#all images i used in this are from creative commons

[bees-draws]

[art]

Creator Spotlight: @camberdraws

Hello! My name is Camber (any pronouns), and I’m a mixed media illustrator located in the southwestern United States. I love drawing everything, but I have a special interest in depicting strange creatures and environments, often accompanied by abstract imagery and mark-making. Professionally, I’ve worked creating concept art and 2D assets for museum exhibits, but currently, I am engaged full-time as a software developer and make standalone illustrations in my free time. I’ve been posting art on Tumblr since I was a teenager, and the site has been very welcoming towards my work to this very day!

Check out Camber’s interview below!

Did you originally have a background in art? If not, how did you start?

I’ve had an interest in drawing since I was barely sentient, but at thirteen years old I decided to become “serious” about art. I was all about reading tutorials and doing a ton of studies. I would tote my heavy instructional art books to school every single day (my poor back!) Despite all this, I decided to forgo art school in favor of a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at my local college. Alongside my major, I received a minor in Art Studio with a specialization in fine art, which totally changed my views on creating artwork and drastically changed my style.

How has your style developed over the years?

As mentioned previously, my style did a 180 after I studied under some very skilled fine art professors! As a kid, my drawings were very realism-heavy and inspired by video game concept art. I mostly worked digitally, too. During college, I was thrown for a loop when we were instructed to do strange things like, for example, make a bunch of marks on paper using pastel, WITHOUT looking, and then turn said marks into a finished piece of art! I quickly and deeply fell in love with abstract work, and especially appreciated images that are not easily parsed by the viewer. Since then, I’ve made it my goal to combine abstract mark-making with more representational subject matter.

What is one habit you find yourself doing a lot as an artist?

Hmmm, one habit I really enjoy as an artist is strictly tracking the amount of time I spend drawing! I currently work a full-time job wholly unrelated to art, so I have to be careful with my time if I want to spend enough hours drawing each week. I created a spreadsheet that allows you to enter the amount of minutes you’ve drawn each day and calculate how much drawing time you still need to reach your weekly goal (I aim for 20 hours a week.) Having such a clear, numbers-based objective keeps me motivated to work like nothing else!

Over the years as an artist, what were your biggest inspirations behind your creativity?

I know this is a common inspiration, but Hayao Miyazaki’s work has been rewiring my neurons since I was a child. Seemingly all of my artistic interests can be summed up by the movie Princess Mononoke: it has strange/abstract creature designs, a strong focus on nature and environmental storytelling, and a mix of dark and hopeful themes. Additionally, I’ve been deeply inspired by video game series such as Zelda, Okami, Pikmin, and Dark Souls. But arguably, none of these have influenced me more than Pokemon! I’ve been drawing Pokemon since I could barely hold a pencil, and I haven’t stopped since! I believe my love of designing creatures originated with my endless deluge of Pokemon fanart during my childhood.

What is a medium that you have always been intrigued by but would never use yourself?

I’ve always been fascinated by 3D mediums and am so tempted to try them out! Whether that’s 3D models created digitally or sculptures made from clay, I profoundly admire artists who have this skill. Oftentimes, it feels like I don’t have time to delve into a totally different artistic paradigm. However, I feel very strongly that learning new skills can enrich your current work. I should take that advice and someday give 3D mediums a shot!

What is a recent creative project that you are proud of?

I am in the process of creating an art book (a dream of mine!) and have been executing smaller drawings of concepts I find interesting from both a visual and storytelling standpoint. A recent drawing for said book is that of a snail made of ink with an ink bottle as a shell, and it went absolutely viral! I’ve never had an experience like this as an artist before and it has been spectacular! I was able to open a shop using my newly acquired art printer and sell many prints of my snail. Creating something original, directly stemming from my interests, and having that resonate with so many people has been unreal. I couldn’t ask for more as an artist!

What advice would you give to younger you about making art that’s personal or truthful to your own experiences?

I would tell my younger self to chill out and experiment more! I was so caught up in the idea that I needed to have a realistic style to be considered “good.” I also believed that technical skill was the only measure of how worthy my art was. That’s not to say technical skill doesn’t matter, but I now firmly believe the creativity and voice of your ideas far outweigh the skill of execution in terms of importance. Technical skills should elevate ideas, not the other way around. Once I began to revel in strange ideas and stories for my work, depicted oftentimes in odd styles or mediums, I truly found my voice as an artist.

Who on Tumblr inspires you and why?

My peers here on Tumblr inspire me more than anything! Sharing my work with contemporaries and giving each other support brings me joy like no other, and keeps me motivated to continue creating. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them! @beetlestench, @theogm-art, @trustyalt, @ratwednesday, @phantom-nisnow, @svltart, @mintsdraws, @mothhh-hh, @jupiterweathers, @thesewispsofsmoke, @picoffee, @fetchiko, @kaisei-ink, and @pine-niidles just to name only a few!

Thanks for stopping by, Camber! If you haven’t seen their Meet the Artist piece, check it out here. For more of Camber’s work, follow their Tumblr, @camberdraws!

[zeldasnotes]

ᴬˢᵀᴿᴼ ᴼᴮˢᴱᴿⱽᴬᵀᴵᴼᴺˢ ³²

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Some of the most kind people Ive ever met had had Jupiter conjunct Moon/Venus. Pure, genuine kindness.

Fama(408) conjunct Uranus can indicate overnight fame. This aspect reminds me of the people who are recorded saying something really funny without realizing it and when they wake up in the morning and see the video went viral.

Venus 10th house is common in the charts of people who work with beauty procedures with a more permanent effect like microblading, cosmetic tattoos, laser hair removal etc. People with these placements often like to get these procedures done on themselves too. Since 10th house is ruled by saturn and saturn is time they want something that lasts instead of just going to a makeupartist.

If one of your parents have Venus in the 5th house you probably hot af.

Moon/Venus conjunct Chiron can mean constantly befriending or falling for the wrong women. They are drawn to people who need healing. But what they forget is that misery loves company.

Everytime I like an artist to the point of liking EVERY song they make we had Venus 8th house synastry. There is a deep understanding here when it comes to art.

Fama(408) conjunct Moon = Soccer mom image👩🏻‍🍼⚽️🧸

People with Ceres(1) conjunct personal planets tend to be well liked.

Venus/Saturn aspects might be hated on more by older people than people their own age. Older women might comment on their looks and older men notice them.

Everytime someone throws a fit in my comments its because I said something about their Moon aspect/sign. Which kinda proves what a sensitive planet the Moon is.

Moon can show where you spend so much time to the point of living there. I read about a person in true crime who lived in her car and she had Moon in the 3rd house, Ive seen Moon in the 6th house who are at work all the time, Ive seen Moon in the 11th housers who are always at their friends house.

Mars, Nessus or Lilith in the 11th house can be keyboard warriors. 🤬💻

Part of Fortune in the 5th house makes someone blessed with extraordinary creativity.

Ive seen people with Lilith Square Jupiter might have to suffer a lot because of rebelling against cultural/religious expectations.

Mars Square Uranus are the kind of people to EXPLODE with physical energy. This makes them excellent at martial arts since they move quick. Mike Tyson have Mars Square Uranus and Pluto.

Venus in Leo in the solar return chart can make you more interested in fashion & haircare that year. 💅

Transit Asteroid Destinn(6583) was conjunct my natal Venus and Transit Moon was in my natal 7th house the day I met the love of my life. Transit Juno(3) was conjunct my natal Juno.

Transit Dejanira(157) conjunct my natal Ascendant was hell. Ive never been victimized by others like I was during that year.

Women with Lilith and Pluto aspecting the Ascendant always look so good in bloodred or jetblack hair.

Moon in the 11th house might find a lot of comfort in social media. Social media can be their escape.

Juicy Couture just screams Taurus energy to me. The soft comfy but still so rich and pretty look to the clothes and bags is pure Taurus. (I cant be the only one who relate certain brands to a sign?)🛍️

Be careful with 2nd house synastry bc it can really make you want to buy someone stuff. I dont know if its house or planet who usually wants to buy bc Ive seen both ways around. Sure it can be a positive thing but not if one is a user and the other is naive. Can also make one expect stuff from the other. 💰

Me and my lilsister have 2nd house synastry but we would never use eachother we just love buying eachother stuff and discuss food and shopping together. For us the giving goes both ways. But Ive seen other situations where one just gave and gave without getting anything back.

Most Libra Venus men Ive met made a very big deal out of what their type is. The type to let eeeeverybody know about how they only date redheads. They can become VERY into what they find beautiful.

Venus says a lot about your behaviour bc Venus is what we find attractive and ofc we act as we want to be seen. Capricorn Venuses for example tend to act in a very mature and serious way. Their behaviour really screams ”take me seriously or live to regret it.”

People with Venus/Pluto tends to get a lot of unwanted suggestions on what to do with their looks.

Transit Asteroid Destinn(6583) was conjunct my natal Venus the day I met the love of my life. And transit Juno(3) was conjunct my natal Juno.

Plutonian Moons can always spot eachother. Same with Chiron 1st house and Lilith 11th house. Thats because these placements all bring experiences in someones youth that can be easily seen on the person later in life.

©️ 2024 Zeldas Notes All Rights Reserved

[therobotmonster]

Please don’t use midjourney it steals art from pretty much every artist out there without any compensation. I didn’t know this at first and tried it but then during the creation process i saw water marks and Getty image logos (though I’m sure they’ve hidden that now) so it’s definitely stealing.

No, it isn't. And you've taken the wrong lesson from the Getty watermark issue.

AI training on public facing, published work is fair use. Any published piece could be located, examined, and learned from by a human artist. This does not require the permission of the owner of said work. A mechanical apparatus does not change this principle.

All we, as artists, own, are specific expressions. We do not own styles, ideas, concepts, plots, or tropes. We do not even own the work we create in a proper sense. All our work flows from the commons, and all of it flows back to it. IP is a limited patent on specific expressions, and what constitutes infringement is the end result of the creative process. What goes into it is irrelevant, and upending that process to put inspiration and reference as infringement is the end of art as we know it.

The Getty watermark issue is an example of overfitting, wherein a repetitive element in the dataset over-emphasizes specific features to the point of disrupting the system's attempts at the creation of novel images.

No one denies that the SD dataset is trained on images Getty claims to own, but Getty has so polluted the image search functions of the internet with their watermarked images that the idea of a getty watermark has been picked up the same way the AI might pick up the idea of an eye or a tree branch. It is a systemic failure that Shutterstock and Getty can be so monopolistic and ubiquitous that a dateset trained on literally everything public facing on the internet would be polluted with their watermarks.

Watermarks that, by the way, they add to public domain images, and that google prioritizes over clean versions.

The lawsuits being brought against Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are copyright overreach being presented as a theft tissue. The facts of the matter are not as the litigants state. The images aren't stored, the SD weights are a 4 gig file trained on 250 terabytes, roughly 4 bytes per image. It runs local, does not reach out to image sources over IP. All you've got are mathematical patterns and ratios. I would go so far as to say that the class action suit is based on outright lies.

But for a moment, let's entertain the idea that what goes into a work, as inspiration, can be copyrighted. That styles can be stolen. That what goes in defines infringement, rather than what comes out. What happens then?

Well, the bad news is that if Stable Diffusion and Midjourney were shut down tomorrow, Stable Diffusion is in the wild. It runs local, it's user-trainable. In short, the genie isn't going back in the bottle. Plus, the way diffusion AI works, there's no way to trace a gen to its sources. The weights don't work like that. The indexing would be larger than the entire set of stored patterns.

Well good news, there's an AI for that. The current version is called CLIP Interrogator And it works on everything. Not just AI generated, but any image. It can find what style it closely matches, reverse engineer a prompt. It's crude now, but it will improve.

Now, you've already established that using the same patterns as another work is infringement. You've already established that inspiration is theft. And now there's a robot that tells lawyers who you draw like.

Sure, you can fight it in court. If it goes go to court. But who's to say they won't just staplegun that AI to a monetization re-direction bot like youtube has going with their content ID? Awesome T-shirt design you uploaded to your print-on-demand shop... too bad your art style resembles that from a cartoon from 1973 that Universal got as part of an acquisition and they've claimed all your cash. Sure you can file a DMCA counter-notice, but we all know how that goes.

And then there's this fantasy that upending the system would help artists. But who would "own" that style? Is that piece stealing the style of Stephen Silver, or Disney's Kim Possible(TM)? When you work for Disney their contracts say everything you make is theirs. Every doodle. Every drawing. If the styles are copyrightable, a company could hire an artist straight out of school, publish their work under work-for-hire, fire them, and then go after them for "stealing" the style they developed while working for said corp.

Not to mention that a handful of companies own so much media that it is going to be impossible to find an artist that hasn't been influenced by something under their control.

Oh, and that stock of source images that companies like Disney and Universal have? These kinds of lawsuits won't stop them from building AIs with that material that they "own". The power goes into corp hands, they can down staff to their heart's content and everyone else is denied the ability to compete with them. Worst of all possible worlds.

Be careful what wishes you make when holding the copyright monkey's paw.

[penandpaperdreams]

Are your characters too “perfect”? Struggling to give them negative traits?

I’ve definitely fallen into the trap of making my protagonists and side characters too “perfect” before. It’s an easy mistake to make, but it can lead to your characters feeling one-dimensional if you’re too afraid to make them seem morally grey.

Here’s a very simple method:

1. Take a character’s main positive trait. Let’s take Hermione Granger, for example - her intelligence is a defining aspect of her character.

