#it just seemed silly to not put in the same amount of effort for people I was closer to when I was putting in that much effort out of spite

[tj-crochets]

Baby puff quilt progress has been delayed by getting my winter holiday* presents (and some other stuff) packaged and ready to mail, but I'm hoping to get at least half the squares cut out for this tonight *my friends celebrate a variety of winter holidays and it's early for all of them but I am notoriously bad at time and also my dad was going to the post office anyway today lol edit: I forgot being a federal holiday meant the post office was closed but in my defense, so did my dad

My next project is a baby puff quilt, and I have 26/98 squares cut out for it! No photos yet, it's just a stack of squares lol

[pluralasking]

#One-Hundred

[pt: #one-hundred]

In order to celebrate 100 days of posting, here are 100 questions for you to answer! You can either answer them all at once, or let others send in the numbers they are most curious about!

Some of them are general questions, others are just really silly and should not be taken too serious. I put a lot of effort into coming up with all of these, so I truely hope you have fun with this!

For simplicity sake, all questions will use the words "System" and "Members".

1. What is your System name and / or the name you collectively go by?

2. Which word do you prefer to use for your System? (example: System, Collective, Constellation, ...)

3. What are your Systems origins, if you choose to label them?

4. Do you have any Subsystems?

5. Do you have any Sidesystems?

6. What is your opinion on you& / your& language and similar types?

7. What methodes do you use to keep track of your System and it's Members?

8. What is your Systems ways of communication?

9. Is communication hard or easy for you (and why is it the way it is)?

10. Do you view yourselves as parts of one person or as multiple people in one body?

11. Who are you out to as plural?

12. What languages do you collectively / one of you speak?

13. What is something you can't seem to collectively agree on?

14. If you have a collective Identity (such as Gender or Orientation), what is it?

15. Do you collectively identify as queer / LGBTQIA+?

16. Do you collectively identify as Otherkin, Alterhuman or Nonhuman?

17. Do you have a collective rentry / carrd / something along those lines? (feel free to share!)

18. What does switching feel like for you?

19. Are you Monoconscious, Polyconscious or something else?

20. What does fronting feel like for you?

21. How many System members do you have?

22. Which word / words do you prefer to use for members of your System?

23. Which age group seems to be the most common in your System?

24. Which gender seems to be the most common in your System?

25. Are there any talents / hobbies you picked up because of a Member?

26. Do you have any in-system relationships?

27. Do you label roles within your System (and if yes, which ones?)

28. Are most of your Members introjected, brainmade or something else?

29. Do you use names, emojis or something similar to sign off messages (and if yes, which ones and why?)

30. Do any of your System members use Xenogenders?

31. How do Members pick face claims?

32. Do you have any Introjects of popular sources?

33. Do you have any Introjects of unpopular sources?

34. Do you have nonhuman Members?

35. Do any of you use Typing Quirks?

36. Do all of you front, or only a selected amount?

37. Are there any Members who can't or prefer to not speak?

38. Are most of you short or tall in height?

39. Is there a Member that is collectively loved by all in the System?

40. Do any of you struggle with being front-stuck a lot of the time?

41. Do you have a Headspace (if not, is there a reason)?

42. What does your Headspace look like?

43. How do Members look like in Headspace? (example: Cartoony, Foggy, Realistic, ...)

44. Is there a reason why the Headspace looks the way it looks?

45. Is it easy for you to enter Headspace?

46. Do you remember what happened in Headspace when you switch into front?

47. Does time in Headspace pass (and if yes, is it at the same speed as in real life)?

48. What is your favourite place in Headspace?

49. Are there "NPCs" within your Headspace?

50. Are there any interesting fun facts about your Headspace?

51. Are there any "System Stereotypes" you fit into?

52. Who of you would be considered the "evil alter"? (in a lighthearted, joking manner)

53. What is your favourite inside-joke with a Member?

54. What is your favourite Plural meme?

55. Is there any character that you headcanon as plural?

56. Is there any show or movie that you believe is a good plural representation, despite that not being its intention?

57. Is there any song that you believe decribes your plural experience?

58. What about an artwork that describes your plural experience?

59. Which Member of your System do you believe to be the prettiest of them all?

60. Do you collectively have a lucky number?

61. When did you first discover your System?

62. How many Members did you know about during your Syscovery?

63. Was accepting your Plurality a challenge for you?

64. How did you learn about Plurality?

65. Where there any signs of your Plurality, if you look back at your past?

66. Do you think your Syscovery changed a lot in your life?

67. If you're out to others as plural, have they ever told you later on that they already thought about it before you realised?

68. What was the biggest struggle during your Syscovery?

69. Was there any big event that led to your Syscovery?

70. What is something you want questioning plurals to know?

71. Are you Neurodivergent (and if yes, how?)

72. Do you have any physical disability?

73. Do you have a dissociative disorder?

74. Do you have any other disorder?

75. Do symptom vary in intensity depending on the fronter?

76. Do you think your disability / disorder has an influence on your plurality?

77. Do you have amnesia of any kind?

78. Are there Members who deal better with symptoms than others?

79. Do your disorders / disabilities influence communication or switching within your System in any way?

80. Does being plural help with your disorders in any way? (example: another Member switching in to take care of the body during difficult times, ...)

81. Which is your favourite plural flag?

82. If you have one, which is your favourite plurality related tumblr blog?

83. What is a fun fact about your System?

84. What is a flavour of ice cream that describes you collectively?

85. Which pride flag is the prettiest, in your collective opinion?

86. If you collectively had to choose between being a sweet or a sour candy, which do you pick?

87. Your body always morphs into what the current fronter(s) look like, would you want this power or not?

88. Is there a Hatsune Miku in your System?

89. Who has been in your System the longest (if you can remember)?

90. If you collectively had to choose, would you rather only eat sweet foods or only eat savoury foods for the rest of your life?

91. If you collectively had to choose, would you pick to become a vampire or a werewolf?

92. Your body is transfered into one of your Members sources, which do you pick and why?

93. If all of you turned into animals right this second, which animals would we find in your System?

94. What would a Minecraft server with all of your Members look like? (example: chaotic, peaceful, laggy, ...)

95. If you could choose between only living in Headspace or only living in Meatspace (real life), which would you choose?

96. What topic would you collectively make a youtube channel about? (it can't be plurality!)

97. Which superpower would your body obtain, if you had to collectively decide on one?

98. Who would pick the coolest tattoo for the System and who would pick the worst?

99. If you only were allowed to eat one food for the rest of your life, but you would have to decide on the food collectively, what would it be and what would the decision making look like?

100. What is the most fun about doing polls and answering questions, in your opinion?

[qqtxt]

hi!! was wondering if you are okay with writing dad!txt maybe ? and if u are .. thoughts on dad!gyu with twins 🥹❔

this sounds so cute 🥺 wrote a little something with this and i hope you like it! 💞 (i focused on something a little different, hope that's okay!)

[🐯] double the trouble, double the blessing

✿ pairing: dad!gyu x reader / non.idol!au / fluff, silly / minor cursing (none with ill-intention!) / word count: 773 words ✿ the life of bliss is one as such with you in it (and the bundle of joys in them, too) [masterlist 🌸]

beomgyu hadn't expected life to gift him with the gift of twins but of course it does when you're a part of his timeline. the chaotic and rewarding life as a parent with two kids at the same time instead of one was not only double the blessing but indeed, double the effort. it was like a tag-team game in which you two constantly try to level the playing field with more experience and knowledge, hand-in-hand with equal amounts of nervousness and anxiety of wondering if you're doing the right thing.

and it seems like beomgyu catches onto your train of thought just as the clock strikes in the wee hours of three in the morning; the twins are put to sleep and yet, you're wide awake.

you feel beomgyu's arm on your waist shifting, the soft grunt he has as he peers up to you past half-lidded eyes in the dark that adjusts to the sight of you glowing in his line of sight. it makes you turn the cheek to confirm just what you had imagined; a sleepyhead who's also meant to be sleeping but here he was, looking at you.

"what is that pretty mind of yours thinking when you should be asleep?" he mumbles, shifting a little closer so he can look at you better.

you scoff a laugh, but your actions show otherwise when you scoot closer, rubbing a palm over his forearm on your waist, "shouldn't i be saying that to you?"

he shakes his head, "nah. only from me to you because clearly, our babies should have your brain," he snorts, "speak it to existence, y'know?"

you lightly hit his arm but soothe it over with a laugh, "idiot."

"yeah, but this idiot is your husband. so mind telling him why you're not sleeping when we've been battling to put those lovely, tiny beans to sleep?"

beomgyu notices how you're swallowing the lump in your throat, the way your eyes flicker down before they trickle back up to meet his own once more. his gaze visibly softens at the sight of you feeling vulnerable; like the air thickens with suspense.

"do you... think we're good parents?"

you watch as your words fill in beomgyu's mind; already you can hear him calling your name in a voice that completely melts the thoughts away when his expression changes. one filled with worry but soon is filled with devotion and adoration for you.

"it's just," you sigh, "i want them to be good people,"

at beomgyu's silence, you continue, "i want them to be kind and warm and thoughtful and–"you lick your lips, eyes fluttering shut just as beomgyu comes closer to lean his forehead onto yours"–the world is so scary now and it... it scares me."

a couple of breaths inhaled and exhaled, you're opening your eyes to the sight of such warmth and comfort wrapping itself around you like a safety net. it–he–smiles at you with such tenderness that makes your heart full; safe.

"i... i can't say i know what the right answer is because, shit, I'm scared, too," he chuckles nervously, and it makes you smile; albeit a little crooked. "but i know that as long as i have you, and you have me, there's nothing we can't overcome together. more so with our two beautiful children by our side."

"so," he breathes, a hand reaching up to pillow your cheek, "whatever comes our way, just know that we'll both be together to handle it... okay?"

beomgyu already knows the answer when you wiggle past his hold on you so you can lower down to press your face to his chest, arms snaking around his torso with a smile pressed to him, "okay."

((not even twenty minutes before you're able to drift off to sleep, the familiar sound of wailings jolt you awake, along with beomgyu who shifts at the movements of your body. before you can even sit up, he pins you down and shakes his head with a groan, "don't even–i'll get it. keep your butt here and go to sleep," "be quick and come back to cuddle me," you wave him off, but he's quick to give you a kiss to the cheek on his way up, "don't tempt me too much, i won't wanna leave then. the kids would need to learn the harsh reality of–"the sound of the wailings get louder that"–okay, I'm coming!" beomgyu's voice overlaps the mixture of sounds that you chuckle as he stumbles out of the bedroom. as the sounds of crying lowers, you make a mental note to make beomgyu's favourite breakfast the next morning.))

[howlingmod]

LIQUID SUNSHINE

summary - valk x reader , reader's also an idol .. smiles .. more valk pining than anything sorry

wc - i dunno ...

misc - very based on spltoon i wont even lie you are the ian bgm to his squid sistrs (< incomprehensible)

-Valk liked to keep a good eye on the music scene, seeing what everyone else was doing or if there were any new groups on the rise in crossroads- it's just exciting to him! He likes seeing how people innovate on trends and the styles that different artists bring to the table, and, from a business perspective, it's just good to know how the music scene's doing for flipside's sake ...

-He usually just kept an ear out on social media to see who everyone's talking about, and that's how he learned about you.

-You were a part of a band from one of the other regions, and apparently you guys were pretty popular there! He hadn't heard of you before, but it seems like you were just a well-kept secret, a hidden gem.

-It didn't take long for him to make plans to visit, see just how much of an idol you really were. He just wanted to make sure he got the full perspective, is all! (And, admittedly, he was just a little intrigued by some of the photos he seen ... he has eyes! Get off his case!)

-Needless to say, he was not disappointed. He made sure to visit when your band was supposed to be performing and he was decently surprised by the crowd that had formed. It was a smaller concert than he was used to (it's not easy being known by the grand majority of the inpherno ...), but everyone there seemed totally enthralled and happy to be there. You guys definitely had a big reputation for yourselves here, he was honestly a little sad it'd taken this long for him to find out about you guys ...

-Once the show was over, he made sure to try and talk to you all. He had to be careful about it, keeping his head down and sticking to the edges of the room, but he managed to get close without being recognized. After he quietly thanked the Heights for it being a night show (he wouldn't have been able to see the stage before getting someone shouting his name if it was daytime), he made his way over to you.

-You all seemed to be about even in popularity, none of you seeming particularly shafted or overhyped by your fans, but you'd been the one he heard about the most. (Though, that probably wasn't true. He probably heard about all of you the same amount and just paid the most attention when you were being focused on. Woops.) So, he figured it was only fair he tried talking to you.

The diguise he hastily threw together felt just a little silly now. Sure, it'd worked pretty well so far, but he was really starting to doubt that it would work up close like this. I mean, it's not exactly easy to hide horns like his and his fake voice-persona-mix was really starting to fall apart.

"Where'd you say you're from?" Your voice snapped him out of his thoughts. "Crossroads, I just wanted to see one of your guys' shows in person, they seemed pretty fun from everything I saw online," he answered honestly, smiling in a gesture you returned with your own. "Aw! I really hope you liked it then, I hope we were worth the travel..." "Oh, for sure! You guys are super talented! You've got such a unique style, I can definitely see how you pull such a big crowd." Ok, maybe he was laying it on thick, but he was being genuine! He was impressed! Whatever! You laughed at that, shifting in place and glancing off to the side, face feeling warm. "Thank you, I'm just glad people like our work, we put a lot of effort into it." He hummed in response, a mix between acknowledgement and shared opinion. Clearly, even if you two had very different scenes, you were still pretty alike, at least in how you viewed your work. A silence fell after that, just barely ebbing into uncomfortable before he shot up. "Oh, I totally forgot!" He started fumbling for something in his bag before hastily pushing over a vinyl he'd got before heading over here and a market he'd thrown in his bag only a little shamefully, "Would you mind?" You smiled at him, gingerly taking it from his hands, "Not at all, who should I make this out to?" He blanched, biting the inside of his lip hard. He hadn't thought of a name, at all. He stammered, glancing around the room quickly for some answer. Pen was so boring, Poster was obviously a lie, and he's not even entertaining Chair. You snickered, just barely failing to bite it back, "I'll just keep it general." His eyes shot back to you, silently letting out the breath he'd been holding, "Yeah, that works. Thanks." You waved your hand dismissively, "It's nothing, don't sweat it." You handed the vinyl back over to him, meeting his gaze again. There was a glimmer of something he couldn't quite name, perhaps because he was a little distracted by just how pretty you looked in this lighting. Sure, you'd been killer on stage, but it was different seeing you up close like this. Maybe he should've invested in closer seats ... Before he could think to bite his tongue, he was talking again, "You ever think about collabs?"

-He had a different kind of pep in his step when he got back to crossroads. He seemed to be in a constant state of distraction, always thinking about something or other enough to risk walking into walls a few times now. Sometimes he'd say it was music, some bar that he was stuck on. Othertimes, he'd just shake his head and say 'nothing,' before going back to staring off into space. Dom could see right through it, and while he couldn't read his mind, he figured it probably had to do with that person he kept seeing on his phone.

-Valk wasn't sure of where to go from here. He'd seen one of your concerts, he'd talked to you, even figured out you guys were open to working with other artists! Curiosity satiated, right? So then why were you still taking up so much space in his mind, often entirely seperated from your band and music?

-Should he have asked for your number? No, that would've been creepy. He knows more than well how fans can be about that sort of thing. Should he have just told you who he was, then? Ugh, that sounded so full of himself. Flipside might be famous, but that doesn't give him a free friendship card for everyone ever. He was pulling his hair out trying to figure out what he was missing here, what misstep he'd taken, by the time another concert came up.

-This one was different, rather than being a concert he and Dom performed at exclusively, this one had people from all around inpherno perform. It was a big deal, one that he was usually giddy about for weeks before. Seems like he really had been awfully distracted with how it slipped his mind ...

-He didn't have much time to mourn, however, when he noticed your band's name was on the list.

Before the show, there was a red carpet sort of ordeal. Musicians would show up dressed to the nines, flaunting their identity and background through their dresswear for everyone to see. It gave the public some nice photos to look at and some introductions to lesser-known artists with some of the impromptu interviews that cropped up with all the paparazzi. Plus, it now gave Valk an opportunity to talk to you again. It was hard to pull off his usually casual and relaxed demeanor whenever he'd pass photographers by, not wanting to deal with some big ordeal if he looked as nervous as he felt. Maybe you'd already walked? Where would you be then? Heights, what if you'd all pulled out last minute? Maybe you wouldn't even wanna talk to him anyway, did you think he was overhyped? Ugh, that was a whole new thing to worry about. What if he came off as pushy?- Just as he started to spiral, he'd caught a glimpse of familiar horns. Quickly turning to look, he'd seen you standing off in one of the staff-only areas, seemingly fixing up your outfit with all the fluffing and smoothing you were doing. He started over, minding his pace enough to not run over and freak you out. Whatever planned conversation starter he had on his tongue fell flat when you'd looked back at him. Your stage-wear had been perfectly translated to the event, dressed up enough to draw the eye but still retaining your usual sense of style enough to not come off as tryhardy. In shorter terms, you were a showstopper, a heartthrob- if his own heart's aching, fast beat was anything to go off of. "You look nice," he managed lamely. You took the weak compliment in stride, smiling as your hands finally left your top alone, "Thanks! You don't look half bad yourself." He smiled back at you, noticably relaxing, "Are you nervous at all?" "I mean, a little, but I think everyone gets a little bit of stage fright," you hummed, "it's always a little nerve-wracking, you just get better at managing it." "Huh, yeah, I can see that.." "What about you, are you nervous at all?" You shot him a look then, smile just a tinge more wry this time around. He straighted back up, subconsciously shifting in place as he laughed. "Ah, well, a little. It's different performing in front of a more diverse crowd, usually you just have to worry about people who already like your genre, but here you've gotta think about the variety of tastes in the audience," he hummed, steadily growing more comfortable as he talked. He might not be the best at talking to people he wants to impress (when did he start wanting to impress you?), but he considered himself pretty strong in his business sense. The greater mechanisms of being a musician came to him easier than making connections beyong shared interest. You gave a little noise of acknowledgement in response, falling quiet as you thought over his words. He could just barely hear the distant white noise of crowds chattering a room over the buzzing lights in here, fixing his gaze on some scuff on the ground for fear of staring. You suddenly shot up as the silence began to drag on a moment too long, turning your head back to him, "I almost forgot. You asked me about collabs at my concert," you started shuffling around your [ purse / pockets ], "I don't know if you were offering or anything, but if you were ..." you trailed off, holding out a small slip of paper to him. He didn't respond for a few seconds, staring blankly at the paper in surprise. Eventually, he rembered how to move his arms and speak, reaching out to take the slip from you, carefully unfolding it to reveal digits. "You uh... recognized me then, I'm guessing." "You have a pretty memorable face." He sucked in a breath through his teeth, pointedly ignoring the warmth crawling up the back of his neck, "Ah."

[colliope]

How date-able are twst boys? ♡

inspired by @sunsguilt

Features all chars, and gets pretty suggestive btw. Otherwise mostly crack +fluff

a/n: my first writing! I hope u enjoy :) if not then go die i guess

﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋ ♡Heartslabyul ♡

Riddle Rosehearts - I don't ljke him. If we're talking pre-overblot he'd banish you to that headlock thing with his unique magic if you ever tried to ask him out or flirt with him. Post-overblot hed be really shy in getting into a relationship but wants to be cared for and protected. But he's not standing up for u in front of his mom tho you'll have to deal with her urself

6/10 he’s a sweet boy, just too bossy and not assertive enough to his mom. Divorceablity is quite high with this one.

Cater Diamonds - low-key relatable to me. BUT. His slang gets annoying after a while. His constant posting without peoples permission is weird too. Picture this. He's meeting your family for the first time, and you sit to have dinner. Cater takes a pic of you guys and posts it with the caption "With bae their fam, I'm a bit nervous guys wish me luck!🥺"#girldad #boymom #saveme Your family assumed it's his humor. WRONG. It's his way of coping with his uncomfortability. When it's silent during dinner he says" OH EM GEE GIRLYPOPS!!!, this food is so SLAY💅!! Tysm bestiessss" Your family gives him the nastiest side eye. He never speaks again. 

7/10 he seems to be a pretty sweet and understanding person, just needs better ways to express himself . Also he calls your mother queenie.

Trey Clover - he’s an interesting guy. You'll typically see him as an npc, but he's much more than that. Have you seen his *tips fedora * "m'lady" stare?? Yeah there's definitely something strange going on there. He's a pretty family oriented guy tho, and he loves to bake for his s/o and to provide comfort and care.

8/10 he's probably one of the more normal ones that I would actually date. Or be friends with. Just keep one eye open when your sleeping with ur with him tho

Ace Trappola- I don't understand how someone could even like him. He's the kinda kid to push you off the swing during recess and when you tell the teacher he'll go like "NUH UH!! THEY HIT ME FIRST!!" . Plus he's canonically not a good partner lmaoooo

3/10 he’s not even a middle schooler. Too pebble brained. Don't date a gremlin like him. maybe if he finds someone like him he might maintain a steady relationship.

Deuce Spades- no thoughts head empty. He needs a little direction in life but he's got a goal in mind. He's a lil stupid but he's getting there. He's such so sweet and silly you have to love him. But he needs to mature a bit before entering a long term relationship 

6/10 not my type, I would go for his mom instead. Plus his dad is literally dr.eggman, that explains everything. but yeah he's got what It takes, be kind to him. He's fragile. Like an egg.

ᓚᘏᗢ Savannaclaw ᓚᘏᗢ  

Leona Kingscholar - girl he is 21 years old he should be in the CLUB!!!!! But no. He's sitting alone eating Kentucky fried chicken alone on a Friday night. If he really wanted someone, he could go for it, but he seriously can't be bothered. If you do manage to get him attached to you it'll take him a while to fully love you as much as you love him, as well as put in the same amount of effort .

