#it's a process and even the so called best artists are still learning new things | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

frenchkisstheabyss · 1 year

Text

♡SKZ React to Finding Out About Your Piercing In A…Certain Area♡

♡ I couldn't ask for a more unique assortment of requests to be sent my way. I love creating content for you guys. Thank you @lieslovefantasy for the request & I hope you find comfort in it ♡

♡ Pairings: ot8!skz x fem!afab!reader

♡ Genre: fluffy/suggestive

♡ Summary: You're nervous to tell the guy you're dating about your genital piercing, fearful of what he might say, but his actual reaction surprises you...

Warnings: This entire post focuses on genital piercings (nothing graphic or detailed) but if convos about vaginas make you uncomfortable then this isn't the post for you. There's also expression of sexual urges but this contains zero sexual contact ♡

I'm not a pierced gal but, if you're at all curious about it, you can find a guidebook here put together by a pro who's been doing it for ages. Stay safe babes

There's a spicier version here ♡

♡ Han's reaction can only be described as utter confusion. He hears what you're saying but it takes him a minute to process what you actually mean. None of this is because he finds it weird or unattractive that you got pierced. It's just that, up until this conversation, he didn't even know you could do that. He's genuinely fascinated though and, after a minute or so, he's staring at you with this wholesome curiosity in his eyes, like you're some work of art, eager to learn all there is to know about this new detail that makes the girl he's falling for even more interesting than she already is ♡

♡ Seungmin's convinced that you're joking. It's not unusual for you guys to say the most random thing that pops into your head just to see how the other will react so he decides to call your bluff, asking to see it since you really have it. You show him with no hesitation, holding your breath in anticipation of the usual smart ass comment leaving his lips and making you wish you hadn't told him, only it doesn't. Instead of saying something off the wall, he compliments your choice of jewelry and tells you how well it suits you. Yes, it's true that he typically takes great joy in being a pain in the ass about things but when it comes to you and your body he never wants you to question how loved it is by him ♡

♡ Felix senses right away that you're worried sick about how he'll feel. Interlocking his fingers with yours, he plants soft kisses along the back of your hand. He smiles at you, warm and gentle, assuring you that there's nothing you need to be nervous about. While he's absolutely clueless when it comes to piercings like this, it doesn't make him view you any differently than he already did. You're still the same charming, intelligent, funny girl that he has been and will always be obsessed with. Whenever you're comfortable showing it to him he'll be giddy about having the chance to see it. There's no doubt in his mind that he'll find it as beautiful as he does the rest of you ♡

♡ I.N has this friend who's best friends with a girl whose older brother's girlfriend got the same piercing as you which naturally means that, through information passed down to him, he's basically an expert on the topic. One thing though, he heard it doesn't really hurt. Something something about adrenaline. Is that true? How'd it feel? He apologizes, cuddling up to you, figuring you probably don't want to have flashbacks of that part. Either way, adrenaline high or not, he thinks you're so cool for getting it done. It's a decision that takes a lot of courage and knowledge of your identity to get done which he admires. You are, without a doubt, the most badass girl he's ever dated ♡

♡ Hyunjin has actually seen female genital piercings before. An artist friend of his did a photo series on it last summer meant to educate people on the 1001 different reasons that women choose to get them done. For some of them it had cultural or personal significance, for others, it was a spur of the moment decision they made simply because they wanted to do it. Which one is it for you? You don't have to tell him if you aren't ready but, if you choose to, you'll have his undivided attention and he'll cherish every word that leaves your lips the same way he always does. The fact that the two of you have gotten to the point that you feel safe enough to be this vulnerable has him getting low key sentimental ♡

♡ Lee Know isn't trying to be a perv or anything. He just doesn't understand how you could feel nervous about telling him something that's so insanely fucking hot. From what he's learned from 5 minutes of intently scrolling the internet, there's a chance that your piercing would make intimacy far more sensitive for you than it is for the average woman. That mischievous grin on his face says that he's more than willing to help you test it out if you haven't already. You roll your eyes when he throws out the idea that maybe he should get one too. He insists that his pain threshold is more than adequate to make getting it no big deal. After being reminded that it's not a competition, he calms down, his mind drifting back to how much fun it'll be to experiment with yours ♡

♡ Bang Chan admittedly has a hard time switching out of dad mode sometimes, often forgetting that he's with you and not his members. His instinct to make sure you're alright has him asking you how your healing went, how the experience was for you overall, and if there's anything he should or shouldn't do when you're being intimate that way he can make sure you only feel pleasure when the two of you are together. As touching as it is that he cares so much, you're a big girl and you feel safe enough with him to express your needs when they come up. You kiss him, promising him everything's fine but you'll let him know if anything changes, and he snaps out of it. He may be prone to worrying but it's only because you're so crazy important to him ♡

♡ Changbin's hugging you from behind when you tell him and this admission only makes him hug you tighter. He kisses your cute lil cheek and throws out a casual, "Oh...nice." It kind of breaks your brain that he's so unphased by finding this out. In the past when you've told people there's been some sort of reaction but you're pretty sure you'd get a stronger reaction out of him if you asked what he wanted for dinner. You question if that's all he has to say and he just shrugs, feeling that there's nothing else to say. He adores everything about the way that you express yourself externally. From the way you do your makeup and hair to the way you dress, he's always drooling over whatever you do. Anything you add to that wonderful base you have is just a bonus ♡

#stray kids x reader #stray kids x you #stray kids x female reader #bang chan x reader #changbin x reader #lee know x reader #hyunjin x reader #lee felix x reader #seungmin x reader #jeongin x reader #han jisung x reader #stray kids headcanons

328 notes · View notes

meanbossart · 8 months

Text

Some art-advice asks I've been meaning to reply to!

I use Clip Studio Paint Pro, though I'm not sure what tips I could give just in general. Just experiment with new things often, draw as much as your lifestyle allows, watch how other people do their work but try to avoid "Dont do THIS thing ever" type lessons and tutorials. Use as much reference as you'd like and take your time! To this day a simple sketch can still take me several hours to do depending on what it is.

Thank you so much!!! I didn't do any kind of formal art schooling but I've always been inclined towards arts and crafts, and started taking drawing semi seriously when I was about 17 (I'm 27 now). I draw a lot of inspiration from western comics and my favorite artists are jason shawn alexander and sean murphy.

Oh I'm so flattered to hear my stuff's inspired you to take up drawing again, I have a bunch of little crafty hobbies but art is by far the most fulfilling one to me - largely because you're constantly learning and improving.

You're definitely onto something already, I am constantly looking at other people's art (even If it isn't a style I would want to emulate) and analyzing how the pieces come together to create the final product. In my opinion this is pretty much the best way you can go about learning besides real-life reference drawing. You can even take something into your software of choice/print it out and trace it (just to yourself, of course) to get a sense of hand-motion and line use.

As a beginner I think there's no shame at all in taking heavy inspiration from your favorite artists, as long as you aren't straight up copying things and calling them your own. Your personal style Is likely to come out naturally, with time. That's very much how I started myself!

Also, just be patient with yourself, try to have realistic goals for your skill level while simultaneously being proud of everything you do. Even if you absolutely despise a drawing, you still drew something! And even if it doesn't feel that way you most definitely learned from it. Use learning tools and tutorials to whatever point you feel comfortable with but don't get stuck on people's arbitrary rules - unless we're talking about something tangible like real-life application of traditional art tools, things like anatomy, perspective and light are to be referenced from - but It's not the goal to emulate them 100% unless you ARE going for hyperrealism. As someone who uses a ton of reference these days, I can tell you first-hand that I often find myself straying from it on purpose to make a piece look more interesting.

Lastly, draw things you enjoy! Don't let anyone else dictate what you SHOULD be doing and don't fall into the trappings of wanting to stick to one specific style, process, or subject matter.

Good luck!!!

LOL thank you so much for your very evocative compliments! I haven't ever done a timelapse, not that I remember at least. I'm not sure how they work but I do so much of "I'm gonna try this thing 5 different ways and then decide what I like" that I'm not sure how comprehensive that would be LOL

I could put together a process showcase or something though, I feel like that might be better even, since I get to explain a little of what I'm doing through text and display how I use reference. Something to consider!

#ask #art #advice

55 notes · View notes

cypressure · 6 months

Note

Have you got any recommendations for dinosaur nonfiction books?