2. Exaggerate it into a negative trait. In the instance of Hermione Granger, she can come across to the other characters as a know-it-all. She’s not always portrayed as perfect for her intelligence, which is what makes her character more interesting.

Using this method, we have a number of options for negative traits for an intelligent character - patronising, arrogant, smug - to name a few.

I use the Fatal Attraction theory for this, which suggests that we fall out of love with someone for the same reason we were initially attracted to them. So, if you grew to like someone because you liked how strong and dominant they are, you may become tired of that down the line when their behaviour is controlling.

I’ve illustrated a few examples for how to exaggerate common positive traits into negative ones in the image above, but I have a few more examples to share so you really get the idea:

1. Comic relief / funny - can’t be serious, humour as a coping mechanism

2. Dark and mysterious - emotionally distant

3. Creative - aloof

4. Loyal - neglects own needs, willing to hurt for those they love

5. Compassionate / empathetic - overstepping boundaries

6. Honesty - overly blunt

7. Responsible - too serious

8. Humility - lack of self-belief

9. Trusting - easy to manipulate, overshares personal information

10. Perceptive - rude

11. Flirtatious - inappropriate

12. Organised - controlling, “neat freak”

13. Easygoing - lack of care about serious matters

14. Flamboyant - can be too much for some

15. Spontaneous - puts self in danger

Of course, you don’t have to do this. You can just have a character be spiritual and creative without making them out-of-touch and aloof. It’s completely up to you!

Using a method such as this, even if you only apply it subtly, adds a touch of realism to your writing by making your characters feel more well-rounded. It means that their negative aspects are truly coming from a part of them, rather than selected at random and mashed together from a list online.

[creatingblackcharacters]

“The Same Place as the Music” Lighting & Color

“Where is the light coming from?” “The same place as the music.” Andrew Lesnie, Cinematographer of LOTR

How & Why It's A Problem

If I had to summarize the frustration I have with this topic in one image, I'd use JeCorey Holder's (queer Black creative!) meme:

Now here's the thing. I'm not saying you have to be a master at lighting. I'm surely not. Hell, I still play around with lighting in my art in ways that aren’t the ‘most realistic’. You can’t ask me the technical explanations behind ‘color theory’ or 'contrast' without me doing some more reading. However… I don’t think anyone needs an art degree to understand this point:

We should be able to SEE your brown skinned Black characters!

I brought this up in my lessons about skin tones and blushing, and it applies with lighting as well. If all of your other characters have focused light and shadows, so should your Black characters.

However, this does NOT mean making them lighter-skinned!!!!

It's not funny nor logical at all to suggest that they somehow can't be seen like your other characters when you’re the one creating the piece. It's like a classic fifth-grade racist joke, “You blend in at night”. Har-de-har.

I was once rudely told to my face (well in the DMs) that a Black character that was completely Europeanized looked like that “because of the [sepia] lighting”. So I'm going to give you all, gracious readers, an example to show that that's not true.

This is Ana Flávia, Afro-Brazilian model! Gaze upon her beauty! Notice how in both of these filters, Ana did not, in fact, turn into a white woman! Because, my friends, that is not how that works! At all!

Here are some other examples of Black people in non-color lighting:

None of these people vanished from the frame just because there was no color. They didn't have to paint on lighter makeup to be captured by the camera. What do they all have in common (in this example)?

Lighting!

Now let’s discuss different ways to think about and potentially try instead!

What I want you all to keep in mind, is that the art you’re painting:

And I know that's silly right, like yeah no shit Ice, we knew that. BUT my point here is don’t be afraid to study photography, theatre, and staging for ideas. They actively work with light! It’s why I share so many images of models; it’s purposeful, focused staging of light with many of these compositions!

Brown-skinned Black people- brown-skinned people in general- GLOW in the light! Our skin reflects environmental light! There’s so much opportunity to play with that, and you can see different examples in those mediums.

Here are a couple articles of lighting in film focused on Black actors.

When lighting a person with dark complexion, the answer is not LIGHTENING THE SKIN, it’s understanding how light reflects off of dark skin.” -Nilah Magruder

Nilah Magruder (Black creator!) has an ENTIRE, thorough and wonderful essay on the topic, far better than I could give! She incorporates the use of cameras, lighting, painting, and more- so rather than be redundant here, I'm going to spotlight (ha see what I did there. It's okay, I know I'm funny) her and her explanation.

Incorporating Blackness in Color/Colorful Lighting

@dsm7 has an excellent and short visual explanation of how picking certain colors will lead to washing out or whitewashing Black characters, and how certain lighting and backgrounds (think the black and white photos on brighter backgrounds) will change the way their skin tone looks.

@nicosbighead has one of my favorite images on here, that shows how many different colors can still be used to convey the image of Blackness. Notice how all those pinks still worked?

@gaksdesigns has a beautiful picture here that I feel utilizes the light in a very minimal yet effective way to show highlights even on a palette that's fully brown.

This article approaches from a lighting perspective via filmmaking, but essentially Sade Ndya suggests instead of increasing the amount of light, change the color/lens of the light based on your character’s skin, as well as for the circumstances of the scene. They'll remain vibrant that way, and you’ll still capture what you need.

I know one way I do this on CSP (I think I’ve mentioned this but I can’t remember) is to use the Add Glow tool with the same or a similar shade of the character’s brown skin tone as a highlight under natural light, or maybe use different colors or filters depending on the sort of light on their skin at the time.

Here’s a reddit about it too, just because I know y’all value Reddit on here, and someone else discussed the topic that both Nilah and Sade discussed.

Is It Intentional?

There are going to be times where you intend for the light to be minimal. Maybe it’s a style choice. That should still show purposeful composition. Here’s an interview with famed Black director Ava Duvernay discussing the intentional darkness on Black actors in the prison scene in the movie Selma. To show that they're both trapped in prison AND that Martin is temporarily low on resolve- it's a part of the story that's being told.

I'm always talking about this: there is a difference between intention (and following through), and neglecting to think about it at all. And neglect isn't what we want, because often we can tell visually when it is- when an artist simply did not think to do it for one versus the rest.

Sidenote, on Youtube in the suggestions after Ava's interview, are also plenty of videos discussing lighting for dark-skin as well- why not take the chance to look?

Conclusion

We do not lack for light! We aren’t flat and lightless when you see us in life. It's actually a pretty awesome part of being brown-skinned. If you’re giving proper, flattering lighting to everyone else, give it to us as well. Study and experiment with ways to highlight brown skin.

You already know what I’m going to say. It’s going to take practice, same as anything else, because it’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A year in illustration, 2023 edition (part one)

(This is part one; part two is here.)

I am objectively very bad at visual art. I am bad at vision, period – I'm astigmatic, shortsighted, color blind, and often miss visual details others see. I can't even draw a stick-figure. To top things off, I have cataracts in both eyes and my book publishing/touring schedule is so intense that I keep having to reschedule the surgeries. But despite my vast visual deficits, I thoroughly enjoy making collages for this blog.

For many years now – decades – I've been illustrating my blog posts by mixing public domain and Creative Commons art with work that I can make a good fair use case for. As bad as art as I may be, all this practice has paid off. Call it unseemly, but I think I'm turning out some terrific illustrations – not all the time, but often enough.

Last year, I rounded up my best art of the year:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/25/a-year-in-illustration/

And I liked reflecting on the year's art so much, I decided I'd do it again. Be sure to scroll to the bottom for some downloadables – freely usable images that I painstakingly cut up with the lasso tool in The Gimp.

The original AD&D hardcover cover art is seared into my psyche. For several years, there were few images I looked at so closely as these. When Hasbro pulled some world-beatingly sleazy stuff with the Open Gaming License, I knew just how to mod Dave Trampier's 'Eve Of Moloch' from the cover of the Players' Handbook. Thankfully, bigger nerds than me have identified all the fonts in the image, making the remix a doddle.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/12/beg-forgiveness-ask-permission/#whats-a-copyright-exception

Even though I don't keep logs or collect any analytics, I can say with confidence that "Tiktok's Enshittification" was the most popular thing I published on Pluralistic this year. I mixed some public domain Brother's Grimm art, mixed with a classic caricature of Boss Tweed, and some very cheesy royalty-free/open access influencer graphics. One gingerbread cottage social media trap, coming up:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

To illustrate the idea of overcoming walking-the-plank fear (as a metaphor for writing when it feels like you suck) I mixed public domain stock of a plank, a high building and legs, along with a procedurally generated Matrix "code waterfall" and a vertiginous spiral ganked from a Heinz Bunse photo of a German office lobby.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/22/walking-the-plank/

Finding a tasteful way to illustrate a story about Johnson & Johnson losing a court case after it spent a generation tricking women into dusting their vulvas with asbestos-tainted talcum was a challenge. The tulip (featured in many public domain images) was a natural starting point. I mixed it with Jesse Wagstaff's image of a Burning Man dust-storm and Mike Mozart's shelf-shot of a J&J talcum bottle.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/01/j-and-j-jk/#risible-gambit

"Google's Chatbot Panic" is about Google's long history of being stampeded into doing stupid things because its competitors are doing them. Once it was Yahoo, now it's Bing. Tenniel's Tweedle Dee and Dum were a good starting point. I mixed in one of several Humpty Dumpty editorial cartoon images from 19th century political coverage that I painstakingly cut out with the lasso tool on a long plane-ride. This is one of my favorite Humpties, I just love the little 19th C businessmen trying to keep him from falling! I finished it off with HAL 9000's glowing red eye, my standard 'this is about AI' image, which I got from Cryteria's CC-licensed SVG.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Though I started writing about Luddites in my January, 2022 Locus column, 2023 was the Year of the Luddite, thanks to Brian Merchant's outstanding Blood In the Machine:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/26/enochs-hammer/#thats-fronkonsteen

When it came time to illustrate "Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk," I found a public domain weaver's loft, and put one of Cryteria's HAL9000 eyes in the window. Magpie Killjoy's Steampunk Magazine poster, 'Love the Machine, Hate the Factory,' completed the look.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/12/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk/

For the "small, non-profit school" that got used as an excuse to bail out Silicon Valley Bank, I brought back Humpty Dumpty, mixing him with a Hogwartsian castle, a brick wall texture, and an ornate, gilded frame. I love how this one came out. This Humpty was made for the SVB bailout.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/23/small-nonprofit-school/#north-country-school

The RESTRICT Act would have federally banned Tiktok – a proposal that was both technically unworkable and unconstitutional. I found an early 20th century editorial cartoon depicting Uncle Sam behind a fortress wall that was keeping a downtrodden refugee family out of America. I got rid of most of the family, giving the dad a Tiktok logo head, and I put Cryteria's HAL9000 eyes over each cannonmouth. Three Boss Tweed moneybag-head caricatures, adorned with Big Tech logos, rounded it out.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik-tok-tow/#good-politics-for-electoral-victories

When Flickr took decisive action to purge the copyleft trolls who'd been abusing its platform, I knew I wanted to illustrate this with Lucifer being cast out of heaven, and the very best one of those comes from John Milton, who is conveniently well in the public domain. The Flickr logo suggested a bicolored streaming-light-of-heaven motif that just made it.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/01/pixsynnussija/#pilkunnussija

Old mainframe ads are a great source of stock for a "Computer Says No" image. And Congress being a public building, there are lots of federal (and hence public domain) images of its facade.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/04/cbo-says-no/#wealth-tax

When I wrote about the Clarence Thomas/Harlan Crow bribery scandal, it was easy to find Mr. Kjetil Ree's great image of the Supreme Court building. Thomas being a federal judge, it was easy to find a government photo of his head, but it's impossible to find an image of him in robes at a decent resolution. Luckily, there are tons of other federal judges who've been photographed in their robes! Boss Tweed with the dollar-sign head was a great stand-in for Harlan Crow (no one knows what he looks like anyway). Gilding Thomas's robes was a simple matter of superimposing a gold texture and twiddling with the layers.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow

"Gig apps trap reverse centaurs in wage-stealing Skinner boxes" is one of my best titles. This is the post where I introduce the idea of "twiddling" as part of the theory of enshittification, and explain how it relates to "reverse centaurs" – people who assist machines, rather than the other way around. Finding a CC licensed modular synth was much harder than I thought, but I found Stephen Drake's image and stitched it into a mandala. Cutting out the horse's head for the reverse centaur was a lot of work (manes are a huuuuge pain in the ass), but I love how his head sits on the public domain high-viz-wearing warehouse worker's body I cut up (thanks, OSHA!). Seeing as this is an horrors-of-automation story, Cryteria's HAL9000 eyes make an appearance.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Rockefeller's greatest contribution to our culture was inspiring many excellent unflattering caricatures. The IWW's many-fists-turning-into-one-fist image made it easy to have the collective might of workers toppling the original robber-baron.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

I link to this post explaining how to make good Mastodon threads at least once a week, so it's a good thing the graphic turned out so well. Close-cropping the threads from a public domain yarn tangle worked out great. Eugen Rochko's Mastodon logo was and is the only Affero-licensed image ever to appear on Pluralistic.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/16/how-to-make-the-least-worst-mastodon-threads/

I spent hours on the sofa one night painstakingly cutting up and reassembling the cover art from a science fiction pulp. I have a folder full of color-corrected, high-rez scans from an 18th century anatomy textbook, and the cross-section head-and-brain is the best of the lot.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Those old French anatomical drawings are an endless source of delight to me. Take one cross-sectioned noggin, mix in an old PC mainboard, and a vector art illo of a virtuous cycle with some of Cryteria's HAL9000 eyes and you've got a great illustration of Google's brain-worms.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/14/googles-ai-hype-circle/

