♛ S E N P A I ♛

It’s a problem you see most often in anime derived from manga or light novels, but it’s also present in movies based on YA novels, and you gotta know what I’m talking about, start on black, opening narration, fade in as the main character explains the world and environment. This works in a book since the reader can’t see anything, they need the specifics of the world explained, but it feels like the movies are just like “well it worked for the book, it’ll work for us right?

I’d say it’s worse in anime, where characters will go on long internal soliloquies trying to explain their thought processes and complex emotions, which again, works for the manga, in a manga movement is very expensive, every single motion requires it’s own panel, which takes up the artist’s time, printed space, and a moment in the narrative, so it’s important to only show what absolutely needs to be shown. But animation is different, it’s all movement and the details are what sells it more than the dialogue.

The reason I wanted to make this post is because of one scene in One Punch Man that perfectly exemplifies how to translate a written thought process into visual storytelling. After getting punched to the moon (err, spoilers), Saitama has this thought process

and it’d be easy to translate that entirely literally in the anime, Saitama crouches, has an internal monologue as he tries to figure out how much force he needs to put into his jump, and then he launches. Instead though, the scene is done completely silently, to sell the fact that he’s in space, but the thought process isn’t removed, it’s just show visually.

He throws a bit of moon rock to gauge the moon’s gravity, then launches, it’s a much more thoughtful approach to the scene and the audience’s ability to interpret visual information.

 and why they’re failing so badly at appealing to youth, and they never seem to be paying attention to the HEAPS OF CRITICISM, even when most all the notes on their sponsored posts are specifically telling them, in detail, why they suck. 

(sorry for the long post)

First of all, they are actually listening. 

My dad works in advertising and graphic design, he’s in this industry, and he certainly listens to me every single time I talk about the memes, the culture of the internet and today’s youth and all the hip things like that. He’s gotta. This is his job, his paycheck really depends on whether or not he knows exactly how to appeal to whatever target audience the company wants him to appeal to. He’s got to be hip on all the memes, internet slang, popular music and media, because if he doesn’t, he’s gonna get replaced by a younger guy fresh out of art school. So you bet your ass he’s gonna listen and pay attention and ask questions whenever his 19-year-old daughter’s talking about DWC, the new game that Blizzard just released, or Hillary Clinton’s pathetic attempts to get the youth vote. 

As you can imagine, everyone in marketing is trying their damned hardest to make sure their content appeals. By this point, they know exactly why content doesn’t appeal, because they’ve analyzed why things do and dont appeal from every possible angle. People literally go to school for this. They attend workshops. 

So if that’s the case, then wtf is happening? 

Why do we get shit like this

spammed all over our feeds? 

Well it’s a bunch of factors, and not all of it is the age of the people making this content. 

See, the internet and social media has actually brought a kind of mini-crisis upon the marketing industry. They have to constantly be appealing to kids these days, or they quickly become irrelevant, uncool. Every day, individual advertisers, and the industry as a whole, has to ask themselves what appeals to this generation, what can they offer that would appeal to the kids these days? 

They’ve got a crisis on their hands right now, because, to put it simply, we all hate advertisements. With a burning passion. 

And they’ve noticed this, they’ve noticed that internet youth as a whole will go to any possible lengths to avoid ads, that we’ll download extensions, avoid websites, even fucking pay money if it means we won’t have to deal with any goddamn ads, and then when we do see ads, we’ll relentlessly mock them on every possible flaw we can find. 

They had a whole decade to notice their audience’s overwhelmingly negative response to anything that’s trying to sell them shit. They are fully aware how annoying their very existence is to us. 

So right now, what they’re trying to do is make ads that don’t look like ads. 

The first thing they figured they should do, was that instead of doing banner ads and sidebar ads and video interruptions in your youtube and spotify, they should be doing sponsored posts: write up their ads in post form, put them up on a designated corporate account on a popular social media site, then pay the site to seed those posts on everyone’s feed. There you go. It’s an ad, but it doesn’t look like an ad. Maybe the internet people won’t be as annoyed now, because it’s just a post in their feed, it’s not disrupting their experience in any significant way like other ads do. 

