How Often To Clean Your House (aka Being An Adult)

The Big Tights Co. and Their Amazing Tights

Confession: we have a crush on a company that makes tights. The Big Tights Company’s tights start with a plus size that is designed to fit a UK dress size 22 to 32; they’ll fit a US dress size 20-30 and stretch to fit 60 inch hips, 32 inch thighs and have a depth (gusset to waistband) of up to 28 inches. That’s right! They considered the depth of the panty area, so your tights actually don’t go sliding down your butt! Their extra plus size is designed to fit a UK dress size 32 to 42; they’ll fit a US dress size 30-40 and stretch to fit 90 inch hips, 40 inch thighs and have a depth (gusset to waistband) of up to 32 inches.

Available in a beautifully opaque option and a sheer that is basically Photoshop for your legs, the styles from The Big Tights Company are comfortable, gorgeous and actually fit. We don’t have anything else to add beyond ecstatic flailing.

♥Lucy Socks by Sock Dreams • Free Shipping in the US • $5 International Shipping Find us on facebook | twitter | pinterest | instagram | sock journal | g+

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As an English Major/ person who gives a fuck about women that headline hurts me.

everyone who reads this post will get some big spicy joy within 24 large minutes (hours)

I really love the bold shapes that make up Jen’s outline and the way the hot pink contrasts with the blue green background.

Jem and the Holograms comic cover design for class. This was way too much fun to work on considering it was homework. I would love to make a cover for this comic one day but until then… 

Might make this a print later without the IDW and Jem logo, or just remake the Jem logo. We’ll see!

EDIT: Tumblr is eating this color for some reason. Check out my Twitter to see the FULL-COLOR RANGE!

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this is the money garf. reblog for untold pasta and riches to come your way

Princess Tutu and Grand Narrative

Once upon a time, there was a clumsy school girl granted the power to transform into the magical ballerina Princess Tutu.

“Once upon a time” is a familiar phrase used to connect stories that take place in lands distant and times different from one another into the same fairytale world. Each episode of the anime Princess Tutu begins with this familiar phrase and then proceeds to tell a story both known and new, where Hans Christian Anderson’s Ugly Ducking becomes Odette, the Swan Queen, from Swan Lake, thanks to the magic of the mysterious Drosselmeyer, who bares a striking resemblance to the character of the same name from The Nutcracker. Princess Tutu is not just a retelling of a handful of fairy tales, it’s an adaptation of stories across literature, ballet, opera, and of course, anime. Each piece of Princess Tutu’s narrative belongs to worlds larger than its own. The series challenges paradigms about typical narrative creation by weaving together multiple “grand narratives”.

While working as an editor for Kadokawa Shoten in the late 80s, Otsuka Eiji wrote a paper called “World and Variation: The Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative” in which he explains the idea of the grand narrative. An individual story only gives the audience a small glimpse into that wider world that the story is set in. This wider world is full of countless narratives told from countless perspectives that make up the grand narrative. Eiji uses the Gundam franchise to illustrate this concept where any given episode of the anime is a small snapshot of narrative within the larger universe(s) Gundam takes place in. Eiji explains, “Countless other [stories] could exist if someone else were the main character.”

Everyone is the main character of their own story. But most of these stories that make up the grand narrative of a world are hidden from view. It’s impossible to tell every story at once and have it be comprehensible. Instead we can only consume small bite-sized narratives that give us a snapshot of the (hopefully) interesting parts of a protagonist’s life. But who, exactly, is controlling these smaller narratives? This is a question faced by the characters of Princess Tutu.

The concept of shifting protagonists and expanding the audience’s view into the grand narrative heavily ties into Princess Tutu’s premise. The anime’s story is catalyzed by Drosselmeyer, the author of a fictitious book called The Prince and The Raven. The book’s ending is a stalemate between the titular characters so Drosselmeyer decides to promote the minor character of Princess Tutu to the role of main character to help the story move forward.

As you can probably tell by the name, Princess Tutu is heavily influenced by ballet. One of the show’s more significant influences is Swan Lake. Through the anime’s re-purposing of Swan Lake’s Odette as a magical girl, Princess Tutu continues to uphold ballet’s tradition of adapting the story for its own purposes.

Princess Tutu and Odette

The basic story of Swan Lake is about a prince falling in love with a girl cursed to be a swan from sunrise to sunset by an evil sorcerer. The sorcerer tricks the prince into confessing his love for his daughter, Odile, instead of the swan girl thus dooming the swan girl’s chance at true love and breaking the curse.

Amanda Kennell, an American scholar, outlines in her paper “Origin and Ownership from Ballet to Anime” Swan Lake’s production history and the evolution of the ballet’s narrative. The original staging in 1877 had the story end with the villain going unpunished and the two lovers drowning in a flood. In a revival staging from 1895 the villain was defeated and the two lovers reunited in heaven after throwing themselves into a lake. In a single scene production called The Magic Swan from the 1940s, the iconic “black swan” was introduced setting the precedent for the same ballerina to play the role of Odette and Odile in striking white and black costumes. And finally, another staging in 2006, not only adopted the White and Black Swan motif, but also changed the ending once again so that the prince kills the villain and he and Odette live happily ever after.

Despite each staging of the classic having significant differences, none of the variations are cast away as counterfeits. The value of the production isn’t in how close it is to the original Swan Lake but instead in the relative merit of each variation. In fact, it doesn’t really matter which you consider “the original” where the additions made by each carry their own merit and add to Swan Lake’s grand narrative. In this same regard, it would be acceptable to consider Princess Tutu another variation on the world of Swan Lake’s grand narrative.