7/10- I don't think he genuinely needs a partner. He's got his own issues to sort out. But when he falls, he falls hard. I wonder how hard his abs are.

Ruggie Bucchi - Rugbartholomew !!!! The scrunkly. The scrimp. It'll be so fun horsing around with this guy. Being his s/o is like being his partner in crime. It'll be fun, and you guys support each other . He really cares abt his loved ones and always tries to bring something to the table for them, literally and metaphorically. Midnight runs to seven eleven. He's working 10 jobs at a time. He's EMPLOYED. He's a boyemployee. He just needs his girlboss to complete him.

5/10 he's a bit scummy tbh. It'll take him a while to fully trust someone. He’d do some sleazy things for money. It also gives you the ick when he smells donuts and starts floating towards them.

Jack Howl- he's surprisingly normal. He's got a set sleep schedule , he's healthy, he has set routines, and healthy coping mechanisms. But that's the thing. as much as he is such a caring and gentle lover, these routines take up most of his life and time. He would be waking you up at ungodly hours for a morning jog only for you to pass out midway to Mount Kilimanjaro. .

7/10 -he dates for marriage, and he’s really serious about his future and starting a family. So he’s such a loyal and protective guy. He's just too much of a gym bro. He prefers pre-workout over partners. Also he unironically likes alpha/werewolf quotes.

𓆝𓆟𓆜 Octivinelle 𓆝𓆟𓆜

Azul Ashengrotto- I love him so much. He's so me guys you don't get it (capitalism) but that aside, HES SO DAMN WEIRD LMAOOOOOO like he thinks he has rizz but he just looks like a Reddit 'nice guy'. Legitimately says m'lady. He gives off the fake dating trope to me. He'd date you to get something out of you but then actually fall hard bc he's touch starved and longs to feel emotionally vulnerable but is afraid of it. So he's an absolute mess in a relationship and needs a lot of reassurance. But yeah he's pretty bitchless 

7/10 he's gorgeous, but he sounds like that one pufferfish singing thing. I relate to him a lot so he gets points. Also since his parents are divorced he definitely has a high divorceability. I have a theory in the works that since we don't know who his biological father is, it might just be Mr. Krabbs. Like it's never said he's a full octopus (to my knowledge). SpongeBob and squidward are Floyd and Jade respectively. SpongeBob X twisted wonderland when?

Floyd Leech- he drank battery acid as a baby. Like dude you're in love with a nuclear fission bomb. If you like Floyd, you're just as fucked up as he is. It's okay tho, he's a very physically affectionate guy and may be overly possessive and obsessive but that's just his charm dw abt it. He also does thing like "if you hug me, expect a little nibbling on your earlobe 😝" and he bites off your entire ear.

2/10 his kisses taste like fish and sheet metal, and he licks short peoples heads when no one's looking. 

Jade Leech- if you saw him eat mushrooms well no you didn't because if he eated mushrooms then he would have not eating mushroom bc no . His version of love is psychological warfare . He’s a mysterious guy. Let's set a scenario for him. You're sitting in the monstro lounge. You see a tall, dark and handsome man across the bar with a mysterious aura. You catch his gaze and quickly dart your eyes away. But his never stop staring at you. He comes up to you and you guys chat naturally . He buys you a drink, your favorite actually. He knows all the ways to make you swoon. He’s so dreamy. Then he says that he put cyanide in your drink as joke. Then he lets it slip he's been stalking you for days. You find out his a wanted criminal. And end scene. Yeah that's romance with him. 

4/10 he's an attentive and observant guy, but sadly that's way before you guys are dating and he's a psych ward escapee.

𓄼𖣠 Scarabia 𖣠𓄹

Kalim Al-Asim - OTTERRRR!!! I love otters. He’s like deuce. But rich. And more innocent(ignorant). He’s so head over heels for his s/o bro. He’d shower them with his love and gifts. He still has a lot to learn in life, but he's willing to give it all to you. You should be honored.

6/10 he's my son. Treat him well. I can’t forgive him for what he did to Jamil tho. 

Jamil Viper- AWWHH YEAH BABY!!! He’s so Fine oml. But personal bias aside, he's very much insane. He’s just a closeted insane.pre-overblot he wouldn't even date u bro he would pretend u don't exist but then hate u being around Kalim. Post-overblot he accidentally avoids you because he has no idea how to express or hide his feelings for you. Okay but definitely has w rizz. Azul seethes at the sight him. Like chewing up his fedora and spitting it out type shit. Men wish they were Jamil. 

8/10 he's so wifey, he can cook he can clean  I will give him a ring if u don't. Minus points for the attempted murder, but still he's pwetty so I forgive him (*^ω^*) . He probably once got hit in the head with a basketball with you looking.

⊹𖥔˖࣪ Pomefiore⊹𖥔˖࣪ 

Vil Schoenheit - okay this one's hard cus he's literally just my mother. But more fierce diva cunty. I've been sleeping on his character ngl, but now that I think about it he's pretty relatable. Like everyone wishes to be beautiful, in some sort of way. I think in a relationship he'll need some reassurance about his looks, but also about it his partner only wants him for his looks. I don't think he actually has high standards, he would probably want someone pretty normal, but also takes good care of themselves, not just appearance-wise.

8/10 he's pretty good as an s/o, but the fame aspect will make things very difficult. Also expect him to be brutally honest with you or pick apart your appearance. He's just trying make sure u look ur best bro he's caring like that. Would make an excellent rupauls drag race judge.

Rook Hunt - I have sent a nuke to your exact coordinates. Why would u want him bro he’s Fr*nch AND a felon. There's no good aspects of this relationship he has negative rizz and his fucking bob makes him look like SpongeBob took the gay potion from the dark web at 3 am. also, he's already mentally married you and has your wedding dress prepared as well as a loan taken out for your new family home before you even know his name. 

0/10 Mr Electric KILL HIM!!! Probably the kinda guy to post a selfie captioned "who want me" and then before epel can reply "the mental hospital " his post gets taken down due to mass reporting and his account gets suspended and he's put on an fbi watchlist.

Epel Felmier- ngl mood bro. It's so annoying being seen as fragile and weak simply for your inherent femininity.I believe in a relationship he'd want someone that tells him what he wants to hear. He'll have some trouble accepting some facts, especially with his anger issues, but he'll learn to sort that out. He's a sweet boy at heart. He just feels he needs to overcompensate due to his appearance.

6/10 I'm not an anger issues kinda guy. It takes resilience to deal with, something i don't have for that. He probs listens to red pill podcasts while on a tractor. He's a 14 year old boy who just discovered Andrew Tate (he's deathly afraid of women)

꒷꒦꒷Ignihyde꒷꒦꒷

Idia Shroud- no. I have no idea how you could have feelings for him if you've never seen him. And definitely not online bc 1. He would never engage in that 2. Theres nothing romantic about the call of duty lobby. Also another guy with negative rizz. But not like in the creepy way like rook but in a loser way. He genuinely believes he is unfit for a relationship and that he is undeserving of love. If somehow he finds someone like that he'd be attached to them until the day he dies.

8/10 I love me a loser boy. He def has trust issues and paranoia but who doesn't in this game. He's rich so he could spoil u with the battle pass for literally any game. Plus ortho ends up becoming your little brother too. It's a win-win. Also don't ask him if the carpet matches the drapes.

Ortho Shroud- would probs hire u to date his brother out of genuine fear the dude would be alone for the rest of his life.

𓆩 ♡ 𓆪Diasomnia𓆩 ♡ 𓆪

Malleus Draconia - his prehistoric charm and awkward demeanor had captivated you, it seems. But yeah he's the kinda guy to say lines like "For the world could be dying and I would have never noticed it because I would have been not paying attention to the world itself, but would be gazing into your eyes watching them shine like the stars". He's soooo down bad. he's so happy to finally have someone to love him. Very very very loyal. But sometimes toes the line of yandere. 

9/10 he's so wonderful. All he wants is to love and be loved. But he still thinks of romance in this Victorian ages and gets hard when he sees your ankles or sumn.

Lilia Vanrouge- this Gent a wee bit peculiar innit? He has connections within the furry community that could destroy your life in seconds. He's everything. He’s everywhere. All at once. He genuinely has dabbled in many different things over the years , so he'll never run out of stories to tell. Many 3 am Minecraft dates. Those upside down  Spider-Man kisses. He’s more than ready to settle down with someone have kids of his own. Maybe have a girl. Name her draculaura, you know the rest. He probably went to monster high ngl. But he's a much more mature kinda guy. Definitely knows what he wants in a relationship. He's reasonable too. But you guys don't sleep in the same bed he hangs from the ceiling in a sleeping bag.

9/10 he's a bit vertically challenged and sometimes summons ancient demons by accident. He whispers sweet nothings into your ear in forgotten languages.

Silver - he's the female gaze bro. He's gorgeous . He’s legitimately a normal dude. But I don't think he's even been near a woman before. No rizz. Just soldier and eepy. But he definitely wants an s/o who can care for him a lot considering his narcolepsy. It's something that worries him a lot, and needs a person who's full of love to give, not only to him but to his family. But you're always welcome to nap with him underneath a tree in the warm sun.

7/10 he's a bit narrow-minded, only having a few goals set in mind and a strict regimen as a soldier. You have to work around that and his disorder in order to be his s/o. It's a lot dude. Especially when he leans in for a kiss but falls asleep inside and hits his head on the way down and gets brain damage.

Sebek Zigvolt- this gator wouldn't last a day in the Everglades bruh ‼️🚫I actually despise him. I have a picture of him in my room that I chew on when I get angry. Why is he always yelling. Why is he so obsessed with malleus even outside of his job. Actually, he probably leaves you for malleus. no chance with him bruh. But seriously you need to be super determined to get with him if you manage go past his alarm clock-like exterior. he's lonely.

3/10 I would turn him into a purse.his version of dirty talk is going "do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior wakasama-" and then you make him put his clothes back on and leave.

﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋

Thank you for reading!  ₍˄·͈༝·͈˄₎◞ ̑̑

[thenukacolachallenge]

In defense of the One Piece Live Action Adaptation’s stylistic choices: A Cosmetologist’s Perspective

Hello! My name is Dia, and I’ve been a licensed cosmetologist since 2015(almost a decade now!). For those unaware of what exactly that entails, cosmetology is traditionally defined as ‘the professional skill or practice of beautifying the face, hair, and skin’. For me specifically, I have worked in the fields of hairstyling/haircutting/hair coloring, skincare, nail care, and makeup application(both traditional makeup and FX makeup) in my eight years of being licensed to work in these industries.

The reason I’m making this post today is to talk about the Netflix adaptation of the hit manga/anime One Piece, and specifically to address a lot of complaints I’ve seen about the wardrobe, makeup, and hair choices of the main cast thus far. I’ve seen quite a bit in the way of complaints, and a lot of it seems to be, to put it as politely as I can, not based in reality of how makeup, hair, and acting in general works, and I’d like to address some of it to possibly explain why certain choices were made, to maybe help people come to a better understanding of the why and how of these sorts of decisions.

