#I don't think I've ever posted them. They're from 2019 though

[beebfreeb]

2010s period piece

[vinceaddams]

Top 5 historic clothing items we should bring back into style (stockings on men, big cuffs on coats etc.)

Well I am very biased, because my everyday clothes are mostly 18th century menswear inspired, but for a list as short as 5 it's good to narrow it down!

1. 18th century shirts. Big puffy soft linen shirts. Best shirts. Comfiest shirts. Though tragically, since they get softer with more washing, they're at their absolute most comfortable right before they wear out.

(This one's from the post where I copied the tiddy-out violinist painting.) Besides being the nicest softest comfiest, they're also the most economical, being made entirely from rectangles. And they're versatile, they look good with lots of different garments! Someday I will do a very detailed youtube tutorial for my machine sewn shirt method. I've done so many now that I think I've finally got it down.

2. Adjustable waistbands. Why did this ever stop being a thing? 18th century breeches have lacing at the back, then in the 19th century trousers have a buckle tab. Now they do not, even though we're all still humans with bodies that change. (These are my orange silk breeches)

Do you know how many hours of my life I've spent taking in or letting out the waist seams of modern trousers? I don't know either, but I've been an alterations tailor since 2019, so it's got to be a fair amount.

All that waist altering wouldn't be necessary if they still made them adjustable! Waistlines fluctuate, so too should waistbands!!

3. Shoulder capes attached to coats. This was a thing in the late 18th century, and in the 19th, and I think into the early 20th too. It adds extra protection from the rain and snow, and it looks cool.

(c. 1812, The Met.)

(c. 1840-60, MFA Boston. The cape on this one is detachable)

You can make them long or short, and stack them up like pancakes or just have one. I've got 2 small ones on my corduroy coat, and one on my dark blue wool. Both cut from almost the same 1790's-ish pattern.

I also want to give a shoutout to fitted sleeves! I love me some two piece sleeves with a distinct elbow! And the coat pockets were bigger back then.

4. Indoor caps. I don't care what era or how fancy you go with it, I just want people to wear caps indoors when it's cold! This one's super simple, it's just a tube of linen tied with a ribbon.

(Detail from Le Marchand d’Orviétan ou l’opérateur Barri by Etienne Jeaurat, 1743.)

If it's cold in your apartment you need slippers for the feets and a cap for the head. Speaking of which.

5. Medieval hoods. This one is wayyy outside my usual era, but the wintery below-freezing weather has just started here and the knit hat I've been wearing isn't quite long enough to cover my ears. I want to make a simple hat with ear flaps, but I also wouldn't be opposed to trying to work something vaguely similar to this into my wardrobe. It looks so warm!

(Image source. Also she has a printable pattern available!) I actually made one of these once, an entire decade ago. But it was scratchy blanket wool and I've since given it away.

That's some of the main things I think we should bring back! There are lots of other things too, like men's nightgowns, and waistcoats with little scenes embroidered on them, but for this list I tried to be mostly practical.

[klxudykai]

the ugly part of reality shifting

as great as shifting is, its really fucking draining. like REALLY draining. its nice that people want to show the fun and positive side of shifting and all, but once new shifters (specifically) hit the stage where they're drained and extremely demotivated, they aren't going to know how to deal with these new overwhelming emotions. reality shifting takes a toll on our mental health even if we don't like to admit it. this may not apply to everything, but I know it applies to the majority.

ive been shifting since 2021 (if you saw my post Abt me starting shifting in 2019 that was wrong lmfao mb yall-). and I still haven't shifted. I used to think I'd shift within 4 years but surprise surprise. I haven't. I'm drained and demotivated. I don't completely believe I wont ever shift, but I don't think I can get what I want by manifesting or affirming or doing any of that. I think the universe will just randomly hand it to me. it sounds dumb but that's the weird luck I have. when I don't expect it, I get what I want. but when I try hard and I expect it, nothing happens or I get smth worse. i don't think that even when I put blood,sweat, and tears into this that I'll shift. I've discovered so much shit about myself yet I am still here with no experience of what its like in another reality let alone my dr. never saw my dr once. only in my dreams and my imagination.

im going to be completely honest when I say that shifting is not for the weak. I'm not saying this to get you to quit because shifting is one of the best things that I found. I just want you to know that its not always going to be perfect. you might feel desperate, you might feel homesick, you might feel exhausted mentally. and sometimes you'll make progress but then find another obstacle. quite frankly, fuck the obstacles because that's not the issue. its how you deal with them that really determine how your growth goes. and no I'm not saying it controls if you'll shift or not because it doesn't. but if you're a person that gives up easily, its going to be hard to overcome those blockages. I say that because I myself give up easily. which is ironic because I don't give up when it comes to certain goals I want to accomplish (one of those goals being shifting), but I refuse to get rid of those so called "blockages" and avoid them even though I know what's the problem. I avoid them because I don't know how to fix them and I just have this fear that's telling me I'll fail.

this post probably doesn't make a lot of sense but that's because I'm writing this in the heat of the moment so I'm not doing a lot of thinking, I'm just typing. what I'm saying is don't be that person that avoids the problems. be transparent with yourself because I'm telling you, the more you avoid it, the more drained youre going to become. it might turn into an endless loop where you think about your Dr daily but you have zero energy to shift. and it fucking sucks.

overall, please take breaks whether they're mental or shifting breaks, if you feel like there is an issue with yourself, fix it. this is a hard journey but it will be a lot easier once you're honest and overcome problems that need to be solved.

(disclaimer that this may not apply to everyone, just the people who are going through a rough patch in their journey. this is mainly just my perspective and what I've heard from a friend of mine since our issues seemed pretty similar. and if anyone needs someone to talk to, my DMS are open. I want my blog to be a safe space and that this is a place where not everything is perfect. I love y'all and please take care and don't stress yourselves <33)

also, fuck that toxic positivity shit that just makes mfs more drained. if you feel demotivated address it don't push it away

[runwayrunway]

No. 50 - All Nippon Airways Airbus A380 "Flying Honu" Livery

Happy 50th Runway Runway post! I had a bit of a hard time deciding what to do for it - after all, it's a pretty significant number. I already sort of know what I want to do for the 100th post, but I hadn't put much thought into the 50th, and I had to scuttle any plans for something long and interesting after a rather stressful week. Instead I decided to do something both fun and requested!

source: ANA Stories

One (well, three!) of the most beloved special liveries out there, All Nippon Airways' turtle-themed "Flying Honu" Airbus A380. These three friendly giants fly from Japan to Honolulu, delighting anyone lucky enough to see them.

Actually, I love the Flying Honu so much I have one myself.

I would describe myself as a bit of a magpie. I collect useless things, be they historical ephemera, horror movie memorabilia, old books, pretty rocks, or way too many fountain pen inks given I mostly use them to take notes. I even have a bunch of my old teeth in a pillbox. Surprisingly, though, the things my talons have lodged in don't include many model airplanes. I have...a few. I've actually, though serendipity, gotten two more since I started this blog, expanding my collection to a startling five. Maybe seven if you count my Starscream and Brainstorm figures, but I don't think I even remember how to put either of them in their alt modes. The fact is that while they aren't a fortune or anything plane figures are expensive enough that it's a commitment to buy one, and I usually only do when I stumble on a good deal for a model I really want. And one of the few times I've actually decided that I just needed a model of a specific livery was the "Flying Honu" A380. Specifically, the one I have is the airframe registered JA382A, Kai. (She's the 1:500 JC Wings diecast model and is around the size of my hand.)

I just needed to be able to gently tap her nose in person, okay? She can't fit up on the shelf with a lot of my other miscellaneous trinkets so she sits on my desk and sometimes I explain things to her while trying to figure them out, like a coding rubber duck. She makes me happy.

