. it also makes me think a lot more about tv shows/films/celebrities than i need to. but i’ve also made great friends from being on tumblr over the years, and gotten support i definitely wouldn’t have gotten in real life. 

back to my real life. do i encourage the girls i live with to be interested in certain media? yes, especially stuff i feel has a good message. i basically sat the two older ones down and showed them the pilot of the x-files. do they experience the same high level obsession i do with tv shows/movies? no. and i’m glad for that. they like to lose themselves in certain tv shows, but when the tv is off they don’t really talk about it. do i introduce them to things i’m interested in media-wise? yes. do i introduce them to books and music i was/am interested in? yes. have i told them about tumblr? no. they don’t have any access to my online “presence” (they don’t know my instagram, twitter, etc), and i don’t talk about it. when my computer is out and they’re in the room doing homework, i’m usually writing. granted, that’s usually fanfiction, but at least i’m writing something. 

one of the boys i tutor is writing a book (he’s 11) which is basically a self insert that takes place in the harry potter universe. he doesn’t know what fanfiction is, and i haven’t told him (although he’d never type it up and put it online lol he barely knows how to turn the computer on), but i’m so thrilled he’s even writing that i make him sit down and write for 10 minutes before we ever start watching a movie (in english). 

ANYWAY. i’m nobody’s mother and at the end of the day i’m posting this online on my stupid blog where nothing i say matters or has any influence anywhere, but i think kids should be able to enjoy a non-internet related childhood as long as possible. some of us on tumblr are old enough to actually have children that age, and as much as we like having an account on this site, if asked this same question we might not as readily say ‘yeah it’s great! i want my teenagers to have the same experience as me!’

there’s my two centimes. hope i answered your question. JuST MY OPINION.

[jaineym]

Celebrity Crush

Prompt: BTS is in America for yet another awards show, and Jung Hoseok expresses his liking towards you in an interview, only for you to do the same with him a week later in an interview of your own. The two of you are then seated next to each other at said awards show.

Pairing: Hoseok x Celebrity!Reader

Genre: Fluffiest of fluffs

Word Count: 2,683

Your POV

You checked your phone, scrolling through your twitter notifications as you saw thousands upon thousands more mentions than what you would usually get. Furrowing your brows, you sifted through the mess to find the cause, finding a video of an interview that the famous kpop group, BTS, had done recently in America.

You clicked on the video, only giving half of your attention to the very good looking men on the screen as you took a spoonful of the cereal on front of you, shovelling it into your mouth.

“So we all know you guys are going to be performing at the awards show coming up in two weeks,” the interviewer spoke, “But are there any celebrities that you guys are excited to see perform?”

“Y/n,” the red haired boy half yelled, catching your attention as you watched intently, his smile shining bright to match the rest of him.

“Jhope over here has a massive crush on Y/n,” the man who you knew as the leader of the group pointed at the bubbly boy, “He literally has their music playing all the time around the house, even when going to sleep.”

“They are quite a talented musician,” the interviewer replied, “Very good looking, too.”

The man, Jhope you believe he was called earlier, nodded happily, his cheeks tinging the lightest shade of pink that it was almost not there at all. Almost.

The interview continued on and you watched as the boys all spoke, their humorous personalities shining through as it ran smoothly. Once the video ended, you decided to go on YouTube and search for more content of theirs, completely abandoning your breakfast.

Your attention was almost completely on the ‘sunshine of the group’, watching as he joked around with his band members, being the mood maker of most videos you watched. You found yourself enjoying his joyful exterior and wanting to get to know the boy, as well as the other members of BTS.

Minutes went to hours and you found yourself binge watching this group, listening to their music and falling into the hole that is being a fan of this extremely talented and beautiful group of young men.

Hoseok’s POV

“WHAT THE FUCK NAMJOON?!” I screamed at the younger man as we got in the car after leaving the set of yet another interview, steam basically pouring out of my ears as I fumed.

“What?” he spoke back, a smirk playing on his lips, “I was just telling the truth, you are obsessed with y/n.”

“That doesn’t mean I want the world to know that I have a gigantic crush on them and listen to their music while sleeping! I’m going to look like an absolute creep if they see that, which they most probably will,” I sulked, dramatically throwing my head back to hit the head rest with a thump.

“It’s not that deep dude,” Namjoon tried to reassure me as we drove back to the hotel, Taehyung quickly changing the conversation to something lighter, joking around with Jungkook.

Your POV

You sat in the dressing room, Awake playing from the speakers connected to your phone as you got your makeup done. It had been a week since you had become a fan of BTS, and you would be lying if you said that you hadn’t spent the entire week surrounding yourself in their content.

Today you had an interview for the upcoming awards show that you were performing at, and the interviewer just happened to be the same as the one who hosted the interview that brought your eyes to the group of boys.

“MAYBE I I CAN NEVER FLYYYY!” You exclaimed as the chorus hit, your makeup artist sighing with a smile as she waited for you to regain yourself before continuing to do her job.

*

“Y/n, it’s wonderful to have you here today,” the interviewer spoke, his smile bright as you nodded.

It’s wonderful to be here,” you replied, plastering a smile on your face as you mentally prepared yourself for another interview.

The topics were the same as every other interview you’d had recently, talking about how excited you were for your performance, what music you had in the works, etcetera.

“So y/n,” the man spoke, “Are there any celebrities that you are excited to see perform next week?”

“Well I really like the kpop group ‘BTS’, they’re amazing performers,” you replied, your smile growing as you thought of the seven boys.

“Oh, is that so?” the interviewers eyebrows rose slightly for a second, “I had them on the show last week and they said that they were anticipating your performance, which I’m sure you’ve seen then,” you nodded in response, “So who’s your bias then?”

“Jung Hoseok,” you said instantly, your cheeks reddening as you spoke quieter, “Jhope. I haven’t been a fan of theirs for very long but he has always been my bias.”

“Why’s that?” the man questioned you, your words spiking an interest to him.

“Well, it’s not anything in specific,” you explained, “He’s very funny, happy almost all the time, an amazing dancer, rapper, singer and much more, not to mention incredibly handsome.”

“You sure sound fond of him,” the interviewer smirked as your cheeks reddened further after your little fan session.

The interview then went back to regular questions, your face returning to it’s natural colour. Once it was over, you mentally hit yourself for pouring out so much about your love for the seven boys, specifically Hoseok.

Hoseok’s POV

“Hyuuuung,” Jungkook sang, entering my studio with a bright smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners, “I have something you might want to seeee.”

“What?” I narrowed my eyes at the maknae, suspicious of what he had to show me.

“It’s about your lover, y/n,” he shoved his phone in my face, an interview video displayed on the screen, the title being ‘Musician y/n talks about their upcoming music performance, music in the works and Kpop group, BTS’.

“LET ME SEE! LET ME SEE!” I screamed, snatching the phone from his clutch before pressing play, watching the interview intently.

My knees felt weak as my celebrity crush spoke well of me, expressing their interest towards me and the group, literally screaming as I listened to her talk about how ‘talented and handsome’ I am.

“Is everything okay? Did someone get hurt?” Namjoon questioned, his eyes filled with worry as he entered the studio room.

“They- me- bias- handsome-” I poke breathlessly, my eyes basically forming the shape of hearts as I struggled to gather a coherent sentence to the concerned leader of our group.

“I assume you showed him the interview,” Namjoon looked over at Jungkook who nodded in response, his bunny smile still taking over his features, “Yeah, the whole internet is kind of exploding with things surrounding the two of you.”

“Of y/n and I?” I questioned confusedly, pointing at myself as Namjoon just nodded.

”I need to lie down for a bit,” I mumbled, excusing myself before heading to my bedroom, my mind not wandering from y/n.

Your POV

It was finally the day of the awards show that you were set to perform at, your past week having been a mix of intense practicing, interviews and watching and listening to BTS.

You looked at yourself in the mirror, admiring what you saw. Your outfit consisted of pale yellow articles of clothing, white accessories and shoes accompanying it well.

It was almost time for the red carpet, and as you were being escorted to your limousine, you quickly went on twitter. You went onto BTS’ official account to find a new post by Hoseok, the red haired boy sporting a black blazer and white button up, a pale yellow bow tie secured around the collar.

You smiled at the beautiful photo that was worth of being hung in an art gallery, liking the post before locking your phone and heading inside the large black car.

*

After what seemed like an eternity of flashing cameras and reporters eager to ask you - sometimes rather personal or rude - questions, you finally headed into the venue, finding your seat in the front row. Funnily enough, there were seven reserved seats beside yours that had papers that read ‘BTS’ on them, laughing softly as you assumed that this was planned due to the large amount of publicity you and the group have been getting involving one another lately.

More and more people began to find their seats in the theatre, the screams of fans of the people who walked in filling your ears. Suddenly, those screams grew incredibly loud, turning your head to see the seven incredibly handsome members of BTS walk towards you.

You turned your head back to the front quickly, focusing on your phone momentarily, pretending that you hadn’t noticed their arrival as you scrolled through your twitter feed, most things being about the awards show. You then heard a small gasp followed by hushed bickering.

“Just sit next to them,” one voice spoke, to which you believed belonged to Seokjin.

“I’ll just embarrass myself, why don’t you?” Hoseok retorted.

“You won’t get a chance like this again, just go sit down,” Yoongi sighed.

You heard a huff followed by shuffling of feet, looking up to see Jung Hoseok taking a seat beside you, his eyes meeting your own as he smiled shyly, returning the gesture yourself.

“Hi, I’m Hoseok but you already know that but we’ve ever met so I feel inclined to still introduce myself,” Hoseok spoke quickly shaking his head after, “I said too much, sorry.”