Well, they tried that, and it didn’t work. It didn’t really matter that now it was all in accordance with the natural functions of the site, pretty much all of us could see that this, 

is a fucking ad. That’s a goddamn ad that’s being put on our feeds against our will. Nobody followed fucking Microsoft, why in fuck would we do that? there’s nothing but ads on that account, and who the fuck wants ads? 

So now they have to go back to the drawing board, and figure out another way to make these ads appealing, even though they’re ads and everyone hates ads. 

So the marketing guys noticed how a new meme causes everyone to suddenly gain interest in a new piece of media, and how quickly viral content will spread in general. How, say, all those Doritos and Mountain Dew in MLG montages are basically free advertising, or how the slew of viral videos featuring horse head masks caused the sale of those particular horse head masks to skyrocket, etc etc. 

In the memes, they found a possible solution to this near-impossible conundrum that the industry is trapped in.

Basically, the way to make your ads not look like ads, is to make them look like your average viral content. You have to turn your brand into a meme in order to appeal. 

It was actually probably Denny’s that figured out the formula first, and they’re probably still one of the most successful examples. 

Think about it. Did Denny’s even HAVE to sponsor their posts? Or did we just all willingly reblog them because they were so fuckin weird, and we couldn’t believe a corporation was doing this shit? 

But now here’s the problem, and this is why the ads are failing to appeal, even more than obvious reasons like “they’re all putting existing and outdated memes in their ads, and its really uncreative and out of touch”: 

The problem is there’s no direct interaction with the audience. 

You know how the Denny’s blog answers asks? That’s exactly the sort of thing that’s lacking from all these corporate blogs, that’s why they’re still really obvious adspewers, and thus, why they’re so damn annoying (other than all the piggybacking on outdated memes, ofc). 

Other than Denny’s, I’ve only seen two isolated situations where a corporate blog actually responded to feedback of any kind: 

That one time that a visual novel app actually announced two lesbian love interests in response to someone demanding gay content.

That one time Episode got self-aware and mentioned Tumblr in an ad

The first response garnered actual respect for the app, while Episode’s ad caused everyone to burst into mock panic (which was par for the course, given how their strategy seems to be “become infamous for our wild ads, and maybe someone will be curious to try out our app”). 

Given how most of us will accept ads in the form of “signal boosts” from fellow tumblr users, it’s basically a given that, as a whole, we respond much better once we’re assured there’s an actual genuine person behind the ad, who is sincerely trying to reach out to us. 

So you know, why the fuck do all these marketing blogs, Episode, Battlecamp, Funyuns, Game of War, etc. 

why do they

never

actually

talk to us? 

It’s simple:  

they can’t actually talk to us. 

Corporations have rules, regulations. These advertisers running the marketing accounts aren’t CEOs, they’re not even managers, they’re most likely low-level workers in the midst of the marketing branch of the company, a branch that, for the most part, has to follow the rules of the company, and are under extreme pressure (from company lawyers and the PR department) not to do anything out-of-line. 

Actually responding to asks or reblogs are a huge risk, and the people who command the guys who run these blogs have a bajillion reasons why they don’t want some bloody grunt to go saying whatever the hell they want on the official corporation’s tumblr blog.They could say something off-color and cause a scandal, or they could ruin the company’s professional reputation just by acting like a human being. When they log into that blog, the low-level grunt is supposed to be representing the entire corporation, a body made up of hundreds or thousands of people. You’d better damn well make sure they’re saying the right thing.

Running the official Denny’s blog probably takes a very organized and deliberate effort, along with a hella lot of risk, all to make those weird posts, reply to asks, even to figure out the perfect blend of surrealism and mundanity, while at the same time ensuring their product actually looks appealing. it probably takes a whole team to run that blog, if we’ll be honest. There’s probably 10 mods, who all have to be in close contact with not only each other, but with the boss. The boss has to trust them to not fuck up. It probably took a lot of careful planning and communication in order to figure out a stable system for all that. 

Episode couldn’t make a response to tumblr that wasn’t formatted like one of their usual ads, and they only made their (pseudo) response after a string of increasingly weirder ads convinced them that such a daring move like mentioning tumblr wouldn’t be a total disaster (well, more like convinced them that “total disaster” is something that should actually be their marketing ploy from now on).