All Nippon Airways (全日本空輸) is a major Japanese airline. In fact, in terms of both fleet size and number of destinations they're bigger than flag carrier JAL. They're consistently described as being among the best airlines in the world for the discerning well-to-do business traveler, and let's just say that's not me, but what I am is a reviewer of airline liveries, and ANA sure has those! In addition to their standard Triton Blue livery they do all sorts of special designs, particularly crossovers with properties like Pokémon and Star Wars. All of these are something I would like to someday feature, but none of them matter at all to me when compared to the Flying Honu, introduced with the A380 fleet in 2019.

A couple of times when I've told people I know about this livery they asked me if 'honu' is Japanese for 'turtle'. That's a reasonable question, but the Japanese word for turtle is 'kame'. 'Honu' is the word for turtle, though - in Hawaiian.

image: ANA

In fact, Honolulu is the A380s' only destination. ANA didn't really want A380s to begin with, but ended up stuck with them while acquiring another airline. The thing about the A380, and the reason it failed commercially and so few were ever built, is that the use-case for a massive plane is pretty limited. It goes as such: you have a passengerbase of people who have to travel from one giant hub that can land an A380 to another frequently enough that you can actually make money on a plane with four entire engines.

Okay, so the use-case is that you're Emirates. ANA might be expensive, but they don't really have the central location or sheer amount of regular business travelers that Dubai does. 'Three' also isn't really that many A380s, which creates a bit of a question of reliability. So instead they fixed the problem in a way that's honestly pretty genius: they made it turtles.

image: ANA

ANA seems to be generally invested in Hawaii, with a fair amount of partnerships with local organizations. A lot of Hawaiian real estate is owned by Japanese companies, and those of Japanese descent are the second-larget ethnic group in Hawaii at 16.7%, so it makes sense that a lot of people would want to travel there. Tokyo to Honolulu is a nice 9-hour flight with no possibility for a stopover of any kind (unless they invent civilian aircraft carriers for A380s), so it's the perfect route for precisely three really huge planes.

images: ANA

They can fit 520 passengers across four classes on one flight, seated across both decks of the massive planes. There is also a section of seats which convert to couches, marketed for families. Those who fly this route get to enjoy rainbow lighting and the ability to buy a duty-free 1:500 model of the plane (not the same model I have, though, I'm pretty sure) or a set of Flying Honu plushes.

Ra looks like she's plotting something. Lani looks like she's never had a single thought in her life.

And they do make money off this, because people absolutely love these planes. People have apparently had their weddings on these planes, and I would too! They make ten weekly flights right now, but in December that will be increasing to fourteen weekly, or two daily.

Okay, so, the actual liveries.

Here's Kai in full-size! The light in my room make her look way cooler toned in the photographs, but in real life she's this color. It's frequently described as 'green' or 'emerald green', but I think it's definitely turquoise and would go so far as to call it blue. Whatever the case, it's meant to represent the color of the sea near Hawaii. Kai is also distinct from the others because of her eyes, which are closed as she smiles from ear to ear. That's why she's my favorite - she just looks so happy!

...a bit weirder looking from upfront, but look how even the ventral fairing is painted! That's part of the flippers where they curl around, tucked into the shell. Unlike the Transocean Air Jinbei Jets, the cockpit windows blend in with the 'scales' of the Flying Honu, looking rather natural.

'Ra' is a beautiful orange, meant to represent the Hawaiian sunset. She has a bit of a peach undertone if you look closely, but her details are done in an extremely vivid reddish orange. Her distinguishing feature are those gigantic eyelashes, similar to Sakura Jinbei's. The actual mouth shape on all three planes appears to be the same, but I find that the eyes still give them distinct 'personalities'. Ra has always looked very thoughtful to me.

Just look at her in flight! I've never understood why people call the 747 stately or graceful, and same for the A380 - double-decker planes are just inherently goofy-looking, and that's great, but ANA managed to make one look pretty elegant. I think it's because turtles are already regarded as large and slow creatures, so fitting like for like just makes it seem as natural for this absolutely gigantic aircraft to be flying as it is for a turtle to swim.

Finally, Lani, the turtle everyone agrees to be blue, represents the Hawaiian sky during its brightest color in daylight. If you look closely, you can see her blue 'eyeshadow', which I've always thought made her look relaxed.

This picture gives a good angle of my only real critique of the Flying Honu, which is that the shells and heads don't entirely look aligned, as if the head is in the process of being retracted. That said, I think that's just a fact of working with the shape of an airplane. There's just no more space below to fit any more shell.

Rather than being just one turtle, though, each "Flying Honu" has two fully rendered baby turtles following behind their 'mother'.

I think this is adorable, and beyond that it solves a crucial problem - the tail. Turtles do have those, but not in a way that maps onto a standard empennage. Instead, ANA makes the smart choice to end the shell at a certain point and add these two extra turtles make-way-for-ducklings-ing their way across the fuselage for more visual interest, leaving the tail empty for an ANA logo without making it jarring. This is a huge improvement over the Jinbei Jets, which again serve as a point of comparison as the other major Japanese marine life planes. (Amakusa Airlines is way smaller and thus not going to get caught up in this.)

I mean, it's hard to find too much to say about these that isn't just "oh my gosh, look at them". The Flying Honu are vividly colored, with clever shapes used to make them immediately recognizable as turtles. I smile every time I see one, including the little one on my desk!

And in case you weren't already delighted, there's two extra bonus turtles!

I think it's pretty obvious I'm giving these an A+. Come on, just...just look at them. The fact that ANA bothered to make three distinct ones with their own names and faces is just icing on the cake for me, but I do love that they did.

I can't believe I didn't find a way to fit this in earlier into the post, but I really love turtles. If you have an aquarium near you, and that aquarium has turtles, I really recommend stopping by to see them. My local New England Aquarium has had Myrtle for more than 50 years. As they describe her, 'the 550-lb Queen of the Giant Ocean Tank is large, in charge, and ready to receive your adoration'.

True to form, although a lot larger and dealing in a different type of fluid dynamics, the Flying Honu jets get plenty of my adoration too.

[genopaint]

Aaaaaaand here's Week 11 of Daily Dragons! Just like the last 2 posts. Moving. Tired. Stressed. Major life changes. No time to post. This last week also had a lot of bad days so I had to lump a lot of missed days together. For example, the Yoshis are actually the last 2 days of last week AND the first 2 days of this week. But enough talk, here's what I was cooking last week.

As always you can follow me on twitter where they’re posted daily

And read more info on each of them below the cut

Daily Dragon #70 - Dragon Mario

Happy #MAR10Day!! I won't do it right now cause I'm a little busy atm but I'd like to draw Luigi, Peach, and Toad with the power too! Like I said before, this is an older concept from 2019 like I said! Here's how it used to look, I think I've cleaned it up a lot!

Also I found an attempt to redesign this concept from 2023! Neat! I still think this newest version is best though

Daily Dragon #71 - Dragon Tank

To celebrate Chrono Trigger's anniversary! It didn't come out perfectly, but I mean we only ever see it from one angle, cut me some slack lol

Daily Dragon #72 - Lil Dragon

Small, pudgy dragons that love playing and biting! They're a little rambunctious so you need to give them lots of chew toys so they leave your stuff alone!

Wanted to draw something small and easy today lol this is another redraw of this little fella from 2019 I believe, I don't THINK this is related to the Pico dragons?

Daily Dragon #73 / #74 - Gemini Dragons

Two dragon sisters who fly around the Gemini constellation. They're never seen apart, even fighting side by side with crossover attacks!

Daily Dragon #75 / #76 / #77 / #78 - Yoshis

Coming in many shapes, sizes, colors, and powers, Yoshis are some of the cutest dinosaurs in the world! Do you have a favorite Yoshi color? Mine are easily Black and White!

Some bonus variants with the other Yoshi colors :)

I know this might seem a touch bit like cheating cause it's 4 Yoshis and also they're dinosaurs not dragons. But before you say this consider: nah it's cool actually

[animation-meme-nostalgia]

HELLO GAMERS AND WELCOME TO THE ANIMATION MEME NOSTALGIA BRACKET!!!!!