You laughed softly, offering him your hand to shake, “It’s fine, I’m y/n. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

He looked at your hand, questioning whether or not to shake it for a second before wiping his hand on his suit pants, taking your hand in his and shaking it gently, still holding your hand for a moment before gently slipping his into his lap.

“I like your tie,” you said, your cheeks reddening at your attempt to keep the conversation alive.

“Thank you, I picked it out myself,” the red haired boy beside you smiled down at the accessory before looking back over at you, “Hey, we’re matching! Yellow!”

“It’s as if someone planned it,” you smiled back at him, noticing that his eyes were focusing on your cheeks, embarrassment washing over you instantly as you covered your face with your hands, “Do I have something on my face? Sorry.”

“No no no!” Hoseok rushed, taking your hands in his as he pulled them away from your face, “I was just thinking about how cute you look when you’re shy and your cheeks turn pink.”

Your face reddened further at the compliment, your gaze lowering to your hands as you noticed that they were still in his, looking to the ground quickly but not moving your hands.

“That was very smooth,” you heard Jimin speak from beside Hoseok, his words coated with sarcasm.

Hoseok let go of your hands, looking over to the blonde haired boy before whacking him on the back of the head lightly, “Shut up, you idiot.”

The group of boys spoke to each other, including you in their conversation very often, and you thought to yourself about how genuine and nice they all seemed; their gentlemen image sure did hem justice.

Your focus turned to the stage in front of you as the host walked out, signalling the beginning, and you began to watch the show unfold.

*

You were nodding along lightly to a popular song being performed when a dark figure walked over to Namjoon, whispering something in his ear, to which he nodded. The message was passed down by each member before they all stood up.

“We have to go backstage now, we’re up soon,” Hoseok spoke, offering you a soft smile, to which you returned, “I look forward to your performance.”

A few minutes later, the same worker spoke to you, telling you to head backstage. You stood up, brushing off your outfit before following the man.

You put your focus onto the live screening of the performances, watching the talented performers as you anxiously awaited backstage to be called to the stage.

You were given a ten minute warning and began to make your way to the wing of the stage when you heard the familiar angelic voice that belonged to Park Jimin, looking over to the stage to see BTS performing Blood, Sweat and Tears.

It was as if you were in a trance. You had seen them perform this song several times, but seeing it in person right at this second, it was amazing to say the least.

You found your attention always wandering to Hoseok, his body moving in perfect rhythm as their beautiful voices sounded throughout the theatre, his parts making your knees weak.

The last chorus came to an end and the music faded, the boys holding their poses on the stage for a few seconds as the crowd roared with claps and cheers, walking off in the opposite direction of where you stood as the host came back on the stage, about to introduce you.

Performing on a stage wasn’t something new to you, but it still gave you the same amount of adrenaline each and every time, which is another reason why you loved what you do.

The music began to play, and you drowned out the crowd slightly, focusing on your performing. What felt like seconds was actually minutes, and before you knew it, you were already walking back off the stage.

Hoseok’s POV

I panted softly, still trying to catch my breath from our performance as we sat in the dressing room. I patted the towel along my neck, swiping the dripping sweat away as I heard a familiar melody begin to play.

“Wait, shut up!” I hushed my band members as my attention focused on the television that played the live performance, y/n standing on the stage as they performed their song that I had heard so may times over and over. It was different now though, I could hear their passion ringing throughout the theatre as they performed with such raw emotions on display.

It was at this moment where I saw just how beautiful and talented they were, more than I could have ever fathomed; it was at this moment where I realized just how much I loved y/n.

The performance ended and they walked off the stage. I sat there for a moment, so many thoughts bouncing in my mind. Without a single word, I jumped up from my seat, racing to the door.

“Where are you going?” I head Yoongi speak as I opened the door, slipping out of the room and into the hallway quickly.

I looked around at the many doors, my heart beating faster as I found the one I was looking for.

Your POV

You walked off the stage, a sigh of relief escaping your lips as the spot light was taken off of you. You continued walking backstage, met by a hallway of rooms, each door having a name written on them. You searched for your own, opening the door before walking in and closing it behind you quickly.

“Y/n,” your gaze shot up quickly over to the couch, Hoseok standing from his seat with a wide smile, “Your performance was amazing.”

“Thank you,” you spoke quietly, your gaze lowering to the carpeted floor, “What are you doing in here, Hoseok?”

“Call me Hobi,” he made his way over to you, laughing softly, “Hoseok sounds so formal.”

“Hobi-” you were cut off by the red haired boy wrapping his arms softly around you, surrounding you in a comforting hug. You hesitated for a moment before placing your arms around his slender waist, hugging him back.

He sighed into your hair, contentment surrounding you. The two of you stayed like that for a while, a comfortable silence filling the room.

“So I was wondering,” Hoseok mumbled, swaying gently from side to side, “Can I get your number?”

[jorjathomas]

Lifestyle trends based on my target audience

When research gaps in the market, I began to think of ways I could get as much content in my zine. Although I had my own personal advice and tips, I also need some content that would help enable more engagement. This is why I have began to look at potential lifestyle trends from the website LSN so I could use in my zine. I also looked into my target audience and how they are researched to behave so I can understand my target audience better. My age group will be people aged 16-24 meaning currently, most of these women fall into Generation Z.

Article 1: How Joy scrolling can uplift brand storytelling (March 2021)

The first article I looked into explains the new aesthetic for story telling. As the pandemic hit, there was a lot of bad news surfaced. Artists took a step forward to create uplifting news and advice that can help distract society and focus on the good temporarily. Ives seen this surge of design all over the internet and a lot of news has been produced in an artistic way to make the articles easier to read. This is a less intimidating approach to new which i like and want to follow for the magazine however i am also weary of the dangers of this. I don't want to distract or wash the important information with pretty art but influence it to be more visible. This article helped influence my decision as this way for creating has become popular in society. A lot of this style seems to be digital however I hope to move this movement into physical consumerism to aid the popularity of magazines.

Here are some examples which were published on the LSN article. (March 2021)

Spreading this positivity across social media has created a lifted and conscious internet algorithm and i think has broken the dark internet cycle of having to look perfect and be ‘amazing’ all of the time. Getting rid of this influencer life and spread important events and news that could educate a person is much more important than having to look a certain way to feel accepted. I wish to do this with my zine and these examples validify my urge to change and create a positive society.

When completing trend research, we looked at trends for the summer and there seemed to be a lot more colour plastered onto life. I can see this now coming into action with this new approach to news by adding sketches and other forms of art into important messages and advice. Just like the Trend project, I hope to bring a euphoric feel and uplift a reader with the assistance of bright colours.

Article 2: Need to know (11/02/21)

The second trend article i looked at involved a lot of information which became popular over the new year. The most distinctive article was about post pandemic self-care. As you should know already, this subject is heavy within my concept so I was interested to see what has changes when taking care of yourselves pre and post covid lockdown. This LSN article states that-  ‘Many US citizens plan to continue engaging in the self-care routines they've established during the pandemic.’

The Need to know article also reports that- ‘According to a recent survey conducted by OnePoll for US wellness software company Vagaro, two-thirds (67%) of people agreed that the routines they developed during the pandemic have become a permanent part of their life. Meanwhile, 69% of respondents say they plan to dedicate more time to self-care in 2021 than they did in the previous year.’

I am happy to see this occurring within peoples life as this is the perfect opportunity to use my zine to spread this awareness. My zine should produce self- care tips that can help them to continue this dedication. Although this is my sole purpose of the zine, I also think I should add personal and education information that can assist the zine in becoming more personal and enjoyable to read as there is more than one category.

Article 3: Reading Market (March 2021)

This was probably the most informative article from the four I looked at on LSN as I was able to understand how much demand there is for reading. There's a obvious increase in digital media so I am interested to develop ideas that could help these statistics transform into the physical media outlets. The LSN articles says that- ‘According to Nielsen, time spent reading books among UK consumers has nearly doubled – from an average of three-and-a-half hours per week to six hours.’ Knowing that there is a growth in reading eases my worry of my magazine not gaining any recognition especially since I plan to print physical copies. They also state that- ‘As well as offering solace, comfort and helping to bolster knowledge, the reading market is adapting. It's embracing digital acceleration through new interactive formats, while also tuning in to the desires of younger generations, namely their ethical mindsets. For brands, media outlets and publishers, even greater disruption awaits a sector that has long been bound to tradition.’

‘We were expecting possibly to see a spike in comfort reads, like cosy crime or light comic novels,’ says Jess Harrison’

From this information, I can see there is a demand in books and most importantly pivotal media. The drastic change from fiction books decreasing and non-fiction becoming popular, proves the fact that people want to become more educated about world matters which they may not have had to do previously. I must remember to add in important information about specific matters I’d like to cover to aid the increase in monumental reads. My only dilemma is the competition with digital reads as screen time as plummeted this past year. Publishing physical copies carries a lot more problems. For example; when I’d publish I would want the copies to be long term for readers, having content that they can keep referring to rather than quick consumption. This would help reduce the carbon footprint of the magazine. I would defiantly want to be a sustainable zine, having more authentic materials that would not only benefit the planet but also add texture to the brand. The article states that- ‘Publishing house Penguin, meanwhile, is taking an environment-first approach to bookselling, targeting the 65% of readers who prefer the tactile experience of a physical book while addressing the impact on the planet. Its Naked Books are printed on demand, use recycled paper, eschew cover art in favour of a simple manuscript, and are delivered using carbon-neutral transport.’

Following up with the digital competitors this fact proves this point. Despite this I can use technology to my advantage when I would publish the book. For example using YouTube or TikTok to improve new customers with the help of algorithms etc.

Above is a digital book company which would be my competitor along side Audio books and Kindle. These have grown in the past year as there is a wider platform for smaller authors to get their books known.

