omg beth.... you flatter me unjustly bc i have (thankfully) seen other people comment on this too... but sometimes it does feel a lil bizarre to scroll through a timeline of people praising a picture and then i take one look at the actual picture and it's mnho with a dorito chip triangle chin and eyes so big he's almost nearing bug territory and i'm like. MAN!!!!!!! what are we doing here 😭

in all fairness i know not everyone spots the edits very easily and some edits are way more subtle than others... i don't even mind all edits! i get wanting to edit the colors a little to make the picture more cohesive and vibrant, and i even get wanting to smooth out certain areas of skin a little to get more striking contrasts in their features. i just don't think it should be an Automatic thing that just happens every time, and i don't think it should go as far as making their skin not look like their skin anymore!!! and obviously i don't see how it would EVER be necessary to edit their actual features or body shape. especially since i'm very weirdly attached to certain parts of their features that get edited out a lot (the slight softness in mnhos jawline and also the little pouches next to his mouth corners... every time someone takes those away from me i lose years of my life!!!)

i think the reason i usually spot edits is mainly that i just. stare at their faces a whole lot. even for the members that i don't draw regularly, i'll often study their features and think about how i would approach drawing them, what makes them Them, so to say. when i watch content i look like a maniac bc i will sometimes rapidly pause videos 200 times until one of them is shown in a particular angle that looks interesting to me and then i will capture them with a screenshot like a rare pokemon and put them in my little reference folder... it's so serious for me skjdfhjdsf i've just always been fascinated by faces so this is genuinely a thing i enjoy doing for fun!!

besides that, i also have been using photoshop since i was like. 12. and i've always been kinda vigilant about how to spot edited pictures bc that, too, is a special interest of mine!! i won't claim i can spot everything but it does make it easier for me to know what to look for. when people ask me if a picture is edited i always feel such a rush in trying to puzzle out what doesn't look right and what could just be awkward lighting or angles... it's so fun!! i just need to not think about the implications of them being edited so heavily in the first place bc then it instantly becomes. Less Fun. oh well :')

anyway that was a whole lot of explanation for a message i'm not even sure required a serious answer but i just like talking about this stuff <3