#in this way that makes them such a poetic canvas to explore a genuine and sincere love story between same-sex characters

[danmeichael]

both ad lib lovers and the summer hikaru died to something really interesting wherein they take typical genre conventions and set-ups of BL and place them into a genre other than romance, while still portraying the romantic undertones. where the summer hikaru died does this with horror, ad lib lovers does this with comedy.

as opposed to hikaru's focus on horror, in ad lib lovers, jealousy, desire, and a fear of inadequacy and loving someone more than they love you is portrayed through the lens of improv. this accurately depicts that having a crush on someone as an adult is humiliating.

[drinkingthelight]

This is the civil war that we created. Maybe we’re losing this battle. Maybe we’re out of breath. Maybe this storm is drowning every ounce of living breath.

“Just some first-world-problem ramblings. - - - Earlier today my dad came to me and said, “This time when you go to the US, don’t get any more tattoos ok, it’s a genuine advice from me. It won’t look beautiful on you. There are a lot of pretty features on your face that you might not realize yet, so don’t ruin what you have. If you want to and when you have money, you can fixed your teeth or do whatever you want to your face, just don’t get more tattoos…” and when he was saying that, I immediately thought “I don’t have any face tattoos, nor have I ever mentioned of intending to get face tattoos, so what do the tattoos on my body get to do with my face?” Maybe he was trying to find a way not to hurt my feelings but it just didn’t make sense to me. I don’t know what hurts more, frank, honest words or circling around the fire but got burned and lost in translation along the way? Maybe I wasn’t supposed to take his words in such literal approach. He told me there were a lot of choices he made in his youth that he regrets now - which I understand, as a father, all he wants is to protect his children and prevent us from going down the dark paths that could be foreseen. What I think is, regrets are parts of life. Life is but a by-product of an accumulation of compromises. When we make a choice, we also, in turn, make a compromise. What he regret, I might not have and vice versa. All choices require a certain degree of sacrifice. - - - Flash back to 6th grade, when I first entered middle school, I started to have some awareness about my appearance as the girls around me wore different colorful skirts and hairstyles, not just “mushroom” hair or boyish handed-down clothes anymore. Boys started to flirt. I started to learn it the hard way that people can treat you differently base on just looks. For 5 years of primary school, being the smartest kid in class, I was always treated with love and respect even though I was just a little kid. Then for 4 years of middle school, I struggled with severe acne and suddenly intelligence didn’t save me anymore.At first I didn’t care. My mom said it’s a natural part of growing up, it would pass. Then I started to get bullied at school by boys, sometimes it was even physical bullying, at one point I was slapped at spitted on by the boys my age, while watching other pretty girls in class being praised. Of course I kept everything to myself. I waited and waited for the ugly part of growing up to pass. But it never did. I continued to suffer from severe acne up until I was in college, and if anything, it just seemed to get worse. I was afraid to look at myself in the mirror every morning. The only time I didn’t hate myself was when the light in the room was dimmed enough I couldn’t see my face clearly. I found a mental safety in the physical darkness. Overtime it developed into a habit that still exists now, mostly in my subconsciousness: I shower in the dark so I don’t have to occasionally catch my own flawed reflection in the mirror, I pull all the curtains in the room for a perfect darkness, I never sit where there is a lot of sunlight for the fear of exposing my blemished skin, I read in the dark, I listen to music in the dark, I live in the shadow. Back then, there were two animals in me. One was a strong, independent eagle who entertained the idea of freedom - the eagle that didn’t care whether she looked different from other birds. Girls were supposed to wear pink, long hair, soft and elegant, pale skin, all types of ideals I didn’t identify myself with. The girl in the mirror was someone whose skin was dark as chocolate, full of scars, crooked teeth, bowed legs, big nose, gigantic forehead, with a pixie cut and clumsy hands. The other one was that hummingbird, that frail soul of a 13-year-old girl craving for attention and peers approval. I was always sensitive to aesthetic, artful matters, so to me, beauty means even more, in the way that every painting I made was a translation of life’s rhythms in colors. I saw beauty in everything but myself. I felt hopeless for being constantly criticized for something outside of my control, something I did not created, something I did not paint: my face, my body, my existence. I studied aesthetic and attempted to give back something beautiful to life through my art, knowing it’s also the one thing I could never give myself. Sophomore year of college, I realized how acne wasn’t just some red dots on my face that would (hopefully) disappear one day anymore when all of my actions started to become reactions to acne. I cut my hair and grew a bang so I could have something to hide my face behind. I didn’t want to date anyone. Whenever in a conversation, I could barely form a sentence because I was too paranoid that the other person was staring at my flaws. Non-existent self-esteem and loneliness ate me alive, bit by bit.One day, I went online, did some research and learned about a drugs called Accutane. The side effects were ranging from migraine, skin rash, extreme dry skin, peeling, joint pain, back pain, drowsiness, all the way to depression. Accutane was available only under a special program called iPLEDGE. You must be registered in the program and sign documents stating that you understand the dangers of this medication and that you agree to use birth control as required by the program. In return, it MIGHT help your acne to stop acting. It might.I took it anyway.After 3 months, not only that the acne condition didn’t improve, my existed depression got worse despite me trying not to acknowledge the effects of the drugs on me until months later when I looked back. Those years my body felt more like a cheap rented house where the last tenant forgot to pay the rent so now I would have to pay her dues, and everyday there would be people shouting outside the window telling me to fix the rusted doors, the broken windows, the missing lightbulbs… just so it could make the block look nice, not knowing all the while I was trying to hold up the columns from the inside to keep the house from collapsing. Also, there was a fire in the middle of the house. And I was the fire.- - -So, then, why did the conversation with my dad earlier brought all of these memories back? Because I thought since those dark days have passed, that I could, that I have indeed made peace with my body, that I have paid all the dues and could even buy back the house to call it my own. Perhaps I was wrong. The fire had stopped burning but the burn marks are still embedded on the wooden floors. I never fixed the rusted doors or the broken windows, but the first time I felt like I ever had the ownership to the house I lived in was when I put a permanent coat of paint on it. 19th birthday, I got my first tattoo - a line of a poem that I kept in my notebook to helped me through the days where a full stop promised more joy than reality. I have always found collarbones the most beautiful, most feminine, most elegantly poetic parts of a woman’s body, so I had the line inked on my left collarbone in a soft scripted font. I thought, if all else people think my skin-deep appearance, the part which I did not create, was not beautiful, then I could at least take it from there and build something beautiful on top of it, just like my art.It was the first time I looked at the civil war inside me to find a path for peace. It was the first time I looked at my body as a landscape to be explored and discovered. It was the first time I treated my skin not as a post-war minefield but as a blank canvas, a first ground for more beautiful things to bloom on. I didn’t want my body turning into a battle to be fought on anymore, and if anything, I wanted to declare my rights to express what I deem beautiful to those people shouting outside my house. I didn’t, and probably could never, understand the very simple fact that if a flower is painted beautifully on a piece of paper, it is called Fine Art, and the same flower painted on my body is called Body Art, but if that paint job is done in permanent ink then it automatically translate my skin into something I should hide and be shameful of? It’s always easier to label something than to understand it. So my father’s “genuine advice” brought me back to feeling like I am paying rent for a house I borrowed from him. It was a choice I made one year ago to have my whole left shoulder and arm covered in more tattoos, each one by a different artist. I admire their talents, their skills, their craft, and I respect them just as much as any other occupation out there. To have someone put so much trust in you that they would let you ink an artwork on their body forever is a lot of pressure. And to me, it’s a symbolization of how a chance encounter, no matter how fleeting, between two human beings could impact one another permanently. I knew the reality of societal judgements when I came back to Vietnam with the choices I made, but I also believed I could grow a more beautiful belief out of the situation with my actions. Since I have these tattoos, I have worked at 3 different companies, have met countless people from different backgrounds and age groups, but never have I ever heard a single insult or received a side-eye look. I thought by having a job, having a boyfriend, having people respecting me for who I am would be enough to prove my dad that the tattoos don’t always mean something negative, let alone ruining my life.Sorry, father, if I failed you.Thank you for giving me this body, but I didn’t choose to fix my crooked teeth and probably never will. This body is my canvas now. This body is my history book. This scar is a story. This skin is my own tale of the long road trips I took under the sun. This is what time does to mortal human: we get old, our skin ages. These images are not just something paste on me anymore. They are me. They are my skin. They make my identity but they are not my identity. To take control of the body that I was given at birth means nothing but to whisper to the world the truth: nobody lives under my skin but me. And I made a choice to believe in the Art of Time and Freedom.—”