Article 4: Anxiety Rebellion (2018)

Despite this trend report being slightly older than the others, I thought it would be intriguing to see if this article has come into play in the more recent years or if my magazine could do this instead to make this trend more long lasting. This article was under the macro trend category on the content page of LSN meaning this should still be present within todays society and I can apply it to my work. This article provides a insight on the new generation and how they are more diverse in comparison to Millennials creating a new wave of life. I looked into this survey by IPSOS MORI below to get a better understanding of my target market of gen z’s.

This video was attached to this article and it was brought to my attention quickly as I think it perfectly portrays my ideas and thoughts around my idea which you may not have seen yet. The next post will be the full advertisement of this video which was made by ASOS. This advertises Collusion which is a brand created by ASOS that offers clothing and accessories for the new generation. They spread positivity and urge consumers to invert their own style.

Gen z:

A quote from IPSOS- ‘For previous generations of teens, anxiety could be attributed to teenage angst – a temporary cocktail of the hormones and emotions that come with growing up – but Generation Z are fighting this stereotype. Rather than allowing themselves to become trapped in a web of anxiety, teens are speaking out against practices that cause them unnecessary pressure and turning their worries into productivity. In September 2018, a 15-year-old student tweeted ‘stop forcing students to present in front of the class and give them a choice not to’, garnering more than 130,000 retweets and nearly half a million likes.’

As seen from previous events from the past year, teenagers are becoming more vocal on specific matters important to them. I am pleased by this as I think they are breaking this preformed ways of living, how to behave and creating a new and more expressive society.  IPSOS Mori’s recent survey found that, ‘contrary to many clichés about today’s young, our new survey data and analysis reveals a better behaved, more trusting, socially minded and less materialistic generation’. There are many prejudgments about teenagers however, everyone has been one at some stage of their life. The common personality assumptions are laziness, rudeness and anti-social behaviour. Seeing the survey data results and proving these judgments wrong is refreshing. Teenagers actually are more motivated than ever and I hope to give them help. The survey also states that Generation Z are showing new attitudes to their placement in the world. for example, improved self-care solutions, spiritual healing practises, cleaner lifestyles, future-proof financial systems and a new entrepreneurial mindsets. These features have defiantly broke the judgments and are radically different from the actions of the former generations. As you can see in the states on the post- ‘Which noted that illicit drug use by US teenagers, including cocaine and heroin, fell from 22.6% in 2007 to 14% in 2017. The study also found that teenagers are having significantly less sex.’

To conclude this post, researching current lifestyle trends within the current youth market has further developed the urgency for a demand of zines like this. I am excited to begin some creative processes now and really make these ideas come together with the help of this trend research.

[thotyssey]

One of New York busiest, most in-demand and outspoken nightlifers, David Serrano made his name giving us life from the DJ booth… and these days, he���s officially capturing our lives in the photo studio.

Thotyssey: Hey David! So, how has Crazy Covid Summer been treating you?

David Serrano: It’s been interesting. I got Covid early in March, so I was able to get passed it quickly. Unfortunately, with the bars closed, I haven’t been working much… but I am not wasting this time. I’ve been really focused on leveling up my photography skills.

Glad you’re feeling better! I did see you just released a whole bunch of gorgeous pics of some of our famous queens. Are these shots you took a long time ago that you’ve finally been able to get to, or are have you been arranging new shoots during this downtime?

A little bit of both. I’ve been able to do several shoots during lockdown, and have several lined up. But I’ve also been going into the archive and pulling out some of my favorites that may have not had a chance to shine yet. Definitely using this time to be as creative as possible.

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[All photos by David Serrano]

Do you think you have a favorite subject yet, as far as the people you’ve shot?

I love people with over the top looks. Pretty is fine, but it can be a bit boring. Anyone that pushes the envelope with their aesthetic is what I gravitate towards. I recently released a shot of Androgyny that I love, with her giant red Mohawk. It’s very punk. I like that. I also love anyone that can just let go in front of the camera and go big. They’re not worried about looking foolish or pretty. And I love shooting dancers, ’cause they know how to move. I shot FiFi DuBois, and we had some really dynamic shots.

You’ve been doing nightlife photography for a few years, but for a long time you were better known in NYC as a DJ. I think it’s really just been the past few years that you really stepped up as an in-demand photographer. Was that intentional, or did it just kinda happen that way?

It was purposeful, for sure. I’m definitely interested in moving in that direction with my career. I’m 43 now, and I’m wanting to work more outside the clubs… but still staying within my nightlife community, like my work on The X Change Rate with Monet. I’ve spun the big clubs, and that was fun when I was younger. But as I get older, my priorities are changing. I prefer to work more shows now, and work more closely with the nightlife artists… so these are steps that I am making to expand my skill sets.

Before we talk more about Now, we should visit Then! Where are you from originally, and how did you begin as a creative person while growing up?

Okay, that’s a long story! I was born in Port Jefferson, Long Island, but moved to upstate NY right outside Woodbury Commons when I was three. I lived there ’til 10th grade, and then moved to South Carolina for a year and a half. Then I finished high school in a small town outside Orlando, Florida. My dad had retired while I was in high school, so we moved and I ended up going to three high schools.

I knew I wanted to do something creative since I was a child because my mom told me, “do something you love, and you will never work a day in your life.” So I gravitated towards the arts. It was always between music and film. I actually started college as a film major at UCF, but ended up switching my major my last semester to music production, which is what my degree is in.

When I turned 28, I moved back to NYC to pursue a career in music as a singer / songwriter. I released a song with Junior Vasquez called “Not Again,” aptly named ’cause it was the only song we did together. I made no money from it, so I decided to pivot and got into DJing instead. I loved it, and that became my career. I also started working in graphic design, which then led back to film. And here we are today… full circle moment.

Was it Junior who taught you how to DJ?

Um, no… LOL. Actually, I consider my DJ parents to be Xavier and Corey Craig. They helped me a lot, and gave me advice when I first began. My first gig was filling in for Xavier at Barracuda, which became my first residency in 2007. And as of March, I was still there.

As far as bars and big parties in the realm of nightlife go, what have been some of your favorite memories and highlights of the past decade-plus for you?

I enjoyed my time at Stage 48 spinning upstairs in the pop room, along with my time at XL working “Hot Mess” with Lady Bunny and Bianca Del Rio. I also loved working Drag Brunch at the Highline Ballroom, and of course the multiple Glam Awards I’ve spun. Those are just a few that stand out. There have been so many. I’ve been very lucky.

I always wondered… what would happen if you won a Glam while you were DJing the awards show? Would you play your own music intro and run up and accept, or just, like, wave from the DJ booth?

I’d have them toss it to me, LOL! Or I’d walk in an awkward silence. Fortunately, it probably won’t ever be an issue.

We’ll see you up there soon enough!

In what huge ways has the nightlife biz changed since you started out?

Social media has definitely impacted nightlife, for sure. People don’t need to go out to the bars and clubs to meet other gay people. Plus, because the world is more open and the LGBT + community is more accepted, the crowds have become more mixed and smaller. Drag has exploded after almost dying out because of Drag Race, and drag has become more mainstream… and has moved from only being hidden away in the underground scene. This is why I’ve felt it necessary to evolve myself. Otherwise you get left behind.

It’s true, within nightlife there is a clear path for drag performers (that fit certain criteria, like being cis men) to elevate, but that path is not so clear for everyone else in the biz right now.

Speaking of social media… you have a very unfiltered presence there, lol! Whether you’re discussing politics (you’re a very progressive Bernie man), pop culture or even nightlife drama, you often say exactly what’s on your mind. Today that’s almost like a death sentence (or at least an entirely stressful situation), with all the canceling happening. Do you care what people think about your social media posts?

I am a native New Yorker, and Hispanic to boot. We don’t hold back our opinions. Couple that with the fact that I’m older and come from a generation that wasn’t coddled or given participation trophies for everything, and my personality can easily trigger overly-sensitive types. I don’t like those people and don’t want to be around them anyway, so speaking my mind keeps them at bay. I have no interest in giving them any power.

People that are in my circle know me, and don’t have any issues with me. I’m actually easy to work with, and very chill. But I don’t have time to baby anyone, or give a platform to anyone talking nonsense or creating problems when none exist.

Actually, what are your thoughts about nightlife folks (promoters, DJs, performers, venue owners) who did those large, undistanced and unmasked parties during lockdown, particularly in those first months?

We all have to be careful and responsible… but I understand people needing to earn a living. If you’re being irresponsible and not wearing masks in public indoor spaces, then you’re asking for trouble. But at the same time, we need to be pragmatic and not Mask Nazis. If someone is outside without a mask and minding their own business, leave them alone. If they’re inside a public place, feel free to say something. As for the public parties packed with no masks, that’s not smart… but we know who these people are. They’re not usually known for their good decision making skills.

[Photo: Maxim]

Lol! Tell us a bit about The X Change Rate, Monet X Change’s fun talk show care of the BUILD Series that airs on YouTube and is filmed for a live studio audience (pre-Covid, of course). She’s had some amazing guests, and naturally she’s a great hostess herself! You’re the house DJ there, naturally.

Monet is great–super sweet to work with, and I was gagged when she reached out to me and asked me to be a part of her show. The crew is amazing, and it’s really inspiring and humbling to work in such a professional environment.

Hopefully you’ll both be back in the studio soon!

I sure hope so.

It must be old hat at this point–but still cool–to have seen so many queens you’ve worked with over the years get cast and do well on Drag Race.

Yes, it’s so surreal to see so many of my friends make it on the world stage. It’s inspiring… but also hard to reconcile. To me, they’re just my friends. To their fans, they’re superstars. It’s weird, but very cool.

So it’s almost impossible to answer this question nowadays, but what else is coming up?

I’m currently in the process of creating some amazing images with Danny Logan, formerly known as Dallas Dubois. He’s become an amazing costume designer since leaving drag years ago. He’s gone on to work in television and film, and is doing very well for himself. We have some incredible, politically charged and poignant concepts in the works… so look out for them.