I’d like to also, before I dive in, note that I am not in any way, shape, or form affiliated with this production! These are merely my personal thoughts and speculation as someone with some experience in this field. None of this is set in stone unless I provide evidence from the cast and crew to back my claims up. As well, I’d like to point out that I have next to no experience working on film sets(I have worked on VERY small productions in the past, for things that go up on sites like Youtube and not Netflix lmao), but I am married to a person who has a degree in film and has worked on live production sets before, and I did defer to them for a lot of the knowledge that I lack with live action production specifically.

I’d also like to point out that while I’m not mad at anyone who has the critiques I cover in this post, I may come across as a bit exasperated. I promise this isn’t me being angry at anyone, but more of just.... I’ve seen the same critiques over and over again, and to me, a lot of the choices seem fairly obvious as to why they were made, and some of the critiques come across as extremely silly to me. This is of course due to my own background related to these sorts of things. I promise I mean no offense or disrespect to anyone saying these things! I just want to make this to be able to help others understand why production may have made the choices they did.

Now, under the cut, I’ll be discussing some common complaints I’ve heard with regards to this production, and provide some potential explanation as to why these changes were made. On to the post! It is quite hefty, so please bear with me.

~

First and foremost, the most common complaint I’ve seen thus far is some variation of the phrase “I’ve seen cosplayers that look more accurate to the characters than this show does,” and I’d like to address this one first, as I think it’s the one that probably frustrates me the most. It specifically frustrates me because comparing cosplayers to actors feels like an apples to oranges situation. The two groups are designed to do entirely different things! Cosplayers do typically look more like the characters they portray than a live action actor will, and that’s a very common occurrence, but there’s a reason for that: the two groups are not doing the same thing. 

Both cosplayers and actors put a huge amount of time and effort into their work, and I love cosplay personally. However, cosplayers are typically in their outfits for 8-10 hour days at most for a weekend, doing things like photoshoots where they have to pose, walking around conventions, and maybe filming a small amount of video(Not to say that this takes no effort! Please do not take this as such, I have helped friends with cosplays and I fully understand and appreciate the level of dedication and hard work that goes into it!). Actors, on the other hand, are in hair and makeup on set for 10-12 hours a day(if not longer) for weeks to months on end, and have to be fully in character while filming, as well as(specifically for a show like One Piece) doing things like stunt work, being submerged in water, and being on boats with lots of wind and ocean spray. There are certain things you simply cannot do, hair/makeup/costume-wise as an actor that you can as a cosplayer, so I really don’t think this comparison in specific is being very fair to the actors and the crew who are in charge of makeup, hair, and wardrobe in this case.

I’ll be getting into a lot more specifics below, but I will be deferring to my main point here very often, which is this: The safety and comfort of the actors is far more important than 1-to-1 accuracy in the way cosplayers can do, especially for minor changes in appearance.

Now that I’ve addressed that specifically, I’d like to move onto some common complaints I’ve heard for each specific main cast member, and my opinion on these complaints, as well as listing potential reasons as to why these things may have been changed!

~

We’ll start with everyone’s favorite funky little pirate king, Monkey D. Luffy:

For Luffy, the number one complaint I’ve seen is the live action’s choice in shoes. in the manga/anime, Luffy wears and fights in flip-flops, but this was changed in the live action. This was changed for a very simple reason, and Emily Rudd, the actor that portrays Nami, actually addressed this on Instagram while being asked by a fan:

Simply put, trying to do the kind of stunt work that Luffy has to do is not safe in a shoe like a flip flop. This is something that falls very completely under my original point of the comfort and safety of the actors being more important than 100% accuracy. It would be entirely too easy for Iñaki or someone he’s in a scene with to get hurt if he weren’t wearing the proper footwear. Fairly simple explanation there!

This is really the only gripe with Luffy costume-wise I could find, to be honest! I have seen a few people saying that he doesn’t have his signature undereye scar, but he does, although it’s not as visible as it is in the original work:

They kept him fairly true to the spirit of his original character, and although I don’t know why they chose to give him this specific potato shoe footwear, it is what they went with, and the main takeaway is that it was for safety reasons.

~

Onto our favorite wayward booze-loving swordsman, Roronoa Zoro:

Similarly to Luffy, I’ve only seen one main complaint regarding Zoro, and it involves his use of swords. In the anime/manga, Zoro has pioneered a specific fighting style called “Santoryu”, known in English as “Three Sword Style”: one sword in each hand, and a third in his mouth.

I’ve seen several people wondering where his third sword(the one that goes in the mouth) is from the trailers, and I was initially wondering this as well, since in most of his action scenes that have been revealed so far, he seems to only be holding either one sword or two. However, there was a brief clip(I’m talking, like, maybe one second) of him utilizing his three-swords style in the teaser trailer released in mid-June:

Now, as to potential reasons as to why this seems to be the only clip of him thus far using all three of his swords:

1. Again, this could be for the safety of the cast. Obviously being a cartoon character, Zoro wouldn’t have to worry about potential damage to his jaws and teeth, but Mackenyu, Zoro’s actor, is a real person who does have to worry about such things, especially as an actor who relies on(among other things) his facial expressions to earn a living. Carrying something like a sword, even a prop sword, in your mouth for long periods of time cannot be good for the health of your jaw and teeth, and I could understand if they chose not to film him with a sword in his mouth very often for this reason alone. 2. It could also be he uses all three swords less often so he can still deliver lines while fighting. In an SBS(”Shitsumon o Boshū Suru”, when translated means “I’m Taking Questions”, essentially an AMA for mangaka to answer questions their readers may have), Eiichiro Oda, the author of One Piece, once answered a question about how Zoro was able to talk with a sword in his mouth with quite a funny answer:

Sadly, in real life, Mackenyu cannot speak through his heart as Zoro does, so it’s possible that some of the scenes have been changed for ease of dialogue. 3. It’s also entirely possible that he uses his three-sword style as often as he does in the anime and manga, and the small amount of what we’ve seen in the trailers isn’t necessarily the full picture. I imagine this is something we’ll have to wait for the full series to drop to find out definitively one way or another!

~

Now, onto our lovely citrus-fruit-loving navigator, Nami!

I have seen two main complaints with Nami’s looks, and I’ll start with her hair, as it’s the more common one I’ve been seeing. I have seen a large number of people saying that her hair looks like(and I am slightly paraphrasing here) “a bad cosplay wig”, and honestly? I think this is just not true, and either comes from unrealistic expectations or just plain being mean-spirited.

First and foremost, this is very obviously human hair:

Now, I don’t know what kind of bad cosplays y’all have been seeing, but the ones I’ve seen start with synthetic hair wigs, not human hair ones(This is not to say synthetic wigs are inherently bad for cosplay! Simply that they are much harder to work with, though they are cheaper than human hair wigs). As well, I know for a fact Emily Rudd got her hair done similarly to this, to the point where I wasn’t actually sure that this WAS a wig at first(this picture comes directly from her Instagram account):

This is very obviously almost the exact same haircut as the wig chosen for Nami, save with more layers, and even the color choices are similar. To say that this wig looks like a “bad cosplay” is honestly just flat-out wrong in my professional opinion, and moreover, it’s quite rude. In addition, to me at least, it really looks like the wig was styled to resemble anime-esque hair, which is actually quite common among cosplayers. If anything, I have the same complaint on Nami’s wig that I also have with Sanji’s(which I’ll definitely be touching on later): it’s not thick enough. Both Nami and Sanji’s wigs just seem like they could use more hair attached to the cap in general, but especially for Nami’s, I really don’t think it’s as bad as people are saying.

I think this “bad cosplay wig” complaint specifically is mainly coming from people who only see the tail end of cosplay productions, which tends to be photos that are often times edited to look a certain way, which can often include doctoring the hair. There’s nothing wrong with a cosplayer editing their photos, for the record, but it can absolutely give unrealistic expectations to those who aren’t familiar with this practice, and I personally think this may be where these comments are coming from. Obviously you cannot photoshop every frame of a live action production, at least not without a lot of time and effort on the behalf of the post-production team, and I highly doubt Netflix would have greenlit something like that for such a small detail. It’s simply not realistic.

As well, I do find it quite interesting that I have seen far less complaints about the wigs of characters such as Zoro or Sanji(played by Taz Skylar(as stated previously, I have seen complaints about Sanji’s wig and I will be speaking on that later)) than I have about Nami’s. I’m not saying it’s outwardly misogynistic, but it does make one consider such things.

The only other complaint I’ve seen directed towards Nami’s live action look(and truth be told, I’ve seen this one far less than the comments on the hair) is the discrepancy between Emily Rudd’s eye color and Nami’s. As you can see from the above photos, Emily Rudd does not have brown eyes, which are the color of Nami’s eyes:

Now, I didn’t actually see this complaint until after the first full trailer dropped on July 21st. Specifically, I saw someone saying that it seemed strange that Steven John Ward, who portrays Dracule Mihawk in the series, is wearing colored contacts to better resemble his character, while Emily is not.

Now, there could be a lot of potential reasons for this, including that Emily may simply be not wearing colored contacts because they irritate her eyes(going back to my original point of the comfort and safety of the cast). But more importantly, I think, is that Mihawk’s unique eyes are directly related to his character, specifically through his epithet: Hawkeye. This is a seemingly important enough part of his character, to the point where it’s directly mentioned in his title. Nami has no such distinctions with her eye color, so I really don’t think it’s as important, and at the end of the day, it takes nothing away from her character to have a different eye color. So, while I don’t know the particular reason she doesn’t have brown contacts, I also don’t think it’s nearly as important for that detail to be as canonically correct as it is for Mihawk. To me, this particular comparison is another apples to oranges situation.

~

Onto our beloved liar, God Usopp himself:

Of course, the number one talking point I’ve seen about the live action Usopp is that Jacob Romero Gibson, Usopp’s actor, is missing his trademark long nose.

As One Piece fans know, one of Usopp’s characteristic traits is his tendency to lie. His name, Usopp, comes from a portmanteau of the Japanese word “uso”, which means lie, and Aesop, the famous Greek storyteller and the namesake for Aesop’s Fables. Because of his propensity towards tall tales, Usopp’s anime and manga character designs also added a reference to another character who’s known for lying, Pinocchio, whose nose grows when he lies. Thus, Usopp in his cartoon form has a long nose!

Considering how many gags in the story involve Usopp’s nose, a lot of fans were surprised to see that aspect of him not carried over into the live action. After the drop of the official trailer, seeing that the character Arlong had his signature sawshark-esque long nose in prosthetic form, there was even more confusion about this choice.