Ireland's privacy regulator is but a plaything in Big Tech's hand, but it's goddamned hard to find an open-access Garda car. I manually dressed some public domain car art in Garda livery, painstakingly tracing it over the panels. The (public domain) baby's knit cap really hides the seams from replacing the baby's head with HAL9000's eye.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

Naked-guy-in-a-barrel bankruptcy images feel like something you can find in an old Collier's or Punch, but I came up snake-eyes and ended up frankensteining a naked body into a barrel for the George Washington crest on the Washington State flag. It came out well, but harvesting the body parts from old muscle-beach photos left George with some really big guns. I tried five different pairs of suspenders here before just drawing in black polyhedrons with little grey dots for rivets.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/03/when-the-tide-goes-out/#passive-income

Illustrating Amazon's dominance over the EU coulda been easy – just stick Amazon 'A's in place of the yellow stars that form a ring on the EU flag. So I decided to riff on Plutarch's Alexander, out of lands to conquer. Rama's statue legs were nice and high-rez. I had my choice of public domain ruin images, though it was harder thank expected to find a good Amazon box as a plinth for those broken-off legs.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

God help me, I could not stop playing with this image of a demon-haunted IoT car. All those reflections! The knife sticking out of the steering wheel, the multiple Munsch 'Scream'ers, etc etc. The more I patchked with it, the better it got, though. This one's a banger.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

To depict a "data-driven dictatorship," I ganked elements of heavily beribboned Russian military dress uniforms, replacing the head with HAL9000's eye. I turned the foreground into the crowds from the Nuremberg rallies and filled the sky with Matrix code waterfall.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/26/dictators-dilemma/#garbage-in-garbage-out-garbage-back-in

The best thing about analogizing DRM to demonic possession is the wealth of medieval artwork to choose from . This one comes from the 11th century 'Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros.' I mixed in the shiny red Tesla (working those reflections!), and a Tesla charger to make my point.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

Yet more dividends from those old French anatomical plates: a flayed skull, a detached jaw, a quack electronic gadget, a Wachowski code waterfall and some HAL 9000 eyes and you've got a truly unsettling image of machine-compelled speech.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

I had no idea this would work out so well, but daaaamn, crossfading between a Wachowski code waterfall and a motherboard behind a roiling thundercloud is dank af.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

Of all the turkeys-voting-for-Christmas self-owns conservative culture warriors fall for, few can rival the "banning junk fees is woke" hustle. Slap a US-flag Punisher logo on and old-time card imprinter, add a GOP logo to a red credit-card blank, and then throw in a rustic barn countertop and you've got a junk-fee extracter fit for the Cracker Barrel.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

Putting the Verizon logo on the Hinderberg was an obvious gambit (even if I did have to mess with the flames a lot), but the cutout of Paul Marcarelli as the 'can you hear me now?' guy, desaturated and contrast-matched, made it sing.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/10/smartest-guys-in-the-room/#can-you-hear-me-now

Note to self: Tux the Penguin is really easy to source in free/open formats! He looks great with HAL9000 eyes.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

Rockwell's self-portrait image is a classic; that made it a natural for a HAL9000-style remix about AI art. I put a bunch of time into chopping and remixing Rockwell's signature to give it that AI look, and added as many fingers as would fit on each hand.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

(Images: Heinz Bunse, West Midlands Police, Christopher Sessums, CC BY-SA 2.0; Mike Mozart, Jesse Wagstaff, Stephen Drake, Steve Jurvetson, syvwlch, Doc Searls, https://www.flickr.com/photos/mosaic36/14231376315, Chatham House, CC BY 2.0; Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; Mr. Kjetil Ree, Trevor Parscal, Rama, “Soldiers of Russia” Cultural Center, Russian Airborne Troops Press Service, CC BY-SA 3.0; Raimond Spekking, CC BY 4.0; Drahtlos, CC BY-SA 4.0; Eugen Rochko, Affero; modified)

[celandeline]

I had an idea for a Farleigh one shot where you’re kind of a “friends with benefits” type situation. You certainly aren’t “dating” but it’s very clear you’re together type thing. He ends up getting with someone else, you obviously aren’t happy, so you bring a different guy to a Halloween party at Saltburn after ignoring Farleigh for a bit. I’d love for you to write it if you’d want to!! I absolutely LOVE your writing!! 💕🫶🏻

anything for you baby <3

i did take some creative liberties, since Halloween is during the fall semester i set it at Oxford, but i hope you still like it!

Together-Together

For two months now, you’ve considered Farleigh ‘yours’, in a sense. 

It’s an unspoken ownership that goes two ways - you spend most of your time together after all, given that you’re in most of the same classes and are both members of Felix’s little circle. It’s only natural that you’ve grown to like him, underneath the bitchy persona he puts on for Felix’s entertainment - and, based on the fact that he holds your hand when he fucks you, you assume that he likes you too. You’re not together - you’ve never discussed being together - but at the same time, you are. 

So when you watch him press some guy dressed as a sexy Dracula up against the wall like he’s going to kiss him, you get a little mad. Rightfully so, in your opinion. 

“What the fuck.” You say, louder than you intend to. Next to you, Annabel turns away from the makeshift bar (two folding tables manned by some guys you recognize from the rowing team), and follows your line of sight, zeroing in on Farleigh and his guy on the other side of the common room. 

“What the fuck.” Annabel agrees with you, pulling you closer to her so that she doesn’t have to shout over the music. “I thought you guys were fucking?”

“We are.” You say, still watching Farleigh over her shoulder. It’s like watching a car wreck - you can’t look away as he leans down to whisper in his ear, a flirtatious grin on his face. You can’t hear what he says - of course not, the music is loud enough to shake the walls of the dorm - but your stomach sinks anyway. “I mean, I thought we were.”

“Then what the fuck is he doing?” Annabel sounds more pissed than you feel, which almost makes you laugh - until you watch that boy nip at Farleigh’s earlobe and another rush of anger shoots through you.

“I don’t know.” You say. It’s the first time - you think, at least - that this has happened since the first time you fucked. Technically, he’s not doing anything wrong, you’re decidedly not together, but it still feels like he’s cheating. He was the one who extended you an invite to this party, anyway - you picked out costumes together. Granted, they aren’t matching, but the principle still stands. 

Annabel scoffs, rolling her eyes as she sips at her drink. “He’s such a bitch sometimes.” She says. “I can’t understand why you hang out with him so much.”

Because you like him. The words dance on the tip of your tongue, but you don’t say them, too busy watching Farleigh mouth at the boy's neck, his arm that isn’t leaning up against the wall sliding around the guys waist. Bile rises in your throat. “I’ve gotta use the loo.”

You don’t hear what Annabel says as you pull away, pushing through the crowds of your peers until you reach the communal bathrooms and shoulder the door open, darting into the nearest stall and locking the door behind you. You sit down on the toilet seat, staring ahead at the inoffensive gray of the stall door, the image of Farleigh feeling up someone else replaying in your head. 

Fuck. 

You shouldn't feel as upset as you do. You’re not together. You just spend most of your day with him and hang out with all the same people and fuck on the regular. And sometimes he tells you that he loves you when he’s drunk. But you’re not together. So, technically, he can do whatever - whoever - he wants. 

And that means you can too, if you want. 

You don’t really want to - you’d thought, since Farleigh asked you to come to this party, you’d get drunk together and leave early to share a joint and fuck like you normally do - but obviously, he’s not an option anymore, at least for tonight. It’s whatever - if he’s going to fuck someone else, so will you. You don’t care. 

New resolve built, you rise from the toilet seat and walk out of the stall, fluffing your hair in the mirror before heading back into the fray of the common room. With new vigor, you dive into the crowd of dancing Oxford students, passing a sexy Marie Antoinette and a poor attempt at a fireman making out to get truly into the throng. With only the makeshift neon lights scattered about the common room as lighting, it’s hard to see anyone’s faces, so you don’t bother, grinning up at the first guy who saunters up to you.

“Hi.” You say, looking up at what you think is supposed to be Magic Mike. Or maybe one of the men in black gone sexy?

“Hey.” Your guy grins down at you. “Nice costume.”

You glance down at the half decent princess costume you’d gone out shopping with Farleigh for yesterday. “Thanks, you too.” You say. “Wanna dance?”

-

You wake up to the sound of someone banging on your dorm room door. 

The sharp pounding reverberates through your skull, and you groan, lifting your head off your pillow and forcing your eyes open. Your eyelashes, stuck together with last night's mascara, have to be pried apart with your fingers. You trip out of the sheets, and the guy from last night - Evan, you think his name was - grumbles in his sleep. Dressed only in one of Farleigh’s tee shirts he left here who knows when, you pull open the door.

“What the hell do you-” You start, only to have the anger die in your throat when you see exactly who is standing in front of you. Farleigh, looking like he also just rolled out of bed, brushes past you into your room, his eyes set on the guy sleeping in your bed. “Farleigh?”

Farleigh pays you no mind, ripping the sheet from Evan in one motion. Evan squawks, eyes shooting open to see Farleigh looking down at him. Evan just blinks up at him for a moment, before, “Who the hell are you-?”

At the same time, you round on Farleigh, yanking your bedsheets out of his grip. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” You hiss. “We were asleep-”

Farleigh’s gaze is still locked on Evan. “Get the fuck out.”

You laugh, mean and loud. “Oh, that’s rich.” You say. “You’ve got no fucking right, Start.”

Evan scrambles out of bed, gathering the few belongings he’d had with him when you’d tumbled into bed with him last night and dashing out the door, muttering, “Didn’t know you had a boyfriend…” as he passes you. Farleigh slams the door shut behind him, and for a moment the room is quiet. 

You toss your balled-up bedsheets back onto the mattress, and tip your chin up to look him in the eye, the image of him feeling up some guy replaying in your mind. “Well?”

“Well what?” He snaps back, tilting his head to the side. “Since when do you just bring random guys home?”

“Since when do you?” I turn it back around on him. “You’re a massive fucking hypocrite-”

He rolls his eyes, smiling in that way that tells you he’s really pissed off. “Maybe I just wanted some dick.”

“Maybe I did too.” You say. 

“Then why-” He starts, and then stops himself. “I thought that’s what I was for.”

“Well, you seemed like you were busy.” You snark. “What’s it matter anyway? It’s not like we’re together or anything, you’ve got no grounds to be jealous.”

“Neither do you.” He says, leaning down to get in your face. The smell of cigarettes is heavy on his breath as his eyes bore into yours. “It’s not like you to bring home some other guy, and Annabel told me you made yourself scarce after you guys saw me and Kieran. Sounds to me like blondie was a revenge fuck.” 

You have to stop yourself from bristling when he says the guy's name. Kieran. You’re not together. You have no right to be as possessive as your heart is telling you to be, but at the same time, he had no right to barge into your room and kick Evan out. 

“Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't.” You say, unwavering despite how close he is to you. “You still didn’t have any right to kick him out. We’re not together.”

You can see the wheels turning in his head as he bites into the side of his cheek. You’ve never seen him this angry, ever - not even at Felix. It’s a little vindicating, watching him get so worked up by something that was really his fault to begin with, and you have to stop yourself from grinning as he opens and closes his mouth. 

“Well.” He says. “Maybe we should be. Together.”

The words are sharp, and pierce through you one after another like bullets. “What, that’s how you’re going to ask?” You snap back. 

He rolls his eyes, his lips pressing into a thin line before he’s pulling you to him and kissing you like he’s hungry for it, all teeth and tongue. You pour yourself into him, grabbing at his shoulders and sweeping your tongue over any part of his mouth you can reach, your teeth finding purchase in his bottom lip. You bite down hard, and he groans, fingers digging into your hips. 

He pulls back, brow drawn. “Ow.”

“You are such a dick.” You say, tugging on his shirt until he pulls it off. You back him towards your bed, pulling your own shirt off and tossing it to the floor beside his. 

Farleigh drops onto your mattress, making himself comfortable amongst the pillows. “What else do you want me to say?” He asks. “I’m sorry?”

“Yeah, maybe!” You kick off your underwear, and pull the drawstring of his sweatpants loose so that he can kick them off. His boxers go with him, and you take your place on top of him, straddling him so that your hips slide together.

“Oh fuck - I’m sorry.” He says, eyelids dropping to half-mast as he watches you grind on him. “I didn’t think you would have cared-”

“Why wouldn’t I care?” You say, bringing a hand up to his face to tilt his head up, eyes narrowing at the hickey under his jaw that you didn’t leave. Still grinding, you dip your head into his neck, biting and sucking a line of marks. 

“Because - mm - we weren’t - ah - together.” He chokes out, hips canting up into yours as you bite harshly into the tender skin. 

“Just because we weren’t together doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have cared if you were fucking other people.” You say, sitting back on your heels to look down at him. “Obviously I cared.”

“I know that now.” He says, watching you rise up onto your knees, lining him up. His eyes find yours. “Did you let him hit without a condom?”

You roll your eyes. “Of course fucking not.” You say, sinking down on him in one smooth thrust. Even though you’re on the pill, you wouldn’t just let some dude hit raw - especially someone you’d just met. The way you trust Farleigh doesn’t extend to other men generally. “And don’t act like you didn’t storm in here all jealous too. You obviously cared if I was fucking someone else, why wouldn’t I have-?”