That should be amazing! And finally: there was a lot of new music this summer. Did anything stand out as your favorite song or album for you?

You have no idea. There have been SOOOO many great songs. I am really into the 80’s synth pop sound, that has made a huge splash on the scene this year: from The Weeknd to Gaga, Dua Lipa, and Miley. They’re all killing it. Right now, I’m loving Miley’s newest song “Midnight Sky.” She’s serving major Stevie Nicks vibes, and I am here for it. Not to mention the video is giving me major visual inspiration for my shoots!

Thanks, David!

Check Thotyssey’s calendar for DJ David Serrano’s upcoming appearances, and follow him on Facebook, Instagram (also one for his photography), Twitter and YouTube. All photos care of David Serrano unless otherwise labeled.

On Point Archives

On Point With: David Serrano One of New York busiest, most in-demand and outspoken nightlifers, David Serrano made his name giving us life from the DJ booth...

[myprofessionalpractice]

speakers

Al Murphy

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The main point of his talk, Al said, was to reassure those who are nearly graduating, were nervous or worried about our degrees or life as an illustrator, as well as how to make the jump between having graduated and having a job. He shared that he was very scared in his final year, “freaking out” and wondering how or when he would get a job or be employed. Al said he now has an agent, that gets him jobs, and this is the best route to go down. Jobs take all sorts of different forms (such as the one below!). Many of his jobs now are editorial, promotional or for advertising, and he mentioned he would love to do more animation but so far his career hasn't taken that turn. 

His work, self-described, is usually character-based and humorous. Every aspect of his brand is bright, colourful and humorous too, including his website and his various social media. One quote from his solo show reads he’s been “described as the Ipswich Town FC of illustration”, in that “he’s been around for a long time but it’s hard to recall any of his major successes”, just an example of the kind of self-deprecating humour he uses in his work and his advertising. Another that also made me laugh was: “having spent ten years living in Berlin and New York he has recently returned to London where he spends his time telling disinterested others that he just spent the last ten years living in Berlin and New York”, which is relevant to our talk, and also funny. 

My own work rarely ever includes humour. It’s often character-based, however. I have never really thought about including humour in my work as it’s always been based on aesthetics for me, but it’s obvious that humour has a big hand in Al’s projects and how he gets employed for advertising. It could be worth trying this in future; seeing how humour can incorporate itself into my work.

Similar to Al’s work above, painted on a wall, is that of Sha’an D’Anthes. Although probably less about humour and focused more on ‘cute’ and aesthetically pleasing small illustrations, her work is similarly used below.

I have loved Sha’an’s work for years. I love the colourful nature of it - although the below illustrations on the glass are only in white, most of her work is bright and happy, like the first image. Personally I would love for my work to jump off the page in the same way, however the watercolours I mostly work with don't always allow this. I would like to work in more bright, colourful traditional ways and see how it translates. 

Sha’an posts vlogs on her YouTube channel and documents her process, talking about life as an illustrator. It’s a fascinating insight into her career and I would love to do the same with my practice eventually. 

Al spoke about his influences and how growing up, you don't always realise that something influences you as its happening. I thought this was an interesting reflection as I always find it quite funny to look back on my work from when I was younger and see how very similar it looked to a Disney Princess film! We collect plenty of influences over the years, all of which have an effect on our work.

Murphy’s work itself is very visually appealing; it’s easy to see why companies want to use it for advertising and promotions. It jumps out at you and is expressive and attention-grabbing. 

He described a few times about working with companies, big and small. Seeing as much of his work is advertising and promotions for companies, he has lots of experience with this. It’s always interesting to hear about working with brands and how the exchange works, especially as it’s likely I’ll experience this for myself after I graduate. I imagine it’s something you get better at through experiencing it for yourself, and you only really learn through doing, but it’s very useful to hear what companies expect from artists and the different ways they communicate it. 

Although not from the talk, an article about Murphy in Creative Boom reads “on the one hand, [advertising] has fed and clothed his family and led to award-winning success, while on the other, it has made him question his own morals as he takes the money to help sell brain-melting products to children”. I thought this was a very interesting point as it is always relevant to discuss what we want from our careers and how we feel our talents are best used to affect the world around us. It’s not necessarily something that’s brought up often, especially as commercial illustration is a very popular road to go down and can be the source of quite a lot of money and success. There’s many other paths in illustration, however, and it’s always worth considering which options make you happiest, which ones you can get the most out of, or which ones you can contribute the most to. At the end of the day, I think creating for a living is a great privilege, and if you don’t love what you’re doing, it’s going to be very difficult to do it. 

Simon Spilsbury

Website Instagram

A freelance illustrator, Simon Spilsbury’s philosophy is that drawing, and ideas, are central to process. His website says that his work is “spontaneous, energetic, quirky, inherently humorous, adaptable and elegant”. At first, he said that every day there will be a new image, one that’s never been seen before. I thought this was a wonderful thing to start the talk with - a comment on creativity, and how it’s never the same twice. 

He asked us, what sets you apart? In order to be creative, you must make collisions, and take your brain out of its comfort zone. I rarely do this; I’ve always stuck to what I know, especially as everyone says to be successful you need a specific style that people can recognise you by. In Simon’s words, however: “you never know where you're going to end up. If you do, you're not being creative.”

He stressed that your reaction to a brief only happens once. You should make a starting point, and the rest will follow. Personally this is something I struggle with; I find it really hard to bring myself to start something, as often the size of the task scares me. Usually once I’ve broken it down, it’s not so difficult. 

Simon also had some specific illustration advice, a lot of it on emotion and expression. He advised that if you want to draw someone performing a specific action, you should do it first. The action also informs the rest of the image. If you're drawing somebody pick up a rock, for example, you draw the rock first. 

Simon’s practice is centred on drawing. Most of his work is sketchy and illustrative in a way only achieved through pen on paper, or digital pen on digital paper. It kind of captures the way that many artists sit down and absently doodle on a page, a bit like a stream of creativity. 

I do most of my work through painting, or through digital software like Procreate. It’s very easy to capture the magic of drawing to Procreate now with very advanced software and plenty of traditional-style brushes. I don't think the emergence of this software changes the creativity that comes alongside drawing and art. Personally, in my head I separate quick, simple sketches on pieces of scrap paper from digital work or painted work as it might take less effort or time. Listening to Simon’s talk reminded me that maybe I shouldn't, seeing as both use lots of creativity. Arguably, quick sketches use more, seeing as they are thought up on the spot and require no planning, brainstorming or practice. 

You must understand what you’re drawing, Simon says, with no preconceived ideas. I liked his approach to illustration - it was inspiring to hear about his version of creativity, especially as I haven't felt that creative in a while. My process has become sort of robotic, always the same, often on a screen and through a computer and rarely just for myself. Although Simon didn't address this directly, his ideas about creativity and leaving your comfort zone really struck home with me. I left wanting to do it much more often. 

Neil Sheakey

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Neil is a design director at Uniform, in Liverpool, established in 1998, which he described as one of the few companies outside London with a wide variety of creatives. He completed his degree in graphic design at the University of Derby in 2004. He showed us work his company had done with brands like Mitre, Ideal Standard, Innocent and Encona. 

His personal creative process was broken down into stages: empathy, perspective, direction, creative and action. It’s always interesting to see or hear about other people’s creative processes, seeing how they differ to our own. Neil also introduced something else interesting, his idea of a 360 experience, also in stages. These were to see, hear, touch and feel, his way of trying out whether and how a brand connects to customers.

Most of Neil’s work is digital and for advertising. He placed a big focus on process, which I’ve not thought about for years. My A-Level Fine Art teacher drilled it into us that process is the most important part of a project. You need plenty of ideas and research to back up your work. I do this a lot for university projects, but not very often for personal projects. I would really like to try this for a personal project and are if it makes any difference to how much I like the finished product. 

Neil gave us some useful advice about presenting. If your audience is frowning, it means they are concentrating, which is not a negative reaction. Presenting, he said, means talking about yourself and your ideas comfortably. However, if your idea bombs or does badly, ask questions: why? What can be fixed? How can it be better? I think these questions apply themselves very well to presenting but also to personal work, especially when I have produced something I don’t like (which happens a lot more than I’d prefer).

Most useful was Neil’s 10 tips. He didn't specify them as such, but they certainly are useful tips.

1. Explore - being creative is all about exploration.  2. Find your voice - something that is always talked about in the community. 3. Collaborate - I’ve learnt a lot about collaborating with others this year; people on my course, my friends, etc. It makes me more creative! 4. Think, do, reflect - always look back on your work and see what you liked, what you didn’t, what you can take forward from it.  5. Craft your portfolio - something I forget about! Having one online means people can always look at it, or stumble upon it. 6. Give 100% - I’ve got worse at this. I find it very difficult to motivate myself, but I’m trying harder, because this is something I love to do! 7. Value your time - I’m bad at time management, but my time is also precious, and it does well to remember that. 8. Look after yourself - one of the most important things, if not the most important one. Being creative for a living can be draining and also a lot of pressure. Looking after yourself is essential. 9. Be yourself - your creativity is what can get you jobs, commissions, etc. It’s important that it’s your own! 10. Enjoy it! - of course. Being creative for a living is fun! I’m not as good at this any more, as my whole life is creative now - when I was still doing exams, it used to be my escape rather than my degree, my hobby and my dream career. Hopefully I can get better at enjoying it and appreciating it.

Other Speakers

Due to illness, I unfortunately missed a couple of the speakers we had visit the university, and another was cancelled to to the COVID-19 pandemic. To fill in the gaps, found and listened to some more talks online. 

Maria Kalman: The Illustrated Woman This talk was wonderfully random and eccentric. Kalman seemed to really run with the idea of thinking outside the box and almost trusting your first thoughts. She talks of being a dreamy child and dreaming her way though life, all the way until college. Interestingly, Kalman didn’t start drawing until after university. I often worry about where I’m at professionally but I often forget that in the grand scheme of things, I’m still very young. The landscape of illustration is different now than in the 80s, but I still have a lot of my life ahead of me. 

An interesting concept she mentioned was “if you know too much, you’re stymied”. This is the second talk this concept has appeared in: Simon Spilsbury also spoke about not knowing where you're going to end up, as if you do, it isn't creativity. Like I mentioned in his talk, this is something I am very bad at. I prefer knowing which direction I’m headed in and I’m often too nervous about a project and how it will turn out to even start it. This talk, and this point, was a brilliant reminder that you can’t plan everything, and sometimes your first thoughts are your best thoughts. 

Janet Echelman: Taking Imagination Seriously  This was one of those talks where you think it might have changed your life, or at least your outlook. Janet Echelman went to India for an art show and her paints got lost in shipping. As I was listening to this story my heart dropped -  I couldn't even imagine what I’d have done in this situation - but Echelman took it in her stride. On a walk, she saw the natives weaving nets on the beaches and  sat with them to learn how to do it. Since then, this way of working has become her best and favourite way of working. 

I was fascinated by this. As someone that is sometimes too intimidated to try a new type of paint, or to paint or draw a more difficult perspective of something, I found Echelman’s willingness to open herself up to new ideas inspiring. There have been plenty of obstacles in her creative life, but when those arise she simply found ways to solve them. There are often times when I find a challenge too hard, or too intimidating, to even start it. Deep down I know that if I attempt it, even if I fail, I will have learnt something from the experience, and you can only get better through trial and error. Even so, sometimes the nerves I feel about a new project or challenge can overwhelm this logic.

Echelman has carried out briefs for very important clients but despite this, her talk is still filled with the wonder and joy that sparked her creativity in the first place. She places great importance on how art should make you feel, and how you should strive to create things that make other people feel something too. It even made me tear up at the end.

Alexa Meade: Your Body is my Canvas  A reoccurring theme with these talks for me is how good these creatives are at simply new ideas. I think the idea of creativity has taken a back seat for me over the years, and I know at A Level and GCSE there was a big focus on technical precision and talent instead of just having a good idea, and running with it. Although my degree places importance on elements of this, in my work it seems to have disappeared. Maybe creativity comes quite easily to me, in that I’m given a brief and instantly have ideas to put down, or maybe I've forgotten about it altogether, and I’ve managed so far to work without much of it. It might be that creativity is different for all of us. This talk still serves as a reminder that we should always be trying to access our creativity in everything we do. 

Meade seems to have creativity down pat, however; if you could describe it, it would be this. Her work is fascinating in that she doesn't paint on canvas, but she actually paints on the subject she is painting. What comes from this is what looks like two dimensional paintings, but is all 3D. These talks are all inspiring, but Meade has taken an idea from the past and made it into a career that nobody else had done before. 

Jarrett J. Krosoczka: How a Boy Became an Artist  There is something so inspiring about holding art and creativity so close all your life, and Krosoczka’s story is this exactly. It places huge importance on using your imagination: “writing is using your imagination on paper”. It was another wake-up call to be reminded that at the basis of what we do as creatives, we’re always using our imaginations. 

“Celebrate your own style” is among the wisdom in this talk. Krosoczka had a turbulent life but recognises and passes on the importance of good stories, for children specifically. There is a confidence that is threaded throughout his talk and his life, almost like willing something into existence. Again, it’s inspiring to see someone with the confidence to know that whatever happens, it’s always possible to meet your goals and fulfil your dreams. In a creative career it’s easy to let adversity get you down, but it’s also amazing to look back on your life so far and celebrate the achievements you've made. 

What I took away from this talk is a reminder that even if I feel down about my art or my abilities, I always have the tools to get better and develop. I think this is something always worth remembering. 

A few other links to interesting talks/podcasts I found by artists:

Anthony Gormley in Conversation with Iwona Blazwick

Tracey Emin RA on her largest-ever text piece

Building a successful career as an illustrator with Furry Little Peach

RCA Talk with Subject Matter: Women Artists & A Brave New Art World

Béatrice Coron: Stories Cut From Paper

In Summary

All in all I enjoyed the talks. It was inspiring to get a fresh perspective on art, illustration and creativity, especially as we often seek out ideas similar to our own and flock to people that share them. Naturally it was useful and equally as interesting to hear from people established in their fields, how this came to be, and even how they felt - and now feel - about it. 

It was also a bit of a wake up call as I know plenty of people, me included, tend to stay focused on the present and the work they're involved in right now, instead of making plans for the future and looking ahead. I don't think it’s advisable to plan out every aspect of my future, but I rarely think about it. It was interesting, fun and quite daunting to sit on the train on the way home from some of the talks and imagine a career that spans as long as some of our speakers. Maybe one day I’ll give a talk of my own!

One criticism I have with the talks is the lack of diversity. I understand it is difficult to get people in to give talks, but one thing I noticed as soon as we got a list of who was visiting was the lack of women on it. I was hoping to get more of an insight into women in the industry. Instead, this was something I sought out myself; the extra talks I needed were mostly by women. Of course the women giving these talks were equally fascinating and knowledgable.

This concerns other aspects too, not only gender, as it would have been interesting to hear from people from different backgrounds and different ethnicities, as all of the speakers we had visit were very similar in that respect. It’s interesting to hear from anyone in the field, but I’m sure people from different walks of life would have something extra interesting to add to their talk or something different in their story to share. Not only for me, for my own curiosity, but also for other students that come from somewhere different to me, somebody that might appreciate a different insight that they can relate to. It would be easy to feature this in a range of visiting artists.

I felt there could have also bee variety in types of illustration, as the talks I heard were mostly from those in advertising and promotions (of course, the two I missed due to illness may have been different). I know Louise Lockhart, the final talk that was cancelled, is a children’s book illustrator, and gives me all the more reason to be disappointed about missing it! There are so many different ways to use skills and experience in illustration and although advertising is a very common one, it would have been useful to have more variety in this aspect.

Of course, it’s always encouraging and refreshing to hear from established artists and to take away something from a talk. There’s always something you can learn. Even with the extra talks I needed, I felt more and more interested with every one I listened to, and felt encouraged to find and learn more. It strikes me that with platforms like YouTube and Instagram, where we follow and subscribe to fellow artists and creatives, we are doing the same, always wanting to find out more and learn from people around us and people we admire. 

[truemedian]

Now Playing Nightly on Instagram: Sketch Comedy’s Newest Star

On Comedy Names big and small are pivoting to online humor, but the standouts are the character-driven performers who were there all along, especially Meg Stalter.

Stalter as Cameile Orgasm, “the richest person in Beverly Hills.”Credit...Meg Stalter

March 29, 2020, 11:00 a.m. ET Everyone in comedy is now either an internet star or an aspiring one. More so than any other artists, comics adjusted quickly to the new normal, with theaters reinventing themselves as online portals, clubs producing virtual stand-up sets and just about everyone performing on Instagram Live. Jim Gaffigan put his family dinners on YouTube, and Mike Birbiglia live-streamed the development of new jokes with Maria Bamford and John Mulaney. In one of the best pivots, Sam Morril and Taylor Tomlinson, who both recently released stand-up specials, started shooting quick funny videos chronicling a new couple cooped up together in quarantine, and it has grown into a very funny series. But the comedians doing the most assured work online didn’t need to adjust because they were already there, particularly those in the growing genre of “front-facing camera comedy”: short character sketches played directly to the camera. Owing a debt to the hectic editing of Tim and Eric and the influence of the defunct six-second-or-less platform Vine, these videos have gone viral for years, but with comedians and audiences stuck at home, they have replaced the special as the dominant comedy form of the Covid-19 crisis. In the constantly shifting ecosystem of young performers on Twitter and Instagram, the most vital voice to emerge during this anxious, isolating moment is that of Meg Stalter. Stalter, 29, has become essential escapist entertainment, an oasis of invigorating silliness in feeds dominated by wearying tragedy. Part of the reason is her staggering productivity. In the last two weeks alone, she started a new podcast, “Confronting Demons,” and performed nearly nightly hours on IG Live, including comic versions of a cooking show, a magic show, a motivational seminar and a master class on the art of seduction. She has also produced more than a dozen flamboyant new characters, from Cameile Orgasm, the self-described richest person in Beverly Hills, to your aunt who just realized she should be in quarantine — along with a bunch of random experiments like recreating a segment from “Sex and the City” and narrating a scene from a Marilyn Monroe movie. While live in-person comedy has vanished, the Meg Stalter Industrial Complex has filled the vacuum. And though producing such a titanic volume of material from her Brooklyn apartment will inevitably produce uneven results, there is an aesthetic through-line to her comedy, such a signature style that you see online comments refer to people as a Meg Stalter character. So who exactly is that? She tends to be verbose, oddly theatrical, preposterously can-do, the kind of person described as a bit much. Her characters are ordinary eccentrics who drop unusually funny names (like Hannikah) and find epiphanies in the mundane, like the artsy mom who takes up drawing again. She becomes so inspired that she develops a new resentment for her children, despairing that she can’t make anything beautiful since she produced such an ugly son. As ridiculous as her characters can be, Stalter approaches them with warmth. For a satirist, she has a big heart, jabbing her subjects without really going for the kill. There’s even a poignancy to how clueless they are. Think Catherine O’Hara in “Schitt’s Creek.” Typically accompanied by vivid eye makeup and subtle but pitch-perfect background music, her characters have an unexpected glamour, like the Parisian influencer who finds herself endlessly irresistible. “My morning routine is to make love to myself and then break an egg to celebrate,” she says in a buttery French accent. “After that, I like to fill up my bath with milk and look at it. I like to sit on a wooden chair for no reason.” Such absurd riffs tumble out of her mouth as quickly as Robin Williams erupted impressions. Comics tend to be either meticulously careful with language or freewheeling and improvisational, but Stalter somehow manages to be both at once. She often mispronounces words, but then commits to the mistake, making it amusing. Other times, she delights in the goofiest word choice. One of her extravagant characters, a grandly self-regarding femme fatale in her own mind, flirtatiously tells a man on a date: “There’s just one little problem: You were looking even more delicious than the rigatoni.” Then there’s this classic terrible wedding toast gone wrong: “Ezmerelda, you are hot, magic and did I mention hot?” she says, then returning to pasta comedy to address the groom. “Tortellini, you are average, brain-dead and more of a curse than magic. But opposites attract.” On her podcast, Stalter plays a version of herself that’s harsher than any of her characters, a fame-hungry nobody who keeps calling up comics, asking them to appear on her show, and when they turn her down, erupting in hostility. (Chelsea Peretti and Chris Gethard sent themselves up beautifully by insisting on their niceness.) Stalter does some more straightforward parodies like a satire of rom-com clichés, but what distinguishes her from her peers is an unpredictable surreal streak. Her videos start and end abruptly, and don’t build so much as evolve into a series of tangents with pivots that veer off into delightful lunacy. In a sketch about a woman who, in a misguided seduction, invited only one man to her birthday party, she gesticulates to her labored flirtation, then seems to be so delighted by her own waving arms that she makes them the main focus, transforming a conventional premise into deliriously abstract physical comedy. With an exception or two, Stalter has steered clear of focusing on the pandemic, though on Twitter and Instagram, where you can see comments right by her face, fans often say she helps them deal with isolation or even the virus itself. On Wednesday night on IG Live, with her hair in a bun surrounded by a beaded necklace, she played a loony psychic (“I followed an owl here and the rest is history”) who invited people to appear on a split-screen and have their futures told. One woman talked about losing her job and another slightly shaken teenager expressed worry about how the current chaos would change her college prospects. Stalter assured both that things would work out, that we’re in this together, and appeared increasingly aware of the cathartic purpose of her comedy. In one psychic reading, she seemed to get emotional comforting a girl, breaking character and saying: “I know this is a funny character but it’s more than that,” she said, adding. “People need magic right now.” In that moment, Meg Stalter sounded a bit like a Meg Stalter character. She also was speaking a truth. But she returned to artifice quickly, shifting into the inherent optimism of the voice of a mystical figure who believes enough in the future to read it on tarot cards.

