#hopefully i can find some hairclips somewhere too

[cubesugarss]

One thing i really like about hiiai's dynamic is that they contrast each other in so many ways. Hiiro who is super honest about everything vs. Aira who expresses himself differently depending on who he's talking to. Hiiro the naturally talented genius vs. Aira the "ugly duckling" who constantly feels left behind. Hiiro with no personal ambition to become an idol (initially) vs. Aira who has had one clear dream since childhood

I love thinking about their early dynamic bc it's a lot of Aira looking at Hiiro who is everything he ever wished he was in terms of being an idol and he just feels so. Conflicted. He knows he's in the wrong for thinking of Hiiro in such a negative light because they're Unitmates for god's sake, but he can't help but be a little selfish when he does what Aira's always wanted so effortlessly. He admires him and wishes he were like him but also resents him for how good he is at everything. The fact that Hiiro was only really there to get his brother back was also like rubbing salt in the wound

But then u look into them a little more and ur like oh. They're each other's first and best friend. Thermometry means so much bc it's the first time their demeanors completely switch around.. this time, Hiiro lets himself be vulnerable in front of Aira and Aira kind of pours his heart out and that's when u realize they Both feel like they would be back at square one if they didn't have each other.

I love how meaningful of a relationship they managed to develop despite how they're basically complete opposites. There's a lot of push and pull with them but look at them now. They are best friends and each other's idol. They go from rivals in the I'm going to kill you way to the you make me want to become a better person way. I'm sick!!!!! I'm so sick!!!!!!!!!

[trash0saurus]

( It has been about a week since Banjou last saw the pretty orange-haired girl, and he's a bit distracted. The group of friends heads out and ends up near the coffee shop. They might run into someone they know...)

“Morning, Jiro.”

“Mmmhmm.” She raised her hand in a slight wave, shuffling his way – still not quite awake. She sat down on the floor across from him – on the opposite side of the doorway. From her vantage point she could see down the alley to the street that ran down one side of the block of abandoned office buildings.

Jiro combed her hair out of her eyes with her fingers – which really meant that the thick fringe was moved aside for all of a couple of seconds and then fell right back to obstructing half her view. She really needed to find her hairclips – hopefully they were somewhere in the hideout.

“We doin’ anything today, Banjou?”

Banjou shrugged, his gaze focused on a point somewhere beyond the doorway.

“The sun sure is bright,” she commented, shielding her eyes.

“Mmm.”

“I heard there’s been some interesting stuff happening not too far from here. Maybe we can go find out if anyone around knows anything.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“You know what? I think I’ll shave my head today. Yeah, I’m sure of it.”

“Oh. Oka- Wait – you’re gonna do WHAT?!” Banjou was promptly snapped out of his staring contest with the clouds and back to reality.

Jiro looked at him in a mixture of amusement and exasperation. “Why don’t you just go back to that coffee shop if you wanna see her again so bad?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he grumbled, shifting so as to avoid meeting her gaze.

[queenforanight]

Jessica Over The Years

This blog is coming up to 8 years old in February (I think?) next year. It’s not exactly a significant milestone and I only spent about 4 years actually working hard on my pictures and content, but I wanted to take a quick look back at Jessica during the past 8+ years.

As I’m sure some of you are aware, I started crossdressing long before I started the blog (another 8 years extra I think), however I didn’t start doing makeup or using wigs until shortly before the blog went live. I guess you could say I had a bit of experience, but mostly I was still a newbie to all things feminine.

2010: In The Beginning

Did I really wear that dress with those boots? AND RIPPED TIGHTS?! Eurgh...

Meet Jessica long before she even knew she was Jessica. This picture was taken a few months before I started the blog and long before I developed any kind of fashion sense or skill with makeup. I don’t think I even bothered putting foundation on...

I guess this is how a lot of us start out though. We’ll throw on a dress (that was borrowed), some feminine shoes (also borrowed), maybe some jewellery (definitely borrowed), try our hand at makeup (guess what? Borrowed) and finish it all of with a wig (NOT BORROWED! It’s actually my natural hair at the time). Some of us might get lucky and look good first time...

Or you could be like me where you look a total mess and don’t realise it until you look back 8 years on.

So what’s so important about this picture? It’s something I always look back on to remind myself of how far I’ve come.

To this day I���m still riddled with doubt and voices telling me “you’re shit at this” that I can do better. I can definitely do better, but it’s good to know that I’ve improved over the last 8 years. I’ve also put on a bit of weight but OH WELL.

2010-2012: Finding My Balance (in heels)

Who needs a dodgy wig when you’re own hair looks shit enough as it is?

Yep, still no wig. I always convinced myself that my hair was long enough to not need one (ignore the fact that it took several hours and a the heat of a volcano to get straight....), but eventually I decided that I was never going to look feminine with my own hair. Not because it doesn’t actually look feminine, but because I’m so used to seeing my hair like that anyway.

At least here I can say that everything I’m wearing in this picture is 100% mine (maybe not the hairclips...). I still wouldn’t say this is the height of fashion (please don’t look at the heels, I was poor and needed something pretty), but it’s good to see that within just a year or so I had already developed some kind of fashion conscience.

This was also when I started becoming more confident about people knowing about Jess (she still wasn’t called Jess though...). I had already told my housemates, my partner, and a few others, but I was getting more comfortable about telling complete strangers or close friends who had no real reason to know.

2012 - 2014: Gurl You Dead Or Something?

I joke, but in reality Jess was nearly dead...

This was a really hard time for me for so many reasons. I finished university in 2012 and moved back home to my parents. Pretty much everyone who knew about Jess lived nowhere near me and I no longer had the freedom to dress up whenever I wanted.