“Yes, okay, I was being stupid.” He says, panting as you begin to bounce, planting your hands on his chest for leverage. “I’m sorry.”

“And?” You prompt, watching his eyes flutter as you ride him. 

“And?” He whimpers, breathy and confused. 

“For waking me up…” You say, slowing down slightly. 

“And I’m sorry for waking you up, please just fuck me.” He whines, pushing his hips up to meet yours. With a grin, you resume your galloping pace, watching him pant and keen underneath you. It’s as good as it is every time - you know his body well enough to know that if you run your nails down his chest he’ll moan, and he knows you in the same way, so he grabs your hips to force you up and down his cock faster, and throws his head back against the pillows so you can lick a stripe up along the side, sucking the lobe of his ear into your mouth. 

He moans, loud and unabashed, and if this wasn’t a regular occurrence you would be embarrassed because there's no way your neighbors didn’t hear that. But, used to it as you are, you just roll your eyes, and slap your palm over his mouth, muffling his whining. “You are so loud.”

Whatever he says is swallowed up by your hand, but the look on his face sums it up for you. You laugh, and bring your other hand up to rest at the base of his throat. You don’t squeeze, but the simple feeling of the weight there is enough to have his eyes rolling up into the back of his head. 

Hands still covering his mouth and throat, your attention shifts to your own pleasure. You didn’t get to cum last night - it took Evan all of three thrusts before he was grunting and shuddering on top of you, and it made you miss Farleigh more than anything else. It makes the sweetness of knowing he was jealous too all the more potent as you're riding him like a prized stallion and he's looking like he’s about to ascend to the heavens with your hand over his mouth. It’s good. It’s always so good with him, even when you’re just hanging out - even when you’re just together in the same room. There’s not many people in the world you can say that honestly about, but Farleigh is one of them. 

The coil in your gut tightening, you lean back down to nip at the side of his neck, and whisper, “I love you.”

His responding groan is loud enough that your hand barely does anything to quiet it, and before you know it, Farleigh’s prying you away from his mouth and throat, pinning you to his chest and rolling so that he’s on top, never pulling out. Tucking his head into the crook of your neck, he resumes fucking into you, hips knocking against each other as he pants into your ear. 

“Mm, fuck, love you too.” He keens. “Love you so much I got - ah - scared. I’m so sorry about last night, please forgive me, please please-”

“Oh, fuck, yes I forgive you, I already did-” You gasp as he ruts against you. It’s delicious, the way your bodies slide together. There’s something about the way that his chest lays over yours that makes your heart swell, and the feeling of his curls tickling the side of your face is like a thousand butterfly kisses. With how keyed up you already are, it doesn’t take much. “Ah- Farleigh-!”

He lets out a long string of tiny moans as he follows you over the white hot edge, punctuating each thrust with a raspy grunt until he stills, slumping down against you. For a moment, the room is quiet. You wrap an arm around Farleigh’s shoulders, hugging him to you. 

“I’m sorry.” He mumbles into your neck.

“It’s cool.” You say. “We’re cool. I’m sorry too.”

“Cool.” He says. “Will you be my-?”

He doesn’t even get the full question out before you’re answering. “Yes. Duh.”

[fishnapple]

Crystal reading : Your energetic field 😶‍🌫️⭕️🔘

A little explanation of the method I used for reading

Lithomancy : I assigned a meaning for each stone (each stone represents a planet) and cast them on a circle divided into 12 parts, just like an astrology chart and do the reading

Pick a stone :

Reading for each group below :

1. Rose quartz group :

Your energy feels very warm and big.

Solid and abundant.

Like a ripe apple orchard under the shining sun.

Lots of red colour.

When interacting with others, you have a grounding effect on them, transporting them to a safe place.

It's active but soft at the same time.

Others may not pick up your emotions clearly because they are too busy focusing on your actions or your appearance.

But they can sense the creative force from you,

your mind is always busy, thinking up ideas

and bringing them to life.

The saying 'Fortune favours the bold' would suit you very well.

2. Citrine group

Your energy feels very open and expansive.

Like an eagle spreading its wings wide.

Carrying in its claws the gift of love.

Because you have such a strong core

that you're able to do that.

There are lots of luck and abundance in your material plane.

People would even say that you have a "rich" energy.

But that richness didn't come from nowhere.

It came from intense dedication and the absolute vision you have for yourself.

But like the image of a bird flying high,

others sometimes feel that you are out of reach, a little detached from them.

After all, you have no problem flying alone in your unique journey.

3. Amethyst group :

This energy speaks volumes.

If your energy would show itself as a person, then they would be a spiritual leader or a teacher.

A unifying force that rallies people from all different walks of life.

Your beliefs and faith don't always follow the common line.

You follow the beat of your own drum.

That's what makes people want to follow you,

to listen and learn from you.

Your words are powerful,

their impacts are not exactly on the mental but more on the emotional side.

Transporting people to a land where they don't understand but still want to explore.

4. Apatite group

You have a very gentle energy,

quite subtle,

that encloses your surroundings.

Creating a soft cocoon.

Your energy would feel very comfortable in the setting of high spirituality.

You blur the line of hard physical world and elusive psychic world.

There's not much ego showing.

You're very protective and private about your inner emotions and feelings.

People would create all kinds of assumptions and fantasies about you.

Even those that are close to you may not be able to read you very well.

Your energy would feel so simple yet so elusive,

like trying to hold water in your hands.

5. Carnelian group :

Your energy is scattered.

There's something unresolved deep within that you may not be aware of.

It pulls you in all directions.

You still show your light to the world.

But right now, it's a bit dimmer.

People would feel quite confused about you.

Your energy needs a home to rest.

Taking good care of your daily life in small steps would help tremendously.

This is a transitional time.

Some old values would be transformed

giving birth to a new self,

bringing in reward to all aspects of your life.

[bogleech]

Ok but I have seen you talk about this so many times, even referencing it in your old cartoons, so I gotta ask - when and how did you fall in love with neopets, like that?

Wait, is it that obscure now? I didn't know a single person from its inception to roughly 2010 who didn't have a neopets account. It was the single biggest gaming-esque name on the internet for years. Celebrities casually mentioned playing it, it got mainstream marketing tie-ins, it had plush toys people waited in line to buy up and a TCG made by the same company as Magic the Gathering. It's not that I especially "fell in love with neopets" like it's a niche thing but that there was a time it was almost outselling Pokemon, so it's just another huge cultural phenomenon that was a big part of everyone's lives during my teens to twenties, and hits my special interest in creature design since it has THOUSANDS (beyond the pets alone) ranging in quality from extremely creative to just plain heinous. I personally only got invested in it when they introduced the mutant pets, though, because it started out having almost like a "rule" against making any pets that were "ugly." They'd joke about it as a prank for instance, and originally only featured the mutants as part of a storyline they never intended players to actually adopt. They even had a fake alternate version of the site with fake "adoptions coming soon" and somehow didn't anticipate the userbase genuinely wanting the slime creatures.

The Chia and Aisha were my favorites but mainly the chia because that kind of "scuzzy" creature was already my own design aesthetic, polar opposite of the site's established style and reminded me of if Jeff Goldblum got fused with a tardigrade instead of a fly:

Is that just me? I feel like the tardigrade similarity jumps right out but I think it was an accident and they were possibly actually thinking of the rotting giant from Nausicaa:

The fact that they intended its design to be unlovably ugly and were surprised anyone wanted it only made it more sympathetic. Eventually they made mutants available and I got fully invested into playing, at the time having to spend hours a day on their little flash games until I could afford a mutant after months of labor. But then a couple of years later they just abruptly decided they really didn't feel like having its design around anymore and "updated" it, which back then was automatic for all pets owned by all players with no going back:

It had unfortunately been fairly common that they'd just completely, totally redo a pet like this with no warning and no user poll to make sure it's what anyone wanted. You just had to pray they never did it to your favorites.

All the other mutants in that earlier image would also get completely changed or never released at all. They still kept some of the other "gross" mutants and would make even grosser, so that wasn't even part of the reasoning. Just the random whims of mad gods I guess. I think what killed the game for a lot of people was actually when they did this to basically everyone at once, standardizing almost all the pet artwork so they could wear clothes in their new dressup system. It wasn't as drastic as replacing a sludge guy with some kind of hairy leaf guy but it did eliminate hundreds of technically unique designs from the site, and I found someone else's examples they put together so I thankfully don't have to do it myself:

If anyone's not familiar enough with neopets or didn't figure that out from the last paragraph, the ones on the right are just recolors of the same exact art as all members of their species with added accessories (now wearable items) Players used to work hard to get pets they wanted based on their unique poses and personality, but you could only keep the original art for a small number of these. The customization feature kind of attracted a different new fandom, from what people say, but it never approached a fraction the site's peak, which is probably how the brand wound up getting sold to some NFT bros who aren't even involved in the site itself and supposedly never even spoken to its remaining staff outside some business emails? This is unrelated to the brief period it was bought by scientologists and the siterunners had to fight back against their propaganda leaking into it. I really didn't expect to turn this response into a mini article, I should really just make a thing on bogleech.com about it sometime. Some of my tumblr mutuals to this day are people I met through the neopets fandom and probably have equally lengthy memories/complaints.

[lyinginbedmon]

Oh lordy is there bad things going down across the VTuber space right now so I’m gonna try and unpack them for ease of comprehension.

Real quick: A VTuber is essentially just a regular livestreamer but instead of a facecam they have a custom model (usually made of layered images but also often a full 3D object) that tracks their face and such. Big tiddy anime girl representation to say the least but it’s a very creative space.

Next: Silvervale, Silver for short. Silver is one such big tiddy anime (wolf) girl, who is part of a corporate group of VTubers called VShojo. I probably don’t need to describe much more for the purposes of this post.

Hogwarts Legacy is a video game based in the bigotry-entrenched universe of the Harry Potter franchise by notorious face-of-transphobia Joanne K. Rowling. Since its announcement in 2018, trans individuals and groups have quite rightly highlighted numerous ethical and moral problems with the game ranging from the inherent bigotry of the setting, to the involvement of literal far-right YouTubers in its development, to just the basic stuff like its success greenlighting further instalments all while Rowling pockets royalties to (expressly) further fund her anti-trans projects (which includes her writing Literally being read into record to quash things like the Equality Act).

The general advice, which would be true regardless of your actual thoughts on the game or franchise, was to just not play it. That way Rowling makes less money, fewer future games are made, and nobody gets hurt as a result. You end your day $60 better off that you can spend on some other big game that isn’t basically radioactive.

To say the Video Gamers did not take that advice well would be an understatement, but things get really ugly when a streamer who otherwise professes to creating a calm and friendly atmosphere, who makes claims to being an ally, gives in and plays the Wizard Game. I’m not going to say that people haven’t been harassed for playing it, almost certainly someone has, but I just don’t have the data to be certain that it goes much further than just posting “trans rights” in chat.

Enter Silvervale. Despite half a decade of advance warning that she shouldn’t play this game, she played it anyway. Live on camera. The community she’d fostered for years didn’t take this well either, and the stream ended early amid purported harassment from the chat. Silver wasn’t the first VTuber to play the Wizard Game, but she was one of the first English-speaking ones.

Things could have just quietly ended there, but Silver then returned to streaming with more of the game and a statement that she had been “harassed” by “freaks and degenerates” on Twitter. Not her best choice of words, but the damage was done.

Because of the 5-year leadup to the Wizard Game releasing, the right-wing mob had already noticed the controversy around it and had made Huge investments into buying and promoting the game as well as spewing vitriol against anyone who even slightly suggested that doing so was in poor taste. They naturally then flocked to Silver’s defense and, following her unfortunate description of “marginalised people making their discomfort known as they had declared they would Years in advance” using language straight from 1930s Germany, started directly attacking any streamer who voiced their intent not to play the game however detailed their reasoning.

As a brief aside, there’s some confusion over how Silver’s chat moderation is set up, seemingly blocking such phrases as “trans rights are human rights”. Some say it’s an overzealous automod, others that her moderators are actually blocking the phrases, it’s unclear and not hugely worth focusing on here. But I mention it because it’s one of the common points made as people state their side on this issue.

This has essentially made Silver the face of transphobic bigotry in the VTuber community, whether or not she actually considers herself aligned with such bigots. Multiple smaller and independent trans VTubers have completely stopped streaming because of the bile being spewed at them by people with the likes of #IStandWithSilver in their bios. The overlaps between accounts on social media posting in her defense and numerous far-right hate movements is as undeniable as it is unpleasant to catalogue.

And boy that’s just the foundation of this whole sorry affair.

Another VTuber who is part of the same company as Silver, VShojo, is Apricot (more commonly called Froot). Froot not only decided to vocally not play the Wizard Game, but to post a tweet saying that she would personally donate to UK trans children’s charity Mermaids for every like the tweet received. She added that her brother is trans and she supports him immensely.

So the bigots that leapt to Silver’s defense very predictably started calling Froot a paedophile and child groomer, which is more or less what they label every pro-trans individual ever these days. Froot had to lock replies on her charity post and her post about her brother as a result, though the tweets remain up.

Most recently, a third peer in VShojo called Ironmouse came to Silver’s defense specifically in opposition to the alleged harassment she received which, again, anyone could have seen coming in the last 5 years by googling the Steam page for this game.

And honestly, at this point, whatever actually happened to Silver in that first stream is completely irrelevant because she’s become the rallying cry of people who actively want to exterminate the entire trans community from cradle to grave and literally beyond. And so much of it could be resolved or at least get the wind out of its sails if she took 5 minutes to just apologise for and disavow everything that happened in her name after she decided to keep playing the Wizard Game.

But, and I say this with no disrespect to Silver, I’m not holding my breath.

[vickysaurus]

Let's take a closer look at the hominin skulls in the Senckenberg Museum's human evolution room. Keep in mind this is not a linear progression through our ancestors, and more like a bunch of closer and more distant cousins.

The first one, Sahelanthropus tchadensis is seven million years old, and may very well not be a hominin at all. I've always leaned towards the hypothesis that it's a gorilla relative, not one of ours. No matter which branch of the apes it belongs to, it lived not long after the time the human-line (hominins) and the chimp-line separated, and possibly even before that point!

Ardipithecus ramidus, the first hominin from where we can start making a fairly decent family tree of our relatives. Before this point, 5 million years ago, hominin fossils are very rare, fragmentary, and difficult to assign. One of the most interesting things that does seem to emerge from these early fossils is that we have walked on two legs for a long time. Maybe even so long that our common ancestor with the chimps and bonobos did it!

Lucy represents Australopithecus afarensis, who shows up at this point (3.3 million years ago).

Australopithecus africanus, the Taung child to be precise. We're about 2.8 million years ago at this point. Australopithecines must've been such fascinating creatures.

Homo habilis, the 'handy man', named that way because when they were discovered they were thought to be the first humans who used tools. Since then, Australopithecus tools have been found, and tool use by many different animals has also been documented.

Homo rudolfensis, a population of humans who lived at the same time as Homo habilis and were notably bigger and a little brainier. Does it warrant being its own species? That depends who you ask. Splitting vs lumping is a point of contention in almost every group's biology, and it can run especially high in the field of human evolution since hominins are A very high profile and important fossils that directly relate to our own origins, and B an extremely tangled group that seems to have produced loads and loads of isolated populations and subspecies that regularly migrated all over the place and had frequent interbreeding events. Personally I tend to come down on the side of lumping them into a few major species.

Paranthropus boisei. These were basically a separate lineage of australopithecines, quite different from our own ancestors, who continued to do australopithecus things until quite recently. They were very good climbers and seem to have returned to the trees.

Homo ergaster, either a close relative or a synonym of the more famous Homo erectus. This is the point where we got really brainy, probably figured out how to make fire ourselves, and spread from Africa to Eurasia.

Homo heidelbergensis. Homo erectus and its many subspecies spread all over Africa and Eurasia and existed for well over a million years. As time marches on and evolution did its thing, we eventually start calling the ones in Africa Homo heidelbergensis. They were quite tall, positively enormous compared to little Lucy a few million years back, and they too joined in the human migrations out of Africa. From the H. heidelbergensis who moved into Eurasia we eventually get neanderthals and denisovans, while Homo sapiens evolved from the heidelbergensis populations in Africa.

And there's the neanderthals! Large-brained and creative (the first known cave paintings belong to them and they buried their dead), they were likely quite different from the brutish image we often get from them. Rather than truly dying out, their populations eventually merged with the larger Homo sapiens population once they migrated out of Africa, leaving our modern genes with a couple percent neanderthal DNA.

Homo sapiens. And that's us! Not so much the last remaining branch of the human family tree as much as several of the separate branches ended up coming back together and weaving into a single bigger branch.

And then there's these little guys, Homo floresiensis! Probably originating from a Homo erectus population that ended up on the island Flores, insular dwarfism ended up making them grow quite tiny. On their isolated island, they remained until about 50000 years ago.

[maniculum]

Bestiaryposting Plan

So the poll is still running, but I think I'm safe in saying there's sufficient interest, so I'm going ahead and typing up a "how we're going to do this" thing, which I will schedule to post after the poll ends properly. As of the time I'm writing this, over 500 people have voted for the "yes I want to draw things" option, and I had been expecting to get maybe a dozen, so we definitely have enough participants. Let's get started then:

Our Source

I had originally planned to translate an Old or Middle English bestiary, but haven't been able to find a good one -- the best option I was able to dig up only has thirteen critters, which I feel like isn't enough to really have fun with. I was debating the idea of translating a Latin one -- this would have been far more time-consuming since my Latin is terrible, but also I do need to practice it, so I figured it evens out -- when I found a solution that doesn't involve me spending hours and hours on translating.

It seems that when Aberdeen University created their digitized version of the famous Aberdeen Bestiary, they released it under a Creative Commons license. (Assuming I'm reading their copyright policy correctly; I'm not a lawyer.) It does not seem to specify whether the transcriptions and translations they attach to the scanned images are also covered by Creative Commons, but since all of those are already freely available online through their website, I can't imagine they would have a problem with me posting them here as long as I provide attribution (which I am hereby doing right here on this post) and am not using it for commercial purposes (which I am not).

The Aberdeen Bestiary is missing a few pages, but there exists a very similar manuscript, the Ashmole Bestiary (they're sometimes called "sister" manuscripts), which is not missing those pages. And I happen to have a translation of the Ashmole Bestiary in hardcopy on my bookshelf, so I can just use it to fill in the gaps. Edit: whoops, the one I have is the Bodley Bestiary. They are in the same bestiary "family", though, so it still works well enough. (I think that should qualify as "fair use", since I'm only taking excerpts and not using them commercially.)

The upside of using the Aberdeen Bestiary is that it means when I round up all the art of each critter, I can include their very nice illustrations alongside the reveal of what animal was being described.

The downside of using the Aberdeen Bestiary is that since it already is free online, people might be tempted to "cheat" by looking up the entries and finding out what animal they describe. For that, please see the next section...

Guessing the Animal

Guessing what animal is being described is not the point of the exercise. (Feel free to have theories and whatnot, but please keep them to yourself so as not to influence the artists.) If you see an entry and think, e.g., "oh that's describing a raccoon"*, and then you create a picture of a raccoon... well, you could have done a perfectly good raccoon at any point and didn't need this framework to do it. So just don't worry about what animal is meant, and do your best to draw (or paint or stitch or whatever else) based on the description! You're not getting ranked on accuracy and there are no prizes forthcoming, so... just have fun with it.

*Example chosen as something that will, for obvious reasons, definitely not be in a 13th-century European bestiary.

Edit after starting to type these things up: some of these are going to be super easy to guess, though, to the point where I don't know how possible it'll be to block out prior knowledge. Sorry about that.

General Procedure

I'm going to schedule a post every Monday (I'm thinking of queuing them for 6pm Eastern Time) with a new entry. It will be the translation of an entry from the Aberdeen Bestiary with all references to the animal's name replaced by a randomly-generated nonsense word. (Henceforth to be referred to as "nonsense-names". I'm Googling* each one before using them so I don't accidentally generate one that actually means something.) These posts will all be tagged maniculum bestiaryposting, so you can follow that tag if you want to make sure you see them.'

*Later Note: Did you know that if you search dozens of nonsense words within a short span of time, Google makes you prove you're not a robot? Repeatedly?

Anyone who wants to draw the critter being described should do so. (You are encouraged to describe your thought process re: why you've depicted it the way you have.) You can put it in its own post, or reblog the description with an image, or however you want to do it. Then tag your art with the nonsense-name I've given to the animal.This will let me and others find it. (You should probably employ copy/paste there to make sure the spelling is the same, since nonsense words are hard to spellcheck.)

A week after posting the bestiary entry, I'll go through that tag and round up all of the art contributed. Then I'll put the images in a big post (or series thereof, considering how many people might participate), along with an @ and a link to your original post.

If you want...

to not have your work included in the round-up post

to have only a link to your post included and not an image

to have me include a link to your website / other social media / etsy shop in addition to or instead of your tumblr

to have other information included alongside your work

anything else along those lines

... then just say so in your post and I will follow your instructions to the best of my ability.

I will also include, at the end of the round-up post, an image of the creature as depicted in the Aberdeen Bestiary and what it is actually called.

All posts I make on this will be collected at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting so that people can look at previous ones without scrolling through the tag.

Various Notes

I'm going to trim out any religious digressions in the original entries -- bestiary authors had a habit of adding stuff like "and the raccoon is symbolic of god in such-and-such fashion, which teaches us...", and I just don't think that's relevant here.

The entries will also be presented in a random order. This is because they're sorted into categories in the original text, so if I don't change the order we're going to get stuck with, e.g., a few months of All Birds All The Time.

You should all be aware that the animals described are not guaranteed to be, you know, real. There are several entries describing animals that straight up do not exist -- some of which are mythical creatures familiar to most people, others of which are extremely obscure.

Explanations of the animal's name within the entries will be redacted.

If other animals are mentioned within the entries, they will not get replaced with nonsense-names. Originally, I was going to make the switch globally, so that if, e.g., the entry for "raccoon" read "a raccoon is about the size of a possum", and the random generator had decided that a raccoon was a balzikhear and a possum was a flunggrish, the "raccoon" entry would now read "a balzikhear is about the size of a flunggrish". However, I decided that it will cause more problems than it solves to obscure any comparisons to other animals -- so the name-switch is now localized only to the specific entry. A possum is a flunggrish only in its own entry, and remains a possum everywhere else.

I was originally going to do one post for every single entry, but there are a lot of them and they vary wildly in length & quality. So I've cut it down to exactly 52 posts, meaning that if I queue them up for once a week, this will run for roughly a full year.

Most of that cutting-down mentioned above was done by combining a bunch of the really short entries into categories -- the last half-dozen posts in this series will be group entries. You can choose to make art of any of them that strike your fancy, or do a group portrait, or just ignore them --I dunno, I'm not a cop, do what you want.

I did also directly cut some, mostly domesticated animals because there's a somewhat different approach to them based on author and audience familiarity.

So yeah, that should cover everything.

[thepradapariah]

Your Rising Sign ✨. The Male Gaze 👀. & Female Character Movie/TV Tropes 📺.

Are you the manic pixie dream girl or the femme fatale?!

Astro Observations 🪐

Using Movies & TV shows, I’ll be talking about observations I’ve made about rising signs! This is just my opinion! You are more than welcome to share your thoughts in the comment section!

(If you know your sidereal Rising Sign Naksaktra EVEN BETTER!)

Disclaimer:

BARE WITH ME HERE!!! This post is written in a VERY generalized way. I am not trying to be exclusionary at all! I want this to be a fun post about movies & astrology. Please be creative with your pronouns if needed! This post is for anyone who wants to read it, no matter your gender or preference, but it will be written in traditional cis-gender fashion, BUT!!!!! I have tried to incorporate all female identifying communities within the examples! I hope there is something for everyone :)

Before we begin:

Definitions:

✨What is the Male Gaze?

“In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. In the visual and aesthetic presentations of narrative cinema, the male gaze has three perspectives: (i) that of the man behind the camera, (ii) that of the male characters within the film's cinematic representations; and (iii) that of the spectator gazing at the image.” — Wikipedia

✨What is a Character trope?

“A trope is an idea, pattern or motif that appears often enough in a particular art form that consumers of that art form begin to form particular associations with that idea.” - The Novel Factory

Introduction:

Men tend to be VERY simple creatures. Yes, they may present themselves as the broody artist w a checkered past or a sci-fi-nerdy-glasses-wearing-type fellow who LOVES Star Wars & Comic-Con. But believe it not, both these men have something in common…Their simplicity. Most men see life in black & white. They tend to take things at face value & rarely feel the need to dig deeper into something unless they are called to. This is not to over generalize (or perhaps that’s exactly what this is) but to draw attention to the straight forward attitude men usually have towards life. (I blame this on their primal hunter/gathering nature, but that’s another topic for another day). Men tend to prefer life & communication to be clear & concise, whereas woman tend to be far more “colorful” in our approach. We don’t spare any details when talking w our girlfriends about the latest gossip as if it’s our life’s duty, where men can sit in silence, playing video games & be perfectly content. In fact, I learned in sociology, that men can actually have ZERO brain activity happening at times (besides the automatic stuff, like breathing lol). Meaning— men can actually sit & think about nothing. Women, not so much, we are constantly stimulated, thinking & planning ahead. Because of this cosmically cerebral mis-match, the way men & woman tend to view each other can be a point of contention. Woman tend to over complicate men & men tend to over simplify woman. Thus giving us the ongoing battle of real complex female characters VS. the over simplified version of them through the Male Gaze. Do men think woman just sit around playing in make-up & fashion, bursting out into random tears & having pillow fights all day? If you ask Hollywood— probably. In this post, we will be specifically looking at how men over simplify woman using Movie/TV tropes & comparing them to the display of our rising sign, &/or if you know it, your rising Nakshatra.

You should know, that before I got into tarot & astrology, I graduated from the film school at New York University. So I am WELL AWARE of the film/tv writing process & thought this would be a cool way to combine my education of films & my love for astrology to teach & critique how woman tend to be represented in Cinema & Television— and in return, real life. (Art meets Life, amiright?)

There has been a discourse in the film & tv world about how woman are represented through the male gaze. I’m sure you’ve heard of the “manic pixie dream girl” trope over saturating the market right now. (Don’t worry, we will get into this later). Woman feel as if these are shallow representations of the feminine experience. While I agree with this statement, usually we don’t see very fleshed out, complex & interesting woman from male writers. (*cough cough* Euphoria Season 2.) I’m arguing here that until we form deep & intimate connections with men, they tend to see us, woman, as these movie tropes, IRL (in real life). If you don’t understand what I’m saying, hang in there w me.