Six More to Watch

These funny men and women are especially good at “front-facing camera comedy” on social media.

Eva Victor

With more than 300,000 followers on Twitter, she’s arguably the biggest star of this form, a magnetic performer whose motormouth characters evoke the comic anxiety of Roz Chast cartoons. Find her here on Twitter and here on Instagram.

Alyssa Limperis

Gifted at accents and impressions, she has been hilarious recently as herself, capturing the hostility of a couple cooped up in at home and the difficulty of conversation over FaceTime, a crossover collaboration with Eva Victor that went viral. Find her here on Instagram.

Noah Findling

A rising star with a knack for finding the right detail, particularly in beta male character types: the needy boyfriend, the younger sibling in a fight. Find him here on Instagram and here on Twitter.

Carmen Christopher

A standout in New York’s weird comedy scene, he posted two very funny videos this month, satirizing Vice News and the life of a comic in quarantine. Find him here on Instagram and here on Twitter.

Chris Calogero

His cliché movie types (every expert hacker, the brutally meta character inserted into every horror film for a decade after “Scream”) are hilarious sketches that double as sharp movie criticism. Find him here on Instagram and here on Twitter.

Grace Kuhlenshmidt

Leaning less on quick cuts than taut, maniacal monologues, she has a gift for hilarious snapshots of the unhinged, the deluded and the startlingly vengeful. Find her here on Twitter and to a lesser extent, here on Instagram. Read More Read the full article

[phandom-mama]

When Meeting your Heroes Doesn’t Go as Planned

This was previously posted on my Medium blog. It is still there as of now, but I want it on my phandom blog too.

I already have plans to talk about said heroes in a future post (honestly, they will probably be the subjects of multiple future posts). I don’t want to go too far into who they are, how I ‘met’ them, or why I consider them my heroes.

So I’ll just talk about the first — and only — time I’ve seen them in real life, why I walked away from their live show feeling disappointed, and how I figured out why I felt let down.

The reason I bring this up today is that it is the one year anniversary of the day I traveled three hours to see them, stayed overnight with my sister-in-law and her husband, and drove the three hours back to work the next morning.

Without revealing too much, I will say this: I have been a fan of the two young men for years. I discovered them when I first delved into the deep, dark YouTube universe years ago when I entered college. At first, they were just amusing and attractive. It wasn’t until the last few years that I began realizing that while I was growing up and experiencing life, I was also blessed to watch them grow up and experience life.

This is why the live show I attended, complete with my Adventure Time t-shirt and lots of screaming adolescents, seemed to fall short. The young women and men in the audience, most of them in high school, were nearly ten years younger than me. They watched these two men talk about their lives online for the looks and the humor and the inside jokes. While I had started out just like them, I had grown up, as had the artists in question.

The live show was beautifully planned out, bringing back old video bits they had since retired, as well as integrating newer segments. As I watched the older, iconic jokes, I remembered what I was doing when the videos were uploaded. I sat in reverence, clapping and smiling, reminiscing about everything from the joys of moving into my college apartment to the horror of my first depressive episode.

All around me, hormones were a-flowin’. Constant selfies, ear-piercing shrieks, inappropriate comments, and homemade and purchased merchandise filled the performing arts center. I wanted to tell them all to shut up. I wanted to make them realize that this wasn’t necessarily a fan experience for me. It was me reliving the last decade of my life.

It wasn’t until the next day, on the drive home, that I really started thinking through why the show hadn’t met all of my expectations. For reasons that deserve their own post, I owe more to the two men than I owe to any other set of people in the world.

That’s when it hit me. The show had met all of my expectations. It was just not in the same intimate setting I was used to.

I wasn’t alone, enjoying and laughing along while using the videos to escape reality or to see that others were also struggling with what life was throwing at them or to fondly remember the past. I felt like I was watching their YouTube videos in my house, but suddenly with thousands of people interrupting the moment.

‘Meeting’ my heroes, or in my case, observing them from the second row of a performing arts theater, wasn’t what I expected it to be, and I’m not sure I’ll ever have the chance to meet them the way I have acted out in my head more than once during my years of watching them. In the end, I am more than thankful that I was able to go to the performance and collect a few souvenirs and a year later, I regret nothing.

If it doesn’t go the way you want it to, don’t worry. Take a step back. Relax. Give it some time. Chances are it isn’t that they aren’t who you want them to be. Don’t let environment or the scene change the way you view them.

They are the same people, after all.

[ofthewind01]

Another Tag Thing

Tagged by @hyrulehearts1123​ - am I supposed to be doing things?

...Yes actually. But screw that.

Rules: Answer all questions and tag 20 people.

1. What is your nickname?

I don’t have too many, I prefer my real name (which I’m not revealing), but I have been called Windy and Sketch a lot.

2. What is your zodiac sign?  

Taurus. Whoo.

3. What is your favorite book series?

I don’t read as many books as I used to, but the original Percy Jackson is up there.

4. Do you believe in aliens or ghosts?

Not really.

5. Who is your favorite author?

Uhm...unsure. Again, I don’t read a lot. NEXT!

6. What is your current favorite song?

Ok, my favorite song pretty much changes weekly, but right now it’s a mix of Dangerous (Left Boy Remix), Two Birds and Older and Taller (Regina Specktor), Animal (Minor Key Version, Chase Holfelder), and who knows what else.

7. What is your favorite word?

Puscilanimous is a fun word. I like that one. I like many words. Too bad I can’t always speak them right.

8. What was the last song you listened to?

Closer + All Star Remix (DJ Dwibbit). I don’t even know why but it’s not bad.

9. What TV show would you recommend for everybody to watch?

The Great British Baking Show. It’s just so comforting, and honestly so much calmer than American Baking shows. Just so sweet and welcoming.

10. What is your favorite movie to watch when you’re feeling down?

I spend more time on Youtube than on movies. It’s kinda sad. That and I overanalyze movies way too much. That being said, I just found an amazing movie called Ethel and Ernest and I’d highly reccomend that as a feel good (or feel bad) movie.

11. Do you play video games?

Heheheh no

12. What is your biggest fear?

Being unnoticed or unsuccessful. Or that I’m not doing enough. Or FOBO.

13. What is your best quality, in your opinion?

Uhm... I’m quiet? I’m not loud and obnoxious. Or interesting.

14. What is your worst quality, in your opinion?

I’m too quiet, and really passive. And I have a weird way of jumbling the English language.

15. What is your favorite season?

Fall and Spring are especially pretty.

16. Are you in a relationship?

Good question.

17. What is something you miss from your childhood?

Times where kids in the neighborhood would play outside together. Nowadays everyone is inside on their devices.

I’m not blaming them though, it’s friggin hot and humid down here in the day.

18. Who is your best friend?

I’ve got 4ish irl best friends, and some good friends all around, but I’m hoping to continue making new ones.

19. What is your eye color?

Brown.

20. What is your hair color?

Brown. I’ve got the complexion of a turd.

21. Who is someone you love?

Family and close friends

22. Who is someone you trust?

Completely? Not many people. My parents? Probably?

23. Who is someone you think about often?

Characters I’ve made. It’s dumb but I think about fictional situations a LOT.