Your art makes me so happy 🥺

hey thank you, i appreciate your saying so (and also giving me the opportunity to talk about dinosaur books)! under the cut for length--

starting off with an overview before getting down to specific topics, my first recommendation is Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved by Darren Naish & Paul Barrett. this was first published in 2017, but the third edition was just released with plenty of updates to reflect new discoveries and hypotheses. it's very thorough and accessible, and takes you through all the major clades of dinosaurs and everything we know about their evolution and ecology. this is definitely the best starting point for getting up-to-date with dinosaur science.

the end-Cretaceous extinction has been getting lots of popular attention lately (thanks to DePalma and the Tanis site I suspect), so if you'd like to learn more on this subject, I love The Last Day of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black, also from 2022. this is the scariest dinosaur book i've ever read--she paints an incredibly vivid and horrifying picture of the aftermath of the meteor impact, and of how the animals which survived the event managed to live on.

if you want to read about how exactly we know all these things about dinosaurs, I just recently picked up Dave Hone's How Fast Did T. rex Run? (titled The Future of Dinosaurs in the UK i think), published in 2022. he delves into what we know from the fossil record and how paleontologists work to figure these things out, as well as what we don't know yet and what we probably will never know, and the difference between those two. i suggest it for learning about paleontology as a scientific process, and it's a very interesting read.

so far, all of these books have been about dinosaurs as a whole; if you are looking for popular publications about specific groups, there are not as many options unfortunately (for some reason there isn't a huge audience for 200-page books about obscure thyreophorans. sighs disappointedly). most of what we get is about the large, more familiar clades; you will see books on tyrannosaurs, and there's a few field guide-style books about Mesozoic birds (which tend to be very beautifully illustrated but kind of technical; see below for titles). my pick for clade-specific books is The Sauropod Dinosaurs: Life in the Age of Giants, by Mark Hallett and Matthew Wedel, from 2016. this one goes into serious detail about every conceivable aspect of sauropod paleobiology, which as you can imagine is a huge and fascinating topic, and all the artwork is gorgeous. caveat: it being 8 years old means there's some science in there which will be outdated by now, but as far as i can remember it's still worth checking out.

and finally, as a paleoartist, i have to mention paleoart books! if you're interested in the science behind the choices paleoartists make when reconstructing extinct animals, especially for your own practice, i cannot recommend enough Mark Witton's The Paleoartist's Handbook, from 2018. he thoroughly explains how to interpret fossil evidence and paleontological research from an artist's perspective, and covers about everything from soft tissues to composing a scene. this is one of less than a handful of books on this particular topic, and it's definitely the most in-depth.

with any scientific subject you have to be careful with older books; this is especially true with paleontology since the discipline has accelerated so much over the past few decades and shows no signs of slowing down. i would even hesitate to recommend anything published more than 10 years ago, since new discoveries and technology have made so many questions and hypotheses moot (and in turn created new and more interesting ones)! the only exception to this is a recommendation for historical significance: Robert Bakker's 1986 The Dinosaur Heresies is essential to understanding what modern paleontologists call the Dinosaur Renaissance, or how our perception of dinosaurs changed from lizardlike evolutionary dead-ends into the active, successful bird ancestors we see in reconstructions now. this book kickstarted that change, and it's easy to see how: it's a very engaging read, Bakker argues his points very effectively, plus there are cute dinosaur cartoons. (i also love a lot of older works for their personal significance, but gushing about formative dinosaur books is something for another post.)

finally, thanks to the wonders of the internet, books are not the only way to learn about current dinosaur science! the best way is always by reading paleontology papers, where scientists directly describe and illustrate new discoveries or hypotheses. however, i know jumping straight into the technical literature may be overwhelming: fortunately a lot of paleontologists have social media, blogs, and/or podcasts where they write about their work and new developments in the field. the heyday of science blogs is kind of past, but there are still a few very good ones out there: this list on Feedly has a good selection to browse. being just self-published material, all of these don't have the benefits of peer review that papers and books do, so always be willing to take things with a grain of salt and do your own research.

of course this is a non-exhaustive list, especially limiting myself to both works recently published and which i have actually read. i've certainly forgotten or missed out on many new paleontology books (Dean Lomax's Locked in Time is one of these which i still haven't gotten ahold of yet, but which im very excited to get to); i welcome any additional recommendations or thoughts from the rest of paleoblr!

i hope this was helpful and i wish you luck in your reading :)

#paleoblr #paleontology #book recs #process #cypress #< - the fursona you see at the top of this post. say hi #sorry this took me so long to post! both putting it together and then actually remembering to post it took more time than i expected #but i wanted to be thorough

48 notes · View notes

barananduen · 10 months

Text

Art Advice: Advancing in Art: The 3 Ps

For people who are new to art, new to a different medium, or just need some motivation.

Keeping what I call "The Three Ps" in mind will help you power through and not quit before you've reached your goal.

I - PRACTICE

It sounds cliché, but practicing is necessary; not just for art, but for everything. Much like athletes spend years in the youth levels, learning the skills, before they can become professionals... and then even when they're pros, they go to training every day, to hone their skills. Just like they do, so, too, must an artist practice.

Practice can be anything. It doesn't mean you must shade so many spheres before you can-- no! You can shake it up! You practice and hone your skills with every drawing you make. You can practice drawing your OCs, your pet, your favorite piece of decoration in your house. Practice with something that makes you excited to draw!

Train yourself to draw different things. When you do a new drawing, try different head angles, lighting, perspective. Try landscapes, still lives, different types of animals. It won't come out perfect the first few times, but keep trying. Each different thing you learn will add new skills to your set, and the more of these you collect, the easier it will become to make that drawing just as it is in your head!

Every artist screws up sometimes; even professionals! Do not be discouraged; every mistake takes you one step closer to where you want to be.

Don't worry about making everything perfect. Just draw! Then look at the imperfections and address them, but don't let them hold you back! Here's an article that will help you keep a positive outlook when things don't come out the way you want: [Art Advice: How to Have a Positive Outlook] It also explains a method that you can use to analyze your not-perfect drawings to identify what you need to fix and how (See #2 in that article).

II - PATIENCE

I often see beginner artists feeling upset because they're not getting "good" at art quickly. Art learning is a long-term process; it takes several years for people to get "good" at art. In fact, you never stop learning and changing and improving. The trick is to stick with it and not give up!

"Rome was not built in a day." - proverb; unknown source

Be patient with yourself. Give yourself time. In the meantime, enjoy the ride!

III - PERSEVERANCE

Imagine a miner who's digging for a precious metal, has been digging for years, becomes disappointed, and gives up and closes the mine. But they were two days away from hitting the vein! They just didn't know it and quit before they could reap the results! Don't be the miner who gives up before hitting the vein!

Keep on arting! Keep on practicing! Keep on challenging yourself and keep it fun! You WILL get to where you want to be!

Keep your goal in mind and don't give up before you reach it!

All the best wishes, ~B~

MORE ART ADVICE ARTICLES

You can find the index to all Art Advice Articles [here] including:

How to Deal with Art Block

How to Have a Positive Outlook

How to Develop Your Own Style

etc.

#art advice #art tips #art help #art resources #positivity #artists on tumblr #art tutorial #motivation #how to #art #barananduen

60 notes · View notes

shinmelodia · 1 year

Text

Love & Process: blue (2002)

Hello to everyone reading, and welcome to a highly belated attempt to squeeze some of my thoughts and emotions through some semblance of a creative process and onto a page. Today, I want to introduce this blog by talking about a lovely film, blue (2002), directed by Hiroshi Ando and based on a manga by Kiriko Nananan.

Since I'm still somewhat new at diving into live action film, especially, like, uh, Japanese indie film, its helping to start with the yuri genre. Because like practically any other woman on this site, I quite enjoy lesbians. blue's manga original offers something of an alternative to the yuri norm, though, and the film follows suit. Both are definitely examples of the Japanese filmmaking trend I've heard of called "mumblecore," (or maybe mumble-komi for the manga equivalent) that most people know through the likes of Inio Asano's early work. Like Solanin or Girl on the Shore, blue is shoegazey, quiet, and contemplative, adorned with moments of subtle physical intimacy, layered emotion, and stunningly beautiful compositions of daily life.

My metric for these kinds of slow mood pieces, which I've previously tended to watch at random whenever the mood struck me, is that if my barely-medicated ADHD brain can even finish them, there's clearly something special going on. blue passed with flying colors; yeah, ok, it took two sittings, but I spent all of both enraptured, immersed, and invested in the mono no aware of silent, fragile love and messy asymmetry that formed this movie's emotional palette. blue is about love, of course, but its also about process and expression, both emotional and creative, and how processing things, artistically, verbally, non-verbally--is often required of real, human love.

