Being A Young Adult Is So Strange. You Enter A Coffee Shop. The 20 Year Old Girl Waiting Behind You Cried

How to show emotions

Part VII

How to show pride

standing tall

expanded posture, opening of the torso

lifted chin, head held high

big and confident smile

looking around to see if people recognize and admire what they are proud of

How to show enthusiasm

big smile and laughter

wide radiant eyes

raised eyebrows

jumping up and down or bouncing

clapping hands

big hand gestures

loud and high pitched voice

speaking quickly

How to show anxiety

not holding/breaking eye contact

fidgeting

heavy breathing

twitching in their face

often a blank stare or looking away

rigid posture

sweaty palms

bouncing their knees

rubbing palms against each other or clothing

How to show playfulness

laughing

giggling

grinning

using a playful tone

making a silly face

touching the other person teasingly

e.g. tickling, nudging, bumping into them

How to show being offended

stiffening up

hard line around the lips

frozen stare

narrowing of the eyes

Part I + Part II + Part III + Part IV + Part V + Part VI

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"Side by side, they were very much alike, in similarity less of lineament than of manner and bearing,

a correspondence of gesture which bounced and echoed between them so that a blink seemed to reverberate, moments later, in a twitch of the other's eyelid.

Their eyes were the same color of gray, intelligent and calm. She, I thought, was very beautiful, in an unsettling, almost medieval way which would not be apparent to the casual observer.“

~ Donna Tartt, The Secret History

小野神社（東京都多摩市） https://www.sa-ka-ki.com/jinja/tokyo/ono-tama/

[oc] “Let me hear it!”

Fontainebleau State Park, Louisiana by Lana Gramlich

Some frames from second chapter of my comics - “Jaikarn”

“Jaikarn” is a fantasy story about royal families, ancient relics and creepy creatures :)

wolf & bunny: a love story

“but what if i’m being annoying :(“ everyone’s annoying dipshit it came free with fucking being alive and existing. now go talk to your friends

What makes an outfit practical or impractical to fight in? Would an acrobat's outfit with some decent shoes be okay to fight in? Any suggestions on how to make an outfit frilly/girly without sacrificing (too much) practicality? (Trying to come up with practical[ish] Magical Girl outfits - know it's not your genre probably - there are certain expectations for frilliness even for tomboyish characters)

You’re, basically, looking for three things: How well canyou move in it, does it give potential foes anything to grab, and does it offerany protection?

If you can’t move freely in your clothes, you can’t fight inthem. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about them being tight enough torestrict movement, or if they make it difficult to walk around. Tight skirts,high heels, tailored suits; it doesn’t matter; they’ll all limit your abilityto fight.

With footwear, you’re looking primarily at how well you canstand and move in it. Shoes and boots designed to grip the floor are (usually)the best options here. So, things like sneakers or work boots are good options.Rubberized soles will help you keep your footing far better when you’restanding in someone’s blood than a dress shoe or high heels.

Things like long coats, ties, free flowing skirts, scarves, hoodies,or of course capes, won’t usually limit your mobility, but they can give anopponent something to grab. Once that happens, that article of clothing willlimit your mobility (some). This is also a factor that’s difficult tocompletely eliminate. Practiced martial artists can, and do, go for collar orlapel grabs on clothing you might think would pass. That said, there are somespecial cases here.

If the article of clothing will tear away freely, it’s (kindof) a wash. You’re still talking about losing clothes, which isn’t usuallysomething you want, but it means you’re not getting dragged out of position byan attacker.

If the combatant is ready for it, it’s possible to usesomething like this as a firing point to retaliate. If you know, roughly, wheretheir hand is, it’s much easier to extrapolate where the rest of them is inrelation to you. This still doesn’t make fighting in long flowing garments a goodidea.

The final factor, almost by definition, doesn’t really applywith magical girls as a genre, and can get a little weird when you’re talking aboutany superhuman characters.

Ideally, if you’re planning to get into a fight, you’ll wantdurable clothing that will take a few hits, and hopefully shield you from harm.Materials like leather and denim hold up much better than lighter fabrics.Insulation in a jacket will take some kinetic force from a strike (not a lot,but still), so it’s better than just jeans and a tee, or even a denim jacket.This also gets into a discussion we’ve had before. Protection is often about makingtradeoffs.

An insulated leather jacket will (slightly) reduce yourmobility. It will give an opponent something they can grab. But, it will alsooffer protection from stray hits and while parrying incoming strikes. It won’tprotect against gunshots, or against a sword, and if that’s what your characterwas likely to face, they’d need armor to deal with those threats instead.

Somewhat obviously, exposed skin isn’t offered anyprotection. Technically, skin itself is protection for your body, and it doesfunction as your first line of defense against infection, but that’s mostlyacademic in this context.

This is also where, magical girls, and most superherosubgenres, deliberately start straying from reality, without actually being unrealistic (in theliterary sense). What matters is if your character has some kind of protectionfrom the threats they’re facing. It doesn’t matter if that’s an ancient alienartifact, a mystical gemstone, or the weaponized power of friendship. That is what protects your character,not her denim vest. You’re also talking about characters where the threats theyface are, effectively, impossible to mitigate through mundane means. Again, aleather jacket, no matter how snazzy, won’t do much against a death beam fromsome snarling murderbeast, or blows from a sword with an enchantment thatdrains the soul from anyone who touches it. As I’ve said before, you selectyour armor to deal with the threats you’re likely to face, and when it comes tomagical girls, those threats are (almost always) going to be far beyondanything you could physically protect against.

Normally, you wouldn’t want to fight off an arisen god ofwar in a school girl uniform, but it’s not like a flak vest would offer anymore protection against a threat like that.

-Starke

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Something like this would be so colossally helpful. I'm sick and tired of trying to research specific clothing from any given culture and being met with either racist stereotypical costumes worn by yt people or ai generated garbage nonsense, and trying to be hyper specific with searches yields fuck all. Like I generally just cannot trust the legitimacy of most search results at this point. It's extremely frustrating. If there are good resources for this then they're buried deep under all the other bullshit, and idk where to start looking.