Speaking Of Sharpie Tattoos, The Way Gerard And Lyn Z Used Them To Write Messages Back And Forth To Each

Speaking of sharpie tattoos, the way Gerard and Lyn Z used them to write messages back and forth to each other on tour is adorable <3 I had heard that the lyrics to Summertime came out of this exchange, but it’s super cool to actually see pictures of it.

I wonder if there’s a story behind the unicorn shirts or if they were just being funky.

Gerard Way Sharpie Writing - Part 7 of 7 (the rest)

Gerard/Lynz co-ordinating words:

I *heart* U // MORE TODAY (Projekt Revolution 08/17/07, Cleveland OH)

4 EVER // AND EVER (Projekt Revolution 09/03/07, Denver CO) - on their wedding day, complete with matching unicorn shirts!

RUN AWAY WITH ME // ANYTIME YOU WANT (Project Revolution 08/24/07, Mansfield MA)

IN LOVE // 100% (Projekt Revolution 08/15/07, Jones Beach NY)

KISS // TELL

Okay, so, today on deeply nerdy things I'm working on (and also looking for advice on; vote at the end of the post!)...

So I've been working on coloring Worm's page from the quarantine coloring book (this is what I have so far), and I decided that I needed to put a name on the side of the boat. Because this stream was the first thing I watched with Gerard and Worm, I decided that “Daydream Believer” would be a good name for the boat (fair warning, it’s a pretty violent game they’re playing in that stream, but to summarize, the part I’m referencing is from Gerard’s turn as the murderer when he starts playing Daydream Believer by the Monkees to creep out Worm and the other dude they’re playing with, which is the moment I linked to.)

But then I thought, this is an alien creature’s magical space-boat. I can’t just title it Daydream Believer in English. So I whipped out my D&D player’s handbook (5e) and went to the Elvish alphabet.

But then I thought, I can’t just write Daydream Believer in English with Elvish letters. I need to translate it into proper Elvish first. Which, of course, the only correct Elvish languages to use are Tolkien’s--Sindarin and Quenya. (In any case, I don’t believe that there is a complete D&D Elvish language.) 

So, I brought up a few Sindarin and Quenya online dictionaries and translators, and I came up with a few different translations for “Daydream Believer”, and I wrote them out and transcribed my favorites to try and see which ones looked best in the D&D Elvish alphabet (I know Tengwar is technically the correct Tolkien-based Elvish script to be writing in, but I was already rolling with the D&D Elvish transcriptions, and I think I like the look of them for an alien space boat better, so I stuck with the D&D Elvish). But now I’m kind of stuck between three, and I thought, why not ask tumblr?

The two on the left with the blue highlights are Sindarin translations, and the one on the right with the green highlight is Quenya; I know there are differences in use between the two languages but I figured there’s no particular reason an alien couldn’t speak either of them. The first of the two Sindarin translations is “celain ely thenid pen”. ‘Celain’ means daylight, ‘ely’ means dream, and since I couldn’t find the word ‘believe’ in Sindarin anywhere I looked, I used ‘thenid’ which means ‘faithful’ and ‘pen’ as a pronoun meaning ‘one’. So, the first translation is really “daylightdream faithfulone”, which is fairly close. But I chose that translation mostly for aesthetics, and I worried I had strayed from the truest translation of the words, so I did another. 

The second Sindarin translation I did was “eraid ely esteliad pen”. ‘Eraid’ is just ‘day’ instead of ‘daylight’, and ‘esteliad’ is ‘trusting’, which seemed closer to the meaning of a daydream believer as one who is trusting in their daydreams rather than one who is faithful to their daydreams, although that could lead to a whole debate on the meaning of the original song, which--let’s be honest I’m way overthinking this already. I’m just trying to find pretty letters to write on the side of this boat, lol :) But nerdy linguistic overanalysis for a random obscure reference that pretty much no one is going to get is what I’m here for, haha. 

So, the third and final of my top three translations is the Quenya one, “árë maur savindo”. Quenya actually seemed to translate the phrase more easily, if only because there’s a word for “believer”. ‘Árë’ is day, ‘maur’ is dream or vision (which, I like the idea that the daydream believer’s daydreams are visions of a sort--oh no I’m analyzing the song again, I said I wouldn’t do that, I’ll stop, haha. I actually have thought about the meaning of the song quite a lot), and ‘savindo’ is believer. The Quenya translator that gave me ‘savindo’ warned that it was fan-created, but ‘sav-’ is in fact the Quenya verb for believe, and there was a whole section in the Quenya-English dictionary I looked at for “one who ___” verbs and they all ended in ‘indo’, so I think it’s a correctly derived translation. 

Tl;dr--those are the three best translations I came up with, and I highlighted where I wrote each of them out in Elvish in the image above. So, now I’m asking you to vote: which Elvish translation of Daydream Believer should I write on the boat on my coloring page? “Celain ely thenid pen”, “eraid ely esteliad pen”, or “árë maur savindo”? Vote in the replies or reblog with your vote! :) 

Postscript: If anyone wants to see my full Elvish translation scribblings which led to this, here’s what my process in my sketchbook looked like:

(There was a reflection from an old art class in the top left so that’s what I roughly photoshopped out if you were wondering.)

It’s always fun to have an excuse to mess around with translations and practice writing things in Elvish script :) 

Pass the happy!🌻🌈When you receive this list 5 things that make you happy and send this to 10 of the last people in your notifications!

Oh wow I got this like forever ago and forgot about it; sorry I haven’t answered yet!

1. Dandelions and violets springing up all around our yard

2. Overly detailed and unnecessary Elvish translation (see previous post, hehe)

3. My cats, and the way it feels when they’re curled up on my lap and just vibrating with purring--especially when they both try to fit on me at once, lol :)

4. Dreaming of going on a road trip with my friend(s) once it is again safe to do so. (It’s funny, I’ve had this ask in here long enough that I know I’d never even heard of Coronavirus when I got it. Not to bring down the happy, but that thought just struck me.) 

5. Reading a good fanfic. It’s been a while since I read Gotham fanfics, but I remember I always liked yours :) 

So I decided to give myself a sharpie tattoo tonight :) I’ve been vaguely imagining having a “God is Love” (1 John 4:8) tattoo for quite a long time, but I’m afraid of both needles and decisions and thus have not done so as yet. 

But I’ve been seeing these pictures of Gerard Way with sharpie tattoos and I was just like “there is no reason I should not give myself a sharpie tattoo right now” and so... I did. 

See beneath the cut for step by step pictures and general rambling :)

I put it in the spot where I would get a real tattoo if I ever get around to getting one; I have a big weird scar about halfway up the outside of my left calf and I figure if I were to get a proper tattoo, that’s kind of an ideal spot for a tattoo anyways and I might as well cover my scar with one. 

As with any good scar, there’s a long story to it, but (gross-out warning, mild medical violence warning) basically I had a spider bite that got infected and it swelled up into this big nasty boil-ish, welt-ish thing that lasted for an uncomfortably long time. When I went to the doctor with it, they pretty much just stabbed it twice to get it to drain and it left me with this. It’s hard to get it to show up very well but it’s basically two deep divots in a patch of pale, off-texture skin, a bit bigger around than a quarter. 

So I knelt on my bed with my leg at an awkward angle, whipped out my treasured 30 pack of rainbow sharpies (minus like 3, because sharpies like to run away), and went to work. It was kind of a weird angle to draw at not only because of how I had to bend my knee but also because everything I was drawing was sideways, but the heart turned out fairly nicely, if a bit lopsided. 

I didn’t make the heart quite big enough to fit “God is Love” inside of it so I wound up with the love bit underneath. I’m fairly pleased with how it looks, although you can definitely tell from the “e” that I was working sideways. 

I liked it well enough, but I wanted more color, and so I decided to add a butterfly wing to the left--or perhaps a flower. I have a tendency to draw those rather similarly so it’s basically both. One flower lead to another, then another, plus a couple of vines; I have progress pictures with each individual piece I added, but to prevent this post from going on for too long, I’ll just jump back to the final design. 

Also, side note, my knee was stiff as all heck after sitting like that for all the time I was drawing, and I had to limp around the house a bit to get my leg to straighten back out. In hindsight I would advise taking more breaks during the drawing process when sitting with one’s leg at such a weird angle.

