blazingflar

[blazingflar]

I know I say that I'm kinda nuts for doing the amount of visual research I do, but at the same time: Specificity is SO much more compelling and real feeling, and imo not getting references often makes things look more amateur.

Eg. drawing a sofa- my mental image of a sofa is something like this:

Like. Its a sofa. It works. But it's not very convincing, the pillows are kinda wrong at the back, and it's not really giving any information about the owner. Even if you want a basic sofa... What kind of basic.

comfy and cheap?

kinda rigid?

inherited? ------

who does this comfy cheap ikea sofa belong to anyway?

guy living alone?

teenage girl?

Grandma?

Anyway I'll get off my soapbox but specificity is sexy and fun and it can do your storytelling for you!

[blazingflar]

This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic?  She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing.  But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great.  She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success.  So - what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear.  Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles.  He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses.  You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on.  Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered.  He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit.  That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way.  I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did. 

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this.  But no one ever told me.  I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes.  No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed.  I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to.  No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to.  I guess I just didn’t know.  I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.

So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while.  But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not.  Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.

[blazingflar]

Heterosexual relationship culture is so alien to me and I don’t know if it’s the fact I’m not cishet or the fact I’m autistic but I hear so many things that make me go “Am I insane or are they?”

There’s a lot of hate on widowers and I saw a woman say “You cannot compete with a dead woman.” which is perhaps a reasonable statement to say if he’s constantly comparing you to his dead partner but that wasn’t what the post was about. And I realized “Oh my God, these people genuinely feel like they’re constantly in competition with their spouse’s exes and the ex being dead makes them feel insecure that they cannot best her.”

There’s also been an uptick in the ‘men and women cannot be ‘just’ friends’ rhetoric which I feel like is extremely dangerous and reflects the rise of fascism and sexism. Some of these stories of women feeling threatened by their husband’s female best friend have some merit and others are like “I feel angry that my husband still talks to the girl he grew up next door to and she and her wife are invited to family gatherings and included in family photos sometimes. Am I right to be suspicious?” No. No you’re not. I cannot imagine being you and living with that high level of stress and paranoia and constant torment and jealousy about your husband having a positive relationship with anyone who isn’t you.

[blazingflar]

THIS EPISODE WAS SO FUCKING FUNNY MAN

WHO ANIMATED THIS

Source: YouTube

There's No Freaking Way I'll be Your Lover! Unless… Episode 6

[blazingflar]

do any of you remember that gumball episode where darwin becomes mega paranoid after watching a health and safety video so to quell his anxiety he goes out of his way to make everything kid friendly and inoffensive by propositioning it as being for the children and then he becomes a fascist at the end

[blazingflar]

learning how to drive in america is like a fucking saw trap.

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my OCs are sooo cool you guys don't know what you're missing. if you could see the show i'm watching in my head rn you'd go so crazy i'm telling u

[blazingflar]

Huntrix + Forward Guard

[blazingflar]

It's so crazy how "Don't feed the trolls" was like the Motto of the internet & in forum culture of the 00s and early 10s and now you log onto a certain website and it's just an endless sea of people pouring gruel into the troll trough day in day out and no one seems to realize or care that their internet experience being a constant deluge of misery and bad faith discussion might in fact be their own fault

[blazingflar]

twitter chuds

"You can't call watanare polyam you gotta say its harem" meanwhile another one of teren mikamis works features a polyam relationship.

[blazingflar]

In 1989, George Bush gave a speech about crack. During the speech he pulled out a bag of crack and said “this bag was seized right across the street from the White House in Lafayette park.” Turns out, his speech writers had the idea to pull out a prop during his speech and in order to make it believable they had the DEA plant crack on this random 18 year old black kid. They lured him there. He didn’t even know where the White House or Lafayette park was. When he got there, they arrested them. The plot was discovered by a journalist.

[blazingflar]

lesbian masculinity is literally one of the hottest and most attractive things in the world sorry.

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Remember, history was awful. Never trust the romantics.

[blazingflar]

bosohurricane

[blazingflar]

Hiya!! Since you're drawing pride dragons, may I request a Pansexual/Panromantic pride dragon?

#116 - 泛性戀 (fàn xìng liàn / pansexual) - Waow! A pretty pan dragon!! 💖💛💙

[blazingflar]

I am spoiling the live action Lilo & Stitch. And I am doing it up front and plainly.

Do not fucking see this movie. Do not waste your money on this. Period.

They made Nani give Lilo up to the American government. They made Nani LEAVE Hawaii and pursue being a marine biologist. They made a native Hawaiian character give up her sibling to pursue a dream that she originally did not have. This is imperialist propaganda at its FINEST.

The original fucking movie is about family staying together. It's about indigenous people being able to stay with each other and stay in their home and be together! That's the whole fucking point! Nani is Lilo's last living relative on her homeland—it is jarring, it is disgusting and disturbing that Nani would not only leave her last blood relative alone, give her up to the very government that is harming native Hawaiians TODAY, but also travel to the "mainland" for her dream!

Not to mention, Nani's actress isn't fucking Hawaiian. She's much paler in photos and real life. They fucking darkened her for this movie.

Don't even get me started on the transgender subtext of Pleakley's "human" disguise from the original movie being completely erased in favor of him being played by a regular ass white man. Jumba doesn't have his accent, they made him more villainous, and his "human" disguise is a non-fat white man—which part of his original joke, I know, is that he was bigger and was more clumsy in the movie because of his size, but to have the main shape of his character completely removed is also fucking weird.

This live action movie is a desecration to the original. I encourage you to not see it, please. Don't give Disney any of your money on this one. Just watch the original. Please just watch the original.

The new message in the live action movie is disturbing and gross.

This is one of the most disrespectful live actions I've seen and heard of. I implore you to not watch it.

[blazingflar]

i just got a 105 min ad?? on youtube??