In being about this, I think it did things for me that a lot of yuri often doesn't and gently hit me in a place that I really needed to be hit. So, let me get into it. This is going to be...very personal, and also obviously spoil the details of the film, if you care about that, although I'm sure there will be plenty of depth left in the text that I leave untouched. Whether you read it or not, I'll be happy I made it. Oh, and sorry if I come off as really New for being so struck by themes and aesthetics that are probably sort of standard for this type of film. I can't help what I feel like writing about, though.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kirishima Kayako lives in a small town by the sea, one much like dozens of other anonymous, disaster-prone exurban towns in Japan at the turn of the millennium. She rides the bus to her girls' high school every day, where she eats lunch with her friends and tries her best to learn something in class. Really, though, she's aimless, quiet, lonely, and introspective. She's trying, but its rare for others to be able to tell. She's also in love with her classmate, Endou Masami. When she confesses at the end of the first act, on a windy beach against the vastness of the ocean, Endou responds that she's glad, and the two become our lesbians for the movie. Kayako falls to her knees and cries in relief. Masami is different from the others--she sees how hard Kayako tried. Does that mean she loves her back, though?

Endou Masami has cool passions and interests; she collects American CDs, which she expertly critiques and describes while lending to friends. The mere view of her vibing to her American alt-rock while smoking a cigarette in front of her apartment window is album-cover worthy in itself. Kayako feels the same way: one of the most intimately gay scenes of the pre-confession portion of the film is when Masami lights a cigarette and asks if Kayako is shocked. The quiet girl declares without hesitation, "No, I'm admiring the way you lit the match."

The whole early film is such a delectable, lonely vibe. The slowly intertwining couple's solidifying dynamic is the kind that forms between an emotionally complex introvert and the perhaps even more unknowable yet somehow more confident object of their affection. The two are classmates, (there's no classic yuri kouhais and senpais here) but for the early part of the film we are seeing things from Kayako's perspective and Masami seems unmistakably older in spirit. There's something about the dense emotions conveyed in her gazes at her new girlfriend, the almost world-weary tinge of recklessness in her distant grins. She talks about music Kayako's never heard of and lends out books with Romantic-era paintings that she has well-formed thoughts on. Kayako even openly admits that if she could, she would want to be Masami.

I think we've all loved a girl like that.

It's a pretty typical experience in middle school or high school, for really anyone lonely who loves women, to be drawn to these sorts of sad, beautiful, oh-so-seemingly-complex femmes. I guess straight men have a similar thing going on with the whole Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype, but for us women (or, women-to-be, at the time, I guess), the phenomenon of these people to us often involves a sort of existential jealousy. I'm not sure what is so alluring to other people about the sense that the object of their love has Something Going On that they are working through, or a vast and complicated life beyond the scope of one's understanding, but it me it always felt like something I was missing out on for myself. Obviously, a lot of their experiences and interests must be interesting and fun and super cool, you think, but even what pain you think they convey must be somehow more edifying than yours.

For me, the edifying aspect was the mere fact of femininity itself. The idea of a girl who has deep and Real emotions, who feels Real love and Real sadness and can actually express that in how she looks, beautiful and imperfect, always threw into stark contrast my own inability to express myself comparably. I was depressed, I was growing up, and I felt things, too, but, as someone who everyone thought was a straight boy and who was too scared to admit to being otherwise, I lacked that sort of beauty, that means of expressing what was inside me through fashion, makeup, book or music knowledge or taste. Or at least I thought I did. Thus, my own emotions must have also meant less. So, I ignored them and belittled them, and entire years passed before I processed a thing correctly. I always wanted to be some other girl. That was the only thing that would fix me.

I assume that the teen (and, uh, sometimes beyond) existential pining experienced by some other people in real life usually lacks the fun bonus that mine had of a screaming void where my femininity should have been, but I'm not sure how much this actually matters to the crux of the kind of experience I'm talking about. That some kind of void is there is all that matters, really, and its there for Kayako in her relationship with Masami at the beginning of the film. She has nothing, Masami is everything, and just being close to her is enough, for now. Just being noticed, just sharing something with her, is all Kayako feels like she can ask for.

Of course, this incomplete way of seeing love can't last, which brings us to the next part of the film, which starts when the two are hanging out and Masami reveals through a guarded, distant grin that she had an abortion a while ago. This isn't something that shocks Kayako or is really meant to shock the audience, and it isn't the big moment where she forced to reconsider her feelings. Rather, she asks how it went, and Masami responds honestly. She mentions she felt horrible the next day and had to be picked up by ambulance from the nurse's office, prompting Kayako to recall silently what to us was the film's first scene, a view from her window during class of an anonymous ambulance, sirens turned off, discreetly rescuing a student.

That she had this ambiguously traumatic, and at least unpleasant and potentially taboo experience is something that could have made Masami feel even older to Kayako, her pain even more distant and obscure. It certainly already is a way that Masami herself feels distant from others. Yet, by considering her own special, observant view of the ambulance back when it happened, it becomes one that Kayako can in some small way assertively share with her. Rather than continuing to put her lover's experiences on a pedestal, Kayako in this scene makes a silent decision to turn a blossoming mutual acceptance simply that they happened into a moment of true intimacy between the two, a sleepover punctuated by smirking kisses and satisfied cuddles initiated by each of them for the other. Despite her remarks that Kayako is weird for unhesitatingly wanting to stay with her, its an intimacy that Masami is happy to accept. This is all an important turning point in Kayako's development because she begins to choose insight, closeness, and assertion over the distant admiration that trapped her earlier.

As we go on, we'll start seeing how blue's gentle impact comes from the way it doesn't glorify or sugarcoat that earlier kind of unhealthy and immature dynamic. Instead it subverts it by giving Masami depth and Kayako agency, before reaching an endpoint that reflects on how the dehumanization of that kind of depressed, pining relationship can be overcome. In that sense, blue is a yuri romance mostly about the couple coming to accept their own and each other's humanity and capacity for expression. Like any good mumble movie, its full of long silences and almost unrealistically hesitant dialog, and doesn't give any explicit internal monologues like a lot of manga do. The world of this movie is one where expression is an uphill battle, something that has to be worked towards and struggled through. It's the world that Kayako and Masami share, in their own separate ways. And that's why its such a triumph to watch Kayako finally find her voice, her passion, and her process, which all starts in this scene.

First, though, it's time to learn about the Something that Masami has Going On.

Things begin when Kayako is still sleeping. Masami gets a call on her house phone that she doesn't answer, but that sends her into a silent spiral of emotional dread. She spends the next day at school in the nurse's office, refusing to tell Kayako what's going on and confiding only in her friend Nakano. Then, when summer break comes along, she disappears, leaving Kayako alone at home, pouring silently over the book of still life oil paintings that Masami lent her.

It ends up being Nakano who tells Kayako why she left. It's the story Masami didn't tell about the source of her abortion: an adult, married man whom she had a relationship with and eventually a pregnancy from. She got things taken care of without telling him, alerted her parents and tried never to see the rotten salaryman again. That is, until he called. He wasn't getting along with his wife anymore, apparently, and she had some sort of attachment to him that made her come running back. Her taste in music originally came from him, after all. It seems that, for the time being, her devotion to this mysterious, abusive man is going to perpetuate a brutal cycle: she'll keep hurting both Kayako and herself all at once.

What really destroys Kayako and her relationship, though, is that she lies about it. When she comes home after some predictably rough interactions with this guy, she tells her supposed girlfriend that she was enjoying a vacation with friends, and even gives her some grapes, supposedly grown in the prefecture she was hanging out in, as a twisted souvenir. The more assertive Kayako enforces her boundaries without hesitation, though, in equally as blunt a tone as she complimented her love, as when she told her she wanted to stay with her, all those nights ago. "Why are you lying to me?" Its with that same grin, now tinged with emotionally oblivious deception, that Masami dares to at first first feign ignorance.

"Eh?" Her smile is shallower than its ever been.

So Kayako walks away.

Their dynamic has now become worse than just immature; it's entirely toxic. From an outside perspective, Kayako is working on her shortcomings, while Masami refuses to reconcile her past. This kind of toxicity, though, is sadly just as common in high school (and even sometimes middle school) as is the kind of misunderstanding, lonely pining I talked about earlier, just usually among different sorts of people. Appropriately, its often even that exact kind of beautiful, hurting, mature femme (in the eyes of disastrous, moody lesbians like Kayako) who is going through that sort of pain. Its that mysterious and tragic byproduct of compulsory heterosexuality that causes a lot of girls to seek validation in the love of an older man, and that I imagine becomes a sort of addiction to that validation that only masquerades as love. Hell, Masami attributes much of what made her seem so interesting on the surface, her love of music, to this guy. She feels like she'd be nothing without him, and the way Kayako praised her, at least in the way she interpreted it, did nothing to dispel this fear. Which I think is really why she decided to go back, even though it would mean betraying the very girl whose love provided her an escape from it all.