Kisses and Curses (the aforementioned paranormal romance app) obviously was planning the female love interests already, and saw in that single comment a good opportunity to officially announce them. They also are most likely a smaller company, probably a single team that’s doing double duty on both content creation and marketing, giving them much less red tape if they wanted to answer a question like “but do the lesbians die,” or model future content after the desires of their target audience. They have a lot more freedom to be human, is what I’m trying to say. 

And while it’s fully possible that something can reach viral status and be beloved as a brand without having to respond directly to their audience, it’s pretty impossible to intentionally pull that sort of thing off, especially when you’re advertising a product or service. That kind of viral fame depends on being unexpected and unexplained, an enigma, really, and as a result, any strategy you find that actually works will only ever work the first time. The second person who tries the same thing will be labeled an obvious copycat.

TL;DR: the field of advertising is struggling to figure out how to adapt to an audience that hates the very existence of ads, and their only strategy is to make their ads less and less ad-like, and make their marketing accounts more like actual users and content creators. 

However, due to the structure and size of the companies themselves, they can’t actually do that. Fully committing to their emulation of content creators would mean they’d have to let the employees who run these blogs freely respond to their audience, and actively communicate with them. That’s a risk that no company is fully willing to take, and thus, all these advertisers are forced to make shitty content bandwagoning off the latest trends, and cross their fingers that someone finds the mess appealing on an ironic level. 

They prefer to invest money in paid boosts, because it means they’re (technically) reaching more people, and they can also quantify their ROI. You can’t get data analysis on each individual interaction, so they don’t encourage it.

So there was a lot of misinformation, and just a huge lack of the nitty gritty stuff, when I was in school and I see a lot of young kids on forums asking if something is normal or worrying about stuff and adults who have wondered their whole lives if other people feel the same on their periods. 

Here’s some stuff about periods people might not talk about;

It can smell. But using scented pads isn’t a great idea, the chemicals in the perfume cause irritation. But here’s the thing; vaginas smell. All of them. All the time. Right now. YOU notice the smell because it’s literally part of you, but other people don’t. If it’s a foul smell and very strong you should speak with a gynecologist, but the average day-to-day odor is normal and doesn’t mean you’re dirty. 

Diarrhea all day every day.

 Or, alternately, constipation all day every day. 

ALSO alternatively, a healthy mix of both sprinkled randomly across the days of your period like too much nutmeg where no one asked nutmeg to be. 

Your first period might not look like a period at first. It might look, well, brown, and lead you to other conclusions about what’s going on in your skivvies. Then it might not come again the next month and show up on a totally different week when it does. Mine came like A LOT. It was very heavy and I bled through a pair of jeans in the middle of school it was so heavy. I didn’t know what it was and thought I was bleeding from my butt because my liar teacher said a period would only be a ‘tablespoon’. Tablespoon of lies. 

At some point your probably going to stain the back of the toilet seat with blood. That doesn’t mean your bleeding too much, or that your dirty, but it’s a tid bit of information I wish I knew as a kid so I could have known to look for it when using public restrooms or at friend’s houses. 

Period farts. 

Having sex on your period isn’t gross or dirty or wrong. Put an old towel down on the bed and have at it.

The feelings you have on your period are entirely valid and not imagined or unimportant because of your period. Whether or not your feelings are heightened by PMS they are still your feelings and should be respected. 

The ‘average’ period is anywhere from 3-10 days with any variation in flow. You shouldn’t be concerned because your period isn’t the same as your friends is, only if it changes from what’s average for you. There isn’t such a thing as a ‘normal period’ you need to fit into.

If you wear a disposable pad there will be a point where it’s going to unstick at some corner and when you pull it off it’s going to pull some of your pubic hair with it. This is going to suck. I am very sorry. 

If you wear a tampon there is going to be a point you will squeeze it out of yourself when you use the bathroom. Just change your tampon each time you go. Please listen to me on this. 

Swamp butt.

You will get blood stained thighs at some point. It’s going to cake onto your skin and make a mess just everywhere. 

