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I have to vent about this somewhere... so here goes!! It's funny how my sister, the seemingly more extroverted and less autistic one of the two, always gets into weird and awkward miscommunications in the world of... aesthetic professionals. If I remember correctly, I have already spoken about her awkward encounter with a male tattoo artist and she's had many more since then, somehow. In general, it's a known thing that people in that line of work tend to be pretty unprofessional, and while I honestly expected that to happen to me it never really did, but my sister is here to correct the statistic. Her bad luck seems to be concentrated in one particular studio, which she says she'll superstitiously avoid from now on.
The first situation: over messages she got an estimated price for the tattoo - I don't remember the exact numbers but let's say it was 100 to 150€ MAX (artist's words). She came with 150€ and by the time they were done, the dude told her it would be 200€. She said she only brought 150€ because that's what they agreed on and he was like oh ok you're right np then and apologized. Obviously awkward but ok.
Next time around she went to the same studio, different artist. My sister contacted the artist about a flash she really wanted - the artist said "sorry I'm currently saving it for another customer but if they end up deciding against it in a week you'll get it". A week passes, the artist posts another batch of flashes and since she really wanted to get tattooed by her and the new batch of flashes was cool, she contacts her for a new flash. The artist says it's available, great they decide on the price of 200€ because it's pretty big. The artist contacts her a day later about the first flash my sister really wanted, and how it's actually available but she forgot to tell my sister. Ok now my sister is in a dilemma, she already agreed on the second tattoo but the first one is available... What the hell, she has enough money she'll get both! Great, the artist tells her she'll do both for 300€. She comes to the studio and the artist suddenly surprises her by telling her the second tattoo alone would cost 300€ because it's actually big and complicated (something she could have said over messages???) so my sister ends up getting just the first tattoo.. for 200€ (not 100% on the price, but it was more than it initially was supposed to be), because that's the one she really wanted. Still, awkward because the artist probably booked her for an x amount of time and now my sister will be leaving early.
Now the third time around, a very, very well known local tooth gem technician (she's local but she regularly does tooth gems in South Korea and Japan, crazy af) is a guest at this studio, and my sister managed to get an appointment!! The tooth gem technician asks her over dms which design she's interested in getting and my sister sends her a picture of the technicians own work where she did like tooth gems arranged like a heart with two extra gems on the bottom teeth. The technician says it's not something that's available in the price list (which btw my sister never got...) but she'll do it for 170€, because of the first time discount. By not in the price list she's referring to this specific type of combo of tooth gems my sister is getting, she states so herself. Great my sister thinks, the price is actually really good from what she researched online. My sister gets there, she says the technician is suuuuper nice and professional, she tells her the price irl like two more times, asks her which kind of gems she wants, tells her the proper aftercare, she has a great policy where she replaces the gems for free if they fall off in under 4 months, the vibes were great. My sister sends me a happy video gloating about the tooth gems, says she'd love to do this again with the same technician. All is well until... she's waiting for the tram to go home and she receives a message. The technician is apologizing profusely, she seems to have made a mistake. The tooth gems arranged in a heart shape were supposed to be 170€ and the bottom hearts were supposed to be... 100€ extra. And now she's asking my sister for money? Over DMs? WHen they agreed upon the price like 3 times already? And this time my sister is in a dilemma. She really wants to go to this artist again because she was (up until this moment) extremely happy with the service. To add to this, this is literally the only alternative tooth gem tech in this region, so she doesn't have much choice. But she's being met with, frankly, an extreme lack of professionalism. When you agree on a price of a service/product, there's no take backsies. Can you imagine eating at a restaurant, paying, and then having the waiter run after you to tell you it's actually 20€ extra? Buying clothes, exiting the store and having the clerk running after you because actually your shirt costs 15€ extra? No, the fuck up is on you, as the good provider, service provider, whatever. If you want to keep customers, you don't do this shit.. Count your losses and move on. Well my sister kind of ended up giving in, and she sent her 30€, basically what the first timer "discount" was. She said she didn't plan for this kind of price at all and if she had been told this earlier she just wouldn't have done the bottom teeth, no problem! But why do these techs/artists keep doing the same mistake, over and over? Learn how to properly price your work, or if you're not certain and it's just an estimate, then SAY SO. They always speak about the price as if it's fixed, and the term "around/estimate" in this type of service industry is extremely commonly used, so why don't they utilize it lmao. The first situation for example, my sister would have happily have paid extra, because the tattoo was worth 200€, but she just didn't have the money on her and the guy gave up out of politeness lmao. But this just creates unhappy customers/bad experiences. Now my sister will be telling everyone what a weird fucking experience this was, losing this girl potential customers. She might go back to her, but she certainly won't get a bigger design next time, losing her more money. Like think a bit, god damn...