Its an ugly truth, and its one that yuri media usually shies away from portraying, but it is explored with refreshing frankness and resolved with astounding maturity by the end of blue. And I think its the source material's status as "alternative" (I guess in Japanese parlance, Garo-inspired) manga, not to mention the movie's simply as an independent film, that allows it to break with genre limitations in this way. There's been tons of writing done on how yuri definitely presents a fantasy of the sapphic experience. Mainstream yuri's origins in Class-S still to this day often cause it to portray romances between women as fundamentally different, and inherently more pure, than those involving men, trapping them in a bubble of unassailable innocence. While that kind of makes sense and seems extremely cool to those of us who celebrate having little interest in moids or whatever, it also has the effect of sugarcoating and sometimes even outright obscuring what real women, even (and sometimes especially) sapphic ones, go through.

There's already a decent amount of yuri, especially among those aimed at older demographics and those where its more of a secondary genre, that do deal with compulsory heterosexuality and the experiences that come with it. What are much rarer are yuri series where one of the lover's flaws more resemble Masami's than Kayako's. Not enough that I've read at least is willing to make its relationships messy, or have one of its leads just do straight up bad things like self-destructive cheating and lying.

Because, really, its the same as what Kayako went through, isn't it? The lonely longing for something more that feels like it can only be cleansed by denying oneself all one has and betting it all on being close to someone else. The only difference between the two's actions is temperament and perhaps socialization--one sought it from a cooler woman, the other from an older man. And somewhere out of sight, that sad, irresponsible, fucked-up adult was probably hopelessly lonely, too, just like Kayako had to accept Masami was. Maybe disaster lesbians, disaster bisexuals(?), and yes, disaster straights aren't so different after all.

Well, other than that Kayako has worked to process her feelings, while Masami went and ruined her relationship over them. That's an important difference. Still, though, even Kayako has some work to do about how she feels about all of this. Masami's pedestal has been smashed, whether she likes it or not, and now she's lonelier than ever. So where does this vampiric cycle of taking from others end? What substance can replace loneliness in this ouroboros of etropic emotional alchemy?

Kayako doesn't touch the grapes. Instead, she silently processes things, lies on the floor listening to the cicadas scream in the garden. The grapes go rotten, and her brother throws them out. She sulks for a while.

Then, she starts painting. A still life of grapes, inspired by the books that Masami lent her. At first, her drawing is lousy, as the school fine arts instructor later tells her, but the colors are gorgeous. The deep purples of the fruits are expertly layered to capture light and tell a story, one deeper than the instructor could possibly imagine. It's the story not only of the transformation of a relationship, but of the growth of one of its participants. As the hot, still air of the coastal Japanese summer cloys around her lonesome final vacation of high school, Kayako finally salvages a passion to call her own out of a floundering relationship. When school starts again and she picks up art classes, going to Tokyo for uni, a dream that was previously held only by Masami, starts to be within her reach. She has a future, an interest, and a way to process all has happened to her.

And then comes the time for Masami to try and return. She proves unwilling to address all that happened before, instead trying to kiss Kayako after school in the art room. Her undeserved attempt at intimacy is rejected with a shove, but so too is her self-pity that causes her to instantly run away. There's more that needs to be said that simply "I'm a terrible person." Kayako pursues her into the town's small shopping district as night begins to fall and neon crackles to life against a cool late summer night. Now the emotional climax of the movie begins.

First, Kayako starts talking. She tells Masami about the painting, about her summer, about how lonely she was without her, about all the places she wanted to go with her. She talks about how happy she was at the same time that she found something she wanted to do without her. This approach is new for her. She's never so far relied on words so heavily to express her emotions. When Masami points this out, Kayako says:

This is how she's choosing to process things for the time being. At first, it was being silent to carefully consider her emotions. Now, its speaking up to keep them focused on what she really wants.

Then, its Masami's turn, for the first time, to tell the truth. By now they're away from the small cluster of lights, staring out at the blackness of the beach where they first got together. Masami broke up with the guy, she says. But she also asserts that she came to his emotional aid to begin with because she felt his need for help was more important than anything else to her. She couldn't tell her girlfriend this before, because doing so would mean telling a truth she didn't think Kayako could bear to hear: that he meant more to Masami than she did.

Kayako already knows this, of course. And by speaking up to quell her justified anger, by weaving words like the deft strokes of honest color on the tip of a paintbrush, she's gotten herself to a point where she can accept it, too.

I mean, think about it. Masami is broke now; Kayako needed to buy her a sandwich so she wouldn't be hungry on their impromptu date. Her sabotaging drive to be validated and her inability to accept love from the girl willing to give it has, by all accounts, ruined her life for the time being and harmed those around her. Even though she broke up with the guy out of necessity, or out of some fleeting impulse to run back to Kayako, she still feels like nothing without him. As she says to Kayako later, now the envy runs in reverse--Kayako is passionate about painting now, while Masami will still amount to nothing. Despite it all, though, Kayako is willing to love her. She's called Masami out on what she needs to be, then decided to stay nonetheless.

"I always come second. You broke up with him, so the number one spot is vacant. When someone else comes, you'll put him there...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For most of my life, I believed that artistic expression was primarily the product of unrestrained, innate, and self-indulgent passion. I thought it was just something people either have or don't have, and that when they do, its something that can drive them to great heights of accomplishment and happiness otherwise impossible for humans to reach. It was mostly Japanese otaku media that instilled this into me, I think. I grew up exposed to a dizzying array of diverse and often miraculous artistic products that captured my imagination in ways the safe output of my own boring, monolithic home empire never did, and most of them were made by people who literally poured their lives into working on them. From Eiichro Oda's future-destroying, decades-long devotion to making One Piece to Kentaro Miura giving his life to practically paint the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel in pen on page after double-page spread in Berserk, to all of the hyper-passionate, universe-shattering early works of Hideaki Anno and his animator cohorts, I thought that I lived in a world of weird and wonderful treats whose cooks had the work ethic of demigods and the talent to match.

And even on the lower levels of the medium, among fan artists, cosplayers, writers, posters, historians, I felt surrounded by people who lived and breathed impossible passion, whose lives must have been defined by a kind of information processing my brain simply wasn't capable of. They had some ability to inhale the miraculous vapors of an abundant artistic landscape and spew out works of their own that further decorated the texture of a fleeting age of impossible marvels. And all that time, there I was, left on the sidelines, interested in many things but passionate about none, and lacking the motivation to really work to pursue anything at all. It was (and, honestly, still is) a state of existential discomfort similar to that sort of lonely-girl-pining, but doubtlessly far larger in scale. Some people had passion, while I had nothing to show for all my years of being alive. For fuck's sake, there was so much stuff out there, and I barely could muster the motivation to even read any of it most of the time.

After a while, I started to feel like I was simply broken, like I was an empty person that didn't belong in the very world I loved living in. And while I think this might be a niche outlook and insecurity (although one represented, to my profound gratitude, in Masami), I think it's also how a lot of people think about love. Love is often portrayed as a feeling sparked entirely of instinct, one that, when a person truly feels it, will never cause them to make any mistakes or do anything fucked up to those they care about. Something that will drive those bolstered by it to impossible heights, improve lives beyond the sorrow and loneliness to which they are otherwise condemned. But, as Kayako learned and as Masami and I are having to find out, that isn't really the whole story.

Expression is love. Love is process. Therefore, expression is also the labor of putting love through a process, of rigorously trying to get your ass in a seat and put in the steps of putting your feelings into form. As this is required of art, so is it required of relationships. And so the two are a cycle. Creation requires emotions to process; relationships require emotions to be processed. And the love that creation inspires feeds itself into the love for others that inspires the emotion to fuel more creation. A Labor of Love. Again, I know I'm New.

But this is what Kayako has been working up to all movie long, first with her silence, then with some words, then with the labor of painting, the iteration of getting better, then with more words again. She has found a slow cycle that is elevating her above her loneliness, a cycle that Masami helped create, and is welcome within, but that can, if need be, exist without her.

Love, labor, process. Expression, creation, process. Creating, processing, choosing...in the end, to do it all again. To stay with what--and who--you have labored to love. And that is the choice Kayako has made.

I have not yet answered what, after thinking and writing about this movie for days on end, might be the substance that can replace loneliness as fuel for the alchemical cycle of emotional taking and giving. By the end of the lovers' reunion, sitting by the road under the slowly-illuminating blue of a haphazardly-clouded dawn sky, Masami doesn't feel like she has an answer, either. She feels small and hollow, manipulative and weak. She's jealous of the coping strategy her own girlfriend has developed to deal with the effects of her bad behavior. So, in the end, what is she? What is there even left for Kayako to love?