The cashier doesn’t care about you buying pads/tampons/etc, they just had a guy buy 4 pounds of carrots, a box of Xtra Large ribbed condoms and cherry scented lube. Your pads are not on their radar of things to care about.

Washing Your Junk:

When you shower (if you want a bath i’d shower before hand or dont wash in the bath itself and shower after to get clean) remember you are not actually washing inside of your vagina, you’re washing the skin around it (labia, clitoris, all those good bits). Using a soft wash cloth with either very mild unscented soap or just warm water.  Seriously, stop putting washing products inside yourself; You do not need to wash the inside of your vagina and doing so can cause infections. Unless given products by your doctor there is no need to douche or use creams or wipes or other stuff like that. They’re lies sold to you to make you think you smell bad. 

 You know how your parents said ‘wipe front to back’?Same with washing, you don’t want to drag butt germs all over your vagina. Don’t do it. 

Some people find that trimming, or shaving, their pubic hair helps them control odor, or makes wearing sanitary products more comfortable, but it isn’t required and is personal preference with different individuals. There is no health benefit to shaving or trimming your pubic hair and it will not make you cleaner than if you didn’t shave. 

Wearing light breathable cotton undies during your period will help eliminate odor and not give you swamp butt. Especially in the summer. 

Washing after sex is a great idea and not just because it’s romantic. If you’ve ever had period sex before you will k n o w but if you have not I am going to just ask you to take my word for it and plan a shower afterwards. 

1. I have heard that “the flow” can slow down if your aroused, and in my experience this seems to have some accuracy (there will probably still be some blood though, put down a towel and all parties should wash after)

2. In my experience, during ones period ones clit and vulva and vagina may be much more sensitive. That could be really nice or really not nice

3. Period sex can help with cramps, a lot

4. It could be really uncomfortable if you are constipated

5. Seriously, put down a towel, or something.

On cramps:

1. See number 3 above

2. Tylenol and ibprofen

3. There are period yoga videos on youtube, which can be very nice (there’s one where it just tells you to lay down like you are doing sit ups) (FYI there might be a lot more flow while you do this)

4. You can make a heating pad. Look it up

5. Walk and move, it could help. Or exercise (like in number three)

and finally: If you want to lay on the couch and watch sappy movies (I like watching really crappy Sci-Fi movies, Dune was boring thoug), and eat chocolate and junk food, and possbily cry. It happens, no shame in it. Oh also please drink lots of tea and water. There is PMS tea which tastes like cinnamon and that can be nice -possibly cinnamon helps in general, I don’t remember, but don’t just eat cinnamon.

**if you eat cinnamon you will wish you had not, a lot. 

You sure have seen this post. It has spread like wildfire over the past few days so I doubt there is any artist out there who hasn’t seen it. But even if you didn’t, you should read on because I’m about to tell you a handy little thing that can help you to protect your art from such assholes as the anon who submitted this bullcrap, as well as art thieves in general.

The magic word is Metadata.

Metadata is like an invisible signature that is embeded into a file. It can contain all kinds of information, like Title, date, keywords for online seach engines, and copyright information. And the best thing is, since this information is “hidden” in the code of your picture, it’s hard to remove it.

There is a nice basic tutorial on how to add Metadata, or “additional file information” to your images in photoshop. It’s really, really easy so check it out!

“Adding Your Contact And Copyright Info To Your Photos With Photoshop” on PhotoshopEssentials.com

I’m not sure if you can do the same with any other art program. If you know how to do this in other programs / can confirm that it works the same way there, please tell me so I can add the information to this post.

🔮🌿LAVENDER TEA BREAD🌿🔮

INGREDIENTS Lavender Cake: ¾ cup milk 3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh lavender 6 tablespoons butter, softened 1 cup white sugar 2 eggs 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt

Lavender Glaze: ½ cup milk 1 tablespoon dried lavender buds 1 cup confectioner’s sugar

PREPARATION Cake: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x5 inch loaf pan. Combine the milk and lavender in a small saucepan over medium heat. Heat to a simmer, then remove from heat, and allow to cool slightly. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg until the mixture is light and fluffy. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture alternately with the milk and lavender until just blended. Pour into the prepared pan. Bake for 50 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a wooden pick inserted into the crown of the loaf comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack.