#there's a sweet spot of androgyny for me i think

[elizawright]

Evaluation

When I first started this project I began with a single word and not much more, ‘Androgyny��. I wanted my final project to be as fluid and naturally spawned as possible, I didn’t want to begin with an already decided outcome which would lead to a very confined way of thinking. I planned to just allow myself to be vulnerable and see where my creativity would take me. Now I’ve finished and I find myself reflecting over my final outcome, I am very proud of myself for taking this risk and finding success.

I began my project by just maniacally researching anything that had some sort of link to the word ‘Androgyny’. I researched using every source I could find. I looked in books, films, tv shows, social media, marketing, YouTube, I even found Inspiration in household products like a coffee jar. I allowed myself to fall down the rabbit holes, finding myself clicking and clicking until I found the sweet spot of research and Inspiration I was looking for. I wanted myself to be as educated on the subject matter as possible, I didn’t want to blindly go into a project knowing nothing about my area of interest. I created a Pinterest and Instagram account dedicated to this project which you can check out by clicking the links at the top of my tumblr. I used these sites frequently in my research.

Other ways I educated myself on the subject matter was by contacting people in the androgyny community and asking for their take on the topic and culture. I had a lot of responses, one particularly helpful from a local drag queen who gave a large range of context to look into.

One thing I also noticed I did through the project was return to my research frequently. I didn’t just research at the start and then no more, I constantly went back and researched more at every stage of my project to keep current to the subject, enlighten myself further and spawn new ideas.

When I compare the work I was producing at the beging of the project in comparison to the work I’m making now I’m astounded by the amount of development and improvement I’ve made to my style. Now, after just a couple months or work, my overall skill has improved, the time it takes to produce work has spread up, my creativity and imagination has enhanced, I have a refined and recognisable style and I’m overall very proud of the work I produce. At the start of the project I had only been working digitally for a couple of weeks and was still producing at an armature level on the iPad, I now consider myself a pro, I feel very confident in my digital working and look forward to continue use of it in the future.

Despite my love and frequent use of digital art, I did in some instances use other media in my project to illustrate such as the use of graphite pencils, acrylic paint, clay and photography.

Experimenting with these other types of media, in some instances for the first time, gave me a great chance to expand my skill share and demonstrate my ability to be versatile and flexible.

Despite all the success I have had, I have faced my fair share of difficulties through the project that I have had to resolve using my problem solving skills. It’s been very challenging at some points in the project to produce work because I have been limited by the current world situation with the ramped spread of Covid 19. I’m very thankful for the help and support given to me by my tutors, I feel this is one of the very highest reasons I managed to produce such good quality work considering the circumstances.

One of the first difficulties I had to overcome was my inability to take a diverse range of photos of models as it was during the 3rd lockdown where it was illegal to meet up with others other than those in your household. I decided to resolve this problem by going with the only option I had available, use my household family members as models. I was very lucky to have such willing family members, and although my reference photography want as diverse as I would ideally of liked, the photos I produced were more than satisfactory.

Later in the project I came up with another way to overcome this problem. I reached out and contacted a range of people apart of the androgyny community, people such as drag queens and models who produce very professional photography online, and asked for their permission to use their photos. Every person I reached out to granted me permission to use their photography and I began to illustrate using it in the refined section of my project.

In some cases I found it difficult that I was quite refined to use only what I had at home as we were unable to go into the studio and use its range of Facilities. Fortunately or me and my digital work I didn’t need to use these much but in the cases I did, I instead chose to go out and purchase my own equipment. This itself became somewhat of a problem because it began to become quite expensive and I could afford it. I managed to solve this in quite a clever way, I advertised online and on recycling apps asking for the materials I need and I was gifted hundreds of art product for free. This became very helpful and allowed me to produce the craft products you’ll find below.

Before I began this project I found myself reflecting on my previous projects and realised I always produced my best work when I had a set plan in place to follow. I’m naturally quite an unorganised person and find it hard to get stuff done if i haven’t made a plan to give me a sense of direction and accomplishment. Through every stage of my project I have had a plan in place to follow, that’s how I managed to produce so much on time. I had plans for what piece of work I would produce each day at what time, plans for what experiments I would like to create, plans for what I want to sell on my store and say in my peer reviews. I also made sure after every major milestone to hoist large peer reflection sections as well as making sure I write some reflective analysis after every piece of research or experimentation. I owe most of my improvement to these practices as the reflection truly helped me perceive what was successful in each experiment, what I should continue to do, as well as helping me understand what was unsuccessful and I should change next time.