I'll be honest, this feeling is so fucking real I get perilously teary every time I think about it. Because, for as much as I mused about Kayako's feelings resonating with me as a former and sometimes girl-piner, when it comes to my current relationship at age 22, it's Masami in whom I see myself most clearly and brutally. It's hard not to when she is the only representation in romance, let alone in yuri, I have seen so far who is as much of a fucking brat as I am at times. Whose tendency to sabotage her own relationship makes it so asymmetric that what her girlfriend feels appears almost one-sided, but whose love is real all the same. If she lacks process, talent, maturity, mystique, if no one is ever going to be good enough for her, then what at all does she have left?

The answer to all of this is the thing that lies at the core of her being, that makes her who she is. The source of her potential to express herself, the starting point of a process yet to fully begin. It's hard to see, but it's there. Its what makes her Endou Masami. And its what Kirishima Kayako loves the most.

It's color. It's the thing at the core of creation that can't be described with words, that forms the motivation for any process. Its the vivid purple of a painted grape whose intentional creation transcends deception and nurtures discovery. It's the blue of a dawning sky whose light guides two girls in messy, lopsided love back into each other's arms. It's Kirishima Kayako. It's Endou Masami. It's what everyone has, and it's all anyone has.

It's the source of love, its process, and its object.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eventually, Kayako has to leave for Tokyo. That's the decision that's best for her, and its a decision that, for the time being, will leave Masami behind in the countryside, hard at work on the process of learning to love herself. At the end of the film, she sends Kayako one final piece of proof of who she is. It's a painting of sorts, recorded on VHS, composed not of oil but of compressed light and sound. Stylistically, as the camera zooms in, it begins to resemble less Renoir and more Rothko: at first, its the beach, then, simply the point of the horizon, the area where the sea and sky meet. Its raw, not quite processed, pure color, vibrant blue, filtered and compressed into chunky, washed-out 800x600.

By way of description, "this is all I can do."

For years, I've struggled to believe that my emotions, hindered by depression and self-sabotage, have any value at all. As someone for whom love, passion, and expression have always felt difficult, even putting my thoughts down on a page, let alone drawing, painting, composing, or directing, has always seemed impossible. Recently, though, I've grown a lot. I've found the beginnings of a process learned to accept its existence. Both this process, and all the loves that go along with it, are often uncomfortable. They are painful and brutal and blissful things into which to pour the labors of communication and the torments of understanding. I've learned to process discomfort for the sake of creation, to create for the sake of love. It sounds cheesy, but again, I can't help what I wanted to write about.

I hope you'll join me as I find more new things and tough feelings I love to process on this account. There's so much more I'd love to say about blue, just for starters. I could talk about my undying appreciation for the work of Mikako Ishikawa, or how the shots in this movie are so gorgeous and evocative that I'd seen many of them before in "Japan in the 00s" vibes compilations.

But, until then, this is all I can do.

#japanese film #japanese cinema #yuri #yuri manga #lgbtq films #teen romance #pining #film analysis #personal essay #blue (2002)#kiriko nananan #mumblecore #long reads

96 notes · View notes

aropride · 1 year

Text

listened to a podcast from tumblr ceo matt mullenweg abt his plans for tumblr and such and wrote down some quotes i found Interesting . (some are not word for word bc auditory processing + memory etc but i tried to stick to what he said as much as i could)

(on being ceo of a social network) "it is as hard as being the leader of a country"

"it needs to do a good job at showing you things you want to see- so both the people you follow but maybe also exposing you to new things you don't know about yet"

"people want their own home on the web, they want it to be something reflects them, not the needs of an advertiser"

"how do we make this amazing and really give the tumblr community what they deserve, and also give the world an alternative from these closed-proprietary advertisement-driven social networks?"

"you can have custom themes, you can customize it every little bit .. what we wanna do is making it be the best of both worlds, giving you the full customization that u currently have on tumblr, that u also have on wordpress, but still provide a streamlined interface, particularly on mobile ... you kind of move in and out of that full customization"

"that's ultimately what we're about, is giving power in the hands of users"

"what people really want isnt what they say they want ... its kind of like expressed preferences vs stated preferences ... thats probably why [other social medias] dont give u total control over ur algorithm"

"i want to have a path where you can start with, call it 'just' a tumblr ... but if you want to turn that into an e-commerce store, or customize it in a different way, or build a newsletter, or a mailing list, or create a membership site- these are all things that are supported by wordpress today"

"tumblr's userbase are primarily young .. more women than men which isnt common in technology .. its a very safe place and vibrant community for lgbt+, i think its over a quarter of the userbase.. kind of a place for art and artists"

"how do we make that a path to the wordpress open source community ... excited about ..bringing a younger demographic into wordpress"

"[the amount of new users from twitter/reddit are] less than you would think in the long term"

(to reddit/twt migrants) "give us feedback! what do you miss from the old thing when you move over?"

"i'd definitely like it to be as big as twitter or instagram"

"for tumblr for example i think [AI] could make our developers a lot more productive, their coding could be checked/tested by ai, .. that'll allow us to do a lot more .. maybe our pace of development could increase."

"ai can be a huge help in assisting on moderation, if it could help flag things before people even report them, that someone could look at and review."

"the algorithm [for the feed/dashboard] is a form of ai- its really machine learning, people use the terms interchangeably- if we could make the feed a lot better, we could tweak it and really learn the things u want to see and the people u want to follow"

"it could provide some really cool tools, when u think of the generative ai stuff, whether its dall-e or midjourney. so much of what people do on tumblr is expressing art and creativity, and theres some people who are resistant to this, but im actually hearing far more artists that are like 'wow! this is another tool in my toolbox!' its not just like using it instead of doing ur work, it's helping with the first draft, or helping u come up with new ideas, or maybe accelerating part of a workflow. so i see it like a new type of paintbrush, or new colors they can use. they see it as a new way to express their creativity. to me that's also the future. .. just like any other tool, like when we moved from typewriters to word processors."

(asked if generative AI worries him) "bad actors using ai to do more bad things .. that's definitely smth that's gonna happen, that's true with any new technology. if u rob a bank before, u used to have to get away on a horse, now you can get away on a car [laugh]. so like, think of it like that. we don't say "oh, banks are gonna be robbed so much more cuz now people can drive away faster". the good guys have cars too, so the police have cars .. it becomes something that is part of society .. there's more good people than bad people"

#text

51 notes · View notes

moonshine-nightlight · 9 months

Text

2024 Writing - Plans

similar to last year, i wanted to post a little look forward at my plans for writing this year are. the necessary disclaimer: this is 100% high level, optimistic, ideal situation and subject to change but i still like thinking about it and posting for anyone who's interested. see this post for last years!

so, i like separating things out it mini goals/sections so see below:

Nothing's Wrong with Dale: with DSM self-published under my belt, I'd like to focus on the NWWD publishing journey next! The main obstacles/costs are time and money. Hiring an editor and a cover artist are the pricey-est part of the process but my own edit (first to convert everything from 2nd POV to 3rd POV and then another high-level edit/revise once i've got it in the right POV) will take the most time and needs to be done before i hand it over to an editor. Then after the editor takes their time (and NWWD is much longer than DSM), and finally i need to process all of their edits as well. And i need to do all of this while i do my day job lol.

i've already converted the first 11 chapters to 3rd POV (i hav some IRL friends/betas who only read that version, so if u feel like the tumblr version took a lot of time lol). the timing of being able to publish this year will all end up depending on how quickly i can do all that and kick off the part of the process that depends on outside parties. Even if i manage to self-publish in this year, i don't expect it to come out until lik December and even that's ideal, super best case scenario.

Long Stories: I want to outline both A Perfectly Ordinary Research Position and Shadow Diplomacy and then pick one to be the new long story on here. I do what i call a chapter outline and a scene outline, which is confusing to not!me because the scene = a chapter on here. i should probably rename that process lol. (NWWD was 11 'chapters' and 35 'scenes' for reference).

once i pick a project, i just hope to post as many chapters as i can. Since this will be new, long, and likely just building steam, i actually think it'll be my lower priority after the Short Stories and NWWD publishing, but we'll see. i'd like to start putting that up in June, according to my tentative 2024 schedule.

Short Stories: Since i didn't get as many of these done in 2023 and they've been haunting my brain longer, i want to for sure get some of these shorter stories done. learning from last years overestimation lol, i plan to post 3 short stories: Courtship Confusion, Feral, and finish Free Piano: Haunted, in that order. i'm excited about all these stories and will let me cover 3 different types of pairings (although technically all are Reader) which is fun. All have been outlined and have parts and pieces written. I wish Feral and FPH could both happen in the fall but the timing just doesnt work out so summers gonna b a little spooky lol.