Because men tend to be simple & take things at face value, they can miss out on the nuances of the woman they are with. How many times have we seen in movies a wife gets a haircut & the husband doesn’t notice? See, no eye for detail, or subtlety. Those small details that make us unique from other woman tends to go over their heads from time to time. And in a day in age where woman are generalized more on a mass scale through social media, it’s easy for men to get carried away thinking woman are all the same or simply, just not that complicated. This isn’t a bad thing, per say, this is just the default until we are able to build a lasting, deep connection between masculine & feminine energy.

In this post, we are going to be breaking down this “conundrum” by RISING SIGNS/1H/Nakshatras. Why? Because the rising sign is how you are seen in the world. The first house rules the body, & what people project on to you as well as what you project onto other people. (The beauty of the 1H/7H axis…more about this later) As a sidereal astrology girly, I think the first house/Rising Sign Nakshatra rules the personality more so than the sun & moon sign. After all, it is called “person”-ality, & the 1H is the house of person, whereas the 7H is the house of partner.

✨Why Does this Matter?

Well first off, it matters how much you want it to matter. This post is for inspiring self expression. By seeing how you effortlessly come across through the male gaze, you may be able to craft your own unique persona or perfect one of these tropes. I am not writing this post because you have to see yourself the way men see you or over simplify yourself while getting to know someone, I’m writing this to give you some indication of HOW men see you so you can put on a SHOW! I’m hoping this gives you the encouragement to take your narrative into your own hands & present your femininity in a way that’s true & authentic to you. I am an absolute FAN of these female tropes. Movies & tv shows have helped me curate the kind of woman I want to come across as. Nothing like seeing a great character on TV that you want to emulate. We all have the ability to play pretend. Look at using the male gaze as a game of dress-up. You can ALWAYS play the part in the ever going Hollywood Film— Your Life.

✨What is the First House?

The first house is the house of first impressions— the cover of the book men are judging.

Because your first house is home to your rising sign, to put it simply, the first house is how you come off to others at first glance. Even though I’m sure you’re a beautiful, complex & intriguing creature, for the sake of this article, we are looking at the first house through a “shallow” perspective. You may feel as if these descriptions don’t fit you at all, in fact, you may feel like this is the total opposite of who you actually are! (Blame the contradiction of 1H/7H axis for this one) However it’s not about how you feel, it’s about how you come across…

Read this article as if you are your crush meeting you for the first time. (Read that again, very meta, I know). The Male Gaze in movies/tv has been argued to be lazy & uninspired writing. I personally think that’s just the male gaze in general. I kid, I kid. Lol. But seriously…they are very simple minded, so we can use this to our advantage to give some of the best performances of our lives!

***If you are reading for your Sidereal Vedic Rising (which is HIGHLY suggest), please look up the degree, so you can read for the specific Nakshatra)

(If you are a man reading this, I don’t mean to drag you. We all know the childhood fact, Men are from Mars & Woman are from Venus. Lol.)

Through the Male Gaze, we will be breaking down how you come off through your rising sign & placements as Classic Movie & TV Character Tropes.

How to Read:

✨IF YOU KNOW YOUR SIDEREAL VEDIC RISING NAKSHATRA: Read that first! That will be the most specific to the trope. (I didn’t double dip, each nakshatra is only used ONCE)

______________

✨If you DON’T know your Sidereal Rising Nakshatra & your reading as a Western/Tropical Girlie———>

✨You can read for the sign in your first house (your rising sign) &/or planets placed in your FIRST OR SEVENTH HOUSE!

✨7H placements cast a direct aspect on your 1H, so if your rising sign doesn’t resonate, check your 7H placements! They have a major influence as well!

✨If you have multiple planets in your 1H &/or 7H, the planet with the LOWEST degree is the dominant planet. Ex: If you have Saturn at 26 degrees and Venus at 2 degrees, you would read the Venus tropes.

✨Unlike men, I’m giving you some flexibility (Lol) Your placements may overlap. For example, if you’re a Pisces Rising— read the blurbs for Manic Pixie Dream Girl & Girl Next Door. One description will probably fit better than the others, but you got options! If you know your sidereal chart for your rising Nakshatra, you’ll get

***There is NO direct correlation between the signs & Naks picked, this is a matter of opinion, so I put what I felt worked!***

Please please please keep in mind, movies & tv characters are larger than life, so please have fun with this post!!! This is over the top!! If you can imagine that you were an old Hollywood glamour queen or a modern cinema starlit, this would be your starring role!!!

⚠️ I do not want to offend ANYONE by using traditional gender pronouns. I am a cis-gender heterosexual female, so I am writing from the perspective I know best. I am NOT trying to say this is the only perspective that matters. I have included cis-woman, trans women & lesbians as examples in this post. Please feel free to share any insights you have, no matter the gender, non-gender or perspective! I’m truly open & supportive. This is not an exclusionary post.

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT!!!! I am using Movies & Television shows as examples, so be prepared!

⚠️ Of course, special shout-out to my little sister! Without her, none of this would be possible!!

On with the Show! 🌹

💋 Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Nakshatras: Ardra, Punarvasu, Swati, Vishika, Mula

Zodiac: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces (All Mutable Rising Signs) & Aquarius

Planets: Neptune, Mercury, Jupiter (1st or 7th House, lowest degree)

Tarot Card: Princess of Cups (Earth & Water)

✨Definition

“[The Manic Pixie Dream Girl] exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures… [The MPDG] seems to exist only to provide spiritual or mystical help to the protagonist. The MPDG has no discernible inner life. Instead, her central purpose is to provide the protagonist with important life lessons. “

-Wikipedia (Manic Pixie Dream Girl was coined by Nathan Rabin)

✨The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is arguably THEE female movie trope of the last 40 years in pop culture. As movies moved away from the Bombshell aesthetic of the 1950’s, most notably, Marilyn Monroe; Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s introduced a new kind of woman. (Even her last name, go-lighly is a play on her attitude towards the world) A woman who throws caution to the wind & isn’t afraid to take risk. In fact, this woman LIVES to take risk! She flutters in & flutters out of the Male gaze, usually chasing some wild dream of being a fashion designer, writer, actress ect, OR is a notch above (or under, depending on how you look at it) an aimless sexy hobo. Regardless of her career ambitions, she’s always as creative as she is elusive— yet somehow, is always able to drop into the male’s life right in the knick of time, whisking the male away on some fever-dream like adventures. Encountering the Manic Pixie Dream Girl almost ALWAYS accompanies a spiritual Awakening for our male protagonist. Upon meeting this woman, usually in some weird, “only happens once in a life-time” way, his world gets thrown into a chaotic flurry. Everything he thought he knew he now knows he never knew anything about it at all. He questions life, he questions reason, he question society, capitalism, the “American Dream”, etc. This is BEST demonstrated by Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) in Fight Club, directed by David Fincher. (If you haven’t seen this movie, you MUST (18+), Brad Pitt is at PEAK sexiness…s/o to the Female Gaze lol) Fight Club is a wicked tale of a man fighting himself, society & his own psyche after meeting a woman who mirrored him so closely, it triggered a masculinity awakening. This is the function of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She is so free, so unbound, so fluid, & feminine, she helps to bring to life the masculine side of a man by reflecting his own inner chaos back to him.

As a Ardra, Punarvasu, Swati, Vishika, Mula Rising or Mutable Rising Sign: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, or Pisces, this could be one of the ways you appear through the male gaze. Because your temperament & view of life can be so changeable, you can come across as a free-spirit, a loss soul, or a wonderer. Perhaps you are, & perhaps you aren’t, but as quickly as you change a hairstyle, you change your goals in life. The male feels as if he needs to tame you, give you structure, security or direction OR he feels like he wants to join you! Break away from the daily grind of life, break societies expectations of him & rendezvous w you, eating cereal, painting & watching cartoons all day. You can represent a child-like wonder and be the embodiment of the “wild-side” of life! As the mutable rising signs of the Zodiac, you tend to be moody & unpredictable. Through the Male Gaze, men may find it hard to connect with you because you always seem “elsewhere”. You always seem a little dazed, perhaps a little confused, but certainly “pixie” like in your approach to life. To the right male, you are fascinating, like a Jackson Pollock painting (the splatter paint dude) in the works— each stroke improvised, never knowing where the paint is going to land, but intrigued more by your process than the final product.

✨Music:

Female Gaze: Like a Bird- Nelly Furtado

Male Gaze: Sex And Candy- Marcy Playground

✨Examples

Holly Golightly- Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Jules- Euphoria

Summer- 500 Days of summer

Robyn Brooks- High Fidelity

Helena- Fight Club

Cat- Victorious

Issa- Insecure

Raven- That’s So Raven

Bubbles- Powerpuff Girls

Emily- Emily in Paris

Sally Bowles- Cabaret

💋Ice Queen

Nakshatras: Jyestha, Dhanishta, Uttara Bhadrapada

Zodiacs: Aquarius, Libra, Cancer, Scorpio

Planets: Saturn, Uranus, Moon, Venus

Tarot Card: Queen of Swords (Water & Air)

✨Defintion:

“…Cool, reserved, and giving nothing away. She may want love as ardently as anyone, but she masks her soft heart behind a wall of ice. It is up to someone else, typically her Love Interest, to soften her cold demeanor and win her love.

The Ice Queen is considered dangerous to love because she will not (or cannot) love back. She's not much for friendship either, preferring to be alone.” tvtropes .org

✨The Ice Queen is cold & unforgiving. She IS the resting bitch face personified, unimpressed & unfazed by those around her. Seemingly aloof, the male in the story is always trying to breakthrough her tough and unbothered exterior. Her coldness posses a real challenge to anyone who is interested in her romantically. She’s just a bitch. And a bad one at that! The Ice Queen is stern in her appearance & her approach to life. Usually divorced, or widowed, but doesn’t have to be, she walks as if she carries the weight on the world of her shoulder. She’s been abandoned by happiness in life, but she’s so regal, no one knows how deep her scars cut. She can resemble the Boss Bitch/Diva trope, because she normally holds a lot of power, but she carries a certain detachedness that is unique to this trope. She is NOTHING nice. The Ice Queen is hard to please & has no issues letting people know she’s unsatisfied. The Male wants to “warm her up”, breakthrough her cold exterior & get to know why she is so damn mean! In some cases he succeeds, in others he realized she’s just a mean & shallow as he originally thought. Elvira Hancock in Scarface is the prototype for this feminine character trope. Not only is her nose typically buried nose deep in snow (if you get it, you get it), she’s. a. straight. cold-hearted. biotch. She’s unbelievably gorgeous & unapproachable, & this is exactly what draws the male protagonist in to her. But even after the male “wins her over”, she was never satisfied. An Ice Queen to her CORE, she was never one to be defrosted. Defamed? Maybe…Defrosted…never.

It’s worth noting that the Ice Queen is usually HIGHLY fashionable. Not the cheap stuff either— the Ice Queen is a Queen none the less. She’s not the T-shirt & jeans girl next door, or the purple hairdo manic pixie…she’s class & sophistication. First rule, you gotta be hot to be so cold.

If you are a Jyestha, Dhanishta, Uttara Bhadrapada Rising or an Aquarius, Libra or Cancer Rising, or have Saturn, Uranus, the Moon, or Venus aspecting your first house, you may find that you come across as the Ice Queen through the male gaze. You carry a certain reserved & detached aura upon first meeting someone. Rarely would you put all your cards on the table. There is also a certain maturity that you carry with you when you walk into a room. Men will assume “oh, this girl, she’s been through some stuff”. You may find that you are somewhat withdrawn in social situations, although people may be very drawn to you. You don’t necessarily care about being liked, but you certainly care about being respected. You come off as if you don’t tolerate any kind of messiness. Men may think you play hard to get or that you just think you’re better than the average. Whatever! You don’t care what they think. You’re too busy reading or being an intellectual (whatever that means lol…this is the male gaze we are talking about). Again, to the right egotistical man who believes he can “warm you up”, you are a welcomed and ongoing challenge. The Ice Queen is the female trope of male dissatisfaction. When a Male encounters the Ice Queen in cinema, she tend to represent a part of the male that will NEVER be pleased, content or accepted. Normally the man after this cold woman’s stone-cold heart is trying to prove his worth to the world around him, & the Ice Queen serves as the perfect trophy. If he can impress her/have her, he can impress anyone & have the World! The Ice Queen is the ultimate prize for the male protagonist w ego/self-esteem issues. Nothing humbles a man quite like a cold-hearted bitch. You may find in your dating life, Male’s feel the need to impress you for no good reason..or maybe you enjoy watching men walk on their heads for a date w you! Either way, as the Ice Queen female trope you carry a certain air about you that commands attention & respect. You carry authority over yourself & those around you. The male gaze says although your intimidating, your worth a try to shut down all the haters, even if you’re hater number 1!

✨Music:

Female Gaze: Needed Me- Rihanna

Male Gaze: Roses- OutKast, Cooler than Me- Mike Posner

✨Examples

Elvira Hancock-Scarface

Camille- The Sapranos

Lady Mae Greenleaf- Greenleaf

Elsa- Frozen

Jade- Victorious

Elekta Evangelista- Pose

Claire- House of Cards

Molly- Insecure

Lucille- Arrested Development

Betty Draper- Mad Men

Mother Shannon, House of Balenciaga- Legendary

Cersei Lannister- Game of Thrones

Dominique La Rue- Harlem Nights

Gru’s Mom- Despicable Me

💋Femme Fatale

Nakshatras: Ashwini, Bharani, Ashlesha, Purva Bhadrapada, Shatabisha

Zodiacs: Aries, Scorpio, Cancer

Planets: Mars, Pluto

Tarot Card: Queen of Wands (Fire & Water)

✨Definition

“A femme fatale,sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of literature and art. Her ability to enchant, entice and hypnotize her victim with a spell was in the earliest stories seen as verging on supernatural; hence, the femme fatale today is still often described as having a power akin to an enchantress, seductress, witch, having power over men. Femmes fatales are typically villainous, or at least morally ambiguous, and always associated with a sense of mystification, and unease.”

