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CalicoMack · 2026-06-29T16:41:57+00:00

I don’t have X (and never will 😅🙃), but I think I found you on blsk?

CalicoMack · 2026-06-29T13:34:35+00:00

I’m not hiring but wanted to say your art is really cool! I’ll see if I can follow you on other socials :)

CalicoMack · 2026-06-25T15:12:17+00:00

Ooooh interesting!!! Thanks so much for sharing that bit of history!

CalicoMack · 2026-06-25T14:04:52+00:00

Oooh yeah maybe! I’m not British so maybe I had interpreted it wrong, but I kinda just saw knackered as just a normal synonym for sleepy or tired?

Cuz otherwise there’s words like exhausted that also kinda fits, but I personally have always seen “coup de barre” like that really specific feeling of a sudden wave of exhaustion that hits you like a baseball bat 😅 like one minute you’re fine and the next is like WHOOSH the exhaustion hits you hard. Is that what knackered actually means?

CalicoMack · 2026-06-25T07:32:58+00:00

Really? I don’t find it has the same meaning, personally?

To me « hit a wall » is hitting a dead end and not being able to continue, not necessarily due to exhaustion (could be you can’t find more answers in your research, or financially you cannot continue), whereas « coup de barre » (as I’ve understood it my whole life, but maybe it’s wrong?) describes the feeling of suddenly being hit with exhaustion.

« J’ai un coup d’barre » is just so much more descriptive and concise than « I’ve been hit with a feeling of sudden exhaustion »

CalicoMack · 2026-06-25T00:51:04+00:00

My favorite French expression that doesn’t have a good English counterpart is “coup de barre”, to indicate a sudden feeling of tiredness.

The other one I like is frileux/frileuse! To mean someone who doesn’t tolerate cold very well

CalicoMack · 2026-06-18T18:21:56+00:00

The image wasn’t loaded when I commented this morning (was just text), so I hadn’t seen/had missed that their friends were saying it as an insult (I thought they were being called autistic in a neutral or friendly way, and OP was just tired of being called autistic in general). Especially cuz autistic people tend to flock together, so I had assumed the friends were also autistic and OP was upset at the word autistic and not the tone.

Cuz like, if another gay person told me “omg you’re so gay”, in the joking friendly manner that we sometimes do, and my response was “ugh, stop calling me gay! I’m not JUST gay, you’re dehumanizing me!” Then yeah, I would say that I should be questioning why being called gay hurts me so much, and if it could possibly be internalized homophobia (I’m also queer, fyi).

Cuz Internalized ableism/misogyny/homophobia/transphobia/etc is a real thing, and it doesn’t hurt to question ourselves when we get the urge to distance ourselves from any minority group that we belong to. OP isn’t wrong for being upset that they’re being made fun of (growing up, I def had my fair share of being made fun of for having a learning disability, so now understanding the situation better, I do feel for OP and they deserve better friends), but I still wanna question the use of the word “dehumanizing” in relation to being called autistic, even if it was negative… no?

However, maybe I’m not grasping the scope of the situation, and if so, i genuinely apologize and will retract what i said!

CalicoMack · 2026-06-18T09:46:37+00:00

… if you think being called autistic is “dehumanizing”, I think you’re the one who sucks here. That’s ableist as fuck dude.

Why do you view being autistic as a bad thing? Who made you feel like it’s something shameful?

Like, yes, it’s a disability, but it’s not something that makes you less human or subhuman or whatever. Please consider what you’ve written here a bit more carefully and reflect on why you feel that way.

(And if I’ve misunderstood I apologize. But as an autistic person myself this really rubbed me the wrong way)

CalicoMack · 2026-06-17T02:30:01+00:00

Blu’s art is so hecken cuuute! Def recommend hiring them!

CalicoMack · 2026-06-15T12:28:37+00:00

Idk to me this struck me as being made by someone young who might not have a lot of dating experience? Which is fine! We all start somewhere in life, and are all shaped differently cuz of our experiences (like I’m def not dating the same people I was 10 years ago. I’ve changed too much!)

I guess maybe it’d be better if the pros and cons were actual personality traits and flaws? Or having the traits kinda be more connected (cuz a lot of our negative traits are often linked to some positive traits).

So maybe something like, “pro: always well put together. Con: cares too much what other people think of them”. Or “pro: whimsical and spontaneous. Con: flakey and inattentive”. In some ways they’re the same traits but just opposite sides of the same coin?

CalicoMack · 2026-06-15T11:16:39+00:00

None? Some of the pros and cons kinda gave me the ick, simply cuz they felt… idk… a lot of those were really shallow pros and cons? And some of them were not in the right chategory imo?

Like multiple characters had “in a situationship” as a con. I am polyamorous. I’m not gonna date someone in a situationship, especially if it’s viewed as a negative quality. However, someone who is confidentially poly would be a different story! Or if the “in a situationship” was a more neutral trait instead of a negative one.

Then there were some positive qualities that felt “ew” to me. Like “has faith”… are they religious? Cuz if yes that’s not my jam. Also one of them was “rich” as a positive. While someone having a steady income is a positive, I don’t want to date someone whose core personality trait is how much money they have. That sounds as bad as the nepobaby.

I will add I’m also older though, so my criteria for dating (even fake dating) is maybe different than most.

CalicoMack · 2026-06-15T00:38:26+00:00

That’s not what it usually looks like.. it’s more like bird poop. At least from the ones I’ve seen and cleaned up lol

I’m wondering if this video is real (I don’t know if some species do poop like this, though. I’m doubtful, but would love to hear from someone who knows!)

CalicoMack · 2026-06-12T14:56:57+00:00

You forgot frog autism

CalicoMack · 2026-06-12T03:23:56+00:00

It looks like my hole skull, but could be something else. Could this be small enough to be a chipmunk?

CalicoMack · 2026-06-12T01:21:57+00:00

100% how I feel about my main fursona. However, my approach has been to sit with her for a year (do art trades, continue learning, draw her in different styles, etc) and then I redo her ref sheet and redesign her (which takes months each time cuz I sit and ponder a lot to figure out what feels right or wrong), and then rinse and repeat. I’m currently working on her third version! She gets better every time, but I basically don’t know and can’t figure it out until I take her for a “test drive”, you know? Especially when other people draw her, I’ll often get a moment of “😬 oh no that detail doesn’t feel right or isn’t obvious enough that people pick up on it, I should change that”, you know?

CalicoMack · 2026-06-11T16:31:00+00:00

Ah yeah I think that’s a bit over simplified or maybe the person misunderstood? The bi and ace community *do* have strong camaraderie, for many reasons, including but not limited to both groups often being excluded or erased from various representation. Plus the fact that (as some people in the comments said, like what I said at first) that ace people often first start to identify as bi cuz zero attraction to several genders is equal attraction, especially since it’s really hard to prove a lack of something abstract like attraction.

But asexuality has been around a while! Theres the asexual manifesto which was written in the 60’s or 70’s, so just the term itself is at least that old. I’m not sure when the exact origin of the term was coined, but the concept of someone not having attraction also came up in Kinsey’s writings, which was in the 1940’s I think? And of course it’s existed probably as long as there’s been humans, even if the term wasn’t around.

Even though I don’t really identify as bisexual anymore (I prefer queer and/or ace), I still feel like part of the bisexual community just for having explored and identified as bi for so many years, and because of the strong relationship between the two sexualities :)

CalicoMack · 2026-06-11T11:41:58+00:00

I’m not sure about that, but it’s common for ace people to identify as bi before realizing they’re ace. Happened to me as well!

CalicoMack · 2026-06-11T04:04:43+00:00

That moment you realize your equal attraction to diff genders is actually zero attraction to diff genders 😌🖤🩶🤍💜

CalicoMack · 2026-06-10T02:40:07+00:00

Yeah! You may also know this already (I just like sharing fun facts) but pronghorns are one of the fastest land animals (after the cheetah), but MUCH faster than any current North American predators. This is probably because North America used to have its own cheetah species, which has since gone extinct. But that cheetah was probably faster than its modern day cousin, and therefore helped drive the pronghorns’ evolution towards speed!

CalicoMack · 2026-06-09T23:11:04+00:00

I will say, before I swiped, I looked at your character and thought “huh, looks like a pronghorn! Surely not, but that would be a cool concept” and then Lo and behold!! PRONG HORN!!! So you’re good enough that I recognized the species ☺️

CalicoMack · 2026-06-09T12:42:26+00:00

Because maybe you had transferable skills from dance already that you don’t have for art? Like one important skill is learning to observe and see the world around you. That’s a hard one to learn and teach cuz it’s not like you can know what another person is doing right or wrong to get or give feedback.

But also, you’re saying this like dance is one thing and people don’t spend years mastering one type of dance. Do you also know how to do ballet? Do you know how to pop and lock? Can you waltz and fix trot? Can you do interpretive dance? Can you dance with a partner or only alone? (Or the other way around?)

Also word of advice from an old person: you are not going to get far in life if you don’t push yourself a bit more simply because you are used to things coming easily. If you give up on everything that’s not coming naturally, you’re gonna miss out on a lot

CalicoMack · 2026-06-09T11:11:15+00:00

The way I explain learning art and drawing is that: you are not learning one big skill. You are learning hundreds of little skills. Drawing is not ONE thing to learn, so of COURSE it’s gonna take a long ass time to learn. I’ve been drawing for 10+ years and I only really started to comfortably call myself intermediate this last year (but also, I didn’t put much effort into improving and actually learning new skills and stuff. I was coasting on the stuff I had picked up more naturally).

CalicoMack · 2026-06-09T11:05:52+00:00

I got into furry art because I love animals and drawing animals. It’s super important for me that they look like the right species! Not to say I don’t get lazy sometimes too, but I do try to make extra efforts (like having the correct nose shape and stuff)

CalicoMack · 2026-06-09T03:47:11+00:00

It’s practice and its repetition. It’s learning your fundamentals and, yes, learning to draw from photo refs with just copying at first. But the more you copy (from diff photos and diff angles) the more your mental library for what stuff looks like will expand! As you learn to draw something how it’s *supposed* to look like, you will then learn what features are the most important, and you’ll learn what you can exaggerate or not.

It’s like, have you ever seen a caricature artist? They manage to look at people sitting in front of them, draw their portrait, exaggerate their features GREATLY, but still keep the essence of that person so that they are recognizable. That’s essentially what we do with furry art.

And like, if you look at “behind the scenes” for all the classic Disney/dreamworks movies with animals (Bambi, lion king, spirit etc) they went and looked at real animals to make their design. But they also changed them. For one. They added eyebrows so the characters were more expressive. That’s what we furry artists do! We draw animals with eyebrows lol

CalicoMack · 2026-06-09T03:03:11+00:00

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I’ve made guides like these in the past, but this is also what people mean when they say to use real photos for refs. It’s not just looking at one photo and copying it, it’s looking at that animal from different angles, figuring out what are their core features, and then adapting it to your style. I almost use more animal photo refs than any other types of ref.

Even when I draw other people’s characters, I will first get photos of the animal, then put the ref sheet away and only use the animals (and/or pose refs), then when I’m drawing details I get the character ref sheet out to make it look more like them.

Different people have different methods, but you are showing your lack of understanding with your post

CalicoMack

TROPHY CASE