(As an aside, Arlong’s costuming choices will not be discussed in this post, as it’s long enough with just the main cast, but believe me, I do have Opinions on it lmao)

Now, as to why the show chose to not give Jacob a prosthetic long nose to better match Usopp’s appearance, I don’t know the specifics. I can only speculate, and really, the only things I could feasibly come up with are the following:

1. It’s entirely possible that for whatever reason, Jacob is unable to wear a prosthetic nose. This could be due to several things, including allergies to either the prosthetic material itself or the adhesive used to attach it, or the makeup required to blend the prosthetic into his skin. If this is the case, then it of course goes back to my main point here that the comfort of the cast takes precedence over accuracy to the source material. 2. The only other explanation that really makes sense to me is that they did in fact attempt the nose in costume fitting, and either the absurdity of it was just either too distracting to audiences/the crew/Netflix execs/possibly even Oda himself, or it could have potentially been a problem during stunt work. Usopp primarily fights with a slingshot, and I have no experience with slingshots so this is just me taking a stab in the dark, but it’s possible that the extra length on the nose could have possibly messed with the actor’s depth perception while attempting to act out Usopp’s fight scenes.

Overall, I genuinely don’t know why they decided to axe Usopp’s long nose. But at the end of the day, I know that for me specifically, this is a minor detail, and not something I see as a genuine problem, nor will it ruin the immersion for me. That being said, I can definitely understand the criticisms here. I’m hoping that a lot of these changes will eventually be answered, perhaps in some behind-the-scenes footage that comes out after the show’s release.

The only other comment on Usopp’s costuming that I’ve seen is much more easily explainable, and I also haven’t seen nearly as much in the way of commenting on it: Usopp’s hair is not in dreads in the anime and manga, and instead is kept natural, especially before the timeskip.

As we can see in the above picture, Usopp seems to keep his hair fairly natural, whereas Jacob, Usopp’s actor, sports dreads in his portrayal of Usopp, as seen in the above photo.

Luckily, I haven’t seen very many comments on this, and I think that’s a good thing, since the explanation seems fairly simple to me. Usopp in canon is based off of (mostly unused in this day and age, for good reason: a lot of the design is highly based off racist blackface caricatures) old-school anime portrayals of Black/African people. As well, in an SBS, a fan asked where the Straw Hats would be based out of if One Piece was set in the real world:

As stated above, Usopp would come from Africa! As well, if I recall correctly, Oda had a hand in casting the live action adaptation, which all points to the undeniable proof that Usopp is and has always been intended to read as Black/African in some form.

The reason I bring this all up specifically, is because of the way African hair grows. Obviously not all Black/African people are a monolith, and even among curly haired people there are different curl tightness and growth patterns, but for a large portion of people of African descent, their hair would not grow similarly to the way Usopp’s is portrayed in his cartoon form. His hair is indeed curly, but it grows down, similar to most wavy or straight hair types. This is especially evident in his post-timeskip hair growth:

Usopp’s hair, which was once above his shoulders before the two year time skip, now extends down past his shoulders. This is not necessarily inaccurate to Black/African hair types, as, since stated previously, different curl patterns and tightness exist, and even with super tight curl patterns, if grown out long enough, the hair will eventually grow down, due to the weight of the hair strands. But for a lot of Black/African hair types, the natural hair tends to grow outwards, instead of downwards(or at the very least it grows outwards before it begins to grow downwards). This type of hair is typically referred to as afro-textured hair, and is the namesake for the afro, a hairstyle wherein someone with afro-textured hair combs out their natural hair growth in the shape it naturally grows.

Now, I’m not familiar with Jacob Romero Gibson’s work prior to One Piece, and I have never seen his hair without his dreads, therefore I can’t say with 100% certainty how his hair grows naturally. However, he does have an Instagram account, and on this account he has photos of himself. I looked through his account, and although he doesn’t seem to have any photos of himself without his dreads(indeed, they seem to be his signature hairstyle) as an adult, he does have a few photos of himself from his childhood. I don’t personally feel comfortable linking his baby photos to this post, so I’m not going to do so here. However, they are visible there, and from what I can see from those photos, he does indeed have afro-textured hair. This may not be 100% accurate to how his hair grows now as an adult, as lots of things can change hair growth types and curl patterns, including things such as hormones, medications, stress levels etc. In my professional opinion, I feel fairly confident in saying that Jacob most likely has afto-textured hair, and therefore his natural hair likely wouldn’t fully grow in the exact same way that Usopp’s does. 

Overall, I only bring all of this up to say that if Jacob did have his hair in a natural, non-protective style in his portrayal of Usopp, I feel that the same people who are complaining about the dreads now would likely complain that his natural hair doesn’t match Usopp’s exactly. Either way, Usopp’s hair is not a huge characteristic that defines who he is as a character(especially not in the way that his nose is), and therefore I don’t think that him having dreads in the live action takes away from the character in any way.

~

Finally, we’ll discuss the Straw Hat crew’s first-rate cook who attacks through kicks, Black Leg Sanji:

Sanji has the unfortunate position of being the character who’s had the most changes to his design from his cartoon to the live action, and there’s a lot of criticism that’s been lobbed his way. Some of it I think is fair, but there’s also quite a bit that I think is honestly quite silly. So without further ado, I’ll go through the four main critiques I’ve seen, and my opinions of each.

Let’s start with the one I’ve heard the most often, and the one that’s easily my least favorite to hear about at this point: the missing eyebrow swirl. Maybe it’s just because Sanji is personally my favorite on the crew and I’m just paying the most attention to him, but my god, the way some people are going on about the eyebrow, you’d think the showrunners made the decision to axe his signature curly eyebrow specifically to spite the Sanji fangirls. I think a lot of the complaining about the lack of eyebrow swirl would simply be changed to complaining about how bad the eyebrow swirl would look if they’d tried to keep it, and I’ll explain why below.

Like many of the costuming changes made to the live action adaptation, I don’t know the exact reasoning as to why they decided to get rid of the eyebrow swirl. As someone who has worked as a makeup artist, however, I do have a theory as to why they got rid of it, and my theory is fairly simple: it is just not really very possible to create a realistic-looking eyebrow swirl that reads well on a film camera.

Yes, the makeup team could have very easily drawn on a swirl with a brow pencil or some pomade and called it a day. However, it would have been fairly obvious that it was in fact drawn on, especially on a film shoot. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about the missing swirl point to both cosplayers and stage actors as “proof” that it could be done, but again, this is an apples to oranges situation. Stage makeup(like that used for stage actors), photoshoot makeup(like what cosplayers would employ), and live action film makeup are three entirely different types of makeup application, and while they each have their own merits, that doesn’t inherently mean they translate into other mediums, and this is something that you have to learn fairly early on as a makeup artist if you want to continue getting work. If you are doing makeup professionally, you have to keep a lot of things in mind, one of the biggest things being how your work will read on camera, specifically the camera your canvas will be in front of. You have to keep in mind things like flash photography, shine versus matte, whether or not post-production editing will be involved, and the like. A fairly popular example of this is makeup influencer James Charles’ old meet-and-greet photo, which has become a meme since surfacing. Charles was used to only doing makeup and being photographed a certain way, leading to him using a setting powder that didn’t lend well to flash photography, and made him look like he was wearing makeup that was far too pale for his skin tone, when in reality it was just a makeup product that didn’t work for the kind of camera it was in front of:

Another example is basically the entire Cosmo Queens video series done for Cosmopolitan magazine’s youtube page, and I’ll use Kandy Muse’s video as a specific example, since she uses her natural brows in addition to her makeup. This series focused on the makeup of drag queens, and it’s very obvious when watching these videos that there’s a huge discrepancy between makeup meant for the stage and makeup meant for other avenues. Drag queens typically are live performers, and there is a common saying among drag artists, which is to “paint(apply makeup) for the back of the house(so that even those in the back row can see your makeup)”. On stage, Kandy Muse’s makeup is quite stunning, but it’s very clear that it’s not fully meant for the editorial style that Cosmo uses during these videos:

Even from a distance, you can very clearly see where Kandy’s real eyebrows sit versus her makeup. And while this is obviously an extreme example, it’s even more obvious when zoomed in, which film cameras have to do often in order to capture the expressions of their actors:

In a similar vein, film cameras, which are typically designed to catch a lot of definition and lend better to a more realistic look, likely would not be very kind to a drawn on part of an eyebrow. Without any hair growing there naturally to make the eyebrow makeup look more realistic, it would be very obvious that it was makeup, and would likely be more distracting to audiences(especially first-timers to the series; it’s important to keep in mind that Netflix would want to cater to those people as well as long-time One Piece fans) than omitting it entirely would. In addition, we have to take into account the actor, Taz Skylar, and his natural hair growth and the direction of his brows.

As is visible from the photo, Taz Skylar’s natural brow grows downwards at the end, whereas Sanji the fictional character’s brow grows upwards into his swirl at the end. In order to match the character 1-to-1 and change his own natural features, Taz would have to either shave/pluck/wax the entire outer half of his brow(which for an actor would be extremely inconvenient for other projects and would be an absolute pain to grow back out), or he would have to sit longer in the makeup chair to have his brow covered by FX makeup, which takes extra time and effort and could throw off the timing of the entire shoot. In addition, neither of these potential fixes would necessarily make the obviously-drawn-on swirl look good and read well on film. Add on the facts that Taz’s character is fully submerged in water in at least one scene, if not more, and has several fight scenes, and it’s not even a guarantee that the makeup swirl would even last throughout the shoot.

I’ve also seen people say that they could have added the swirl in post, but I think that’s it’s very unrealistic for Netflix to greenlight that for a minor detail such as a singular visible eyebrow.

While I am very sad that they weren’t able to translate Sanji’s signature brow to the live action adaptation, I think a lot of the complaints regarding him not having it and insistence that the production should have included it are entirely overblown, and are mainly being made by people who don’t have a lot of knowledge of what goes into film makeup versus other types of makeup. And while Sanji’s brows are fairly important to his character, this fact doesn’t actually come into the story until far after the timeskip, and we don’t even know if the live action will get another season outside of this one. I really hope this can help explain why they may have made the decision to nix the brow swirl for people who are still concerned about it, since from what I’ve seen, it seems to be the number one point of contention when it comes to live-action Sanji.

Next, I’d like to speak a bit about Sanji’s hair. Now, I have some complaints of my own about the wig used on Taz, but most of the criticism I’ve seen regarding the wig actually revolves around why it doesn’t cover his eye completely, as Sanji’s hair does. This is something that seems fairly obvious to me: Taz has to do a lot of stunt work, and he needs to be able to see! This is a potential safety issue more than anything else, and therefore goes back to my main original point. As well, there’s no real way to make the hair not move without completely overloading it with product, which, again, would be very obvious on a film camera, and likely wouldn’t read nearly as well as people think.

As for me, my personal critiques around the wig are just how sparse it is. Sanji has a lot more hair than is in the wig, and I really think a wig that had a little more hair attached to the base would have looked better. As well, I don’t know if the styling of the wig works for me personally.

I was actually really hoping that the live action adaptation would take cues on Sanji’s hair from the character who Sanji was modeled after. A lot of people still to this day think that Sanji’s appearance is based off Leonardo DiCaprio, specifically his role as Jack Dawson from the hit movie Titanic or his role as Romeo from Romeo and Juliet, but Oda has actually explained in an SBS that this isn’t the case:

Sanji’s looks and his “vibes” are based off of Steve Buscemi’s character Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs, and personally I would have loved to see his live-action hair more closely resemble that, but sadly, it wasn’t meant to be.