The schedule i worked out makes it so all this will be possible, but also basically has no breaks in sunday postings after my haitus which is beyond optimistic but i lik to start overly confident lol

Hiatus: this is also your reminder that my work has a specific Busy Season which honestly started already (lucky me) and i will b beyond busy Jan-March at a minimum. i hav more projects than ever with my promotion, a lot to learn, and a lot to juggle so minimum 6 day work weeks will be the name of the game - but hopefully all goes well and i'll get a nice bonus i can feed directly to my editors lol

anyway, that's where i'm at right now and I'm looking forward to all the exciting writing and publishing to come in 2024!

Feel free to send in any asks about upcoming/current stories!

Thanks again for all your support in 2023 and Happy New Year!

#my writing #writing status #2024 plans #yearly overview #story status #nothing's wrong with dale #courtship confusion #feral #free piano: haunted #self-publishing #editing #lov to shoot high lol #rly rly thank you for all the support you've given these past few years #i'm still so excited to be doing so much with my original works #:D

22 notes · View notes

snek-panini · 1 year

Text

It's been a few weeks since I had new books to share, but I finally got photos taken of the newest ones so today's the day. Here, have a book:

This is Across Tides and Currents, a Good Omens siren AU by Sodium_Azide and @doorwaytoparadise (hi. I hope I tagged you right). My favorite thing about this AU is that, at its heart, it's about learning to communicate with someone who is so different from you that you can't even physically speak each other's language, and yet you've still got so much common ground that you find a way. It's way lighter and more fun than that description makes it sound, though, so go read it if that's your thing.

The cover on this is Lineco book cloth, scrapbook paper printed to look like leather, and blue foil htv. The foil was actually a nightmare to do. The first time I applied it, it wouldn't stick no matter what I did, and the bits that did stick peeled off as soon as I touched them. I had to peel them up very carefully, cut a new image, and try again. Thankfully it worked the second time but I don't know that I'll be using the foil type again unless there's no other way to get the color I want. The non-foil metallic was so much easier to work with.

More book photos under the cut!

I went with a coptic bind for this one for a few reasons. The first was that I wanted to try one on a quarto-size book to see if I could. I also wanted to try the mitered corners thing I did when I bound Strange Moons, and see if I could have the same effect on the interior. (That bit didn't work out so well; the front is fine but I mismeasured the inside and the lines didn't match up, so I trimmed some pieces of cardstock to cover that up. I really like the layered look though, so that's fine. It's quirky.) The third reason is that not long before I decided to bind this one, the authors published a new chapter after two years of no updates. That's the best possible reason to have to change plans, and the glueless bind means that if they ever do that again I can just redo the stitching to add more pages. Win-win.

Getting whimsical with title pages here. This took way longer than I thought it would, probably because I don't like graphic design and I did it in Word where I do the rest of my typesetting. Usually what I do is grab an image and put text around it or on top of it and then just play with fonts and sizes, but this time I drew the lines and then made the text follow them. This is the first time I've used the word art feature since...probably 2009? I'd forgotten how. I have no doubt there are better ways to do this but if I'd had to learn a new program at that point I'd have quit. And I do think it was worth it--it's cute and fun and looks about how I imagined it.

Couple of photos of the inside. Sorry the first one's blurry, I had someone trying to get my attention when I took these. The section break image came from rawpixel, I just made it gray instead of black so it's more subtle. The fic has very nice illustrations that I specifically got the artist's permission to print and then I failed to get any photos of them when I did my little photo shoot. They look very nice, though. I swear.

The last image is something I've started including in my latest books. I'm calling them "A Note from the Bookbinder" and it's basically just me talking about why I chose that story, the experience of reading it for the first time, stuff that's going on in the fandom, stuff about the process like the new chapter coming out as I was preparing to print. It's kind of...like marginalia? Part of fanbinding is preservation and that's linked to archival work, and something I know archivists love is marginalia and diaries. I don't like writing in my books and I've never found any fun in journaling, but sometimes that kind of context is important so I'm trying to add it. Someday, decades from now, I may not remember all the details, so I'm trying to preserve them. IDK, this got philosophical on me. Go read about mermaids now. Promise it's a good time.

#bookbinding #fanbinding #snek makes books #good omens #fic rec #i wanted to do this as a mermay project #that did not happen #i finished it in october #happy mertober

47 notes · View notes

thedragonboosterzine · 2 years

Text

Letter from Rob Travalino to DB Fans- 2022

Hey y’all! So we managed to get in touch with Rob recently, and he was extremely kind to write a note to us! We’ll be updating the zine with this section soon-ish, but thought you might enjoy reading it here first! Enjoy :)

-Li / @paynnincorporated

(Also hehe, there might be more news to come! Rob’s kindly taken some fan questions from the organising team! We’ll share answers when we get them.)

----

Dragon Booster remains one of my favorite life moments, and there have been so many since the show. It was a fantastic journey to be sure, and it often seemed the dragon was in control from the beginning, and the show was meant to be.

Our Canadian partner Alliance Atlantis (Ken Faier and Jennifer Bennett) came on board the very first time they saw the presentation. They learned about the show because Kidscreen Editor Jocelyn Christie loved it so much that she did a feature about it and put us on the magazine cover. We sold the show to CBC (Martin Markle) and Disney (Gary Marsh) with just one meeting.

We already knew Ace Fipke from another company called Mainframe, and NerdCorps in Vancouver was actually custom-built just for Dragon Booster. Our original sales video/animation test was made in a rented apartment that we filled with computer workstations, passionate artists, and animators. That apartment crew became the seeds of NerdCorps Entertainment.

Then, even more, amazing things happened:

Everybody found something different to love about the show and message, which was so rewarding. My co-creator Kevin Mowrer and I lived in the world for years. It began with a feature film prequel idea that takes place years before the series and focuses on Tannis Bllayrr. The world took years to plan and create. It was meant to function as a real place, and we'd hoped to make it into a sprawling online game.

I carefully scripted the show and story for you, the fans, and was thinking about what the story and each detail might mean and hopefully inspire. I wanted Dragon Booster to reflect the world and finding our place in it. Kevin Mowrer shared this vision and carefully put story, emotional content, and personality into every but of art and design he did. The NerdCorps crew picked up the vibe and expanded from there, taking the look and feel of the show and world to even new levels. As a result, the show itself is full of cool double and hidden meanings about culture and our world. Like Mortis might suggest, like Dragon City, and each of us, it all depends on how deep we're willing to look.

Obviously, I'm still a fan myself, and sometimes I look back, and wonder, wow, was I really part of all that? That for me is the best aspect of the creative process, when the community comes together, and when the characters and world take on lives of their own and begin to guide everybody together.

All of you are part of this world now, you have lived in and helped build it. You are part of a long chain of crews, dragon powers, Dragon Priests, and approaches to life that, like the history of Dragon City, have led here. It's a fantastic honor that you continue to explore and expand the history and world of Dragon Booster.

While much of the show still holds up today, one of the things I'm most happy about is the basic message that we can all be superheroes as long as we realize that true superpowers only work for moments, and that they only come out when we're genuinely balanced with ourselves and those around us. I'm super honored how the show has kept so many fans for so long.

Thank you and of course, thanks Beau!

Release the Dragon!

Rob Travalino

#Dragon Booster #dragon booster fanzine #dragon booster zine #updates

61 notes · View notes

dyouevendraw · 7 months

Text

About me

So, I thought I’d probably be best to just make a pinned post with some info so I’m not just a void who throws art a a wall. (I’m probably gonna edit as things change) But here we go:

My tiktok is dyoueven

My instagram is dyouevendraw

My name is D, sometimes people still call me Fay, I don’t mind that either

I’m 22 years old

I use they/them pronouns, I’m fine with he/him too. I’d call myself nonbinary or even agender, leaning towards the masc side. It’s a struggle

Additionally to that, I am ace and my romantic attraction is 🤷🏼. I like androgyny and femininity if that says anything lmao

I have a hypermobilty condition, thus, my physical health is very inconsistent. Sometimes I feel fine for weeks, sometimes I can barely move my arms. Luckily, I don’t dislocate easily, I mostly get joint pain, pinched nerves, random bruises and badly healing wounds. Additionally, I seem to have a mild variant of long covid, which is making my lungs weak, so sometimes physical activities winds me badly even though it’s not hard work.

I am autistic and only found out around 2 years ago, thus, school burned me out! I was bullied by my teachers and they ignored all the signs of a struggling student, so I developed bad social anxiety (added by other events with former friends and general genetics probably). I took a year off of art to focus on getting a better mindset, and I guess I’ve been back since this year.

I am a clumsy and unlucky person, that’s why I say I am like Xie Lian a lot (send me a Hua Cheng)

I like k-pop. Currently, I like BTS, TXT, SKZ, LE SSERAFIM, New Jeans, Red Velvet and SHINee.