[ethicallysourcedhumanmeat]

Lost Boys: Day 3

[ < ][First][ > ] [Masterpost][AO3] [Buy Me a Coffee]

Day three is only one chapter, also warning for suicide mentions

Saturdays are not the same when you’re not in your own home, and they’re really not the same when you’ve got an entire day of work ahead of you.  Noelle gets up early and meets Nina at the rink.  She’s waiting by the door laughing at Jumin and Zen bickering in the messenger when Nina saunters up, keys ready.

“I thought I said to take your time,” her friend yawns.

“I thought you said you’d be here already,” Noelle laughs.

She sets up a few cameras around the rink, this was Nina’s private rink time, it would just be the two of them.  Nina is on the ice in no time and Noelle takes her time getting her skates on, video of Nina warming up wouldn’t hurt. 

Noelle pulls her sweater off and makes sure her phone has connected to the little speaker she’d brought back, she sets the playlist to repeat and catches up to her friend. 

Nina points at her chest. “It’s been a while are you sure you’re ok in that thing?”

“I’m good,” Noelle gives her a thumbs up.  “I need some pairs shots and I don’t think they’re ready for gay mascots just yet.”

“Ironic considering the inspiration,” Nina snorts.

Between them she has plenty of video to finish her storyboard and do a short rotoscope demonstration for the client’s approval.  If she works most of the weekend she can even be ahead of schedule.  It’s an uneventful day both in her temporary home and in the world of the RFA.

She misses her own apartment, whoever Rika was in life she did not have nearly enough table tops in her apartment to accommodate the kind of space Noelle needed when she worked.  She makes it work however, between taking Darryl for walks and fielding calls and chats in the messengers she’s not even sure how she’s still going.  After the last few days she should be ready to fall into a coma.  But somehow she’s ahead of the schedule she’d set to be specifically ahead of schedule.

When her phone rings Darryl whines at the Tina Belcher groan she uses as her ringtone, it’s mid afternoon and she’s sitting on a table at the dog park.

“Two calls in one week, this is the worst lottery I’ve ever won.”

“Where are you right now?” Jumin asks.

She groans. “Since when are you my keeper?  Is there something going on I should be worried about?”

Jumin hates not knowing.  She can hear it in his voice, he wants her to admit she’s the woman in the messenger.  But Luciel had been very clear, under no circumstance could she tell him, and she knew Jumin enough to know he’d never outright ask her.  Anyone else he would but not her.

“You were not answering your home phone; I was simply curious how your new project was progressing.  Mr. Jeong had expressed some concern that you had taken a large amount of tools with you when you’d left yesterday.”

“What specifically was his concern?”

“Noelle, if you grind your teeth like that you will break them,” Jumin scolds her.

“Fuck off,” she laughs. 

“Well,” he says expectantly.

“It’s going well, I did not steal anything, I took some cameras and spent this morning at the rink.  I’m way ahead of where I thought I’d be but this is the easy part really, I still need to find a second skater and I do have a back up presentation I’m going to prepare.”

“The client seems to be very clear on what they would like.”

“They are but all of the notes seem to want to leave any kind of copyright issues up to parody laws.  I can only shave so much off this with my connections; legal fees are a whole different ball game.”

It hadn’t mattered how many times she ran the designs with the client’s specifications she couldn’t see there not being a legal issue.  This was a sales campaign not fan art.

Jumin makes a thoughtful sound.  “Could you send me a photo of my nephew, and I will let you get back to your day.”

Noelle laughs, and hears the line go dead.  She snaps a selfie with Darryl, careful not to reveal any of the apartment, and sends it off to Jumin who responds with a photo of Elizabeth III.

*

What a day it had been.  He’d gone for a run first thing, all the way to the library and borrowed a copy of Hamlet.  He’d overheard No’s friends talking about how she knew almost the entire script by heart and he’d felt inadequate.  He’d never been good at school and he’d been so focused on musicals he’d never even considered performing something like Shakespeare but No had actually studied it.

And all that stuff she’d said about her childhood.  It was stupid that he was jealous that she’d had voice lessons for so long when it had caused her so much pain but there was a small part of him that couldn’t help it.  Her father may have expressed it horribly but he’d been supportive of her talent.  Zen slaps himself, supportive in a terrible, awful way.

He scanned over the scene, he wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking at, and he should have gotten her phone number.  He did have Elle’s number though.  He’d already called her once, and then she’d called him when he was getting the shower.  God that girl, she might be as bad as he was.

His eyes wander his small apartment and settle on the little lunch bag on his counter.  Had anyone ever brought him lunch before?  Fans had sent him sweets, and there was the odd woman and even man who had given him pastries, or bought him lunch but no one had ever made him a lunch, not since his mother.

He’s relieved when it’s time to leave for his meeting.  Not that the meeting itself had been anything exciting.  He was uncomfortable with how the writer seemed to throw herself at him, the way she took every opportunity to touch him.  He’s distracted, by Elle and her flirtatious call, and by unreadable No, who makes him lunch and lays her heart bare but seems to look right through him.

It’s all he can do not to check his phone at every opportunity.

*

“Missed a spot,” Luciel snickers as he hears the little pop that indicates his timed crumb bomb was successful.

Vanderwood growls from somewhere behind him but is sufficiently distracted, Luciel minimizes his work and glances at the security camera’s in the apartment.  Elle had been busy all day.  They’d gotten up and taken off just as he was starting to pass out at his keyboard this morning, and then they’d been working hard since. 

He’d caught Elle, fielding messages from the app, and taking calls and all the time there were sketch books, and paper being filled with sketches.  They resolution was not good enough to see what they were doing but from what he’d caught through monitoring the call Elle had gotten from Jumin later that day, Luciel could see that it was work.

At least Jumin seemed to expect that level of commitment from everyone at C&R, not just Jaehee.

“That’s a familiar face,” Vanderwood squinted over his shoulder.

“Ah!” Luciel shrieked, he was rewarded with a slap to the side of his head.  “Madam, you gave me quite the frighten,” he snorted.

“Why are you watching this kid?” Vanderwood ignores him and watches the monitor intently. 

Luciel turns and narrows his eyes on his handler.  “Are you both members of the androgyny club or something?”

“My last problem child had this job,” Vanderwood shrugs.  “It was a little below us really, a smear campaign but whatever, the agency was pretty new back then.  Find dirt on this kid, or plant it if we couldn’t.”

“So what did you do?” Maybe this would explain the bizarre mishmash of information his background check had turned up.

Vanderwood shrugged.  “Made it up, she was a pretty good kid, reasonably wild. The step brother was kind of a mess but from what I’ve heard he’s out grown it, despite everything.  We altered some text logs, a few photos.  Her father paid us a lot of money to drag her through the mud and make sure no one forgot it.”

Luciel’s eyes flick to his computer and his chest tightens.  The worm he’d released to delete all the hits on Noelle and Jumin had picked up a program releasing them within moments.  He’d disabled his own agencies program. He tries to suppress a smug smile.

Elle had only just come back into the apartment with their giant people named dog, he wondered if that was a habit they’d picked up from Jumin. He watched Elle, through 4 cameras while he listened to Vanderwood explain how it was this agency, Vanderwood’s previous agent even, that had, as Elle put it, ruined their life.

Camera one in the entry way watches Elle, kick off their boots and leave them in the middle of the floor, camera two on the computer catches a pair of jeans flop over the back of a chair and Camera three in the kitchen shows Elle in a pair of briefs and a hoodie chugging juice from the carton.

“Whatever you’re doing,” Luciel turns to look as Vanderwood barks, “can wait, you need to—” he pushes his hair back and snorts.  “Well she’s smarter than I’d have thought.”

He looks back to the monitor, three of the feeds are warped like a bad dream sequence, Elle comes into focus on Camera one, a jar of oil under their arm.  They flip the camera off but walk away leaving it intact.

*

He’d never seen Jumin so angry.  He’d pulled him out of fights more often than either would have admitted to their parents but that had been years ago, not since Noelle.  But right now, even with Rika in the other room getting ready to go out he thought that Jumin might hit him.

He’d never been afraid of Jumin before.

“This isn’t my fault,” he said softly.  But he knew from the way Jumin’s scowl wavered that he lacked conviction

They’d all seen the news, his mother had called him before dawn the urgency of the news superseding their different time zones.  Noelle was in the hospital.  Noelle had almost died.  It had been unclear then, as the news broke exactly what had happened and his mother, for all her absences, had whispered into the receiver, did he think her father hurt her.   Rika had been lying next to him when he hung up staring expectantly with her kind eyes, bright even in the dim light of his phone. 

“That sounded serious, is your mother alright?”

“She’s fine,” he’d said.  And then he’d lied.  It had been almost a year since Noelle had moved, this relationship was new he didn’t want her to know about Noelle, know that he’d given up so easily.  Rika was so fragile at times and he felt so guilty.

Jumin glared at him from the doorway.  “She tried to kill herself, Jihyun.”

He would have rather Jumin hit him, hearing Jumin of all people say it out loud had been worse than reading it in the paper, or fielding the inquisitive texts from his mother.  Still he had trouble believing it.  “Are you sure,” he ventures, trying to keep his voice even.  Rika is in the next room.  He doesn’t want her to know.

“Do you know how many reporters have called me? There’s a gaggle of them in lobby just waiting for me to come back down.” He pushes past V and sits heavily in an armchair.  “My father called Mr. Lee, it’s not conjecture on the media’s part she did this to herself.” Jumin leans forward with his head in his hands. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, he doesn’t know what else to say.

“You should tell her that,” Jumin snaps at him. 

The door to the bedroom opens after a few moments of uncomfortable silence and V watches Jumin transform, the harsh angles of his face soften and his shoulders relax, he smiles at Rika.

“Oh,” she chirps, “am I running behind I thought we were leaving at 7.”

Jumin smiles softly at her.  “No, you’re perfect; I had just stopped to let V know I won’t be able to come with you tonight.”

“Are you sure?” She pouts.  “V is acting like someone died today, I was really looking forward to letting you cheer him up after the show.”

He watches the way Jumin controls his breathing when he shifts his focus from Rika to himself.  “I’m sorry Rika,” he doesn’t take his eyes of V as he stands.  “I’m sure as lovely as you are in that dress Jihyun will have a hard time staying sad.

Why was he remembering that?  That had been the night Rika had first seen Hyun. She’d been so upset that Jumin had canceled on them, and they’d gotten into a fight on the way to the theatre, he was hiding something, and she could tell, she could always tell.  He’d been relived when her attention switched to the show stealing boy with the red eyes and silver hair.  They’d gotten dinner afterwards and she’d spent the whole evening trying to find out more about him, distracted from her earlier ire.

No one has been to see him since last night.  She’d declared today a day of joy and ecstasy and as so often happened he was excluded.  His job was to suffer, though truth be told the tightness in his chest felt lessened and his head seemed clearer somehow.  It was almost a relief to be alone on these days, even with the dark turns his thoughts would take by evening.  He knows he’s safe from himself.  He knows Saeren is outside his door.

Saeren had taken him out past the signal jammer earlier that day to receive and return calls to Luciel. 

“Only Luciel,” he’d cautioned, spitting his brother’s name.

Luciel had spoke hushed, and excitedly about the new member, whispering about Hyun and his growing infatuation, and from the sounds of it V could guess Luciel had a small crush of his own.  “R-respect,” Luciel had stuttered when he said as much.

Saeren growls and glares when V laughs.

He checks his messages while Saeren huffs and groans impatiently at him.  He wants to be done out here, left to what small bits of joy and ecstasy he is allowed while monitoring the RFA and V.

“There are a lot of messages from Jumin,” V finds himself saying.  “He wants Luciel to give him this Elle woman’s background check? He wants me to call him, he says it’s urgent.”

“No,” Saeren says and he grabs V’s hand leading him roughly back into Magenta.

He’d argued briefly that Jumin would be more suspicious that he’s being ignored than if he’s appeased or fed excuses but was met only with Savior’s said, and the usual threats of violence.

His fingers brush the lens of his camera and he wonders if there’s enough vision in his left eye to capture the way the last light of the day plays across the tile floor of his room, does the reality look as stark as he thinks? 

He considers briefly if he fell from his window camera in hand, would the last image he captures be a beautiful as her smile.

[enbyfication]

oh wow, you cut your own hair? i have a trans friend who cuts his own hair as well and idk what they do but its simply gorgeous to look at; wavy but short and smooth. im sure your hair also looks amazing and hopefully, it'll kick dysphoria's ass! you pose an interesting predicament but what if i wanted to rest my head on your knee? or use my own hands to just rub against your legs or even thighs...depends on how tall you are. just moving my hands up and down to massage you and let you know that im appreciative. you'd at least have to let me do something with my hands, right? it wouldn't be fair that i would be the only one enjoying myself from it... unless you're getting pleasure out of me cleaning your fingers and watching me do that. okay, that thought is kinda hot but i'm only cleaning them because they're dirty, okay? and the sink is too far away without you having to get up and leave so this will have to do for now. you know what i mean, right? that's the only reason im doing it - dont you think of cupping my face in one of your hands or scratching my chin either. dont ask why, those arent like sweet spots or anything!

aa sorry if this is too much, i got a little bit "motivated" to respond right before i go to sleep.

ah, no!! i buzzed it aka i took an electric shaver to it - slightly longer on the top n rlly short on the back and sides. was super easy hehe & took no skill at all, no way I cld ever cut my own hair. that's so impressive though!! unfortunately im in a top spot bc id love long hair but my hair grows up n out into curls instead of down so it looks v masc no matter what i do:/ i am like sisyphus cutting and growing out my hair tryna achieve androgyny. the short is keeping dysphoria at bay for the moment though:)

and no, no, of course I understand. my fingers are dirty and you're helping me clean them, as best you can, and I'm so grateful for that. and if you want to hold my fingers, my wrists with your hands so you can better clean then, well that makes sense too! but of course I'd have to watch, to make sure you were doing it right. because at the end of the day, I could always get up and clean them myself. so you've gotta keep me there. and I've gotta keep an eye on you to make sure you're really giving me all your attention