Another critique of live action Sanji is that he hasn’t been depicted with his trademark cigarette, and I kind of knew that this would happen from the moment I found out about the live action adaptation. This is not the fault of Tomorrow Studios(the production company), or even Netflix at large, but instead this is largely based off backlash from anti-smoking lobbies. 

(As a former smoker myself, I have a lot of opinions on the ridiculousness of anti-smoking groups going after smoking in fictional scenarios like films and shows, but that’s a gripe for a whole other post lol) 

Netflix notably caught a lot of flack for the depiction of commonplace cigarette smoking in other series, such as Stranger Things, even though the series takes place in the 1980′s, where smoking was incredibly commonplace. The major backlash even got to the point where you can actively see the drop in depictions of smoking between each season. I am hoping they at least give Taz one scene with Sanji’s iconic cigarette, but I’m not holding my breath on this one. I doubt Netflix wants to deal with that backlash again.

Finally, the last big complaint with Sanji’s wardrobe I’ve seen is his signature suit, specifically regarding the fitting of it. Sanji’s suits in the anime/manga tend to be fairly fitted in nature, while the live action once Taz wears, while still having a slightly tapered fit, is a bit baggier than what Sanji typically wears.

This is a fairly straightforward change, in my opinion: if the suit was as form-fitting as Sanji’s are, Taz(and his potential stunt double(I don’t know if he did all of his own stunt work or not)) simply would not be able to move the way Sanji does! This is an issue of cartoon versus reality: Oda is able to depict his characters doing whatever they want in whatever clothing they want. However, real life is sadly not as accommodating, and because of that, Taz’s suit has to be a bit less form-fitting so he can still do all of Sanji’s signature footwork. Going back to my original point, the sacrifice of the fitted suit had to be made so the production could actually work.

~

I tried to touch on all the biggest differences I’ve seen people talk about, and I hope this was helpful to anyone who may have been curious as to why some of these changes were made. Please let me know if I missed anything big or if you have any additional questions/need me to explain anything further, I love what I do and I love being able to have insight like this. Thank you so much if you’ve read this far, and please reblog if you found this post helpful or informative <3

[demonslayedher]

Links, why started, and why abandoned:

Rengoku+Akaza Sitcom: It was very silly and rereading it still makes me laugh. I've had passing ideas here and there and have made two separate attempts to continue it, but I haven't captured the same flow. Kyojuro's efforts to get me fired as the lead writer and keep this sitcom canceled have so far panned out.

Low-Key Married AU: When I look at the notes sometimes I am like, "wow, this must be my most popular AU, but it is such a mess and I feel so bad for people trying to follow it." I got as far as The Nezuko Incident, but it was already super long, and rather than being engaging it felt more like it was just trying to give chronology to this AU. ZenNezu Angst (no link): I was in such an indulgent, angsty mood when I wrote it, and I wrote myself into an angsty hole. It was whump with an intended happy ending but by the time I went back to it I was not in as whumpy of a mood and I had forgotten how I was going to build up to the intended happy ending and found it meh. Also, I am embarrassed by how whumpy it is and even considered publishing under a different name.

Raw Sword Production: I want so badly for the fandom to appreciate the intricacies of Japanese sword production, which is why I put it into fiction format in the first place with Teppi being the vehicle through which readers can learn a complicated but fascinating process. I wound up learning a lot more since publishing that, and wanted to fix some details, as well as make it clearer with more illustrations, and add on the full process of smithing (instead of glossing over it in the conclusion and focusing most of the smelting). Got to about the point of polishing (one of the last steps), felt overwhelmed by the amount of illustration it would benefit from to be clear, and lost confidence feeling that even with all that effort, there probably would not be many people who read all the way to the end. Filler Arc w/ Character Beats: I still really like the ideas, have had ideas for how to expand it to a proper flow and make a solid story out of it, it had a very cute start, but I lost steam. I want Ufotable to make it instead and just let me direct. EDIT: So far it doesn't seem this one is going to win the poll, so I reread what 5577 words I had, and gosh dang it, it was cute. So I have posted it.

Again, zero promises of any of these projects getting more attention, even if they win the poll. But knowing what people would enjoy reading might provide more inspiration. EDIT: Guys, if you want "other," ya gotta tell me which one! Also, if you want more than one, feel free to say so too. Again, the point is to see if I can work up the inspiration to finish. If.

[sout999]

adhd talk

the third truly unsung project alongside my film and dissertation was the weird amount of targeted effort i had to put into Completing Anything Big As A Neurodivergent Person Whose Brain Is A Crazy Off The Rails Train Staffed and Patronised Entirely By Multiple Exact Copies Of The Squirrel From Ice Age

which is a description like 99/100 people reading this can relate to, but i think a sentiment i see less often and therefore feel kind of stupid and stubborn and lonesome about is "adhd is innate but is also exasperated by hectic lifestyle/modern instant gratification machines so if i fix my habits around those i can cure myself forever". which is silly and wrong but also i feel abit disconnected from adhd social media culture and cant cope just relating to it (which is all it seems to be sometimes) but learning to harness or tame it to do the things that are really important to me

i felt really cringe tbh having to look up youtube videos of HARVARD STUDENT REVEALS PRO STUDY TRICK and then narrowing it down to specifically adhd-focused study videos and keeping a planner and setting aside specific time to study studying and practising anti-academic meltdown journaling techniques and reading fucking atomic habits but i really didn't want to contribute to my abhorrent academic record following me all through undergrad. in fact i wish i had done this sooner but i was not self aware enough to consider the fact

probably the best change i made was severely cutting down or being mindful of social media time, i don't backread my tl anymore and have more moments of awareness when i find myself dumbly scrolling and realize i dont want to be doing this, and then wondering what i actually Do want to be doing. i keep a book nearby to read, and have also swapped a lot of social media time to sketching-off-pinterest time. reading about the psychology behind social media apps is also super interesting, although i always feel like a paranoid wacko conspiracy theorist talking about it. stuff like how negativity and judgemental behaviour is good for engagement (and therefore ad revenue), and how if all posts on your tl were interesting you wouldn't be as addicted to social media as you are, therefore microblogging employs a slot machine/gacha system where you "roll" for posts by logging on and hope to get a good one. it's a little full on but the more i think of it as a revolting and evil machine the more incentive i have to do something else with my time ^q^

a harder thing to do was, in the late stages of the project, the real crunch time month, avoid everything that could become a huge hyperfixation, and then eventually even minor distractions or fixations. because i know if i got super obsessed with something i'd just be up posting about it or drawing fanart. i had to bar myself from persona 3 remake and elden ring dlc and all these other shiny new releases, and the mobile games i was playing... i look forward to catching up on them now. i took up reading books a lot more because unfortunately thats just not as exciting. in the last month of film work i stopped listening to music on my computer so i wouldnt get drawing or animation ideas to distract me from film work. as of writing this i havent listened to music in like 40 days guys 😱 at the same time i am the kind of person who needs background noise to work, so i have:

watched novum's four hour hereditary video essay three times

watched novum's seven hour midsomar video essay three times

watched that one five hour bojack horseman retrospective twice

listened to audiobooks of the Britney Spears biography, Jennette McCurdy biography, three Playboy Bunny biographies (i was on some sort of lady bopgraphy kick i guess), and a few fiction books

rewatched all of bojack horseman

started on House MD and got a few seasons in before i finished the project, amazingly the perfect show to look away from bc of all the medical stuff, how many lumbar punctures do you need to show like seriously

honorable mention to the learned skill of communication and being honest and picking your battles and killing your darlings which is a larger part of managing mental illness than i cared to admit but one of the hardest ones because it involved confronting things and making big painful drastic changes and then having to tell the faculty about them. sometimes i'd be stuck on a piece of animation work for weeks/months, then go back and change the underlying idea to one i'm actually passionate about, and do the animation work in one day using newly found magical hyperfocus passion power. it's crazy! but being able to be confident about taking those steps rather than keeping on with what you're "supposed" to do went a long way.

i very much look forward to listening to a music and playing some video games properly now and being pulverized like a small victorian child from the sheer amount of fun i'm having. i'd say it was all worth it and a fun experiment in channeling the magical humours of passion and boredom and i hope it will help me with future projects too. i Am super burnt out though x__ x thanks for reading and for all your support up until now!

[poppyseedmuffiin]

poppys amazing guide to free money for in app purchases (not clickbait)

long post ahead, sorry in advance. now idk if anyone else has talked about this at all, at least in the sky community. but with the amount of IAPs in sky (and seeing periodic posts of people offering services like commissions in exchange for season passes or exclusive IAP cosmetics) i feel like i just cant sit on this knowledge any longer if people turn out to not know about it. maybe almost everyone is aware of it and/or already using it or doesnt care and im a silly goose, but if this can save even just one person some money, or allow them to buy something they couldn't have afforded otherwise, then i'll be happy lol. it's certainly helped me and i'd like to share the love.

getting to the point: if you are on android/use google play (sorry everyone else idk if apple/the app store or other platforms have something similar, might be worth looking into or idk maybe this same app is on there too), then you can use this app called Google Opinion Rewards to get free google play credit.

this is going to feel like a cheesy fake youtube sponsorship or something but For Real this app gives you basically free money in response to answering surveys. i downloaded it a few years ago after one guy mentioned it in a video in passing, and as of now i have gotten from it almost $150 of google play credit.

“poppy, this sounds super sus”, you might be thinking, shaking your head. “answering surveys?? isnt this a scam to collect your personal data??” and fair enough! yeah probably the data is being sold (though on the page they claim to not share it with 3rd parties), im not super internet wise or savvy but idk it seems like everything is selling your data nowadays. and to get the most amount of surveys you can, you have to have certain things turned on in your google account.

it might ask you about a place you've been recently, or if you've been looking up something lately, or if you remember watching a certain video on youtube, or whatever. sometimes it's very accurate and specific with the targeted surveys, and sometimes it's totally fucking random. to me its not any creepier than getting an ad for like. wendys after only talking about it out loud with my phone within earshot, and most of them are pretty innocuous anyway, at least in my opinion. idk. u dont have to use this. im just putting it out there for those who might want to give it a whirl.

Before i go into the nitty gritty rambly details (on the google doc below), here’s the reassurance: this is real. Yes, the reward for each survey is less than a dollar, but it adds up. Sometimes there are a whole bunch at once and that can bring in a good haul. Since downloading the app, i’ve answered 730 surveys, and from that earned $142.11 (as of writing this right now) in total rewards/credit.