There is terminology for this phenomenon in Kabuki theater. Eiji points out in his paper the similarities between the concepts of Sekai (world) and Shukou (plot) from Kabuki theater and his ideas of the grand narrative and the smaller narratives.

In Kabuki, Sekai represents the world a story takes place in and Shukou represents the story that is a product of that world. Each staging of a Kabuki play is its own Shukou derived from either a single Sekai or the mixing of Sekai. What matters in creating a good performance is not necessarily conveying the Sekai but instead the relative merit of the Shukou’s take on things. No performance is exactly the same and different actors bring different strengths to a performance and in turn provide a different experience for the audience’s entertainment. This of course carries over to more art forms than just Kabuki, classic ballet is in a similar position where entire songs are sometimes re-choreographed just to match the strengths of an individual ballerina. Ballet in particular has a long tradition of making minor and major changes to suit an individual performance. Whether it be tweaking choreography or straight up giving the story a different ending. The evolution of Swan Lake’s production is an excellent example of how productions of what are considered to be the same story can dramatically vary.

But Princess Tutu borrows from more stories than just Swan Lake. This brings us back to Kabuki and the idea of mixing Sekai in order to create another Shukou.

Princess Tutu takes pieces of classic stories and rearranges them to create something simultaneously familiar and completely new. Princess Tutu is not forging a new Shukou from only Swan Lake’s Sekai, but instead is connecting the canon of European literature and performing arts together into an even more extensive grand narrative.

Just look at the series’ opening for example, where Swan Lake and The Nutcracker are intertwined with one another as the anime’s titular character is dressed in the ballet costume of Odette and dances to The Nutcracker’s Flower Waltz to simultaneously combine the worlds of two ballets while producing an entirely new moment unique to the Princess Tutu anime.

The anime ends on the implication that if one person tries to control a story and the grand narrative it’s connected to, that person will fail. Princess Tutu is an excellent reminder of how stories are dynamic. Stories end up taking on a life of their own evolving, expanding and being reworked by both creators and consumers.

Eiji explains that once the consumers feel they have a grasp on the grand narrative they are free to produce their own small narratives from it. This is exactly how its creators forged Princess Tutu from the grand narrative of classic literature and performing arts. Just as mangaka can’t help it if a doujinshi adds to the narrative of their original story, Travosky can’t control the new life his ballets have taken on in Princess Tutu. Stories will take on a life of their own, abandon the need for an original and become a part to a larger grand narrative to be consumed and reworked over and over.

hey everyone! it’s been a while since i made a masterpost, and i recently found some good health-related apps on the play store that i thought to consolidate into a post.

all these apps are available for both ios and android users! i’ve also grouped similar apps together.

fyi: these apps are not intended to replace your therapist/counselor – they only act as an aid. the apps listed here are those that seemed credible enough and had good ratings on the play store. some may help you and some might not. since i don’t have depression or panic attacks, i can’t speak for the efficacy of some of the apps here.

For stress, depression, anxiety, or panic attacks:

Rootd: exercises to help with anxiety and panic attacks, as well as lessons understand anxiety. it also includes emergency contact if you need help and a personal stats page.

Self-help Anxiety Management (SAM): exercises to help you manage your anxiety. you can also build your ‘anxiety tookit’ and chat with other SAM users.

PanicShield: for those who have panic attacks. it has a breathing tool to calm you down, information about panic attacks, and two techniques to train your mind to have fewer panic attacks (based on two types of therapy). 

MoodSpace: short, interactive mood workouts that may help treat depression.

InnerHour: a self-help app for stress, anxiety or depression. it has small daily tasks, helps you deal with distressing situations, helps control your stressful thinking patterns, and has a relief box.

Moodpath: an interactive two-week depression and anxiety screening program that tracks your emotional and physical wellbeing and generates a personalized mental health assessment that you can discuss with therapists.

Calm Harm: tasks to help you resist or manage the urge to self-harm.

To generally improve your life:

Youper: conversations with a bot to improve your mood and emotional health. it also has mindfulness and meditation exercises, a mood tracker, journal and symptoms tracker.

Wysa: similar to Youper, Wysa is a chatbot who reacts to the emotions you express to help with anxiety, stress, low mood, anger or sleep issues.

Primed Mind: a life coach to help you reach your personal goals and improve yourself. it can help you build habits, calm down, fall asleep quickly, and study effectively.

Headspace: meditation and mindfulness exercises

Just Rain: a soothing audiovisual rain simulator where you can control the degree of rain sounds.

Some words to use when writing things:

winking

clenching

pulsing

fluttering

contracting

twitching

sucking

quivering

pulsating

throbbing

beating

thumping

thudding

pounding

humming

palpitate

vibrate

grinding

crushing

hammering

lashing

knocking

driving

thrusting

pushing

force

injecting

filling

dilate

stretching

lingering

expanding

bouncing

reaming

elongate

enlarge

unfolding

yielding

sternly

firmly

tightly 

harshly

thoroughly

consistently

precision

accuracy

carefully

demanding

strictly

restriction

meticulously

scrupulously

rigorously

rim

edge

lip

circle

band

encircling

enclosing

surrounding

piercing

curl

lock

twist

coil

spiral

whorl

dip

wet

soak

madly

wildly

noisily

rowdily

rambunctiously

decadent

degenerate

immoral

indulgent

accept

take

invite

nook

indentation

niche

depression

indent

depress

delay

tossing

writhing

flailing

squirming

rolling

wriggling

wiggling

thrashing

struggling

grappling

striving

straining

Chocolate Teacake High-Hat Cupcake (x)