You been in the animation meme community for longer than 4 years? SAME!! And I'm making a bracket about it! Without further ado lets get into the rules and get your 'Opinions' (hehehe) on the bracket!

-> SUBMISSION FORM [CLOSED!] <-

-> RULES!!! <-

-> Must be from the timeframe of 2006-2019! Any ones after that I would consider to be too new

-> This is not a battle between the artists who made the original memes, it is a battle between the meme song clip itself! TLDR how nostalgic and how much head bopping would you start doing if this song played in your general vicinity

-> When submitting, please submit the original meme! If it was taken down/ privated, just find another one and make sure to list the original makers name

-> As well as if the original meme is labeled 16+ or NSFW/suggestive try to find one that's not. Staring at UnknownSpy intently

-> You can submit multiple animation memes! Don't submit the same one twice though please pretty please. And don't put multiple in the same submission or I will cry and sob intensely

-> BRACKET INFO!!! <-

-> Brackets will be updated (hopefully) every week or so!

-> There'll be (hopefully) a total of 32 or so contestants, depending on how many submissions I get. Could be more could be less I dunno

-> TAG LIST BELOW <-

#on a completely unrelated note < not a poll nor relevant to the bracket

#AM nostalgia attack < poll post

#AM nostalgia calm < not a poll post but relevant to the bracket

-> ABOUT THE MOD <-

Oh is it me time I suppose it's me time. Anyways hi I'm Vector/Jamie at @v3ct0rgraph1cs, I use he/it/wire/beep pronouns, I'm a real life computer robot guy and also the poll mod!!! I've never done a poll bracket before but I've been in the animation meme community for like. 7 years now so I think I'm qualified to do this maybe

I still make animation memes too I only started posting them like 2 years ago when I got toon boom and also a graphics tablet and've been doing it ever since, started from my roots in flipaclip though ✌ my channel is V3CT0RGRAPH1CS if you wanna check it out maybe :]!

Speaking of checking stuff out go check out my partner! They run the @tf2shipswag account and they inspired me to make this one because sillyyyyy, go check it out at @fr0ggs they're very nice and cool and also they take commissions so Get One<3 I'm assaulting you to buy art from my partner /nf

The guy in my pfp his name is Vector he's not me but he might as well be

inspired by @tf2shipswag, @ultimate-objecthead-hoedown, and others :]

[grox-empire]

ANOTHER propaganda post for @voidspace-bubble's spore tourney.

GROX SWEEP BABYYYY!

There is a reason my blog is themed around them. There is a REASON my fursona, Who I own a fursuit of, is a Grox. There is a FUCKING REASON they are one of few holdovers from Spore in daybreak. I am SO autistic about them you have no idea. Spore in general is my special interest but something about these little guys specifically just has me ENTRALLED.

They're the big bads of spore. The main villains of space stage. They're built up from the beginning of space stage and are a major obstacle even towards the endgame. You can either ally with them, Which is far easier to do but comes with MANY penalties... Or take on the grueling task of wiping out their entire empire, Which is roughly 2000 planets large and circles the galactic core. And they are one of my absolute FAVORITE parts of the game. First off, The way they're built up. They're built up as a big, scary empire. the antithesis to life. But then you meet them and they fucking LOOK LIKE THIS

Which??? Can I just say. Is fucking IMMACULATE. The sheer contrast with how these guys are described and how they actually LOOK is just... amazing. They're built up as a force to be reckoned with, Everyone is TERRIFIED of them... And yet when you actually meet them? They're short, impish, vaguely cat-like aliens with the saddest, wettest eyes you have ever seen, And incredibly low-level parts at that. The best part? They do genuinely live up to their reputation, Too! I definitely know a lot of people aren't a fan of their design because it's not scary or threatening enough but I personally think the sheer contrast between how they look and what they are makes them MORE scary. What would drive something like that to this point? And that's not even taking into account how goddamned fun they are to draw and stylize. Due to their design being pretty simplistic you can interpret it in many ways... I personally see them as vaguely cat-like, Child-sized humanoid aliens with short fur, But i've met several people out there who see them totally different to how I do. It's VERY interesting.

Second of all, The sheer amount of PERSONALITY these little guys have while you talk to them. Spore's dialogue is great and highly underrated but The Grox? Honestly they're just... The absolute PEAK of what spore's writing can be like. They're super fucking charming. Like there's CLEARLY so much more to them than what you see on the surface... But unfortunately because spore is spore and worldbuilding isn't their top priority, You never really learn what their deal is beyond what is shown to you. But that doesn't stop me and MANY others from having headcanons! I have a whole BOATLOAD of headcanons that I am fucking refraining from talking about here since... This isn't about my own version of them that i've come up with in my head, this is about how they are in canon spore. That IS to say, though... If anyone is interested in hearing more about that please for the love of god LET ME KNOW I could go on for HOURS about my thought on these guys

I'm tired as fuck and this probably sounds SO incoherent because I have so many thoughts that i'm unable to articulate, But i'm so autistic about these guys especially. They're genuinely one of my favorite fictional characters of all time and I really want other people to be able to appreciate them too ^^ They're definitely the creature I would personally like to win the poll. I know it's a pretty damn obvious choice but these little guys genuinely mean a lot to me and I don't think i'd really be the same person I am now without them. I've been fixated on them since like... 2019?? and it's lead me to creating my passion project which I plan on sticking to for years to come.

So, To make a long story short? GROX SWEEP!

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I always have a moment, if I hear a comedian mention the word "Tumblr", of briefly panicking, as I remember that technically they use the same internet as I do and apparently are allowed to see this website. I usually relax if it was before 2015, though. Lots of people knew Tumblr existed before 2015. For some reason, around 2015, maybe slightly later, everyone believed that Tumblr stopped existing. So if it was before that, I figure it's fine. These day they are probably one of the many people in the world who assume Tumblr doesn't exist.

I'm sort of joking about this - as in I do genuinely have a moment of freaking out from hearing them say the word "Tumblr" because I briefly and irrationally somehow feel like they can see me, but I also know there's no need to be genuinely worried, as in real life just because they mentioned a website's name doesn't mean they're on here searching their own name. No one's doing that on Tumblr. It really is why I love this website. No one is here. No one is looking at us. It's not like Instagram where you're posting on the same site where the celebrities you're talking about have their own fucking account.

Except for David O'Doherty, who does have a Tumblr account that he must log into regularly because it has his tour list and that's kept up to date, but he hasn't made any new posts on there in years, I'm pretty sure he just updates the tours and then goes away. It's probably fine. Oh, and there is another comedy-adjacent person who has a Tumblr account and whose name I'm not going to write because I know he does Google himself, he once emailed me to tell me so, and I freaked the fuck out for like a week straight because apparently sometimes in real life they can see us. But it's all right, I'm pretty sure he only looked at one post, took a video off YouTube, moved on, it's fine. It's absolutely fine. It's absolutely fine and I'm not worried about it. No one's looking at me. That guy does have a Tumblr account of his own that was actually updated regularly, though, so that's a bit different. That might explain how he ended up finding my post that mentioned them on here. Most of them don't so they wouldn't come across my posts. (That guy was also very very nice when he emailed me and I love his work and think he seems very cool, which I'm adding on the infinitesimal chance that he's somehow reading this again, extremely unlikely but I'm vaguely paranoid - I'm also saying that because it's true though, he's great and I still listen to his stuff a lot, it's fine, he was nice, I'm just horrified at the idea that any famous people would ever know what I say about them, that's why I hide in this corner over here.)

So there was that incident. There was the day I discovered DO'D's blog, which did freak me out until I saw how long ago it was last updated. There was one time when Russell Howard referenced a Tumblr post on TV, which freaked me out for about half a second before I remembered that it just means one of his writers found a Tumblr post and put it in the script, Russell Howard doesn't personally write that whole autocue. Russell Howard is probably too important to even run his own Twitter account. He's not here.

The worst scare I've had - besides the time a guy actually emailed me - was when I heard Daniel Kitson in 2018, which was far too recently, say the word "Tumblr" to say he disliked someone who had a Twitter blog and a Tumblr blog dedicated to how great he is. That actually did seriously freak me out for a few days (he wasn't talking about me or anything, I made this blog in 2020, but still, didn't love to hear that Kitson apparently searches his own name on Tumblr and gets mad about people having blogs about him), though I felt better when I first heard his most recent show, in which he promises us he hasn't Googled himself since 2019. He wouldn't lie, right? It's probably fine. It's probably fine.

Anyway. As far as moments where I'm listening to a comedian I have posted about on Tumblr and I hear that person say the word "Tumblr" and for a split second my blood runs cold as I think "What the fuck do you know about Tumblr?" - as far as moments like that go, this sure is one. Brief panic, followed by moment of "it's 2014, it's fucking fine, I'm sure they've all forgotten we're here by now", followed by "Jesus Christ, Ian, what the fuck have you been reading, that side of Tumblr is not meant for your eyes", followed by "actually, I still haven't been able to find a list of air dates for their radio episodes but I have a document where I'm saving all the context clues in the hopes of narrowing it down enough to label all the episodes with dates, the fact he described that particular post as 'new' can be a context clue if I go to that blog and dig up that post and find exactly when it went up", followed by, "Jesus Christ this section of the internet should really not be for anyone's eyes, what the hell, look at all those things people wanted to do to David Mitchell, but yep, found the post, it's from late February 2014, that tracks with everything else, I think I'm in the right ballpark on these air dates."

The work of a comedy archivist is hard. Sometimes you have to go through some trenches to get a context clue for an episode air date. You do what you have to do.

[fallynleaf]

I'm trying to get my wrestling journal caught up, and am succeeding with mixed results. I wrote over 10k words on stuff from July alone, 4k of which were just about AEW Blood & Guts on July 19 (the Golden Lovers' first match back together since 2018). I've been toying with the thought of publishing that piece somewhere where people might actually read it, so I thought why not post it here?

(The usual disclaimer on my journal applies: please don't reprint any of these translations, as they're pretty rough and I haven't gotten them looked over by anyone.)

Kenny Omega & Kota Ibushi & “Hangman” Adam Page & Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson vs Konosuke Takeshita & Jon Moxley & Claudio Castagnoli & Wheeler Yuta & Pac

July 19

I’m at a loss of words to describe this match. Unfortunately, I’m at a loss of images, too. There is nothing I can put in this space that’ll do proper justice to the emotions I felt watching this. But I’ll try.

I don’t think Blood & Guts was the right match format for this story. There are simply too many moving pieces, too many distractions, too much for the cameras to keep up with. But pro wrestling teaches us to see things not as they are, but as they feel, so I will talk about how this match felt.

The feud between The Elite and the Blackpool Combat Club started a long time ago. So long ago that I can’t even pin down an exact start date in my memory. I suppose in some way, it started in the closing moments of the very first AEW show, when Mox made his surprise debut and breathed in his first taste of freedom, stained with Kenny’s blood.

Kenny vs Mox is such old history for AEW, it’s practically primordial. It’s in the company’s DNA.

Like many great wrestling feuds, there’s an ideological disagreement at the heart of this one, a disagreement concerning the fundamental nature of professional wrestling. More than anything, though, it’s about love.

Bryan Danielson said as much in the promo he cut on April 5 after the Blackpool Combat Club attacked Hangman on Dynamite. Interestingly, in this promo, Bryan seems to draw an equivalence between love and true professional wrestling. He treats them as one and the same. He talks about loving Mox, Claudio, and Yuta, whom he goes on to describe as “professionals” in contrast to the Elite, who are “amateurs”, and who don’t have love, or even understand the concept of it. 

To Hangman, he says: “And I love these men! I love these men! Do you know what? You don’t have anybody who loves you. Is anybody coming out from the back? No! Not a damn person! ‘Cause nobody loves this man! In fact, they don’t even know what love is! But I know what love is. In fact, when I’ve been at home, I’ve been teaching my kids a few things. A few things about how to fix up your house. And I think the house that is AEW needs to be fixed up. From all these amateurs.”

The house metaphor immediately caught my attention. It reminded me of an extended metaphor that Hangman employed in his monologue from episode 204 of Being The Elite, which was released on May 18, 2020, and which to this day remains one of the few pieces of art about the pandemic that I can actually tolerate. In his metaphor, he compares AEW to a house, and The Elite are both in the house and they are the house.

In Hangman’s own words: “I nearly won the prestigious ‘Man of the House’ award in May. I’d teamed up with our broom to clean the house better than anyone had ever swept it before. And I feel like I might have been starting to… patch up the holes of the walls of the house. The walls that made the house what it was in the first place.”

The Man of the House award is his failed attempt to become AEW World Champion in May 2019. Teaming up with the broom refers to his tag team with Kenny and their 6-star tag title match with the Young Bucks, which was considered by many people to be the best tag match in history. And the Elite are the walls. He’s talking about the slow, tentative process of repairing his relationship with the faction that quite literally made AEW.

I suppose in a very literal sense, The Elite are in AEW and also are AEW, in the sense that they’re the “Elite” in “All Elite Wrestling”. Hangman’s mixed metaphor is only as messy as reality.

The “AEW as a house” metaphor came up again two years later, on May 25, 2022, in a now infamous promo segment building up to Hangman vs CM Punk at Double or Nothing, where, with just two words, Hangman unknowingly set off a chain of events that would end up almost tearing the entire company apart, though no one realized it at the time.

He tells Punk: “You talk a big game about workers rights, yeah? Well, you’ve shown the exact opposite since you’ve gotten here. I love this place! I care about this place! This is my home! And this Sunday at Double or Nothing, I will not, I will not be defending this championship against you. No, for the first time in my life, I will be defending All Elite Wrestling from you.”

And Punk tells him: “Win, lose, or draw, I respect you, Hangman. But remember, those roads you traveled to get here? They were paved by me. This house that you built? It was constructed with lumber from trees that I chopped down. The world you traveled to get here, to create All Elite Wrestling, happened because I gave you the blueprint.”

Hangman fails to defend the championship against Punk. And in the months that follow, he fails to defend All Elite Wrestling from Punk, too. The philosophical divide was so true to reality and so exquisitely foreshadowed that it caused me to initially assume that the rumored backstage altercation between Punk and The Elite was part of an intricate work that connected back to this very promo. I was more right than I knew, but I didn’t know that the reason for the connection was not because it was a well-planned story, but because the conflict at the center of the story was real.

AEW is the house that Hangman built, and Punk says that it was made with lumber from trees that he chopped down. In saying so, he takes credit for The Elite’s work and implies that without them, he could simply fill the space left by their absence on his own.

But can he? Can anyone? Can there be an All Elite Wrestling without The Elite, or would the whole building crumble without its walls? For a few months in late 2022, we got to experience AEW without The Elite. It was not a particularly encouraging time for the company.

Which brings us here, to 2023. Bryan Danielson says that the house that is AEW needs to be fixed up. He doesn’t think the Elite can compare to the Blackpool Combat Club, not in terms of love or in terms of pro wrestling.

I’ll admit, when Bryan said that The Elite don’t even know what love is, I laughed. Kenny Omega has centered his entire wrestling career around love, to the point where “A Wrestling Love Story” is in the title of his documentary. I once heard someone sum him up by saying “in pro wrestling, you can choose to be whatever you want to be, and Kenny Omega chose to be in love.” 

Before he beat Kazuchika Okada to win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in 2018 in what is widely considered to be the best match of his career, Kenny said: “I’m not saying that I’m arriving to this arena with a bunch of new moves, but I am saying that this version of Kenny Omega might be the most prepared. And a big part of that is because I’ve let someone back into my life that I cared about, that I loved, and that together with that power, we can’t lose.”

He says basically the same thing outside of kayfabe as well. In his documentary, he credits Kota’s support as being essential for preparing him physically and emotionally so that he’d be ready to pour his heart out in a match that he knew was going to last over an hour. Many of the hard lessons that his character had to learn about the pain of isolation and loneliness, and the redemptive power of love, are things that Kenny himself had struggled with.

In 2018, Kenny once gestured to Chuck Taylor and Trent Beretta, the Best Friends, and said “This is what friendship looks like.” Then he put his arm around Kota and said, “And this is what love looks like.” This is a man who knows what love is. He knows the pain of love as keenly as he knows the triumph and the sweetness of it.

In a way, I think of Kota not coming with Kenny to AEW as sort of the original heartbreak. It’s there in the background subtext of the entire major arc of AEW’s first chapter. It’s an unhealed wound that only leads to more hurt as time goes on.

Which brings us to Blood & Guts. The Blackpool Combat Club and The Elite are both lacking a 5th member for the match. The BCC has Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, and Wheeler Yuta, but not Bryan Danielson (who is out with an injury). Their fourth member is Konosuke Takeshita, who is fighting with a single-minded purpose, which is to surpass Kenny Omega. Their fifth member later turns out to be Pac, who has no real immediate story reason to be there, besides past grudges. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that.

The Elite has Kenny Omega, Hangman Adam Page, and Matt and Nick Jackson. I can’t recall the precise moment I knew that Kota Ibushi would be their fifth member, but it was before the Blood & Guts match was even announced.

The moment I knew for sure, though, was when I saw this clip, which was filmed after Dynamite on July 5. Speaking to the crowd, Kenny says that during the week when his whereabouts were unknown, he didn’t stay home, and he didn’t go to Canada. “But where I went was for a good old friend, someone who is very near and dear to my heart.” He smiles when he says that last part, and his smile alone is a dead giveaway.

If there was any remaining doubt, this article by Michael Nakazawa on the DDT site cleared it up for me. The article sums up Konosuke Takeshita’s AEW story, which of course I know very well, but I wanted to see Nak’s take on it. This part was another giveaway that Kota Ibushi was going to be the 5th person on The Elite’s side: "そして竹下が抜け一人欠けたジ・エリート側には誰が入るのか？DDTファンにとっては竹下とケニーという顔合わせは見逃せないものになるだろう。(ここで多く触れるつもりはないがジ・エリート側の伏せられたメンバーとの顔合わせも見逃せないものになるだろう。) " (“And with Takeshita out, The Elite are down a member. Who will fill in on their side? DDT fans won’t want to miss the face-off between Takeshita and Kenny. (I’m not going to touch on it too much, but I’m sure that the confrontation with the unknown member of The Elite is also something not to be missed.”)

On July 12, the week before Blood & Guts, they reveal the 5th member of the Elite’s team. The Blackpool Combat Club has Kenny at their mercy, a chair around his neck. Mox offers him the microphone so that he can say his last words. Kenny says, “We still have a fifth member, too.” He’s laughing, even though he struggles to breathe. “Check the screen. Check the screen, you bitch.” The look on his face is absolutely serene.

The arena goes dark. Kota’s new music plays, though the crowd doesn’t recognize it. But everyone cheers when he shows up onscreen. I’d been wondering if a Canadian crowd would be more familiar with Kota Ibushi than an American one, since I’ve heard that the TV station that AEW airs on frequently plays Kenny’s documentary, so many regular AEW watchers in Canada likely have seen it. This crowd certainly knows who he is.

At the end of the video, The Elite is now listed as the Golden Elite instead.

The lights turn back on. The Young Bucks and Hangman are here now, ready to save Kenny. As the Blackpool Combat Club clears out of the ring, Kenny picks up the mic. He says, “We might be one man down, but we’re never out. Next week, Blood & Guts, we’re gonna show you guys it’s more than about fighting, it’s more than about your kill-jitsu; this is about more than that. Heart, passion, soul, friendship, love.” He smiles as he says love, his voice almost breaking.

He knows they’ve already won. Kota Ibushi is coming, and it’s all going to be okay.

After the reveal, Kota tweeted about it (he also posted it in English). That “AEW見ていたよ、ずっとね” (“I’ve been watching AEW, this whole time”) line in particular, I am overcome. I don’t even know how to put into words what it felt like to read that. Golden Lovers fans have been waiting four long years for Kota Ibushi to make an AEW appearance.

I don’t think any of us expected it would be anything like this.

Kota arrived in the US a few days before the match. He tweeted a photo of him and Kenny and Nak at Kenny’s house, which still feels utterly surreal to me. 

And here at last we’ve reached the match.

I’m going to preface this by saying that AEW did a spectacularly bad job with the production on this match, which isn’t exactly unusual for them, but I’m less forgiving with this one. I think every single time the Golden Lovers started interacting, the camera basically immediately cut away. It’s hard to interpret it as intentional malice, considering how bad their usual production is, but it was jarring how little the production team seemed to understand what people actually wanted to see here.

The photos on the official website are also an incredibly poor selection (Kota and Takeshita aren’t in a single one of them), which seems to be a theme with every Blood & Guts show. And because AEW bans fan photography, if Scott Lesh isn’t there, and the official photographers drop the ball, we’re basically entirely out of luck. I got desperate enough, I actually attempted the bold and unprecedented strategy of just asking AEW for access to more photos. I couldn’t get them retroactively, unfortunately, but I should have more photos for shows going forward.

The whole thing made me extra appreciative of the work of Japanese fan photographers, who are so good at not only capturing vivid and dynamic photographs of moves, but who also capture the quieter moments, like exchanges between wrestlers at the corner. A lot of pro wrestling lives in those quiet moments, not in the bloody violence or flashy athleticism.

I think fundamentally that’s where me and this match were at odds. I was watching for the quiet moments, and what AEW thought they were delivering to viewers was the blood and violence.

In the end, the Golden Lovers were only one of like a dozen things that were going on in this match. So ultimately, it wasn’t really about them. I’m more at peace with that fact now at the time of writing, over a month after the match, than I was when I watched the match live. I think when you’ve waited so long for something that means so much to you, it’s almost impossible not to be disappointed when you finally get that thing, because it’s competing with all of the versions of it that played out in your head.

Kenny entered first for their team, and Kota entered last. The two of them were the bookends for the Golden Elite, the beginning and the end, containing the entirety of the faction between them. Kenny wore fully Kota Ibushi themed gear, so the two of them matched. The Young Bucks and Hangman had their own set of matching gear, which was white and purple in contrast to the Golden Lovers’ white and blue (I’m sure this divide won’t become important later).

Leading up to this match, the Blackpool Combat Club had repeatedly had The Elite’s number. They’d beaten them up more times than I can count, had mutilated them with screwdrivers, and had dragged Kenny through the hell of Don Callis’s and Takeshita’s betrayal.

But now The Elite had their secret weapon. They were finally whole again.

From the second act onward, as soon as Kota Ibushi, the final member, made his entrance, the story of the match was that the Golden Elite needed him to save them. Whenever things started going too badly for them, he’d come in and change the course of the match so that it was in their favor. Every time.

I think my favorite spot in the match involved this horrific bed of nails which turned out to actually be a bed of screwdrivers. Very thematically apt. Mox was laid out on it, and Kota approached him, and I knew immediately what he was about to do, yet still gasped when he actually did it. He did his trademark standing moonsault, his knees impacting directly with Mox’s chest, driving Mox’s body deeper into the screwdriver heads.

The Golden Lovers reunited over Mox’s prone body. They reached for each other in relief, and I looked to see their expressions, my heart pounding, and the camera had already cut away from them.

Some other things I remember: Matt Jackson poured a sack of thumbtacks down from the roof of the cage into the ring, and Pac stomped Nick Jackson through a table in a dramatic spot that looked far better in the replays than it had in the original shot. Mox brought the wild violence probably more than anyone else in the match.

I wish we’d gotten a little more with Takeshita and Kota, as it was their first time sharing a ring together in many years. But this match wasn’t really about that, either.

In the final minutes of the match, Pac and Claudio get into an argument, then Pac cuts his losses and bails. Don Callis pulls Takeshita out shortly after, realizing that their side is almost definitely losing. The match has now become a 5-on-3.

The Golden Elite unleash everything they have left onto poor Wheeler Yuta. Then they hoist him up with the chain around his neck, and he starts to pass out. The referee calls for the bell. I didn’t realize exactly what had happened at first, because the production failed to show it, but it was actually Mox who had ended the match. He surrendered to save Yuta.

Someone summed up the story very succinctly in a discord screenshot from somewhere. A person with the display name “V….” said: “So in the end the story is that despite how much conflict the Elite have had over the years when the time came, they were the ultimate cohesive unit and the BCC, despite how much they crow about being professionals and loving each other, had to rely on mercenaries that coincidentally had grudges against the Elite that bailed because they didn’t have as much skin in the game and in the end Moxley, a man who tries to portray himself as nothing but violent and merciless, had to surrender to save his protege in practically a perfect mirror of him submitting to Hangman at Revolution.”

For once, I actually found myself in near perfect agreement with what seems to be the IWC’s general consensus of the story of that match. I really liked how my friend described it: “mox literally had to surrender to love in more ways than one”.

The end of the match ran up against the end of their TV timeslot, the enemy of televised wrestling in America, though we did get one final shot of the Golden Lovers together right as the show went off the air. The post-match stuff didn’t quite make it onto the show, but some fans captured video of it. Kenny spoke on the mic for a bit, and one of the things he said is that we’ll probably be seeing Kota in AEW again.

Kota was unfortunately at a pretty severe disadvantage this whole match for several reasons. This was only his third match since coming back from his 2021 injury, for one thing, and it was much more demanding than either of his GCW matches in March. It was also a match style he was not at all accustomed to, and it was his first time wrestling in AEW. 

We found out in a tweet he made later that he hadn’t realized that his normal wrestling shoes wouldn’t be well-suited for the match, so the thumbtacks and glass pierced through his shoes and hurt him throughout the match. Reminds me a bit of the original Little Mermaid story, where every step the mermaid takes on land hurts…

He didn’t actually come in contact much with the thumbtacks during the match itself, besides the ones that made it through his shoes. The thumbtacks in the photo in the above tweet came into play after the match. When they went off the air, Kota intentionally threw himself onto the thumbtacks, just for fun. Kenny had a pretty funny reaction, haha. He looked at him like he knew he’d be the person picking every single one of those tacks out of Kota’s back later.

And sure enough, Being The Elite featured a clip of Kenny doing exactly that. They talk briefly in Japanese while Kenny’s taking the tacks out of Kota’s back. Here’s a transcription of the Japanese. I love how Kenny takes care of Kota before getting his own wounds tended to, despite his own back being in far worse shape.

Kota explained the reason why he jumped into the tacks in a reply to El Desperado (English translation) (Despy also recently took a totally unnecessary tack bump himself). Since it was Kota’s first time in AEW, he decided to take a bump onto the tacks in lieu of a greeting. I think he knew that he really had to do something memorable to leave a strong impression in the minds of all of the American fans who’d never seen him before, so this is what he chose to do. It did make me smile seeing the reactions from Japanese fans. As soon as that moment happened, a lot of Japanese fans on twitter were like, “yep, that’s him; Kota Ibushi is back”.

After the match, apparently all ten of the guys in it were visibly emotional that they’d gotten that chance to wrestle each other, and Matt Jackson had them all sign one of his shoes so that he had a memento to remember the occasion by.

In Kenny’s unaired post-match promo, he says, “I'm a lover, not a fighter. You guys don't know by now, I'm a lover, not a fighter. There's one thing I learned throughout this rivalry of ours. When push comes to shove, you guys are as tough as they come. You taught us what it means to not only be a professional wrestler, but to be a wrestler.” He says, “I'm willing to stick my hand out and shake yours if you guys wanna let bygones be bygones, because love you or freaking hate you, Moxley, love you or hate you, Claudio, love you or hate your ugly ass [to Wheeler Yuta], I respect each and every one of you.”

And that’s that. The end of the feud. 

In an interview, Claudio said what they wanted to come across was that: “We lost that battle, but we won the war. Thanks to the Blackpool Combat Club, now The Elite is better than ever. We brought them to a place they’ve never been.”

In a way, the BCC did end up fixing up the house that is AEW. They patched up the walls by bringing the Golden Elite back together, thus repairing the original heartbreak that was what caused the cracks to form initially. The Golden Elite is the best version of The Elite. It is their truest form, shining with love.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvC9uVHOHJZ/

https://twitter.com/JJWilliamsWON/status/1682966137187778560

[mindthelspace]

Eurovision 2024 first impressions

Wasn't sure what to listen to at work, and then I remembered that all the Eurovision songs have now been released! So I thought I'd give 'em a listen.

Until today, I'd heard small clips of the songs in Youtube top 36 lists. That was it.

Caveat 1: I've paid zero attention to any of the national finals, so I'm blissfully ignorant of 90% of whatever drama happened in those.

Caveat 2: Everything below is the personal subjective opinion of me, a knobhead on Tumblr. You will probably disagree with a lot of it and that's fine.

Caveat 3: "Why are you not boycotting when Israel are-" Yes, I know. I do follow the news. I'm not going to go into why I'm not boycotting because that's not what this post is for, but I promise I have thought about it and can explain my reasons.

So, with that out of the way:

Croatia: Strong start! I really like this, and get why it's one of the favourites! I might be on Team Croatia this year- I'd love the winner to be someone who hasn't won before, or hasn't won for decades!

Netherlands: It's... alright, I guess? But I'm not sure it's as funny as it thinks it is, and might get a bit old fairly quickly.

Switzerland: This is interesting, and a nice break from their pattern of the past few years. I'll be happy if this does well :)

Italy: I like this better than I thought I would, based on the little clips I've seen. Still a bit confused about why it seems to be topping literally all the Youtube rankings, though.

Austria: Meh

Sweden: This is the ONE song I couldn't make it all the way through. I, yeah, sorry, I hate it. Sounds AI generated. Sweden, please, you have good music, I know you do, I've heard it, you don't need to send this kind of crap every other year, please!

Ukraine: Ukraine my beloved, always understanding the assignment <3

Greece: Way more interesting than the clip I'd heard previously made it sound!

Germany: This is exactly what I was afraid would happen if LotL didn't do well. I'm getting flashbacks to Michael Rice and his 2019 last place.

Belgium: Meh

Cyprus: Extremely Meh. This is like a composite of every bland, inoffensive, radio 1 song ever.

France: It's a nice ballad. 'For the Mum's, I think is the phrase. S'fine.

UK: Apparently 'obnoxious ear worms' is my country's new schtick. Although like Italy, I do like this a bit more than I thought I would. Also starting to notice a lot of the songs sounding a bit 80's-lite?

Georgia: S'fine, I guess. 50/50 as to whether it breaks their NQ streak.

Malta: Wow, there are a lot of trendy girl pop songs that I have absolutely no feelings about this year.

Armenia: This is enjoyable and I respect it.

Azerbaijan: Another Whelming-to-decent one, but I do like that they're singing in their own language for the first time!

Albania: Snore

Australia: I get what they were going for, but I find this a bit cheesy.

Ireland: Look at Ireland taking a risk! I so, so, hope this works out for them and breaks their NQ streak! I am slightly concerned, just because this is the kind of experimental that can be difficult to translate to a three minute stage performance, but if they give it the creativity it needs it could be their best entry in years!

Lithuania: A nice little catchy thing. Quite like it.

Denmark: Oof, Denmark really are in their wilderness years, aren't they? Look, this isn't bad, but there are a lot of songs that sound similar to this, and this has 'lost in the shuffle' written all over it.

Poland: There's nothing about this that makes it stand out from all the other trendy-girl-pop-songs objectively, but I do have a soft spot for this one.

Spain: This is really cute! I think I've found my favourite Big 5 :)

Czechia: Oh look, we have some pop-punk this year. Cool.