 I know she would delete it anyway. So I keep this for myself. And for her.

[leeclementpaintings-blog]

Painting & collage part of Women Series by artist natali Bouchaaya @niche_lb On Insta, zoom with 2 fingers on the screen for more details 30x 40 cm image size/ Sold in a resin floating frame with protective glass cover. ---- Lebanese artist natali Bouchaaya lives and works in Beirut. After graduating with a degree in interior architecture, she received her MA in visual arts from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) and started full time painting since 2015. Her works combines different interests like Max Ernst’s paintings, Ukiyo-e's prints and Martin Parr’s photography. natali explores and evolves her painting techniques and themes, keeping them as subjective and personal as she can so it would unleash her imagination in a unique and genuine way, re-composing mundane life fragments into a new singular, poetic, sensual or playful world. “I choose figurative art to resonate in the viewer eye and his memories so he could relate to my world”. Words are always her starting point from where she begins building the imagery for a painting or a series. Themes that recur in natali’s work express metaphorically her exploration of concepts of everyday scenes, people, beauty, animals, movies scenes and mysterious conjunctions. The work arises in an “automatic” way without a specific objective or goal in her mind. The images compose themselves spontaneously as she works primarily with acrylic on canvas then experiment with other medium. Her eyes and hands facilitate the ‘arrival’ of the pictures that she makes. More than anything else, the process requires of her that she pays attention, and to be in a receptive state, so as to be ready to capture the dialogue (which is the best part). . . . #collage #collageart #painting #acrylic #art #arte #artwork #instadaily #instaart #kunst #interiordesign #interiorstyling #homedecor #newmedia #newart #lebanon #beirut #france #gallery #galerietheartist #contemporaryart #artcontemporain #framed #artforsale #unique #original #originalart #swag #vscocam #artsy #arts #woman #women @lee.clement.art @galerietheartist