That’s not nothing! I’ve been able to buy sky IAPs with nothing but credit that i’ve earned from answering these surveys. The longest of these surveys literally take a max of like 20 seconds, and u can go right to them from the notification on your phone. It takes 0 effort essentially and for me it is worth it to see that receipt for $0 in my inbox. I have a compulsive spending habit and use it rly often so in my case mostly it just acts as a discount, subtracting from the price however much is in my balance, but still! That’s better than paying full price! Free money is free money! You can also choose whether or not to use it when making a purchase, and stop answering questions and giving them the data at any time. You can choose what to share with them really easily from the settings in the app, so if you want to turn off just location or something, you can just go to “survey eligibility”, select what you want to change, and manage it as you like. The only thing you have to have is your age, since it won’t send surveys to users with no age on their account. And you can use the credit on other apps too, since it’s google play credit! I just mostly use it for buying sky IAPs. you can save up to buy a season pass! 

If you’re like me (maybe not. Im kind of pathetic. Someone pls validate me), you’ve tried whatever you can to not pay for microtransactions. Yeah there’s stuff like mistplay and those annoying ass “tasks for coins” esque things within an app that have you sign up for online magazines or download other apps and get to level 3 of PigFarmVille or whatever to earn credit or money, but those never got me anywhere and this is the most effective, legitimate thing i’ve ever used for this purpose. It takes time and patience, but before you know it you’ll have $5 kicking around in your balance and you can buy the cute oreo headband or pair of shoes or whatever tgc has in the shop this time. It legitimately feels like i’m cheating, sometimes, or that it’s too good to be true, but i’ve used this for three years now and it’s never let me down. And no i’m not sponsored, just a broke bitch that stumbled across this. They should give me something for this free promotion tho lmaoo

below I have both the sharing link to download the app if anyone wants to and a link to a google doc with my personal tips for this app on it since this post is way too long already and i dont want to waste more of peoples time, but anyway thanks for reading if you did, and if you try it out and it ends up helping lmk! c: and also maybe reblog to spread around if you think others would find this helpful. I almost never do posts like this especially bc im very unsure of myself and tend to think im wrong but sometimes i get stuff right and this feels like something i got right. Hope it helps you too. 

Get paid for answering short surveys. Download Google Opinion Rewards now: https://googleopinionrewards.page.link/share

[muttlyparasitic]

I'm feeling creatively burnt out but still wanna draw?

Like I'm still drawing, still making content and loving it but I feel exhausted, thats why I've done so meny redraws of my old artwork lately.

I think I'm just feeling this way because I'm just burnt out by the internet, which is embarrassing to admit.

I don't care about likes, or followers, but at the same time, putting all the hours and hours of effort that I do into my work for minimal engagement is just a let down, the outcome for me trying to make my creations an interesting online presence is burning me out.

I don't compare myself to others but when I see someone put like 2-3 hours of work into just some random little drawing that they themselves say is just "something quick and simple" that they game up with to get 100+ likes or 20+ comments, then seeing my stuff that I put a cazy amount of effort into with good quality, exhausts me to see.

I know it would help more if I created trendy stuff, changed my style to something more edgy or more anime looking, I could definitely get somewhere but I don't want to, I like how I draw, I like what I produce and it doesn't seem fair that I have to do what everyone else is doing just to get somewhere.

I know thats life, life is unfair and doesn't push creativity or uniqueness, it just wants what works, memes work, trends work, but I don't want to do that, I want people to enjoy and be interested in MY creations and be invested because I have a lot of stuff to show that I just haven't cooked up yet.

Idk this is a silly rant that no one will really read besides maybe 1 or 2 people.

[try-set-me-on-fire]

For the wip asks wrap myself around the promise that there is room and maybe loose threads

Loose threads is the quilt shop au, which i don’t have much else to share from except for the idea that Buck is going to secretly make Eddie a quilt and feel a little silly about it because Eddie is already a quilt maker and his work is so beautiful, why would Eddie want whatever amateurish thing Buck can make? But Eddie is so unused to someone putting in that amount of effort into something for him, of course he’ll be blown away.

Promise that there is room (still a line from the same Angie McMahon song) is ER nurse Eddie part three! Part of it is going to be from Buck’s perspective which is hard to figure out because i have to come up with what a Buck who’s lived the last six years without Eddie is like. He’s a little first try I was pecking at yesterday.

The smell of caramelized onions is filling the station loft as Bobby tempts fate by starting in on a big early breakfast. It was a busy night, maybe karma will work out so they’ll actually get to taste the omelet ingredients set out in neat little bowls across the counter. Buck’s kitchen assistance had been limited to merely chopping ingredients this morning, and that work is done so now he’s sitting on one of the counter stools and trying to resist the urge to spin it around and around like a child. His phone buzzes.

Eddie: Half n half?

Buck knows it’s not a request for some but a question as to why a full carton has miraculously appeared between the gross pulpy orange juice Eddie likes and the ultra smooth Tropicana Chris and Buck chug down at a rate Eddie has deemed “alarming.”

Buck: noticed u were low, brought some with me yesterday

Eddie: ok well lets just pretend this doesn’t mean I haven’t opened the fridge in 24 hours

Eddie: no take out or pop tarts here, im a responsible father who home cooks every meal

Eddie: thank you

Buck: of course! <3

Buck bites his tongue to try and school the stupid grin off his face. So much about all this has made him feel like he’s about twelve years old, but he’s an adult with a boyfriend not a kid with a crush. Except he does feel like a kid with a crush, maybe even more so than he ever did when he was a teenager learning how he felt when someone pretty looked at him and what his body could do with other bodies. He’s had butterflies before. Eddie’s smile makes his fingertips numb.

“Buck?”

Buck blinks up at Bobby, who’s clearly asked him a question. “Uh- sorry, what?”

Bobby’s got a gently amused look on his face as he says “You free for a barbecue Saturday? Seems like everyone’s time off is lining up.”

Buck smiles and doesn’t point out the fact that Bobby is the one arranging the time off for half of the people who come to Grant-Nash barbecues. “Sure, Bobby, sounds good.”

[kuromi-hoemie]

🌻

lol it being completely open ended to talk about whatever i want, i went on a tangent (⁠〒⁠﹏⁠〒⁠) I'm putting it below the read more

i think.. it'll be funny, how when i move and finally say goodbye to this city, people on here who don't know we're in the same city will probably think “what that's where u lived?? why didn't you say anything sooner!!”

buddy i have been here for 8 years and completely lost faith in everyone here, this is a uniquely terrible area with somewhat friendly but extremely impersonal people and i don't care for it or anyone in it anymore!!!!!!!!!!!

i don't want someone to change my mind, I don't want to suddenly find what I'm looking for; I learned a lot professionally and about myself and life in general while living here but its time is up, the people here suck compared to literally every other place I've been to lmfao. I'm sure there's a few gems out there but they aren't worth what it takes to live around here.

when i was trying to figure out where i wanted to move next, I was going to give this place another year since that would arguably the best opportunity I'll have to enjoy it if i move somewhere cheaper (I've had a long complicated journey here).

but then i really thought about it, and being here — trying to chase happiness feels like swimming upstream towards something that's forever just out of reach. and then i thought about the city i decided I'll move to next, and there are so many people there who are always really happy to see me and always inviting me to stuff. and it's not just me, but they're all rly chill with each other and hang together too.

and it felt silly to think of suffering through another year here. why should i fight so hard to find what's already waiting for me somewhere else? life does not need to be this hard and i don't have to suffer another year here actually ✋🏾😭

very cool that i have some mutuals in the area who don't know this yet, but I'm not trying to spend an hour+ in traffic and have to pay to park just to hang out with them lol. wish i knew y'all like a year and a half ago but it's too late for me to really get attached to anything here.

there's literally (1) thing i care about in this city and it's the best friend i have. and being completely real, i love her very dearly but if i felt supported enough as i need from even one person here i wouldn't feel the need to leave. we talk thru text Sometimes very briefly, mostly to just send stuff to each other and ask about hanging out, and we hang like once a month or 1½ months.

like.... this is as good as it gets? 😐 there might be something better but it's going to take a significant amount of time, effort and frustration to find. and i just... do not think it's worth the effort, actually. sometimes taking the easier path is the correct choice.

I've made so so so many friends here that have all fizzled out. everyone I've become friends with will speak to you once a week or two or three maybe. MAYBE!! And it doesn't matter if you sent 1, 2 or 10 messages, it's not just a matter of where you are sending those messages, it doesn't matter what you are talking about or what you may need, you are just not hearing back from them. i could die here right now and no one would even begin to think something might be wrong with me for god knows how long, if ever.

so like. idk. i am extremely over this city and could not be convinced to stay. I'm the kind of person who needs to be talking to 2 or 3 friends every day, i need to be in one or two small but active group chats with people who are dear to me, I need to hang out at least twice a week at one of our places, i wanna go out to something together every two weeks at least.

it just seems like if i move somewhere where people take it a little slower and are more personal, I'll be able to get back into that kind of life i miss. it's so fucking easy to feel like the problem is me somehow until i drive like 25 miles away from here and suddenly the difference is like night and day (⁠´⁠-⁠﹏⁠-⁠`⁠；⁠) like oh i don't suck actually, and I've become much more sure of that over the past year-ish i guess, but the problem still remains and i just have to suck it up until i leave.

also yeah I'll name drop it while I'm at it lol DO NOT MOVE TO SEATTLE 🙅🏾‍♀️ no one here drives, most people hang out in the pay to park/HEAVY traffic areas and everyone here is friendly but VERY very impersonal. if what you want is someone to hang out with every once in a while and to live a hermit lifestyle then it's probably perfect for u but if you want to meaningfully connect with your friends you are swimming upstream here do not do it. this city SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this is the most trash ass city I've ever been to and I've been up and down the west coast and to other inland states!!!!!!!!! this is not normal!!!!! you people are not normal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! people from here get pissy when you bring up the Seattle freeze but it's real actually you guys do suck supremely and anyone from any place with even a shred of warmth between people in its community can tell you that, and i can say that bc i remember how often I'd be willing to say hi back to people when i took public transit and they'd immediately clock that I'm not from here because No One wants to talk to them otherwise.

i don't know wtf the deal is here but i don't need to navigate it or fight it 🚶🏾‍♀️ I'm just moving to the kinda place you can both live and work in, which is what all the other places I've lived at have been like. I'm sorry y'all live like this and think it's normal, but i don't think locking yourself away for weeks at a time not talking to anyone because of depressive episodes and always feeling lonely is like.. normal.. it's not. and you genuinely do have a lot to be fairly depressed about, and so do i tbh and i fight it so fucking hard but I'm just removing myself from this 😶‍🌫️ good bye and good luck.

[luveline]

𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐣𝐚𝐝𝐞 —this one might be silly but I'm always asking you guys for advice so I thought it might be fun to offer the same, ask me a question about love or life or something much less dramatic and I'll tell you what I think

𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐣𝐚𝐝𝐞, i may be in the need of the tiniest bit of advice. my boyfriend and i have been dating for close to a year now (10 and a half months to be exact) and we're sort of growing distant. its been happening for a while now and i have been bringing it up once a month these last couple months and he always says he's going to try harder and he does so but it goes back to the way things used to be after a week or so. we're doing long distance and we have a time difference of about 11 hours and its hard but i just want him to put a similar amount of effort that im putting. i dont want to approach the topic again because i'll sound like a broken record but i don't know what to do

hey gorgeous just a disclaimer that you know your life and your relationships better than i do, so I'm not saying you should for sure do whatever i say! but I'm going to kind of tell you what i may do in a similar situation

I think that people grow apart all the time before growing back together, but in the instance of his being your boyfriend, it should be a very high priority to him to make sure he delivers on his promise of trying harder for longer than a week. I'm not sure if you want to be with him your whole life but for me that is the goal of a relationship, and if he's already failing to do so before the one year mark that's not very fair to you in my eyes, because you deserve to have someone who is willing to put in the same amount of effort as you no matter what stage of a relationship you're in.

