As other notes mention this is a style of figure called an Alebrije! They were invented in the 1930s by a man named Pedro Linares, who had a psychedelic fever dream about a world teeming with weird animals in these intense color patterns. He started making models of them to sell and they became an international phenomenon to this day :)
i think the reason i like tumblr so much is that it really emulates a piece of what the old web is like. a lot of people are mobile users now, but if you take advantage of desktop, you can have your own unique theme, make a bunch of cool pages for people to explore. tags let you explore other ppls art, depending on how long they’ve been posting, you can see how their art has evolved.
you really dont get that on twitter or other websites without having to scroll through a bunch of tweets to find a users art. once its posted, its basically dead because other tweets are flooding in.
user customization is non existent on those sites, you are forced to use the same layout as everyone else. constantly being advertised to if youre using their mobile apps.
web 2 is joyless. you’ve been turned into a product. too much focus on likes & views. you’re perfectly fine with companies stealing your personal info & make money off of you for the sake of convenience. web3 is being envisioned by the biggest assholes on earth.
“The indie web, it’s these thousands of websites delivering millions of
pages, built up with passion, opinions and information by Net users
assuming their rights as citizens. The indie web is a new type of link
between people, it’s a free and open space of shared knowledge where
vanity has no place.
” - the indie web manifesto, 1997
here are some guides to get you started on making your own website. it really isn’t too hard if you’ve messed with tumblr themes in the past. i’d say its simpler since you dont have to deal with tumblr’s backend stuff & different post types.
i love girls with no ‘maternal warmth’. girls who are affectionate in awkward ways. girls who are not ‘caregivers’ so much as care needers. girls who mean well but come across as assholes. girls who don’t mean well. girls who cry a lot but it isn’t ‘cute’ it’s just annoying. girls who aren’t always the most beautiful one in the room. girls who are obnoxious. girls who kind of suck but u can’t help but love them bc they really are just trying,
It’s 2008. I’m in O'Hare (Chicago airport) around Christmas time, absolutely tired from a 36+ hours of travel from Lithuania. My flight to North Dakota has just been cancelled by a region-wide snowstorm. My cell phone and credit cards aren’t working because I haven’t called to have them turned back on/authorized for the US. I’m so tired and a little delirious, and coming down with a cold. I just want to get home and see my family. I shuffle into the line for the airline to see what can be done about my flight, but the line is long and I am already defeated. Tears leak from my eyes intermittently from tiredness, helplessness, and self pity.
A business woman in the line turns around. She introduces herself, frowning a little because this is so against whatever code she lives her life by. She explains she’s a pharmaceutical exec from New Jersey and that she is visiting some distant relative in North Dakota, and was on the same (now cancelled) flight as me. She hands me an apple and protein bar and says something like ‘I have no maternal instinct. I do not have children and I do not want them. But you are so clearly out of your depth here I feel compelled to help you in some way.’ She helps me book a room in the airport hotel and trusts I will pay her back when I get home (which I do). She pays for a meal we have together, in which she mostly talks about how she climbed the ladder at her corporate job.
The whole incident now seems like a fever dream because I truly was sleep deprived and loony. This woman emphasized many times how she was not a caretaker, she was not a warm person. Indeed she was not gregarious or solicitous. But she also very very much was deeply kind to me, much to her own surprise I think. 0 percent maternal, but my extreme patheticness really drew out something she didn’t know was in her.
I hope she has continued to have a great child-free life.
Regal antique obi with an amazing butterfly on the taiko area and a hiôgi (formal cypress fan used by Heian era noble women), paired with a perfectly matching butterflies tsukesage kimono.
Because of the fan presence, the obi butterfly might be a nod to this bugaku (Heian court dancing) costume:
