The 'hot mess millennial', 'female despair', 'Millennial intimacy', 'Afflicted woman', 'sad
girl summer', 'literary sad woman'... Whatever you like to call it, women are having a freaking blast
in lip fic covers right now... absolute time of their lives. But let's break down these breakdowns
- why are women having emotions?! Between the plot and the design, what is the link? And with our
findings can we make our own using the formula? Formula- the secret formula. There will be trials,
tribulations and ultimately there will be triumphs. Firstly let's talk about the plot. Okay,
so plot wise what do these books have in common? One - more often than not centers around a young,
middle class, 20 to 30 something year old woman (although there are exceptions). Two
the characters are going through some sh- menty b, intergenerational trauma,
having a career in writing and media related burnout, relationship issues, maybe they're
just you know figuring things out. Three the characters are real, they're raw, they're messy,
they're annoying. According to multiple Goodreads reviews having an unlikable main character is a
staple in this bildungsroman. If we map out the years that these covers started becoming a thing
you can see a massive Spike during guess what oh it's freaking covid! That'll do it. But actually
it goes before covid Believe It or Not, women being sad have existed since forever. In online
spaces 10 years ago we had the 'Tumblr sad girl'. 'The sad Tumblr girl' was typically a young woman,
a teenager who listened to Marina and the diamonds, worshiped Lana Del Rey. The sad
girl could often be found reblogging captioned black and white photos of themselves or other
people crying and the most harmful version of the side girl promoted eating disorders
and harm. The sad girl aestheticized their depression. Glimpses of the sad girl can be
found in all forms of media and whether or not these writers even like to be afflicted with the
term 'Sad Girl music' or 'sad girl', society has a huge desire to put complex emotions people's
themes and ideas into a little digestible little concept. Misery loves company and there was a
brand in being seen as tragically beautiful. I think about the career of Lorde and how people
really didn't like her metamorphosis is to a young 20-something-year-old woman who's arguably just
a little bit happier. Like after seeing so much you know girl-boss, gate-keep... I forgot the
third one gastro, and this content that showed a particular privileged aesthetic of what well-being
and personal growth looked like, I feel like we've said you know what? Enough live love love I wanna
die, cry and hate. Now the Tumblr sad girl's all grown up and they're face planting on a desk,
in their arms, cake, furniture, on a wall, sheep. Vladimir is so funny to me because if
you look at the difference between the UK and the US version like, okay, this one's giving
like okay this is about giving turmoil about love, and then we have this - Kidnapped By The
Hot Billionaire Vampire’s. Now what about the aesthetics? Seeing as this is marketed towards
Millennials I wanted to make the most Millennial cover ever. That started with the outfit I wanted
it to give 'brunch but I'm also at the office'. Setting. So setting you see like if it's about
career troubles? Put in an office. If it's about depression, mental health? Maybe they're laying
in bed. Comfort but also depression. I thought to myself what is the place where I feel most
vulnerable? where I am really my most raw, truest self? Where really I'm going through some shit?
The toi- so these were the Vibes that I was going for. I don't have a fancy studio,
I don't have a fancy camera, nor do I know how to use one, but what I do have is questionable
mental health and an iPhone and on this channel we do with what we have goddamnit!
Really practice looking dejected, frazzled like take yourself back to the time when
Elon Musk bought Twitter. Anyway these were the photos that I got out of that
um you tell me you decide if they're any good or not. We're trying to aim for something that
looked like this this is really what you call a rush sketch.. *descent into barking madness*
Let's talk about why
their faces are covered. I think it gives a nice mid departure from the purely Illustrated
cover trend which I have a whole video on and just photo. Something like this. It also helps to have
a hidden identity so that the reader can put their own image of what they think the character looks
like.. they could also just be clapped. Honestly putting myself into this cover was a self-insert
um a rep for my south Asian girlies you know the eldest daughter and the the bad mental health.
I thought it was going to be easy but it turns out that glowing up the image was going to turn
into my own canon event... all sorts of issues! Perspective... I want to messier hair... I wanted
to remove the background pieces for simplicity... I wanted to remove the texture on the shirt... why
did I wear this shirt?! Essentially I had to paint over the dots to make it look as realistic as
possible. I had to paint individual hair strokes it was like bruh I am I Michelangelo because I
can paint! Here I am wondering why I'm fixing up the minute details for a YouTube video and people
aren't really even gonna see it and wondering what am I doing with my life? Add some color.
Speaking of which - color. Alot of pink, reds, greens because firstly it's eye-cashing secondly
psychology wise you associate it with women and you still want it to be bright enough to sell.
I was like let's go for a millennial pink or also alternatively Barbie and Billie Eilish. It's nice
because green and pink are complementary colors which adds a little pop- a little
pop a little. Originally when I was making this I wanted a lot of negative space because this
book was about being in a negative space. I like having a lot of blank emptiness because I feel
like it really draws your attention to like One Singular Thing. Title now because we're going
for the most Millennial cover ever I was thinking what do Millennials say? Now I'm basically on the
cusp of being a millennial so I grew up hearing a lot of this 'live love love' what is the opposite
of that? Die cry and hate. What about I can't even? In my feels. Take me back. The struggle
is real. So that just happened. Adulting and adultery. So this just happened. My life is
terrible because inflation. I did a thing or um I didn't do a thing which is kind of like a play
words. I asked my brother who's like solid gen Z and he said that quote: it's quite disgusting.
Researching the topic of the sad girl one of the discussions that I found really intriguing
was this idea of women displaying sadness as a form of protest. This could be your whole
video in itself so forgive me if I dilute the argument a little bit it's the idea that like
being transparent in your emotions doesn't have to mean it's a weakness. We want to see the messy,
we want to see the difficult choices in life, in people's feelings, in their relationship...
because life is kind of just like that. And instead of having just escapist purely fantasy
concept we get this catharsis that other people struggle too and it's not just this
picture-perfect ideal. And that's why I think a lot of people including myself really love music
and fiction and literature and movies that really just depict the real struggles but actually there
was a counter argument that overwhelmingly, the dominant narrative in these pieces of fiction,
or of like the characteristic online personas for example sad girl, are about a particular type of
white woman that affords them the luxury to be a certain type of sad and whether non-white women,
who have different lived experiences, different burdens, different cultural backgrounds,
are even afforded the ability and the space to be as unabashedly like be messy whilst also being
understood and not being seen as like playing into any racial stereotype. Let me know if you
like a whole video on the 'sad girl' I don't really typically do commentaries but if there's
demand for it I'll do it. Honestly, I guess you could say I'm going through my own sad girl era
if you want to call it that because I've really struggled to get anything completed recently
and this is one of the more simpler looking covers yeah and uh guess how long it took me
20 - 21- 21 hours. 11 of those hours which is me fighting against my own brain call it Creator
Clash 3 after hours of indecision and struggle we came to our cover. I Didn't Do A Thing when you
can't even avocado toast because of inflation so therefore how do you expect me to buy a house when
rich people keep up buying houses and charging insane landlords price and people get trapped into
a rent cycle and the gov keeps not building more social housing- [speech drowned out]