Other artists I like are: Tatsuya Kitani, Eve, The Oral Cigarettes, Vaundy, King Gnu, Queen Bee and MCR (what a mix)

Fandoms I’m in include(I’m sure I’ll add more danmei when I’m done reading them):

TGCF (I have beef with it but I’m deeply in love)

MDZS

SVSSS (still reading, on volume 2)

JJK

AOT

Sometimes I like Marvel. I only care about Spider-Man and Loki

TLOZ

Pokémon

(Always open to suggestions for more things, especially when they’re queer🤠👍🏻)

I write my own stories and am working on an AU that includes many fantastical being, though I am not entirely sure if that’s ever gonna see the light of day bc I don’t see anyone caring about my writing lol (it already has 137.000 words I’m not even joking it’s not funny, why am I writing this)

I’m sure I’ll post more of my OC’s when I find the time. My favorite is Harumi, he’s the main character in the fantastic beings AU, as a werewolf

I am so sorry my humor is super trauma based, bare with me it’s okay to laugh at my pain, it’s how I process, I swear

My favorite food is anything indian (especially aloo mutter, I bathe in that), pizza (only the one I make), and (red) thai curry.

That’s the only thing that sets me apart from Xie Lian, I eventually did learn how to cook and apparently people like my food!! (I add cinnamon and chili to everything, maybe that’s the key?)

I love building lego and organizing things by category (why I didn’t get diagnosed with asd is beyond me, I’ve always been like that)

I mostly draw on an Ipad with procreate, but I wanna get into watercolor and copics too, I just feel like I’m wasting the suff when things don’t turn out how I wanted them to be

I am horrible at texting and get anxious over it

I had another account here I was running for years, but I was in a pretty icky fandom and didn’t want to associate with the reputation that came with it, thus, I left. I am not the stupid, hurt and depressed teenager I was anymore, and that’s great!

I am german, though, I speak English so much I might as well be a native speaker

That’s it for now, you can always feel free to ask my questions, my (anonymous) asks, submissions and reblogs are always open, I just won’t answer if you’re rude🤠✌🏻

#artists on tumblr #about me #about myself #about the blogger #about the artist #art #random #text post #pinned post #danmei #tgcf #anime

4 notes · View notes

vodid · 1 year

Note

my toxic trait is looking at your art and thinking that i could do that too. everytime i try drawing Transformers it ends up lookin like a pile of metal that got ran over by two semi trucks blasted to cybertron and back then got the shit beaten out of it by Optimus Prime himself 😭

but fr though, how do you do it? like what kinds of shapes are they made of? how do all their weird alien metal parts move?

what may work for my style might not for you, as i've unfortunately learned through my years of yearning for/trying out another artist's skill, and that's okay. but i am very honored to be that kind of artist to you 💗 beating yourself up for not being like me won't help you, though 🥹 your art is great, regardless of if it looks like mine or not. i'm going on 7 years of doing this after all! (also i started with bayverse of all things 😵)

and honestly, a lot of it is just experimenting and finding what's right for you, what you need to improve/improvise on, and what you want out of your art. for me, i found that i have a very difficult time actually getting that sharp, blocky industrial style of robots down and eventually opted for a more organic, squishier look. but i do maintain their proportions as they're wildly different from a human's ghsdfsjs

you're already off to a great start doing exactly what i did to learn: redrawing screenshots from the shows. i learned most of what i know from tfp, with a lot of bayverse and g1 mixed in there. it took me about two years of that before i felt confident enough to start making original art consistently. it takes time (and tbf, i was still learning how to art in general when i started. so you really are off to a great start)

this is the kind of art i made in 2017:

massively different from my art now, right? through all these screenshots, i'd test out new ways to draw and color. at one point, every piece i made was trying something new. and it was okay if it didn't work out. means i know what not to do next time lol generally though, i'd NEVER do lineart. i mostly focused on building up my sketching and coloring skills, as seen here in my 2018 art:

and that kind of fucked me over for life so now i am left with painting over the sketch 😂 i digress though

in all honesty i've spent my entire art career figuring out how the fuck all their weird alien metal parts move 💀 a lot of it is BSing, some is recycling the same poses to make things easier on yourself and the rest is studying studying studying. cannot tell you the amount of times i've rewatched certain bayverse scenes frame by frame to figure out how all their parts move in tandem — i still don't know! 😅 g1 was a nightmare to figure out because of its blocky simplicity and limited range of motion. it's still a struggle to this day haha

it's really difficult how to explain how exactly i draw transformers, as it's just... something i do nowadays. there's not a ridiculous amount of thought put into it since i've built up my skill. but here's generally how i sketch their bodies and what shapes i use:

the first is slightly different as its a more detailed approach than g1 so just imagine the arms are a little rounder — "marshmallow," as my brother would call it — like the sketches in the second (even if those are a little more advanced in the process than the first)

my best advice to you is to learn their proportions and articulation via redrawing screenshots — various ones! i chose the most dynamic poses for my megatron practices in 2018 to nail it in my head lol but yes shows like tfp and earthspark are great for that (you could probably even do with looking at the storyboard animations for earthspark to help!)

and remember, i'm still learning too! i'm not gonna pretend like i know what i'm doing. but i'm glad i inspire you :)

#vart

12 notes · View notes

ghostwav64 · 8 months

Text

2024

Lowkey starting to think getting laid off was one of the best things to ever happen to me. Like it's been hard and I've cried a ton because this shit sucks and job hunting and getting rejected at interviews is hard as hell.

BUT, on the good days I'm making art, connecting more deeply with my friends, reading for fun again, making my way through Baldur's Gate 3 and getting TOUGH SHIT done.

It's reminded me how capable I am, I think being stuck in a shitty job for a long time can be really bad for your confidence and I am feeling like such a badass bitch lately. 2023, I made a lot of progress as an artist, in 2024 I'm going to make even MORE progress as an artist. Here's what some art stuff looks like for me this year:

January 26th- Exquisite Corpse dropping on Spotify, Tidal,Apple, Music,Waystar Royco Music app and more

January 31st- secret project #1 (and more in the future)

February 2nd- show at Parachigo in Fargo,ND

February 28th- as of now unannounced show in Fargo,ND End of February or March- Holiday Malaise (Short Film)

I'm also getting close to done with my next EP Crybaby on Fire. It's my best work yet imo, and I've learned a ton in the process of making it and I'm excited to share with you all when it's ready.

Once that's wrapped up I'm going to get back to work on my first album which I'm excited to finally announce will be called

The Blue Rose Tapes

It's an album that is a Twin Peaks inspired transition journey/ghost story nightmare.

An insanely talented friend of mine made the sickest fucking cover art for it check her stuff out on insta but I won't share it until the album is in a more final state, you should check out the artist's work on insta in the meantime:https://www.instagram.com/rkgcollage/, she makes the coolest collages and writes some incredible poetry and is one of my best friends in the entire world.

I feel ready, reenergized and ready to get back to working on the album after making this EP, I have a better understanding of my creation process and feel like I'll be able to take the lessons I learned there to help with the album, and I feel like I have a better idea of what the bigger vision for the album is so I can take a new approach to making it. Can't wait to share more on this in the future, I'll be posting updates and snippets along the way on all my socials.

2024 is going to be hard, but I'm going to survive, and not only am I gonna survive, I am going to live it fully, I am going to keep following my heart and my dreams, I did a lot more of that in 2023 and even though 2023 almost broke me a few times I still felt happier than I have in a very very very very long time.

This year,

I'M GONNA SPEND MORE TIME WITH PEOPLE I LOVE!!!!

I'M GOING TO REMEBER THAT:

I HAVE A SOUL!

I AM A HUMAN BEING AND I HAVE WORTH!

JUST FOR BEING HERE!

A JOB DOES NOT DEFINE ME AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

I'M HAPPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DOING HARD THINGS IS WORTH IT!

THIS YEAR I WILL ONLY BE PRAISING DALE AND RAISING HELL!

IT'S GONNA BE A DANCE PARTY AT LAURA PALMER'S ALL YEAR LONG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPwxCESKxeM&ab_channel=ghost_texture

#2024 #new year #iknowwherewaypastnewyearsbutlikefuckthingsaregoodrightnowmakinggoodprogressinlifeanddoingtoughshitandimactuallyhappytobeherewhiledoingit #twin peaks #thebluerosesessions #bluerosetapewhen #crybabyonfire

2 notes · View notes

catkin-morgs-kookaburralover · 1 year

Note

8, 9, 11, 17 for the writer/artist asks!

8. Do you have any OC family trees?

I do, from several years ago, but I can't remember where I put them. I could recreate them, tho.

9. Favourite OC?

Since I already answered this, I'll pick another favourite, Tom. His insecurity and struggles to unlearn habitual misogyny have captivated me because my boy is TRYING he's DOING HIS BEST at separating from the poor company that influenced him for years. He slips up, but he's still trying his best. Overall he's a very relatable character.