Serbia: I'm... not feeling much for this *now*, but I think it might grow on me once I've heard it a few times.

Finland: I am CACKLING

Portugal: I'm a bit undecided about this, tbh. Might have to see how it is live.

Norway: I knew I'd quite like this, and I do! I feel like the live performance is really going to make or break it though.

Luxembourg: So I've heard this song is *also* Israeli propaganda, and if that's true, a) that sucks, because Luxembourg, mate, this is your re-entry, you didn't want this, and b) it's disconcertingly cheerful.

Estonia: Whatever this is, it has no business going this hard.

San Marino: Another pop-punk. I'm a bit more intrigued by this one than the Czech one. I can't see it doing amazingly, but if the performance is good it could get San Marino a rare Q.

Slovenia: It's OK. Seemed like it was going somewhere and then... didn't.

Israel: Was debating whether to ignore this (and sit there wondering about it), or give in and listen to it once so I could stop caring. Went for the latter. You'll be relieved to know it's bland as shit. The inevitable background booing might even be an improvement.

Iceland: I didn't get Hera Bjork in 2010 and I don't get her now.

Latvia: I really want Latvia to break their NQ streak, especially with how they were basically robbed by the semi draw last year, but this just... needs to be more than it is. A really good live performance could save it, maybe? I don't know. I wanted to like this but I'm not hopeful.

Moldova: Slovenia Two. Another one that was sort of going somewhere for a minute, and then stopped.

In conclusion:

So much Eurodance

So much 80's

Loooads of really similar songs. More than usual. Some of them are inevitably going to cancel each other out.

The "everyone follows the runner ups of the previous year" trend seems to be holding, with lots of similar-vein-as-Noa-Kirels, and a few similar-vein-as-Kaarijas.

This is definitely a year that's less my cup of tea. That's OK. I was spoilt last year. And there are still some solid entries.

[hazbincalifornia]

(I’m pretty sure the way I type is recognizable but I need to like pretend at anonymity bc I feel. Remarkably silly about this)

I wanted to like idk rant to someone in the HB fandom who isn’t balls deep in the “anti proship” sphere bc like, I’ve been struggling w guilt over enjoying a certain ship that everyone hates and considers problematic (I think Loona and Octavia is rlly cute!) and I’d like to make content for it but I also rlly fear being seen as like a pedophile. Do u ever worry abt that kind of thing? And is there anyway ur able to get over it if u do? I don’t like getting into anti/anti anti discourse bc I feel like it’s a very reductive way to view and interpret media but I still have a crazy amount of worry/guilt

First off, it is still ridiculous to me that this is even a problem in this fandom. This is an adult show about characters in Hell, and the main characters are, respectively, assassins and the eclectic cast of the Hotel which includes a cannibal serial killer. (I am eternally both amused and completely baffled that like half the awful puritanical takes I see are from Val icons. Buddy. Pal. The fucked up fiction is coming from inside the house.) I saw waaaaay more fucked up shit on Zim nsfw twitter than I see on Hellaverse twitter and that show was Y7. Up your game, guys.

Personally, I don't really see Loona and Via as siblings/sisters as much as I think a lot of others do, more just friends (and honestly I think canon moved much too quickly to give them such a heartfelt scene together, they hadn't even met officially before that point?) so it's really only the age thing and even then, the plot of HB has seemed to imply that a fair amount of time has passed since the series started, probably around a year- so Via would be 18 or older by the time anything actually started anyway, especially if they became friends first. Setting aside the 'justification' though... they're not real. They're cute together, I agree, and I think you should be perfectly fine enjoying them just in the lens of 'they're similar, I like how they'd interact, and I think they're cute together'!

I was pretty much forged in my opinions about this from Invader Zim stuff, where people insisted that liking two characters that I'd liked together since I was thirteen made you a pedophile. Obviously, I could tell that wasn't true, because it had never been the case in all those years up to people starting to be bitchy about it in 2019. (Before that, it was that it was bad because it was enemies to lovers and, more importantly, gay. Great hater throne to inherit, guys!)

Unfortunately... as stupid as it is, this fandom is way more puritanical than it should be, so it wouldn't be wrong to engage through anonymity to protect yourself. Find the people in the tag who are using 'proship/proship interact' or something along those lines (I've seen a few, although some tend to lean more on hard/dead dove content), post on ao3 into the anonymous collection which removes your name, make a tumblr sideblog that doesn't connect to your main, find fellow shippers and interact with them specifically. Do whatever you need to do to keep yourself safe from people who can't understand that thinking something is cute or interesting to explore in fiction is automatically bad just because they don't like it. The more stuff that's put out there about the ship, the more likely you are to find kindred spirits, that's honestly part of how I gathered my mpreg weirdos to me in both this fandom and the last.

I'm pretty sure that the callout I got for Sunny was why several mutuals who were a friend group unfollowed (and likely muted) me on twitter. Unfortunately, it left me worrying that the other shoe was going to drop any day for about a week because it got just enough notes to make me worry but not enough to get to anyone with any real reach to spread and get it 'over with'.

At this point, I've sort of reached a state of 'fuck it', because if it happens, it happens. I know that I'm fine, and the people I genuinely care about know that too. I know that what I'm making is entirely separate from my morals as a person, if not from how dumb the IZ stuff was than from the fact that I was an English major. Literature is full of stuff that authors don't make as a 1:1 with their real-life morals! And the one you're thinking about isn't 'bad' comparatively at all.

I think the fandom is starting to see that being a dick about fictional content is bad through the backlash to Poison and 'hey, maybe telling somebody that they need to detail their trauma to the public to make fiction is bad?', but it seems to mostly be centered on dub/noncon, so I wouldn't necessarily hold my breath.

At the end of the day though, remember this: You, as a person, are completely fine, no matter what others might think. Octavia and Loona would probably be seen as a totally normal ship like ten years ago (except for people who'd be dicks about them being gay) and there is no judgement to be made on your character in any reasonable way for thinking they're a good ship. You're not a pedophile for thinking a fictional owl and hellhound look cute together, any more than I was for smacking together two Nicktoon characters, and frankly the IZ argument held slightly more water than 'the almost-18-year-old and the 22-year-old' because Zim's age was so ambigious. Try explaining this 'people think the young adult animals holding hands are bad' to any adult who isn't sucked into fandom discourse and they'd probably be baffled that it's a problem.

I know that the guilty feelings aren't always rational and it took a bit of time for me to unwind how I felt about creating certain stuff too, but try to remember that above all else- exploring things in fiction has been a thing people have done for a very, very long time. What matters is your actions towards other real people, not what you do with fictional dolls.

If nothing else, if you want you can always send me a dm and chat that way, I'd be happy to talk.

[giggly-squiggily]

Do you have any advice for someone who wanna start writing but is too scared and don't know where to start

you seem really cool and your writing is truly amazing and I wish you a good day or night!

Hey anon! Firstly- thank you so much for the kind words! I appreciate them immensely, and I wish the same to you :) I'm not the best with advice, but I'll share what I've learned from my time here on Tumblr :3

Under the cut for length :3

Being scared is a completely valid feeling, especially when we're first starting out. Hell- it's still scary some days, and I've been doing this since October 2019 😅

I will say though- that fear gets easier to manage the longer you're doing it. What starts off as anxiety on whether or not people are gonna like your work turns into a feeling of excitement as you get ready to share your creation.

Does it make hitting the post button any easier? Sometimes. Are they're days where I wanna launch myself out a window after I press the post button and run Charlotte from Black Clover style?

You betcha! :D But when you love doing something, and you wanna do it bad enough, it's so worth it :) I think everyone here has felt those nervous jitters to some degree when we first started out in our little community (or whatever community you ultimately find yourself in), so you're never alone, anon :)

All that being said- there's never any pressure or time frame for when you're ready. Hobbies like writing are meant to be fun and relaxing, so if you know you're not ready to make your debut on Tumblr, you don't have to. When you are ready, you'll know- and you'll be able to hit that post button! All and all- I'm rooting for you, anon! I hope when you are ready to start writing here, you'll have only good times and an absolute blast! (And of course- if you ultimately choose to write for yourself alone and not post it- I hope that your writing journey is a fun one full of things you wanna write and see with your favorite characters and settings! :D)

As for where to start- that's ultimately up to you. I can't tell you how to start it, but I can give you some quick tips (And also- if anyone wants to hop into the replies and share their advice, please feel free to do so!)