-Wikipedia

✨The Femme Fatale is arguably the most ICONIC of the female movie tropes. A popular trope of Film Noir “movement” in the late 1940s, early 1950s, the Femme Fatale is a sexual seductress with a naughty side. Enchanting as she is dangerous, the male gaze ogles her, even though it may cost him his life— or at least his job & social standing. Medusa is one of the best representations of this trope. If a man locks eyes w her, he’s as good as dead— yet, time & time again, men tried to defeat her, only to meet a tragic end. As time progressed, the story of the woman who turns men to stone (definitely a sexual innuendo if you ask me) found new life in television & film. The Femme Fatale is a beautiful disaster just waiting to happen. She’s wild, like the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but she has a certain knack for danger and crime. She lures the male in & traps him like a spider in her web. The male is usually a little weary of the woman, but is overcome w her grace & charm, or he’s truly an unsuspecting victim who gets completely taken advantage of an entangled in whatever mess she’s made for herself. One way or the other, the male often ends up in a position of life & death after lusting after this dark & intriguing beauty. The film, Carmen Jones, starring Dorthy Dandridge, is a classic tale of a woman w loose morals who ends up (spoiler alert) dead. Unlike most of the other female tropes, the femme fatale almost always suffers consequences for her actions. She either ends up in jail, or dead, or kills her lover, or he ends up in jail, or her lover ends up dead. Tragic, I know. Again, think of Medusa…she killed everything she laid her eye on, & then ultimately had to be killed. (RIP Medusa, you were a baddie). No one gets out scotch free when dealing w this character. The femme fatale is mysterious, almost like a mythical creature or an enchantress, & the male is instantly drawn into her, whether they exchange words in a bar, or she simply flicks her cigarette & he rushes to relight it. One thing is for sure, she lives by her own rules & is bound by nothing…not the law or death itself. She’s usually a criminal minded free-spirit, manipulating her way through life to survive.

If you are an Ashwini, Bharani, Ashlesha, Purva Bhadrapada Rising Or an Aries, Scorpio, or Cancer Rising, or you have Pluto or Mars aspecting your 1H, you may come off as the femme fatale through the male gaze. Your dark, broody & secretive nature is fascinating to them, and they want to join you on a passionate journey through time & space or save you from whatever sticky situation you may have put yourself in. They want to play detective & you are the perfect case to crack. When the femme fatale enters the male’s life, she instantly posses a threat to his usually naive understanding of the world. She’s not your typical housewife— far from it. She challenges the traditional social construct of beauty & submission. Normally from a troubled/difficult past past, the femme fatale will only submit to law & death, she’s been forced to learn the ugly sides of life & uses them to her advantage. You may find that male’s tend to want to dominate you or control your direction in life in relationships, but you are REPULSED by this notion. This trope teaches men (and woman sadly), that freedom comes w a cost. Hopefully it’s not your life, but if it is, you sure make a sexy corpse!

✨Music:

Female Gaze: Wild side- Normani

Male Gaze: Dirty Diana -Michael Jackson

✨Examples

Filomena (Sophia Lauren)- Marriage Italian Style

Cat Woman- Batman

Carmen- Carmen Jones

Dr. Frank-N-Furter (played by the wonderful Lavern Cox)- The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Jennifer- Jennifer’s Body

Gilda (Rita Hayworth)- Gilda

Amy Dunne- Gone Girl

Laura Biel- 365 Days

Alex Vause- Orange Is the New Black

💋Queen Bee/Mean Girl

Nakshatras: Krittika, Purva Phalguni, Chitra, Purva Ashadha

Zodiacs: Libra, Capricorn, Aries, Leo, Taurus & Gemini

Planets: Venus, Mars, Sun, Mercury

Tarot Card: Princess of Swords (Earth & Fire)

“The Mean Girl trope had us all believe that the dark side to womanhood is catty, conniving competitiveness.”

The swaddle.com

“Mean girls are often overly concerned with appearance. They may place a high priority on their clothing, their make-up, and even their weight. Likewise, they may zero in on these things in others, pointing out everything from acne and weight gain to clothing choices and hairstyles.”

-theteenmagazine.com

✨Somewhere between The Ice Queen and The Diva, there lies a sweet sour sweet CLASSIC female trope that always leaves the girls GAGGING in disbelief, like “did she just say that?!!” The Queen Bee/Mean Girl trope has her fair share of representation in film & TV, particularly in teen dramas, but she is NOT limited to high school. The Queen Bee is in charge, she knows what she wants, she knows how she likes it & she has ZERO problem letting her loyal subject know. Sometimes, she is portrayed w a deep deep deep DEEP down heart of hold, but most of the time, she’s just a straight biotch from beginning to end. You DON’T want to cross her, or you just might end-up on her ever growing hit-list. If there is one thing Ms. Mean Girl can do..it’s hold a grudge. As stated above, the Queen Bee/Mean girl trope serves the stereotype of the cattiness & competitiveness of femininity. And it is a fact that in the wild, the female animals are usually far more aggressive than their male counterparts. (Think Lion, or a Mama Bear). Boys may have their sports, but lady’s have their looks & they will secure that W come hell or high water all the way to Prom Queen.

If you are a Krittika, Purva Phalguni, Chitra, Purva Ashadha Rising or Libra, Taurus, Aries, Leo or Gemini Rising, OR if you have Venus, Mars or the Sun aspecting your 1H/7H, you may come off as the typical Mean Girl Trope through the Male Gaze. You’re aloof, yet decisive about the things you truly care about— like— “Wednesdays, we wear pink”. You keep people on the tip of their toes with witty banter & effortless conversation. If they don’t know the latest trends, the current celebrity gossip or who dumped whom…well, you’re just not interested in what they have to say, so why bother? You can play the villain easily & have no problem being unliked as long as you are respected. You are a social butterfly, a socialite, if you will. You know how to make the streets talk with admiration & envy. People may be afraid that they can’t meet your standards, but good, they probably can’t. NO UGLY FRIENDS is the motto— people may think you actually hold try-outs for who is allowed to sit with you at the table. Through it all, you know how to take control & lead— this energy oozes from you as people seem to just step aside as you sashay down the halls. Always up on the latest fashion, you always come w your A-game and your enemies will NEVER catch you slipping. There is a beautiful confidence that you exude because you know you are the one and only. People may be extremely intimidated by you, but the real ones will bow at your feet.

The shadow side of this trope is the shadiness. Queen Bees/Mean girls are known for being just that—MEAN. People may assume that you are quite backstabby & mischievous. YOU, of all the movie tropes, don’t mind playing

d-i-r-t-y! People perceive you as never wanting to let go of that crown & you’ll do whatever it takes to keep the social order in tact. Think “Status-Quo” High School Musical w Sharpay, the ULTIMATE representation of this trope, screaming from the top of the cafeteria! (THIS IS NOT WHAT SHE WANTS! THIS IS NOT WHAT SHE PLANNED!!!!!) She didn’t care who she had to cut, scheme, lie, trick, plot & sabotage to make SURE Ms. Gabriella did not get the spotlight w her man, Troy. Think of the lengths you’ll go to to get what you want. You come off as spicy, cunt-y (in the best way), & beautiful. You are a glamour girl & never afraid to throw some shade here & there, making you the ultimate reigning Queen Bee!

✨Music

Female Gaze: Feeling Myself- Nicki Minaj

Male Gaze: Mad at myself- Issues

✨Examples

Maddie- Euphoria

Regina George- Mean Girls

CoCo- Dear White People

Lulu- Pose

Toni- Girlfriends

Emma Roberts in Coven & Scream Queens

Blair- Gossip Girl

Cheryl Blossom- Riverdale

Santana- Glee (Rest in Peace)

Buttercup- Powerpuff Girls

Alison DiLaurentis- Pretty Little Liars

Sharpay- High School Musical

The Heathers

Penelope- My Dog (LOVE HER, but she’s such a Bitch—a bad one though lol)

💋Ingenue/Damsel in Distress

Nakshatras: Mrigashirsa, Rohini, Hasta, Revati

Zodiacs: Cancer, Capricorn, Libra, Aries (All Cardinal Rising Signs) & Pisces, Taurus

Planets: Moon, Venus, Saturn

Tarot Card: Queen of Cups (Water) Libra, Aries

“The ingénue usually has the fawn-eyed innocence of a child but subtle sexual appeal as well.”

“The damsel in distress is a recurring narrative device (or trope) in which one or more men must rescue a woman who has either been kidnapped or placed in general peril. Kinship, love, or lust (or a combination of those) gives the male protagonist the motivation or compulsion to initiate the narrative. The female character herself may be competent, but still finds herself in this type of situation.”

Wikipedia

✨The Ingenue/Damsel in Distress is one of the most recognizable female movie tropes to date. From the tales of The Greeks, to King-Kong, to Broomhilda from Djengo— there is always some damsel…somewhere…that is…in fact…in…distress. The Ingenue is a naive babe, just learning the ins & outs of life. She’s pretty, she’s unassuming & adorably doe-eyed, full of wonder for the life ahead of her— just waiting for a strong man to show her the way! The ingenue is common, but in the best way. She’s not an ice-cold bitch like the Ice Queen or the Queen Bee, but she sits more in her femininity that the Tomboy or the Diva. She’s divine & subtle and a man is always lurking around the corner, waiting to whisk her away from all the evils in the world. If this sounds like a Disney Princess, it’s because it is. Most Disney Princesses would fit into the Ingenue/Damsel in Distress character trope, but just like most of the Princesses, no matter how young & impressionable, the Ingenue is usually the one who makes a way for herself in the end.

If you are a Mrigashirsa, Rohini, Hasta, Revati Rising or a Cardinal rising (Aries, Cancer, Libra Capricorn) or Pisces, the male gaze may perceive you as the Ingenue/Damsel in Distress trope. Your beauty & grace exceed you, & your youth is ever-present. When the male sees you, they just want to protect you & hold you dear. You spark masculinity in those who are attracted to you because you come across so soft & gentle. But don’t get it twisted, you can be a little spicy! You certainly have a little sass to you, but you try not to wear it on your sleeve. You are a true darling to those who are deserving. You serve ultimate demure womanliness & you seem to glide through any room you’re in. Although your impulsiveness & naiveté may land you in some sticky situations, there’s always a lovely leading man just beyond the pines to lead you out of the darkness and into their arms (Awwwwwwwwwww). You may be the type to need help opening the pickle jar, or clumsily fall into some big strong arms— you don’t mind being on the receiving end of affection & people just swoon over you. Unlike the Door Next Door, there can still be an “unapproachability” factor to you. You’re not the girl from down the street, you’re the new girl in town; a little lost, a little curious, but always cute! You may find that men tend to underestimate you & you’re constantly trying to prove yourself. OR you can find yourself in situations where your voice tends to be over powered as you get lost in a sea of toxic masculinity! Either way, you know how to leave a room in awe. You carry just enough mystique & intrigue that male’s fight to know more about you, but yet they just feel as if you’re a naturally good person. You’re coy, but not too coy. You’re shy, but not too shy. You are the perfect “woman”. You may have a past, but your future is always bright! A hero waits around the corner for the perfect time to catch you when you fall or introduce you to a world you didn’t know existed.

As the Ingenue/Damsel in Distress, your energy is POWERFUL, almost as if you’re sexily yelling “Fire! Fire! Save me! Help me!” when you walk into the room. You know how to keep the male gaze & they will break their necks to see you eloquently walk by. Before the reign of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, you were the trope on top— the beautiful default representation of hyper-femininty in the 20s/30s/40s. You set the standards for the early starlets, they were nothing if they weren’t the lovely ingenue!

✨Music

Female Gaze: Bring Me to Life- Evanessance, Pretty When I Cry- Lana Del Ray

Male Gaze: Let Me Love You- Mario

✨Examples

Betty Draper- Mad Men

Celie- The Color Purple

Neytiri- Avatar

Autumn- P-Valley

Daisy- The Great Gatsby

Persephone- The [Abduction] of Persephone

Irene- Drive

Angel Evangelista- Pose

Disney Princesses

Broomhilda- Django Unchained

Piper Chapman- Orange Is the New Black

Mississippi- P-Valley

Penelope- The Odyssey

Satine- Mulan Rouge

💋Girl Next Door/Tomboy

Nakshatras: Anuradha, Uttara Ashadha, Shravana

Planets:Jupiter, Venus, Neptune

Zodiacs: Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces, Taurus, Libra

Tarot Card: Princess of Pentacles (Earth)

“The girl next door is usually from a small town or an un-flashy neighborhood. Her personality tends to be down-to-earth, supportive, and approachable. For both her main boy and her culture at large, the girl next door embodies an idealized, wholesome femininity.”