All my dresses and makeup were thrown into a box and hidden away; I rarely updated the blog because I had no new content, and for a long time I wondered whether or not I would ever see Jess again.

And that’s when Moon came along.

I actually met Moon in 2009. She was on the same course as me at uni and she was also my housemates girlfriend, and she also knew about my crossdressing hobby. After uni we still kept in touch, however after her and my previous housemate split up we drifted apart a bit.

I don’t remember whether I messaged her or vice versa, but we decided to have another dress up night. Something where we could reconnect, dress up like old times and just be bitches in general.

This is also why it’s so important to have a gal pal when it comes to dressing up. If Moon hadn’t re-entered my life, I honestly don’t know whether Jess would still be a thing. Moon not only gave me the confidence to keep the blog going, but she was also a constant source of inspiration and made me want to improve my makeup and fashion skills further and further.

This part does have a happy ending too. After just one night of dresses, wine, and the usual stupid shit we always ended up doing (there’s a video of me somewhere wearing an Alice in Wonderland outfit while singing ‘I’m a Little Teapot’. It will never reach the light of day...), we reconnected and have been great friends to this day. In two years time, I’m happy to say she’s going to be a Groom’s Maid at my wedding!

2015: Jess Is Finally Jess!

I gained a sense in fashion as well as a few stone in weight. AND MY HAIR STILL LOOKS SHIT!

Fast forward one year and I finally decide to give myself a name! I wanted to pick a name that I liked, but also wasn’t shared by any of my close friends. Eventually I narrowed my choices down to Jessica and Blaise, and decided to go with both!

It felt like a really insignificant detail at the time, but by giving myself a name I had actually committed to treating to crossdressing as more than just a hobby, it was a lifestyle.

By the end of this year I had reached over 1,000 followers on the blog, created an Instagram account and had come out to all my friends. Considering the year before I was thinking about packing it all in, this felt like a huge step.

This was also when I started to come into my own. After 5 years of trying so many different dresses and outfits, I had finally found a style that I enjoyed and could work with. All I needed now was time to practice and a bit of money to actually buy the clothes/wigs I wanted (the wig I’m wearing in that picture was binned after that night... I don’t think I need to explain why).

2016: Time To Make It Big

NEW WIG! NICE HAIR! FINALLY! Only took me 6 bloody years.

2016 was an extremely strange year for me. I think I had about 3 different jobs within the year, brought a house with my (now) fiance, and had my close friends asking about Jess. All this meant that I didn’t have too much time to spend on being Jess, but at least the option was still there for me.

However, there were 2 odd things that stood out more than anything else to me.

First of all, I somehow hit 10,000 followers at the end of the year. The year before I was gobsmacked when I hit 1,000, and I genuinely thought it would take another few years before I even reaching 2K. 

Reaching 10,000 followers made it feel like everything was worth working on, regardless of how much effort I had to put into it. It also felt like I had stopped being a learner and started being a teacher of crossdressing. I found myself asking less questions from others while answering more to people who were just like me 6 years prior.

The second weird thing was making a deal with JustFab. I already used their services for clothes and heels, however one day after tagging them in a post I was approached with a minor advertising deal.

I doubt I can legally go into what the deal was, and to be honest it wasn’t as good as it sounds, but it was such a shock to realise that I was being asked by large brands to help advertise their wares into a new market. I would never consider myself a model, but if I’ve ever felt like one, it was during that moment.

2017: Jess Goes Public

OK this specific picture was taken in my back garden, but you get the idea...

My friends had known about Jess for just over a year at this point; most of them had met her at private parties and a common questions I was asked was ‘Are we going to see Jess soon?’ I was finally in a position where I could be Jess freely without worrying about restrictions on privacy or judgement.

I could have just left it at that and stayed in my comfort zone, but I didn’t come this far by playing it safe and I wasn’t going to stop there. I decided that Jess needed to experience the world outside of her house.

The first experience was Kinky Boots, and later on in the year DragWorld UK. I’ve already written about both these experiences (and you’ve already probably read them) so I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that Jessica was met with great reception and I now wonder why I hadn’t done it sooner.

I’ve spoken to hundreds of people while out as Jess, and so far I’ve still only met one who disagreed with what I was doing. I even bumped into people who follow my blog and recognised me! Goes to show that you don’t know you’re famous(ish) until you know you’re famous(ish).

On top of that, a long term project that I had always dreamed about finally became a reality: Gender Mag. 

The magazine is still running after 3 months, which I’m taking as a good sign. It doesn’t have any near as many subscribers as I was hoping for, but we’re stable for the time being. Hopefully with a bit more hard-work, some more placement advertising, and a better platform to work off of, it might become the success I dreamed it would be for the past few years.

You Can Shut Up Now Jess

I know I know, I have a habit of making extremely long posts detailing every little thing, but I only do it to show the changes and improvements you wouldn’t normally see. A picture tells 1,000 words but 1,000 words tells a story.

I won’t go into the usual ‘why this is so important here are some bullet points blah blah blah’; you’re all smart enough to figure it out for yourselves (I’ve not exactly been subtle about it anyway...).

However, I will say one thing. I get a lot of messages from gurls saying that regardless of how much they work on their makeup they still think they look the same. 

When scrolling through this post did you notice a difference in skill from one picture to the next? Probably not. But if you look at just the first picture from 2010 and the most recent from 2017, you’ll notice a huge difference (I’m gonna put this below so you don’t have go all the way back to the top).

This kind of work doesn’t happen over night. Some people might be able to manage it months but I’ve found that it usually takes years, and even after those years you’ll always find something you could improve on. You may not notice it because the differences are so gradual, but if you looked back 8 years into the past, you’re bound to see a big change.

I’m actually going to shut up now...

- Jessica Blaise x x