The main picture at the top is from that stage as well, but then I went and googled “sharpie tattoo” because I remembered something about there being a way to make them last longer. I found this, which said to cover it in baby powder and spray it with hairspray. I don’t really use hair spray regularly, but I was pretty sure I had some around somewhere; the first stuff I found actually turned out to be a spray can of hair mousse, though, so I just patted it around on top of the baby powder. I didn’t quite get the whole thing covered because I was worried about smudging it if I rubbed it around. 

I was fairly certain I had some actual hairspray somewhere; eventually it occured to me to look in my old dance bag, because the last time I used hair spray was probably my 9th grade dance recital. I was correct, and upon locating said dance bag, I found both hairspray and an abundance of nostalgia. I reapplied baby powder and sprayed it on. Having not been used in nearly a decade, the hairspray came out in a confused trickle rather than a spray, and the whole area became very wet as I tried to pour out enough spray to cover the design in its entirety. The ink started to bleed and, while pretty, I was worried that rather than preserving my sharpie tattoo I was going to rinse it off prematurely in a flood of aged hairspray. 

I quickly dabbed at the flow with a bit of toilet paper, and in doing so accidentally made a rather lovely watercolor on the paper. 

So, this is where things are at now. The baby powder did leave quite a bit of texture on my leg. I imagine it will rinse off, but I think for tonight I’ll let things ‘set’ before I try and rinse it. Perhaps it would’ve been better if I’d left the initial design without putting any of this on it, but hopefully this will help it last longer. It’s just fun to have something bright, colorful, and meaningful on my leg. 

I’ve been really digging Killjoy aesthetics lately and I love the whole culture of being bright and colorful and unique that they have, and as I’ve been conceptualizing my Killjoy OC (cosplay to come, if I ever get around to it), I’ve found myself thinking about how I’d want to ideally design... well, myself, and so I guess this sharpie tattoo was really born from that. 

Along those same lines, I’ve also been revisiting the idea of dyeing my hair. It’s something I’ve contemplated since middle school but never done, but now I really think I would like to. Again I’m at least partly inspired by Gerard Way, both in the sense of the bold hair colors of the Killjoy universe and from seeing how many great hair styles and colors Gerard’s had over the years. I’m not fond of the idea of cutting my hair, but I like the thought of mixing it up by dyeing it. 

The wrench in my plans right now, though, is the way that everything is just on hold at the moment. Specifically, I’ve been in rehearsals for a play, but with this whole pandemic business, our rehearsals are suspended and our play is postponed for an unknown period of time. The play is the Crucible, and unfortunately, neon red violet hair would not fly in puritan Salem. My plan initially was to dye my hair as soon as the play was over in early April, but now, well... who knows how long it’ll be until the show happens and I’m in the clear to mess with my hair. So, stay tuned for that I guess. I don’t know if I’ll wait to do my Killjoy cosplay until I’m able to dye my hair; I would like to have both this sharpie tattoo and dyed hair at the time of said cosplay, but I’m not certain whether those time frames we’ll overlap. We’ll see. 

Anyways, if anyone’s still reading this, thanks for sticking with me through my rambling! I hope you have enjoyed this episode of Violet’s adventures in sharpie tattoos.

Oo, this is like... modern impressionism! It’s great :) I love the vibe and the sense of motion and the colors so much!! 

And I agree, the Danger Days family is beautiful and precious <3 

Run away like it was yesterday

If we could run away, run away from here

[x]

~~

surrogate families are going to be the death of me i swear to god why does Danger Days affect me so much

ignore me i can’t draw motorcycles

(The part neon ghost is replying to is where I asked if Cherri Cola's gender was a Welcome to Night Vale reference)

Now I can't help imagining a WTNV/Killjoy crossover though. Like, what if Night Vale is the Zone 13 no one talks about or something? Most of the time the radio signals can’t make it through that patch of weird interference, but once in a while, the wind blows just right and over the static the Killjoys hear not Dr. Death Defying but a strange man mooning over a handsome scientist or whispering the name ‘Huntokar’... 

"What's your gender?" + the characters i hc as enby

Party Poison: *nods thoughtfully* "Yes, i do, indeed, have one."

Show Pony: "Dunno, lost it in the City. Hope to get it back some day." *sighs whistfully looking in the distance*

Cherri Cola: *shrugs* "Partially boy, mostly void."