Ok so language classes have been absolutely kicking my ass, in the sense that I have no TIME for anything... except for the event running in Tera rn of course. I got into anki flash cards because memorizing words passively isn't so easy anymore, there's just too many. For some reason I always thought Anki was a japanese language only method, and I guess it's because I used to see it recommended on /a/ all the time, so hearing it's just a regular flashcard thing with a specific algorithm blew my mind lmfao. Second course is ending soon, and I'll be jumping into the 3rd level without a break this time - we'll see how that goes. I'm already pretty tired... But it's fun! I can't lie, while tiring, it is enjoyable. My group this time around is both better and worse, depending on how you look at it. I think there's 13 of us, which is a lot more than last time. This automatically means the class is rowdier, and a couple of students are particularly disruptive and annoying. However, I met a couple of really nice people I enjoy hanging out with after the classes, so that's a plus. The teachers though... I'm not so sure about. I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but our past two teachers were like creme de la creme of this language school, and they were both crazy good - at teaching, knowing what to focus on, and generally having enough authority to control a classroom while being chill and approachable enough that you could get coffee with them afterwards lmfao. For this course we got two different teachers, and one of them is extremely eccentric in a fun way, she's great at teaching theatrically like one of the previous teachers, but I feel like she's a bit too relaxed and it made a couple of students feel too comfortable in talking to each other all the time that it now became actually disruptive. And I can see that the teacher is annoyed by it too, but for some reason she isn't strict enough about it. I guess cause it's weird having to "discipline" people that pay good money for this and that are grown adults that should be mature enough to know not to do such things, but some people just lack awareness and are rude retards, I guess. The other teacher we have is a very classic "teacher".. which isn't bad, but it can be a bit dull! That said they both balance each other out well and cover each others weaknesses, so I think they're a good duo, it's just a shame they're both pretty weak authority wise. Sometimes you need to put your foot down, even if it means just talking to these people after class and asking them to chill out.. One older lady that's in our class is considering swapping to private lessons because she can't stand the vibe in this class, which sucks but I get her.
And now!! Time to talk about The Substance. Sadly I didn't have the inspiration to make a movie review site, I'll probably get to it when I get a break from classes (or not..). I actually....... really loved the movie lmfao. First of all, the movie is extremely absurd. First I need to mention the setting, that is time wise in the present but we're lacking the presence of social media despite having phones, instead TV seems to still be king, and I really liked that approach. In fact I think it makes the movie feel more timeless which is a smart choice, because unlike TV which has been around for decades in a pretty consistent form, social media trends change way more rapidly. It always dates the media badly when you decide to include a ton of memes and topics that will age badly in approximately 2.5 weeks. It's also definitely encompasses multiple generations better. The acting is over the top, there's not a whole lot of dialogue, most of the time you're looking at really claustrophobic closeup shots of the characters, everything feels really small, empty and controlled. The body horror was great in how real and fake it felt (the sound effects omg!!), much like how fake, grotesque and perfect Margaret Qualley's body looked. She had the most perfect prosthetic breasts on which I thought was an amazing touch lmfao. Both Demi Moore and her gave such a great and entertaining performance. Margaret NAILED the ditzy/purposefully innocent mannerisms that men tend to slobber over, it was actually infuriatingly good, and again, grotesque/absurd in how fake it was. This is also one of the rare times that I don't feel pissed at the main character being irrational and making really stupid mistakes. We have so many real life examples of this. We live in an age where we're well aware of how bogged you look like after you get addicted to plastic surgery, where we know the health risks that come with it... yet people still do it lmfao. Chasing youth and grotesque perfection is just such a common thing irl that I think if the substance really was real we'd have no shortage of people abusing it.
Now from reading about it online I've heard a lot of people were unhappy that the story was so self contained, in the sense that there doesn't seem to be some grand feminist message. Yes, the "bad guys" are all clearly men, but none of them suffer as much as the protagonist does and it left a lot of people feeling dissatisfied. Like the movie didn't respect women and once again women got the short end of the stick. But like, isn't that just a reflection of reality (specifically also in Hollywood)? Yes, even after being found guilty for domestic violence, or rape, etc. male stars/producers will continue life like nothing has happened, with opportunities being thrown their way even if they've hit the wall at 200 km/h and look like shrivelled scrotums, for lack of a better term. I don't think the movie even needs to teach us a message, after all it seems like Demi Moore herself, while being aware of what's she's done to herself, has still continued on with cosmetic procedures. The world will keep turning. It's a currently never ending cycle and not every movie needs to make a revolutionary statement out of it. I think it's great for portraying this clinical and absurd setting in the way that it did. I'm finding it hard to be upset at these things, I can't expect everyone to be completely aware and cognizant of things I'm aware and cognizant of, in a way that I want them to be. Idk. Does that make sense? I do think it's a step in the right direction though. I'm glad we're slowly but surely entering the era of "wait cosmetic procedures make you look insane actually". Reminds me of the girl that's in class with me this course, she's completely fallen into the extreme procedure hole, her nose is Michael Jackson tier and her lips look like the lips of every extremely gay fashion icon from eastern europe circa 2004. It's incredible how uncanny she looked compared to everyone in class, and we were all just supposed to roll with it and not think much about it. On the other hand, there's the rising trend of celebrities getting supposedly really good procedures done recently, (Christina Aguilera, Lindsay Lohan, Madonna) that people are praising, so I wonder if the pushback is only going to apply to this old "style" of pillow faces and the like thus staying in the never ending cycle, instead of just being anti cosmetic procedures in general.
