“Early on I made the producers and director mood boards of Lara Jean’s style. I wanted them to understand that even though To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a contemporary realistic story and not Harry Potter or Hunger Games, her style is crucial to understanding the character. In my notes, I wrote, “It might not be what a teenaged guy would find sexy, but it’s what she feels pretty in, and for an introverted girl, it’s a way for her to express herself. Just like her bedroom.” It’s 60s meets 90s meets Asian streetwear. She is a girl that looks at Korean fashion blogs, goes to vintage shops, scours the internet for the perfect thing.” Jenny Han
Enemies-to-friends-to-lovers is a really nice, satisfying trope, but the truth is that it only works if the reason why two people are “enemies” is for something dumb, like they took the last banana before you could at the grocery store, and not something like one of them is a racist or a raging misogynist or a mass murderer lol.
Ricardo Bessa aka Kyendo (Portuguese, b. Penafiel, Portugal, based London, England) – Blimunda in The God Penguin – Ladies of Literature Vol. 2 Digital Arts
a nsa agent in a suit looking through my laptop camera: she’s on her phone…….. our data shows that she’s got tumblr open on her laptop but she has tumblr open on her phone………. double check her browser?
some nerd hired straight out of college: *types rapidly* she’s definitely got tumblr open on her laptop
the nsa agent, softly: so why is she looking at it on her phone…..
When I was 18 I took a ballet class at college and every morning our beginner adult class started just as the Ballet Majors in the studio next door took a mid-class break.
Many mornings they would gather in the doorway of my classroom and watch us struggle through our bar warmups or jumble up a new technique while they smiled and whispered to each other.
And every morning I dreaded seeing them there because I knew they were making fun of me.
I had other classes with some of them, and I was always embarrassed when ballet came up, and it always did, them being ballet majors, because I loved to talk about it but knew they’d seen me dance, and I was sure they thought I didn’t belong in the conversation.
At the end of the semester, our instructor announced that she’d like to invite the dancers from the next door studio to sit in on our final performance as an audience, and everyone in my class hesitated. We’d worked so hard, we wanted to celebrate our progress during our final without being judged. Most of us left class that day suddenly more anxious about the final than we’d ever been.
The next morning, in one of my other classes I had with the ballet majors, one of them approached me, and as if she’d been reading our minds the entire semester, she said
“Hey. I just wanted to say that I know we watch you guys dance a lot, and I wanted to make sure you know we’re never laughing at you. When we watch you guys learn the basics…..it reminds us of when we first started when we were younger. It’s like…looking at ourselves when we first fell in love with dancing. That’s why we love watching you guys.”
It shocked me. I felt awash with relief and utterly stupid all at once.
Here I had spent an entire semester assuming the worst of people who had otherwise been nothing but nice to me in every other setting, and I had no one to blame for that but my own insecurities that I’d allowed to rule me for months.
I’d been so unfair to these girls, because I was self conscious. I was so worried about being judged that I’d judged all of them.
Here I was worried they were laughing at me, and all along they were looking at me with nothing but absolute delight, even envy for what I was getting to experience.
This encounter changed my entire attitude, permanently.
It made me realize that, yeah sometimes people are jerks for no reason, but more often than not, people really are just….Good.
Since that day, I’ve started giving everyone the benefit of the doubt until they prove me wrong, for their sake and for my own.
And I’ve learned that the world becomes a lot better and life becomes a lot easier when you accept that maybe not everyone is judging you. Maybe you’re the one who’s hardest on yourself.
Let yourself be. Let yourself exist and breathe and be happy.
Beautifuldifferences 