24. Are you currently excited about/for something?

I just started concepting a new comic that I’m hoping will be a success - right now it’s got a bit more potential than my other ideas.

25. What is your biggest obsession?

Writing and art, and Youtube. All good.

26. What was your favorite TV show as a child?

I watched a lot of PBS kids as a child, we didn’t have cable. But Fetch with Ruff Ruffman was a good one I always loved.

27. Do you have any unusual phobias?

Not really? I’m not that interesting. 

28. Do you prefer to be in front of the camera or behind it?

Behind. I want to work in film after all.

29. What is your favorite hobby?

Concepting, for art and stories alike.

30. What was the last book you read?

I haven’t read a book in a while =u=‘ I can’t remember. I’m probably going to read Les Miserables soon though.

31. What was the last movie you watched?

Ethel and Ernest. Great movie. Srsly.

32. What musical instruments do you play, if any?

I played French horn for a while, I could still pull that off.

33. What is your favorite animal?

EVERYTHING, mostly cats though. And dogs.

34. What are your top 5 favorite Tumblr blogs that you follow?

I don’t pay much attention to tumblr.

35. What superpower do you wish you had?

Flying. Or wind. Both very useful. However, the process of growing wings is awful.

Trust me I would know.

36. When and where do you feel most at peace?

The beach at night.

37. What makes you smile?

Corny puns, being in good company, cracking bad jokes.

38. What sports do you play, if any?

I was in Marching Band for 4 years - IT’S A SPORT

39. What is your favorite drink?

Sweet Tea, original or wild berry.

40. Are you afraid of heights?

If I have no protection, yes.

41. What is your biggest pet peeve?

Arrogant people who will defend a point without compromise or insight. And sudden loud noises. And little brothers. Ahem.

42. Have you ever been to a concert?

A few, nothing hugely popular though. Mostly Christian stuff... I need to get out more.

43. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?

An artist? I didn’t think about jobs much, but I always wanted to create.

44. What fictional world would you like to live in?

Something peaceful. Zootopia would be cool.

45. What is something you worry about?

I worry a lot ok that’s not new. What other people think of me is a big one.

46. Are you scared of the dark?

Only when alone.

47. Do you like to sing?

I’ve been in choir since kindergarden - what do YOU think?

48. Have you ever skipped school?

Nope. I was a good kid. Good and boring.

49. What is your favorite place on the planet?

Not sure, I haven’t been too many places. Florida beaches are really nice though. And so are the North GA Mountains.

And LA is especially beautiful. It’s pretty much all of that rolled into one.

50. Where would you like to live?

Big city, big opportunities. Like where I live now - ATL.

51. Do you have any pets?

A skiddish cat and a younger brother.

52. Are you more of an early bird or a night owl?

Early bird - I’m always the first one awake at a party. But I can play with the family pets then.

53. Do you like sunrises or sunsets better?

Sunsets. You don’t have to be up super early.

54. Do you know how to drive?

Yep. Not the best though, I’ve hit a parked car before.

55. Do you prefer earbuds or headphones?

Earbuds, they’re not as clunky.

56. Have you ever had braces?

Yep. For 2 years.

57. What is your favorite genre of music?

I’m not picky, but Alt. is my favorite.

58. Who is your hero?

Too many people, my parents are up there with people like Malala Yousafzai and John Lasseter. 

59. Do you read comic books?

Sometimes. I read a few webcomics, and run one myself though.

60. What makes you the most angry?

Sudden loud noises, and consistent loud noises. And arrogant world leaders. And arrogance in general.

61. Do you prefer to read on an electronic device or with a real book?

Real book, I do get a bit more bored with electronic reading. Plus, books can’t die.

62. What is your favorite subject in school?

Art! And calculus. Not sure how that works.

63. Do you have any siblings?

A younger brother. He’s awful.

64. What was the last thing you bought?

...food probably. I like food. I think it was Moes.

65. How tall are you?

5′2″. It doesn’t help I’m skinny and short.

66. Can you cook?

I can, with a recipe. 

67. What are three things that you love?

Thinking, writing, drawing. 

68. What are three things that you hate?

Loud noises, rampant childishness, and those who think that the first two will give them power.

69. What is your sexual orientation?

I’m somewhere between straight and ace. Does that make sense?

70. Where do you currently live?

Georgia! Come for the who knows what, die of humidity.

71. Who was the last person you texted?

@hyrulehearts1123​ and another writing buddy. Yay writing buddies.

72. When was the last time you cried?

I think Sunday, for all of 10 seconds. I hate crying. I just do.

73. Who is your favorite YouTuber?

IHateEverything, as of right now. Having fun with that series.

74. Do you like to take selfies?

Sometimes, they don’t really turn out all that good though.

75. What is your favorite app?

If I had a favorite it would probably be iFunny.

76. What is your relationship with your parent(s) like?

Pretty good, they’re great parents.

77. What is your favorite foreign accent?

Children with accents - it’s just so friggin cute!

78. What is a place that you’ve never been to, but you want to visit?

England, or anywhere in Europe really. I’ve never been there.

79. What is your favorite number?

Yours ;) jk I don’t have one

80. Do you find outer space of the deep ocean to be more interesting?

Space. Galaxies are breathtaking.

81. Do you consider yourself to be a daredevil?

I’m pretty much the opposite of a daredevil.

82. Are you allergic to anything?

One type of obscure medicine. That’s about it.

83. Can you wiggle your ears?

Nnnnnope

84. How often do you admit that you were wrong about something?

Pretty often, even if it’s not my fault. That’s not healthy is it?

85. Do you prefer the forest or the beach?

I like both too much to choose. Forest (when safe) is probably better though.

86. What is your favorite piece of advice that anyone has ever given you?

“If you don’t feel stupid, you’re not working hard enough.” - My dad about working hard

87. Are you a good liar?

Occasionally. I wouldn’t let you know though.

88. What is your Hogwarts House?

Gryffendor and Hufflepuff. Gryfflepuff? 

89. Do you talk to yourself?

More than I talk to real people.

90. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Introvert. 100% Unless I’m around extroverts. Then I’m a dork.

91. Do you keep a journal/diary?

Only of story ideas.

92. Do you believe in second chances?

Yes, but it’s less likely someone deserves them after a long period of time of repeated actions.

93. Do you believe that people are capable of change?

Yeah, people can change. But people can also change back.

94. Are you ticklish?

I used to be... thanks friends.

95. Have you ever been on a plane?

Yeah, a bunch. Is that a new thing?

96. Do you have any piercings?

Nope, I hate needles. Hate them.

97. What fictional character do you wish was real?

idk. All fictional characters have pros and cons to bringing them to the real world.

I’m too analytical aren’t I? Let’s just go with Calvin and Hobbes. They’re harmless.

98. Do you have any tattoos?

Nope. I’ve only thought about one, but, once again, NEEDLES.

99. What is the best decision that you’ve made in your life so far?

When I switched from a public school to a private school.

100. Do you believe in karma?

Eh, not really. People make choices that affect them in the long run, that doesn’t mean it’s a supernatural thing.

101. Do you wear glasses or contacts?

Nope. I’m the only one with perfect vision in my somewhat extended family, until you hit some of my cousins.

102. Do you want children?

I couldn’t handle more than one kid. Maybe a dog will work instead.

103. Who is the smartest person you know?

My dad, personally.

104. What is your most embarrassing memory?

I can’t think of anything ultra-embarrassing right now, but I have a tendency to screw up the english language in strange and creative ways.

105. Have you ever pulled an all-nighter?

Only once, a while back. I need my beauty rest.

106. What color are most of you clothes?

Solid colors, mostly T-shirts. I look like a middle school boy most days. Not fun.

107. Do you like adventures?

Sure! I’m up for failing miserably.

108. Have you ever been on TV?

I was almost an extra in a Netflix movie - my family was up in New York City and we stumbled onto a set, and got to take part in it. I don’t think the scene was in the actual film though.

109. How old are you?

18.

110. What is your favorite quote?

“Do not let anyone define you because of where you come from. Your only limit is your soul.”

-My senior quote, from Ratatouille 

111. Do you prefer sweet or savory foods?

Savory. Sweet isn’t bad though.

112. Have your friends ever badly disapponted you?

Most of them have (not too badly though) at some point, but I love them anyways.

113.  What is your favorite scent?

Home sweet home. Too bad you can’t bottle that one up.

114. Random fact you know?

Banging your head against the wall burns 150 calories an hour. Go try it.

115. What is your opinion on long distance relationships?

They’re painful and tedious, and don’t always work out, but if the relationship is strong enough you’ll perservere. Why do you ask?

PS screw tagging people. Just screw it

[twelvesignsrp]

congratulations tabi, cancer is now samuel wade with the faceclaim neels visser

APPLICATION

   Character Sign: Cancer

   Character name: Samuel Wade

   Birthday: 7/7/1997

   Sexuality: bisexual                                                                                        

   Gender: male

   Moon Sign: Pisces Moon – he’s someone who needs fantasy, compassion, escape, and creative outlets more than anything else in the world. he can go a little stir-crazy at times, which is why it’s important for him to have security as well, but he can be extremely hard to pin down and read when he gets into one of his darker moods. sometimes he feels he is best left on his own, even though he wishes he could connect better, but he knows he needs to figure out how to navigate his own soul before he can really reach out to others around him. he is and will always be drawn to artistic, sensual and spiritual pursuits.

   Faceclaim: Neels Visser

   Power: future illustration – it’s not so much any sort of clear image that splashes itself across his mind and forces him to recreate it on any surface available, it’s more like some sort of gut feeling, almost unnoticeable sometimes until he’s practically finished with it. the urge to draw or paint something is as familiar and ingrained in him as the need to breath or his body’s need for blood from his heart—it’s something stuck just beneath the layers of his skin, and he doesn’t even think about it until he looks down and realizes he’s drawn something that ends up coming true a little while later. he does it without thinking most of the time, but then there are a few dark midnights, sleepless nights when the kaleidoscope mess tries to seep out through his fingertips, the drive to create something much stronger than his need to sleep. the talent for art has always been there inside of him, the magic just decided to adhere itself to that.