11. Sum up one or more of your wips!

I wouldn't exactly call this a wip because I haven't seriously worked on it for years, only bouncing around my brain a bit, but: Patience, the dear beloved knitting oc. I love her and her story and may even find it in me to write it during nanowrimo this year, if I haven't properly planned out any of the other ones I want to get written.

Patience copes with life by hiding away in a small sandstone cave a lot of the time, halfway up a mountain. She knits a Lot, so much so that she has to sell her pieces just so she can afford to buy enough yarn to knit with. This upsets her, but hey, she copes. She's really quite contented with her life, until one day she hears the rattling of *her* rope-and-stick ladder that *nobody else* uses, and a head pops up above the ledge. Unfortunately, its owner is trying to be friendly. Even more unfortunately, due to a combination of circumstances it is sprung on her completely without notice that this is her new adopted sister, Rhona. Patience does not like this. Patience Does Not Like This. However, she does her best to try and work with her, but Rhona just doesn't vibe very well, really. Time passes and her parents are at the end of their rope and it seems that Rhona will have to go elsewhere, though where they don't know. I completely steal a plot point from Dear Enemy in which Patience saves Rhona from a fire, in the process breaking several bones. While she recuperates, Rhona comes to understand her more and learn how Patience works and vibes and how they ought to interact, better. By the time Patience is well enough to go back to the cave as previously - having to overcome her newfound fear of heights, with Rhona's support - they are good friends and enjoy one another's company. In the final scene, Patience is teaching Rhona how to knit.

17. What are some tropes and character dynamics found in your wips?

The Sudden Realisation, in romance; I do not know how romance develops, or how feelings grow. If I have a POV character, either they're Suddenly Aware, or it's an already established thing. (Examples of the Suddenly Aware include both Tom and Adira - he realising he's not actually interested in another girl romantically, she by seeing a photo of them asleep together and going oh - and the established thing would be Paddy and Lilac.) I love the grumpy one/sunshiney one as a trope, and to some extent that's represented in Vaniah and Anneka's relationship, and certainly with Neil and Faith. (Spoilers!! Faith takes a while to be introduced and that relationship certainly surprises the other characters.) I can't think of any other tropes or dynamics off the top of my head rn, but if anyone wishes to pick them up in my writing and ask specifically about it, I'll answer, lol.

#knitting oc #nanowrimo 2023 #<- ? maybe #patience #rhona #adira #tom #taira #paddy #lilac #vaniah #anneka #neil #faith #ask #writing

5 notes · View notes

faithfromanewperspective · 9 months

Text

a letter to my (new) boss (i'll never send)

it's important for me to process this here so. i know i've got that work 24/7 in my veins and i know i've got that need in me to change this city and to change the world. make this city nurturing, and feed the whole world and i can't help but constantly feel i'm getting distracted from it and traumatised from that distraction, being forced to do stuff that felt off course. what is on course? do i still remember it? what is the dream? why do i keep feeling caught up in other people's dreams, and dare i say, their idols? a vision of myself i cannot be?

i keep thinking it's like gender dysphoria and but actually. actually it is it's like. i'm sick of my whole life being told to climb up these ladders yknow? this whole structure that was constructed by the patriachy and isn't my gender at all. empowerment of women or whatever shouldn't mean we have to be that. should mean we get to be valued for who we are, whatever that is, instead of being forced into this box that some people won't even acknowledge the existence of (and that is the invalidating, repeatedly traumatising thing).

and that's why i love working in this field that facilitates the change of the industry. but to be bridging this gap requires sacrificing who i really am and the true iteration of the vision i have and i'm stretching myself, pretending what's hurtful isn't hurtful but still trying to steer the whole world away from what's normalised and in there, i feel so lost. I fought to do this project because it felt like finding myself. and it has been, to some extent. but what it has done is opened up floodgates. made me have to face things that are easier left unsaid. it's led me to face the dysphoria that has stayed under the surface for so long.

and i've realised who i am, and also realised, i don't think anyone realises and in some ways it's for the best because i can almost guarantee that in a lot of ways people are not going to like it. the right people will. in fact, i can think of a few who will. i'm almost feeling like i can bring it to the table. almost. but my art is always going to be a reflection of who i am. yes, even linkedin articles. even this bougie course. it's all kind of terrifying, really, because i belong precisely because i don't belong. it's that disparity that's keeping me employed and the way i call everyone else into line because the perspective i bring is outside of the boxes we can see when the boxes are moving too far out of what might be broadly acceptable, encroaching on and stepping on the feet of the invisible and vulnerable, or worse. i speak for the trees. i speak for the punks and the addicts and those who are oblivious to the whole grind. how i sometimes wish i could be.

but i once watercolour painted a wall hanging for an old friend and creative muse that said 'learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist' and that's kind of how i've lived my entire life.

i find it ironic, sometimes, when people look at the have-nots of various backgrounds with different stories who often seem not to be trying under capitalism and think they feel entitled to things without working for them. i know people who think that to various degrees with various caveats and i don't even fight them anymore. no, i intend to do something so much greater. because i've figured it out

i've figured out that I'm the imaginary picture they have of these people they know nothing about, but the other way around. i have this core, and i mean CORE belief that's as fundemental to me as gender (and i get emotional thinking about it, like i don't think it's going to change, self destructive as it is, it's baked into me like DNA and at almost 23 my brain is nearly finished developing. it's stuck) that I'm put here on earth to work hard and provide for everyone else. i've memeposted about it but it's true. i've tortured myself over the lack of success I've had here and come back a million times to the fact that i don't have to, i'm held safe by supernatural hands from that one time a god put on DNA and became a meat suit and made some enemies who then killed it and called it a victory.

i know i don't need to for me and i know i don't need to prove anything and i know i know i know but the strongest sense of gender euphoria i've ever felt is when i fully surrender to both that and this feeling i have that iwanttoiwanttoiwantto. i feel like it's my role in the diversity and it's the big dream i've had since i was an age i could count on my fingers and toes without thumbs. social role or gender, right? this is incorporating some of the themes of womanhood and going global with them, provisioning and nurturing, and i don't care about logistics or what is fair i won't let anyone take this away from me, even though i see in their eyes they often want to try.

it's not even necessarily feminine. it could be masculine if you like. the opposite of toxic masculinity i guess? i know i get gender envy from some who embody this idea. but it's me and i know that and it might be a belief, a dumb one i will admit it, in that i need freedom to live it out. but it goes deeper than that.

and i have to say i've approached this with an attitude of utmost surrender. i have no way of guaranteeing this is going to work but i know i feel good when i'm following the same intuition that lit this passion in me and i know things go wrong when i try to suppress it. i know in order to be my best me i have to be fully me.

and i feel like i need to get comfortable and confident in these shoes before i expose myself too much to things that freeze the flow state of my brain and have power over me that they try to use to mold me into someone i'm not. someone who makes better financial decisions or hangs out with better people or has a more reliable sleep schedule or whose concept of equity isn't so complicated or who can enjoy hedonist things a little.

but don't you get it? it's when i get this out of my system at the same rate it goes in that i'm happiest. least self-destructive. i can celebrate with whatever joys i please within a liberated liberator's moral code and i can actually be present in the moment instead of trying to stem a tide that might give me that fulfilment i've been chasing for my whole life. i'm hesitant to say it's God talking to me except for the fact that i should relax. i don't know for sure, no one does, but what if it is? what if sometimes the counterintuitive best thing to do is just let me be deranged? because when i'm liberated this is as deranged as i get. just trust me, please.

and when you trust me i'll show up to those corporate events in a classy dress and block heels and i'll charm those investors or whatever they are (i won't let them know that i've forgotten their role as soon as they said it) and I'll have them seeing just a seed of my perspective, the one i've collected from thousands of stories i've sought out and will continue to until i represent millions. billions. i'll negotiate and cut to the heart of it in meetings, just let me grow and i can learn to do that. i know my skillset. i'll do admin organisational stuff and make a system for it. i'll finish my drinks and complete your jokes, don't you see who i could be? don't you see who i am? i'm the same me when i work in impact investing as when i work in special education and when i work in conservation and when i work in consulting and i work in urban design and i work in manufacturing and i work in hairdressing and when i'm a mother. i'll defeat your systems and i'll climb ladders horizontally like the monkey bars i slayed on as a child and i'll do it classily. i promise. i'll spend my whole life giving and i'll have fun doing it.

that's the dream isn't it?

#corporate punk #letter to my boss #sustainability #vision board #gender #the werid number of topics i've touched on here. but the important fact is i'm learning to be myself #personal mental health tag

2 notes · View notes