Incase You Were Unaware...

I do makeup tutorials (amongst other things) on YouTube.

I've gotten myself into a series that is somehow less daunting than reading the book series that the ideas for these looks came from.

There are five books in the A Song Of Ice And Fire series, and all of them are about 1,000 pages long. Last spring, I got super excited and ordered them all and then when they arrived and I realized that I had to read an adult book series, it was kind of terrifying. But they're amazing and devastating and fantasy-ish, so it was all fine and I got through it.

After that, a 'Great Houses of Westeros' makeup series can't be too bad... right?

The Great Houses are:

      Lannister, Greyjoy, Tyrell, Stark, Baratheon, Martell, Tully, Arryn, and Targaryen.

Wait... really, is that all? It is! How exciting. That means that today, since I filmed Baratheon, I'm over the hump! I only have four left! On the even brighter side, I have a good idea of what I want to do for Martell, Arryn, and Tully, I'm still a little unsure of Targaryen.

I'm trying to make all the looks both relatively wearable and yet still clearly inspired by their respective houses. Of course, wearable is entirely subjective. For instance, apparently some people think hot yoga shorts aren't wearable outside of hot yoga classes. How strange.

Anyway, I thought I'd post the first three looks of this series as... they're the first three I have up on YouTube.

Matching Tattoos and Death

I have a friend in New Zealand who had a friend in Ireland. I got a matching tattoo with my friend in New Zealand. She got the same matching tattoo with her friend in Ireland (and other people). Her Irish friend had a brain tumor and was dying. He's been dying for a long time, I think, but he's just now actually died and it made me really sad because even though I've never met or talked to him, I had the same tattoo as him and we were connected a bit. He must have been awesome to be friends with Jess, though. So I guess it's also sadness for a missed opportunity to be friends with him.

I Am Not Tan.

People love to tell me how tan I am. Or, here in England, they say I'm 'tanned'. Which is even more irritating as it comes with the presumption that this is not my natural skin colour. I appear to be Caucasian, so I must just be a white person who had gotten 'tanned'. 

How fucking racist. 

If anyone is at all aware of the MAC foundation system, most white people are somewhere around NW10 - NW20. Which is pale skin with a pink undertone. My winter shade is NC35. That's yellow-tone and of the medium variety, and that's what colour I am all over. It's my dead of winter default. (But Jordan, it's summer!) yes, and I'm a fucking vampire. I am pale. 

People think I'm being ridiculous when I say that. You're not pale! You're tan! No. I am pale. I'm so fucking pale, people think I'm white. But I'm not. I mean, I'm partly white, but so is Obama and you don't see people calling him white, do you? 

But anyway, people say I'm tan like its a compliment. Like pasty white is the default and my skin needed to be changed from the 'normal' white by the sun. Nope. Wrong. Rude. Racist. 

It seems like such a small thing, probably. But I find it so offensive. Like, let me get an actual tan, and then you can compliment me on that. Until then, you can go fuck yourself. 

Ducks!

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I haven't read the book. 

I'm sad I didn't read it before seeing the movie. 

It's okay, I've just ordered it, so it's on it's way with 3 other books. 

I never understood why people were always quoting that one line. If you've ever heard of the book, you'll know the one I mean. 

"And in that moment, I swear we were infinite." 

I didn't understand. 

But now I do. I've had those moments. They're the ones that don't even seem that important at the time but will stay with you forever. You will always remember how you felt and what the air smelled like and how wide your friends were smiling. 

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is about a boy his freshman year of high school. He doesn't have any friends and he was in the mental hospital for a while, I think. His best friend shot himself the spring before. 

So he makes friends with a group of seniors. 

I think I had more friends that were above me in grade than in my own, so I know how thy feels. To have all your friends so happy and excited to leave and you're stuck behind for a few more years. 

I wish I had read the book when I was still in high school. It seems like it would have been so important. It's still important, of course. It's just not happening to me anymore and when it was, I think I took it for granted that I was always going to have friends like that and life was always going to be just like high school. 

In some ways, it's so much better, in others it's worse. 

The good outweighs the bad.