   What do they study? Art Appreciation

   Biography:

rule 1: schizophrenia is hereditary.

you wouldn’t think that to look at Marie Mason though, as she smiles and walks slowly down the aisle to marry the man who has stolen her heart and all her inhibitions and reservations about love. they’ve thrown themselves into this wedding, adored each other endlessly, despite the family secret she keeps from him, hoping on every star in the sky and any god in heaven that somehow, maybe the curse will pass her by unaffected. maybe their love is stronger than her genetics, maybe his kiss will break the evil spell, the ticking time-bomb on her mind. and after all, doesn’t everyone deserve a happy, fairytale ending? the Beatles sang “all you need is love” and they both agree wholeheartedly, because this feels absolute between the two of them. there is nothing that can get in the way of their union.

rule 2: love is not stronger than madness.

no one bears the brunt of her mental decay as much as her first-born son Samuel, especially in the first seven years of his life. he learns to run quickly, hide perfectly, play games that make no sense and have no rules. he has to think on his feet, tell stories without endings, anything he can do to please her, to help her, to make her love him—or at least remind her that she once did love him. it comes and goes sometimes, and he suffers in school for it, despite how much money his father pours into his education.

what father doesn’t seem to understand is that, yes, she does have many good, long stretches of sanity, weeks when she is fine, she is stable, she is operational, and Samuel enjoys these times because that’s when their family love dynamic actually feels real. but those times never really last long enough, they are just the minute gasps for breaths the universe takes before exploding again. his mother and his little brother, younger by three years, and him can all go to the park and have picnics, and he doesn’t have to think about how Jacob is already a better reader than he is. Jacob is better at a lot of things, but Samuel’s sheer amount of personality ensures his place as older brother. he can also draw better than anyone else in his class, but no one is as much a fan of his work as Jacob is, and Samuel is sure that nothing in the world can break the two of them apart.

that’s why when the doctors finally come and take their mother away while she is screaming and thrashing around, like a demon straight out of hell, Samuel holds onto Jacob’s hand tight enough that neither of them have to notice that their father can’t even look at them. Samuel is terrified that one day he’ll grow up to be as cold and distant as that man, but he’s even more scared about his mother’s genetic lotto win taking root in him.

rule 3: nothing in this world is in your control.

caution: contents are hot. he lets himself ride the waves of adolescence, boiling over with too much freezer-burn chemicals. like a sunflower, he is all brightness on the outer rim, the edges of him oozing glamour and laughter and just enough coyness to keep others interested, but in the center is dark, dark inflorescence, drying and dying out in the sun. he can feel himself changing as puberty takes over, shifting him into the kind of boy who stares at other people too long and lets himself fall into chaos too quickly. he falls in love too hard and lets it drive him to the edge of his mental cliff time and time again, because maybe if he gets used to it out here, it won’t be so bad when he finally tumbles down off it. he lives his life in fear of madness, which gives him a bit of wild freedom, but mostly just makes him want to cave in on himself.

his turmoil breathes life into the only part of him left that’s still beating; drawing and painting. he spends hours on it, creates everything from abstract memories of dreams to landscapes and fruits. it’s an incredibly forgiving art, but nothing about that sentiment lets him sleep a full night through, unburdened by nightmares.

his father comes to him one day after he’s turned eighteen and tells him he expects good grading scores from his high school so that he can enroll in a well-accredited university next fall—a university that has already been picked out for him. Samuel hadn’t intended to go to college, actually, because he wanted to start selling his art as soon as possible, but he doesn’t have the means or support system around him to venture off on his own, the way he wishes he did. he’s too easily persuaded to attend, but he manages to hold his own when it comes to which classes to choose. his father wants him to become a doctor, and follow in his footsteps of becoming a surgeon. for that entire summer, he starts bringing his oldest son to his hospital with him, making him watch the surgeries sometimes, hoping that the drive to cut people open and fix them will somehow seep into Samuel via osmosis. it’s total hell to the eighteen-year-old, and it doesn’t convince him to change his college schedule at all.

rule 4: with great power comes great responsibility.

not very far into his experience at durham, things begin to change. at first, he thinks “this is it, i’m finally losing it,” when he sees the exact same car-wreck scene on the news as what he had drawn earlier that morning. he thinks maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe a fluke, maybe some kind of déjà vu. he sets the picture on fire and smokes a cigarette as he watches it burn, his heart pounding in his chest, the fear like freezing fingers wrapping around his lungs, suffocating him. it’s not long though before it happens again, and again, and again—the things he draws becoming real somehow, and he begins to worry whether he’s drawing the future or creating it through his drawings.

it takes about a month or two, after he really starts taking action based on the paintings and drawings, that he realizes he is shaping only one version of the future, and that by simply knowing about it and doing something with that knowledge, it can be changed; which is a huge relief. so he starts acting on his abilities, working to fix whatever seems wrong, warn whoever he needs to, avoid the pitfalls he can see coming. he very rarely anymore draws the things he wants to, but it’s okay because this is more important anyway, and his skills at detail and coloring are getting better, sharper, clearer.

but with each new picture he puts his whole soul into, he feels it leave him just a little bit more. it’s a well-known fact that talent and survival cannot exist harmoniously inside one body; eventually something has to give. nothing is stronger than madness, he controls nothing in this world.

and schizophrenia is hereditary.

   Five interesting facts about your character:

I. he has grown up with a mild form of dyslexia, making him very uncomfortable reading things. he struggled through it all throughout high school, oftentimes bullshitting his way through tests and literature classes. whenever he was called upon to read something from the books, he would always play it off as something silly, like making up the words and story as he went, often getting in minor bits of trouble for it. whenever it was really important that he learn the material, he just looked up youtube videos for it. he still needs to do that sometimes. II. he calls his little brother Jacob every week, just to check up on him. he hates being so far away from his brother, really the only member of his family that he ever connected with. his brother looks up to him a lot, even though Sam has no idea why anyone would. III. he lives off of a steady diet of ramen and code-red mountain dew. he knows he should eat better, but he’s too young to care about health food and he’s been blessed with a fantastic metabolism. plus, he doesn’t know how to cook and he can’t be bothered to learn. IV. he does work out though, whenever he can, and even though his choice of exorcise is boxing mostly, he wishes he could get more into martial arts, like taekwondo or jujitsu. V. secretly loves super nerdy stuff, like anime and comic books, but he tries his best to keep all that under wraps, stuffed into the bottom of one of his pants drawers, because he is scared of what people will think of him if they knew. he wants to be chill, not looked at like he’s crazy.

   Character Quote:

“lie with me under

the sweeping sky that

forgets us

there is no other kind of death

destroy me if you must.”

–inkskinned.tumblr.com

   If your character had a patronus what would it be? and why? his patronus is a dapple-grey stallion. it means his passion for the things he loves is hard to beat, he becomes very involved in his friends, family, hobbies and studies. he can be very sensitive and emotional, getting hurt easily and often feeling melancholy for very little reason. however, this emotional enlightenment allows him to understand others and empathize extremely well, while also being very creative and intelligent.

WRITING SAMPLE

Samuel stared at the lines on the wooden door in front of him, his eyes wide but unmoving– stagnant just like the rest of his entire body. he was supposed to be moving, supposed to be a man of action by now, like he had told himself countless times to be. he’d spent the better part of the morning looking into a mirror, practicing the lines he was about to say, going over what sounds best, the exact type of words to formulate, anything that didn’t sound creepy or desperate. he wanted to be one of those guys who were able to just go after whatever they want, no hesitation, no overthinking.

but he wasn’t. he wasn’t a man of action, he wasn’t a man of anything– he was just standing here in front of his classmate’s door like an idiot, completely immobile because his nervousness had rooted him to her welcome mat. he was supposed to knock on the door ten minutes ago. he should have already gotten this done and over with by now but instead he couldn’t stop staring at the lines in the door and thinking about how heartbroken he was going to be as soon as she rejected him.

she had no idea how hard he’d been working up the courage to do this. how long he’d spent practicing his tone of voice or his smile. he wanted everything to be perfect and if he messed this up…. he might never have forgiven himself. he had already messed up so many other relationships and lost so many opportunities with her already this semester. he wanted to move forward. he wanted to show her how much he liked her.

he slowly inhaled a breath, lifting his fist up to knock on the door, but he couldn’t make contact. maybe he could do this next week. there would still be a next week, right? there was always next week– next month– next year. except what if she moved away or dropped out of school? what if she got a boyfriend? and then he’d have to see them together in the hallways, think about how she liked to be kissed, think about whether she was being treated well enough. he was not keen on this idea.

but knocking on this door was about as easy as fitting his whole arm into his mouth. how did other people seem to do this so damn easily? he always saw it in movies and things, guys being assertive and girls being spunky but accepting. things always worked out in movies though, whereas real life was often messier, especially in those first few steps of a relationship.

relationship? maybe he shouldn’t have been thinking about that word just yet—it was still pretty early. he hadn’t even managed to ask her out yet. hadn’t even knocked on the goddamn door. he huffed again, the nervous fluttering and pounding in his chest only getting worse.

he lifted his fist up again, an inch or two away, when the door suddenly opened and there she was, a bag of trash in her hand, and there he was, his arm raised like an idiot. “i…! oh..! hi..” his palms immediately started sweating as panic set in and his fight-or-flight instinct started telling him to turn and run. his feet however, were still painfully glued to this spot. “i, uh… i was just about to knock… on your door….” he slowly lowered his hand, feeling like a deer in the headlights. “obviously.”