-the-take.com

✨The Girl Next Door/Tomboy Trope is by far the most realistic & relatable female trope of all. She’s not flashy. She’s not mean. She’s kind & sometimes even “one of the guys”. She gives off an innocence that makes her irresistible to the male gaze because she’s just so darn cool. She’s “not like the other girls”. Although she may prefer a comfy t-shirt & jeans, she’s comfortable in her femininity. She doesn’t try to compete with other woman— even though other woman my try & compete with her. Why? Because she’s usually the girl surrounded by all the guys— not because she flaunts her beauty, but rather because she’s not stuck on herself. She challenges the status quo demonstrating that sexy can be fun, sexy can be sweet & sexy can be “normal”. Zendaya is arguably the IT girl of a generation & she usually plays this type of character. She comes across as someone you can sip cool-aid with after she beats you in a round of basketball! For some, that’s sexier than Marilyn Monroe herself! This is the All-American (no matter the race) beauty that only lives a few doors down. This trope is most likely to be in the “friend-zone”, until one day the male realizes…”OH MY GOSH! SHE HAS BOOBS!”

If you are an Anuradha, Uttara Ashadha, Shravana Rising OR a Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces, Taurus, Libra Rising, you could come off as the Girl Next Door/Tomboy female trope. You’re approachable & not stuck on yourself & that makes you highly desirable through the male gaze. You’re simple & non-demanding like some of your other female counterparts and this makes you a breath of fresh air in a Kardashian fueled instagram dystopia. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you know how to clean up nicely! When it’s times for you to put on a skirt & heels, you knock ‘em dead. You’re stunning! But you’d much rather lead with personality than looks. You have an effortlessness about you that can’t be obtained by just anyone. At times you may feel a bit awkward about your sexuality, but again, through the right male’s gaze, this is SUCH a turn on. This is an extremely powerful trope because you are realistic. You may have big dreams, but you feel like you come from humble beginnings. You’re authentic to yourself, not to Chanel & Gucci. Sometimes, you may feel overlooked & one-up’d by the “popular girl”, but there is ALWAYS someone who thinks you are the most beautiful girl in the room because you light up the room like no body else & don’t get me started on the way you flip your hair & how it gets the boys overwhelmed. You don’t know you’re beautiful…and that’s….that’s what makes you so beautiful. How lovely!

If you are the Girl Next Door Trope, you don’t have to worry about putting on a show to impress the boysies around you. Just continue to be you’re cool & down to Earth self. Even though it seems like we live in Shallow Land, where everything is based on superficial looks & flawless instagram selfies, you’re super special because you don’t give in. Don’t conform & don’t rush to be the “it” girl. You don’t need the BBL & the thick lashes. (NOTHING IS WRONG W THIS!!! NOTHING~~~) Your natural beauty is more than enough through the Male Gaze!

✨Music

Female Gaze: All You Wanted- Michelle branch

Male Gaze: Hey There Delilah- The Plain White Tees

*sorry I couldn’t link it! Ran out of space!

✨Examples

MJ (Zendaya)- Spider-Man

Zoe- Grownish

Victoria-Victorious

Monica- Love & Basketball

Bella- Twilight

Justice-Poetic Justice

Peggy- Mad Men

Moeisha- Moeisha

Betty Cooper- Riverdale

Blanca Rodriguez- Pose

Apollonia- Purple Reign

Danielle- The Girl Next Door

💋Diva/Boss Bitch

Nakshatras: Pushya, Magha, Uttara Phalguni

Planets: Sun, Saturn, Mars

Zodiacs: Leo, Scorpio, Taurus, Aquarius (All Fixed Rising Signs) & Sagittarius, Capricorn

Tarot Card: Queen of Pentacles (Earth & Water)

“The strong, dark, beautiful woman. She's often a go-getter, chasing stardom, wealth, or just recognition for her talents. If she becomes an Idol, she's not constrained by the pressures of always appearing youthful, innocent, and approachable.

Part of her allure is instead her maturity, either in personality or in sexuality. When she walks in the room she not only turns heads, but she demands respect and won't hesitate to set you straight if she doesn't get it.”

-tvtropes.org

✨The Diva/Boss Bitch Female trope is THEE BADDEST BITCH. She’s worked hard to get where she is & she isn’t going to let some MAN come along and knock her off her thrown. This female trope demands a certain level of respect when she walks into the room— all heads turn because they know she’s the boss, just waiting to give quick & sharp directions. Usually fashionable, because she can AFFORD it (hello!), she knows how to command in any setting while looks good. A trend setter! She may be one of the most intimidating of the female tropes through the Male Gaze, on par with the Ice Queen, because the Diva carries a certain masculine energy. She usually is running things & bossing men around herself. She doesn’t let her sex get in the way of her ambition & talent. This character trope is not afraid to speak her mind because she knows she has just as much right to a seat at the table as anyone. She’s hard to impress & won’t settle for anything less than perfect. Mediocrity will NOT FLY with the Diva. She expects & she will have the best.

If you are a Pushya, Magha, Uttara Phalguni Rising or a Leo, Scorpio, Taurus, Aquarius, Sagittarius, or Capricorn Rising, you may come off as the Diva/Boss Bitch female character trope. You seem to prioritize work, success & your ambition over friendships & relationships. You force the males who gaze upon you to reevaluate their own status & merit in the world. They know you can’t be easily swayed & have to step to you with their best foot forward. Usually depicted as an insatiable boss, men may feel you’re an insatiable lover— demanding & hard to please…whatever, this doesn’t stop you! You know what you want & if they don’t get it for you, you’ll get it your damn self. You come off as self-assured & somewhat egotistical. You’re proud of your work & you expect to be treated like the BOSS that you are. If someone has a problem with that, well then, they can just get in line! Olivia Pope in Scandal is a great example of this trope in action. First, she has a J.O.B. & she’s DAMN good at it. The best, even. Her sex appeal through the male gaze is due to her wits & her competence. Like you, as soon as she walks into the room, people know it’s business time.

If you are the Diva/Boss Bitch Trope, don’t let ANYONE discredit your hustle—not another woman, not a man…NO ONE! You’ve worked hard to get where you are, and it shows because of the way you carry yourself. You can be one of the classiest tropes of all & that’s more impressive than you could ever know. Your beauty lies in the fact that you are sophistication personified. Your intrigue lies in the fact of your rarity! Not every woman is as ambitious or as capable as you are. You make men shiver when they lay eyes on you because you have an aura that screams “STEP YOUR GAME UP OR GET TO STEPPING!” Never try to dim who you are. You’re bossy & you’re the bitch they all LOVE to hate! Let them! You’d probably hate you too if you weren’t you because you are just too fly to handle! Confidence oozes from your pores because you know your stuff. Although it’s lonely at the top, you enjoy the view of downtown from your corner office! It’s hard to compete where others don’t compare Ms. Diva! Own it!

✨Music

Female Gaze: Flawless- Beyoncé

Male Gaze: Ms. Independent- Ne-yo

*sorry I couldn’t link it! Ran out of space!

✨Examples

Olivia Pope- Scandal

Blossom- Powerpuff Girls

Miranda Priestly— Devil Wears

Annalise Keeting- How To Get Away With Murder

Sylvie- Emily in Paris

Jaqueline- Boomerang

Shug Avery- The Color Purple

Cookie- Empire

Mercedes- P-Valley

Matron “Mama” Morton- Chicago

[azullumi]

alhaitham — academic rivals ☆彡

summary — the relationship between you two are merely rivals in the akademiya or so you probably thought.

pairing — alhaitham/gender-neutral reader

tags — fluff (kinda), the trope enemies to lovers but academic rivals instead; headcanons

word count — 902

a/n — i haven't wrote for him after a long time (that long time was 3 days ago)

being a renowned scholar of the akademiya and being on par to the famous scribe really does bring a lot of things in your life. both negative and positive events to your everyday occurrence.

"are you reading?"

"it's amazing how you have eyes but never see the use of them."

you don't know which one's personality is at fault here but one thing is for sure, if alhaitham wasn't as frank and rational—to the point that some of his actions and words are simply just unacceptable to your moral concepts— as he is, you would be getting along with him just fine.

you also don't know if it's due to your clashing beliefs and ideas that you two just couldn't get along. or is it really just that or he just refuses to do so? eitherways, he still irks you off in multiple ways. even when it's just the sound of his breathing.

the two of you compete against each other in terms of being the best among you, as such your relationship is treated as something simply born and made by a competition, an unnatural way to form a connection with another but that's just how it is.

''are you now starting to realize that you like me after all?"

"i've learnt to endure and bear with your presence."

sarcasms, creative remarks as comebacks to one another's argument, teasing and joking words that leads to banters and bickering, and many more. you'll probably only get along with him only when the world ends. it was obvious even from a stranger's perspective that you were not on good terms with him.

but despite that, there was never a time that you two have touched on a sensitive subject while arguing or have you two said anything personal and mean that it crossed the line. it's just some useless and close-to-nothing banters that always occur—to which it has become part of your daily routine.

however, the fact that you two work really well when it comes to projects and research is something that can't be denied. even when there are countless arguments being shared because of differences in opinion, you two still end up getting the work done flawlessly.

although you could still recall vividly as clear skies the memory of when a student once said how you're only able to attain such a high academic standing and image due to you often being paired by a great scholar like alhaitham—also the man you refuse to be near to, and that all credits for the projects and research papers you have published all goes to him. if you were even given the chance, you would have chosen someone else as your pair but you don't.

this is probably part of the reason why you have a certain yet unexplained dislikeness for him. his existence basically shadows over yours.

it feels horrible having all of your hard work and effort being disregarded but hearing such words are just something common and expected so you ought to ignore it not until you hear a familiar voice speak up.

"are people like you really bound to judge and speak about things you have no knowledge of? shouldn't you focus on finishing your research papers instead of gossiping and talking about other people's lives?"

"you don't know (name) or anything that they do. i have seen how they work so hard to attain their goal and put everything that they can just to do so. witnessing you bad-mouth them while you're at that state doesn't make you look better but rather a fool."

you could immediately tell that it was him, the said man who, from the other students' perspective, deserves all the credit for every project.

he wasn't as bad as you thought and maybe for once, just this moment, you're thankful and grateful to him. but this raises the question, why would he even care to do that? he's most likely the type of person to just walk pass and just let them fools talk bad about others before reporting their conduct to the office.

honestly, this isn't the first time he has done such a thing. in moments more than one, he would often show that he cares for you as a partner (academic) and as something that is more than strangers but less than friends, occasionally speaking up for you when you can't, being cautious and keeping you safe, knowing the foods you can't eat and avoiding from ordering it when he would take you out for a meal just to discuss about your progress in the part of the project/research, and many more.

you suppose it's only an act of courtesy and him being a gentleman though isn't it too much? you just refuse to overthink it and not put any meaning behind his actions. simply just reasoning it that alhaitham is a human that have a heart behind that demeanor of his.

"why do you even care? i don't understand you sometimes. you act like you don't like me then the next you do those things that keeps me up at night."

"when have i ever said that i don't like you? you have a great mind, (name), think."

the only thing you know the two of you share is the relationship of being rivals and probably only just that. 

— navigation | masterlist

[ghelgheli]

i love your thoughtful posts and your patience in answering questions, was wondering if you had read transgender marxism and if so what did you think of it? ty!

thank you 💖💖

i put off answering this ask specifically to read transgender marxism. i hadn't realized, going in, that it was an anthology of essays rather than a book with a single thesis and thread. having worked through them all i have to say... i was underwhelmed.

a few of the essays (e.g. queer workerism against work and seizing the means) read as restatements, using assorted theoretical widgets, of the rote fact that aspiration toward class consciousness and proletarian revolution demands that we organize with a consciousness of transness. true! moving on.

a few others (trans work employment trajectories, notes from brazil, dialogue on deleuze) felt like re-presentations of known knowns and (sorry!) kind of pedestrian to work thru.

several of the later essays (and especially the afterword, which as far as i could tell misrepresented at least JGP in histories of the transgender child and possibly even metabolic rift) bored me near to tears and were difficult to distinguish from the wordplay of theorizing purely in the realm of ideas. i'm pretty sure i think "‘Why Are We Like This?’: The Primacy of Transsexuality" by xandra metcalfe is just wrong and plays into racialist constructions of the plasticity of the subject while trying to construct an image of liberation.

that said, I had some favourites that i would recommend:

Encounters in Lancaster by JN Hoad. i posted an excerpt of this one recently. the analogies to atomism, the conception of the aleatrix, the image of heterosexuality as the swerving stream that sweeps us up in its currents—i thought it was beautiful and sharp.

The Bridge Between Gender and Organising by Farah Thompson. also posted an excerpt of this one. just a good autobiographical account with clear upshots of one subjectivity of organizing for a Black trans woman

A Queer Marxist Transfeminism: Queer and Trans Social Reproduction by Nat Raha. this is a critical recommendation (i think there is a classic overuse/misapplication of "femme" thru the text) but the concept of "gender labour" (not gendered labour!) and of the transfeminine subject as being relegated to the lowest, informal and unwaged rung of performing this labour in service of gender maintenance is something that will stay with me

i also enjoyed Transgender and Disabled Bodies: Between Pain and the Imaginary by Zoe Belinsky. don't have too much to say about this one. here's an excerpt tho: "The organism creates her own foundation: she continually creates the being of her own species – the condition for creating the ‘I can’. She continually creates her capacity to create that species-being and the ‘I can’. She does this through the collective labour of organisms labouring in common, in order to coordinate themselves as sensory parts in a higher organism. The labourers must move from particularity to generality in order to establish the general horizon of transformative possibilities: the inorganic body – institutions, tools of culture – that support the creative capacity of the human body."