You can't force someone to do that, though! As you know. This will sound very very harsh but if it were me I would likely bring up the topic of breaking up, not because I think ultimatums are the way to go, but because if he doesn't change and doesn't grow closer to you, as a long distance relationship especially, it isn't going to leave YOU feeling very good or very happy when you deserve to feel good and happy, and I feel you have two options, to grow closer or to grow further apart — but you can't grow closer with him if he isn't trying to.

I'm really sorry to say that though because I can imagine all the heart ache this is causing you!! People aren't perfect and I'm not saying you should definitely go break up with him, but I think maybe that's the fear that if he doesn't change, you don't really have many options (I really hate saying that to you, I feel so scythe and cloak, but what I'm trying to convey is that your happiness is the only thing you can defend in this situation because you can't make him do what you want, you can only control your own actions, and if he isn't going to do better by you, I hope YOU will do better by you, because you deserve the best). And also, if you're afraid to bring something up I (as gently as I can) don't think that's a very good sign, because if he's your partner you should always feel comfortable enough to air out what's bothering you (I'm not saying that's his fault or your fault but a unfortunate matter of circumstances)

And he's your partner so I don't want to continously slam dunk on him or say he's shit because that's not fair, I don't know him, I only know what you've said you're feeling. I recently felt very distant from someone important to me and I know how hard that is, and I also know that my first idea wasn't to just end our relationship and move on, but if you've been asking him repeatedly for months to change and are still experiencing the problem I don't want to encourage you to keep pouring your heart into something that seems so unfair to you. I think that you're doing an amazing job by having already been honest with him, and even your 'being a broken record' is a good thing, communicating how you feel to people I believe is a sign that you love them or care for them, because you're trying very hard to work through the problem rather than get mad without understanding. So keep being honest with him and if that makes you a broken record that's okay, keep trying to work together with him, but don't take the brunt of your relationship on your shoulders either. It's tempting to wonder if you can do better or be better, but you're expending effort right now as you are and you deserve it back the same

I hope this was helpful for you but even if it isn't (which is totally fine and also I'm sorry) I hope you're doing okay! Love is so hard but it's worth it to keep trying, just make sure you're taking care of yourself!♡

[gay-sin]

reciprocity?! how?

posting things online after not posting things online still feels really strange to me. i feel like my unposted thoughts and art have become sacred because they are private. sharing them in a public way feels almost sacrilegious. i'm probably just scared of giving away my precious thoughts and finding out that other people don't think that they are so precious.

i'm being silly because : a. i have almost no followers. and b. no thoughts of mine are completely unique - never been thought before! they aren't just mine anyways. they're more like an amalgamation of all i've seen and processed. sure, the processing is mine but i see so many things in a day that i had no part of creating. all those things make me who i am.

i think that maybe i fear that posting things online gives people this window into me and my life that they don't deserve. like maybe we should have to earn each other's trust and care about each other's wellbeing before we get free access to each other's precious thoughts. i don't like that social media seems to encourage people to give away the things that make us ourselves. then these things get replaced by a representation of these precious things that can be interacted with on a little touch screen. these little representations are intended to intrigue people to care about us more. but when it doesn't do that, we wonder if the things that make us who we are have any value at all. we try to repackage them or change ourselves to be more precious to more people. but we were precious all along so this process is no fun at all.

i could avoid social media and i mostly do but because i love making and sharing art i think i'll always wrestle with this unequal dynamic. one person sits in the corner of the room gutting themselves and spilling it out on the floor in front of a crowd of people. the crowd claps and promptly exits after they have seen all of the organs drop to the floor. this is an incredibly dramatic image and i know that art isn't always and maybe shouldn't be so heavy or painful like that. but sometimes that is what showing my art feels like and it kinda sucks!! i know this dynamic isn't special to art. there are so many instances of people giving so much and never knowing the impact of what they do. maybe that's just how it is but it makes me sad. can we try to do it another way? i think i just want reciprocity in my life in general but i don't know if i know how to do that. i want to give thanks to the bed i sleep on and the people that picked the berries that i eat and the ghosts that built the city i live in. basically, i'm not sure how to thank all the things that keep me alive for keeping me alive. i also long to be told that i am helping keep something alive because often it's hard to imagine that i do that. but maybe i just have to trust that i'm contributing to something bigger than me even if i'll never really know. maybe I have to make things and know that all the energy and time i put into them has to be good just for just that. the process over the product, the path is the destination, it's all about the climb baby!! maybe when i'm a ghost, a 22 year old will write a blog post about wanting to thank me for what i did but not being able to.

what am i saying here? i don't really know. let me know if you have any suggestions on how i can thank my bed for letting me sleep on it. i guess i could just say it with my words. maybe that's my problem here. we all just have trouble saying the words. maybe nobody wants to admit out loud that they are alive because of anything other than their own individual efforts because that makes them seem weak. nobody wants to admit that without their bed they'd sleep horribly every night and never get rest. that without their shoes they'd get holes in their feet.

i think it's important to say i love you even if people don't love you the same amount or in the same way that you love them. i gotta work on thanking the ghosts more. so thanks to all the ghosts that made this language i'm typing in. this one is for the ghosts that put a lot of thought into things so I could do things thoughtlessly!! i gotta work on giving and knowing that i'll probably never see the impact of what i give. i gotta work on saying thank you more. thank you for your time to read this. but ughh ... see??? why does it feel sort of embarrassing to say thank you? it's easier to be aloof and alone and pretend you don't need anybody. to end a post with : take it or leave it! idgaf! but c'mon. if you didn't give a fuck about what other people think, you would have kept it to yourself. it's okay to need other people! it's a good reminder because sometimes i hate admitting that i need you (you being everyone that's not me). but i do. i definitely do. and i'll start saying it more. i'll say it even if nobody says it back.

[aggressivebreakcore]

there’s a new tim hortons ad that’s going around and it goes something like this:

three dollars for a breakfast sandwich with the purchase of a coffee. you heard that right! only three dollars for a breakfast sandwich with canada’s favourite coffee! get it now for a limited time. it’s time for tims~

and this makes me so angry for no reason. like come on. the first time you say it it’s fine, but people mostly aren’t listening, so that’s why you say it a second time but the second time you word it so that it seems like you can pay $3 for a breakfast sandwich and a coffee instead of what the real offer is, $3 for a sandwich plus more money for a coffee, idk how much i don’t go there. and honestly how long until it ceases? how much longer until ads just only use loopholes and the rules that regulate them give up and the ads are just allowed to lie forever? why is it not common sense that you should not just straight-up lie to thousands of people, maybe even millions with the amount of times i keep hearing this same ad. someone please start making more laws on limiting ads.

every waking hour of our lives is filled with ads, from waking up and looking around your room and seeing dozens of brand names on every object imaginable, to going to school or work and while driving instead of street signs see ads, everywhere, billboards, taking up your concentration and making you just a little more likely of having an accident, to getting to school or work and the entire day your attention being jostled between every different little effort to increase sales. and once you finish your work for the day and finally unwind at home every single website that exists has ads, unless you happen to scroll on wikipedia for hours every day. oh wait shit they have ads telling you to donate to them because they literally cannot keep up with all the other websites that have ads. the world we live in forces everyone to have ads. i could go on and on about all the ads we see online, but other people have already done that a lot. and finally, we go to sleep on our mattress with a brand name imprinted on it, put away our apple or android or google or whatever phone, look at the posters on our walls with little ads in the corners, and go to sleep, before another day of the same thing happening again.

and honestly the stupidest thing is that even after all that, after all that effort people put to put all those ads in front of you, even after everything that you see every day chances are they don’t even really have that much of an impact other than being annoying and wasting our time. when was the last time you saw/heard an ad and it actually worked? and you didn’t just wait 5 seconds and click skip on the first frame it appears?

oh shoot instead of a silly little complaint about a tim hortons ad i wrote a whole essay about the nature of humanity shit i hate when that happens

[synergy-poprocks]

this is LITERALLY one of the reasons I started the DeXL drawing project. I didn't get into it with my first post, but I might as well now. Under the cut because it's a bit ranty:

When I think of AI Art, I think of that one quote from Jane Austin's Emma where Mr. Knightly says, "[Emma] will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience." It's the same thing with anyone interested in AI. @mewtwoandme said it best above: they're LAZY. They don't WANT to do real art, they want people to THINK they're talented without putting in any of the actual effort required to develop a legitimate talent.

Along with that: any AI bro I've ever met is one of the most wholly unpleasant people to be around. They're rude. They think they know better than you or ARE better than you not just at art, but at other things too. They think they're owed something just by existing when they've never put the work in to receive any real reward, praise, or special treatment.

One such guy comes into my work. We've had to ban him from parts of the store because he'll try to use equipment without our permission. He thinks we can't cut his silly little AI prints as straight as he can. He can't just seem to wrap his silly little head around the fact that no amount of "straight cutting" is going to make his so-called "art" anything more than a cheap imitation of other people's actual hard work and training. Even if the cutting is crooked, that's the least of his problems. His REAL problem is that he evidently has no talent to begin with, nor is he interested in developing it.

If imitation really is "the sincerest form of flattery mediocrity can pay to greatness," then AI bros might as well parade with a banner that says "I'm mediocre!! I'm only interested in the path of least resistance!! Please stay as far away from me as possible!!" Personally, I feel like nothing could be more embarrassing than admitting I'm incapable of developing my talents on my own. Loudly advertising my biggest, most egregious flaws (in the case of an AI Bro, their own laziness) would be humiliating for me.

But that's none of my business, I suppose.

I guess what I'm saying is I'd rather create something with my own hands that doesn't look very nice as opposed to taking someone else's work and tell everyone it's my own. fun fact: that's a crime called ˚✧₊⁎plagiarism⁎⁺˳✧༚

You wanna be good at something!??! WORK FOR IT.

If a child puts some scribbles on a page, it'll make it on the fridge. Not because it's good, but because it's THEIRS. It was made from LOVE. A love of color, a love of the subject, a love of making a mess and containing it on a piece of paper. IT CAME FROM LOVE.

AI isn't born of love, it's born of laziness. I'm in no wise a real artist like my friends or the people I follow, but AI makes me sick.

Every time I report a bot another one appears and now they’re also posting stolen art fed through an Ai generator, the same one taken right off my deviantart

Fuck AI generating pictures, AI is not art, AI is garbage and theft and anyone who believes it is art can unfollow me right now because I will only speak more unkindly about AI from here on out