This was completely prompted by me seeing that spooky ballsack dress on an extremely sickly, malnourished and bogged Kate Beckinsale and realizing that holy shit, she's the main lead in Underworld and I actually never realized that before. Do you ever just not connect a certain actor to their role because their movie styling is so completely different from their irl presentation (that and... surgeries)? Because that's what just happened to me. Of course, I didn't actually watch Underworld since 2003 when it came out, when I watched it with my dad.. and I was 6... but back when I watched it I thought Kate was the coolest looking woman in the world and I wanted to be a vampire shooting silver bullets when I grew up. Now that I look at her, the styling is so.. whatever. The corset over the latex bodysuit? But the trench coat still slaps. Anyway, I've been aware of Kate Beckinsale's existence for a long while now, but I never made the connection. I always heard of her in the context of a bri'ish heartthrob but for the love of me could never find her interesting or memorable looking and I think I came close to cracking the mystery, it's her hair color!! It just doesn't suit her... Or rather, it makes her look like she blends into her features too much, idk. She looked cool as fuck with pale skin and black hair though!!!
In other news, I was doing some internet sleuthing a little while ago. First of all, I got reminded of a certain choker stealing drama, so I went to the archives to search about it and the people involved. As I was scrolling through the archive of posts made in... I think 2011 or 2012, I quickly scrolled past a very familiar face on a thumbnail and had to take a second look. The picture was attached to a post of someone saying how they miss a certain lolita from 2007-2009 livejournal days. But I didn't know this woman as a lolita (even though she mentioned being into lolita as a teen in a passing remark), I knew her as a local balkan tiktoker that focuses on cooking/lifestyle videos, one of the two only local people I actually really liked on tiktok. I don't know why this was such a shock of endearment to me, but it was. First of all, being a non japanese lolita pre 2010 was rough in general, you had to make do with a lot of DIY and creativity so the community seemed totally different. I feel like, as someone that arrived to the end of the LJ era, blogging and personality were also taken into account on a different level in addition to the community being smaller in general, although I do know some lolitas carried on this blogging into instagram and personal blogs after LJ kinda died off. Second of all, that someone from my neck of the woods actually gained some notoriety for her fits and style in that timeframe is so sweet to hear... People still remembered her years and years after, and asked around for her socials, which she has mostly wiped. Some of it still remains on the wayback machine, but not much.
I realize I haven't updated my site in a while but thing is.. I've been watching more movies than anything else lately and I don't have a movie review section on my website!! Maybe I should, but also I'm kind of lazy to keep track of the stuff I watch. I just know I'd make a letterboxd and start logging all movies I've ever watched onto it which I don't feel like doing... I went to a local independent cinema with my husband a couple of times, sometimes I tune into movie streams on cytube and so on... I've also been deep into gaming suddenly. I started replaying Elden Ring, and then the latest update in Tera stole my heart again so now I'm playing Tera with a lot of old friends. Our guild is kinda alive even, which is shocking. It's also my main source of online social interaction nowadays. Nothing hits as good as an old and comfy guild does! Next year will be our 10th anniversary... I've been reading some non fiction, but stopping at mid point. That's my biggest issue with nonfiction, even if I find it interesting and engaging at a certain point I'll have my fill of it. It's like reading a really long article lmao. I'm also still playing Life Makeover and I've got lots of fits that I didn't take nice pictures of! Ah, I've been lazy with picture taking and pic uploading on my shrine. In addition to that, the last few gachas haven't been of interest, thank god, so I'm saving gems like crazy. Hoping to spend them on a gacha I really really like in the future. The event sets have had some bangers recently so it's really enough to keep me satisfied.
Oh and, going to see The Substance tomorrow, kinda hyped!!! I didn't watch anything slightly scary in the cinema since... The Rite in 2011! Wow that was a long time ago.