1.) Formatting is key. It doesn't have to be anything fancy-shmancy; just be sure to space out paragraphs and use proper punctuation so your work is readable. Don't sweat over the occasional typo- I know my work is always littered with them ajejrajer; and if you ever need help with your writing- don't be afraid to reach out and ask :) There are plenty of us here who'll gladly help you out if you need it!

2.) Don't be afraid to interact with people. I've seen a lot of really cool peeps here in the community, and I can say for the most part we're pretty chill klerjkajkrjk I myself am fairly awkward in DMs but I don't bite unless you want me to (Jokes!...Unless 👀 karkekjlarkjlerkj) Okay but really- the best part about being in a community is having people around you who like similar things you do and to share ideas with. It can be a bit intimidating at times (especially if you're like me and have social anxiety plus you've been a fan of a lot of people prior to making a blog) but it's worth it. I'm truly grateful for the people I've met here in this community- both those who I talk to on a daily basis and those who I might only interact with on occasion :) It's a lot less scary once you get to know everyone here jkaekrjajkr :3

3.)The golden rule: Have fun with it. Highlight it, circle it, put Patrick Star in fishnets on it- this is the golden rule!!! Tumblr is a hellsite that can fall off the face of the planet at any given moment, so we might as well make our time here as fun as possible! :D

Going back to the whole writing for you thing- if there's fandoms you love and want to write for, do it! Is it niche? Write it anyway! Has anyone heard of it? Well, now they have, haven't they? Is there literally no demand for this fandom/character/setting? Well- if you want it, then there's your demand. Don't be afraid to change it up and make your blog/writing whatever feels best. Crack fics, serious fics, a combination of everything in between- whatever you feel like making, I say do it! :D As long as your having fun, that's all that matters!

Ultimately- how you go about your writing journey is your call, anon. I don't know if anything I said today helped, but I'm rooting for you and all the things you'll make. If you ever decide to make your writings public here on Tumblr, let me know- I'll gladly check them out! :D Take your time, have fun, curate your experience and kick some butt, friend!

[gisellelx]

For the fanfic author asks do you want to talk about: 6, 30, and/or 42?

Thanks, @palmofafreezinghand

6. How do you come up with ideas?

In fanfic, I write the stories I want to read for which I can't find a version I love. Almost all of my fics come from me basically just wanting to be a voyeur: "The Talk," my first fic, was me reading the line in BD where Edward mentioned he'd talked to Carlisle about having sex and me thinking, "Well now that had to have been an interesting conversation!" So I wrote what I thought happened. They also come from conversations with people--Ithaca Is Gorges came from talking with my bestest bestie about the fact that as you get older, you start realizing that your parents are fallible people, and that one of the biggest problems with the Twilight saga is that Bella is taking Edward at face value when he has not ever managed to get to that point with Carlisle and Esme. So what do the Cullens look like when they're not filtered by Edward?

Also I was trained to write characters first; plot second. So "ideas" for me usually are "okay, in this situation, how would this character logically respond, given all the things they hold dear, are afraid of, think are at stake?" I don't think of plots first. Plots emerge (and frustratingly, keep emerging.)

30. What do you struggle with most when writing?

Perfectionism. So, so much perfectionism. I very often see something that needs to go first before I can write the second thing, and then if I can't write the first thing, it doesn't matter if the second thing is more white hot. It's the main reason I've shifted to fully drafting long fics and only posting fics that consist of what are effectively related one-shots: Cien Años right now has been stuck because there's a chapter with Rose and Esme I need in order to establish something about what Esme thinks of Carlisle before I go to one of Esme and Carlisle 70 years later. But I've been having issues with that one. I will obsess over pieces of a work and over individual sentences until they truly pass muster, and, if I decide there's something else that belongs in the work, I will edit it later. I appreciated your tag comment btw, and also laughed about it because I revise everything. Sideblog answers? Yep. Headcanon posts? Yep. This post? Yep! I will move beats around in a sentence on a reddit post so that it has the rhythm I want it to have, even though there's absolutely no creative merit in it at all.

I used to be way better at just writing and letting stuff stick but not anymore. The other day one of my collaborators talked about her writing process and described mine as "Oh and then [giselle-lx] just produces these perfect sentences that say exactly what we all mean" and I was like, "No I have just already edited five times before I put them into Overleaf!"

42. How do you get over writers' block?

I...don't? I'm staring at a fic in Scrivener that hasn't been updated since 2019 and which I started drafting in 2010. And like I said above, been stuck on another work for a year.

But the thing which works the most reliably is reading. When I read, whether nonderivative stuff (which is mostly what I read--I am a bad fanfic reader, I confess!) or fic, my brain starts sparking with ideas and then I can get going again. If I'm struggling to get words down, it's usually a sign I need to read more.

Oh and the other thing which reliably creates writing is getting the hell off social media. Every single time I am serious about that practice, my brain just rebels at how bored it is and starts writing. "Ordinary Time" happened after I deprived my brain of social media for a month, and "Drying Up" happened after I deprived it for merely a long weekend. I know this in my soul, and yet... :/ :shakes fist at Mark Zuckerberg:

Ask me things!

[ectoplaasm]

Please share I'd love to hear the lore

TEE HEE if you insist >:) I have a feeling this is gonna be Long so strap in

First things first: this

So in my little narrative, I have it that Maeve and Simon met in college (Fall 2019) (in an econ class but tbh any GED class works) and became friends. She's studying computer science and Simon is like "woah that's crazy--you know my sister is a robotics engineer maybe I can introduce you guys." And Maeve is like "hell yeah of course that sounds awesome." So she visits GYAXA with him and meets Aura, Metis, and another woman I've named Claudette, and they're all on the robotics team (because, realistically, NASA wouldn't have JUST two robotics scientists). They hit it off well enough that Aura offers her a co-op position (RE: Clay Terran also receiving an early internship. For some reason) (oh, also, this means Maeve does school full-time in the fall and part-time in the spring while she interns at GYAXA) and her mentor is Claudette. I should also mention that Simon and Maeve started dating sometime in October 2019.

Sometime around March 2020, Something happens to Claudette where she mysteriously disappears from GYAXA, seemingly kidnapped as there is a sign of struggle in her office, but she is not heard from after that. She was working on some sort of glasses software that Maeve has now inherited (it's kind of like a remote hack--if I ever make AAI: TWotP it would be the mechanic she supplies Blackquill with). Needless to say, Maeve is now intern-mentoring under Aura, likely on the projects with Metis as well, so Maeve would then know Athena at least a little.

Flash forwards: UR-1. Tragedy riiight after their first anniversary (at which time Maeve receives that locket I always draw her with). Remember, though, that this is when Maeve is full-time at school, so this explains why she wasn't there when it happened. I think during this time she would act as an older sister to Athena and help set her up for going to Europe (since uh. No hate at Aura but I don't think she would have helped...), also, since Metis is gone and can't do it, I think she would upkeep maintenance on Widget (this relationship between the two of them is why I gave Maeve gloves similar to Athena's since she also interacts with the glasses technology). Then, of course, Maeve would also visit Simon for a while in prison, since maybe he keeps some of his old self for a while (which I imagine he's grateful for since I think no one else is confirmed to visit him ever...?). Eventually, after a long enough time of being broken down by the system, he would break up with her around December 2022 under the guise of "I get so annoyed every time you visit; leave me to rot alone here in peace" when it's really him pushing everyone he loves away to protect them from his eventual demise. And Maeve accepts this, albeit extremely sadly, and does not return to the prison. Perhaps she writes letters whenever something significant happens, and perhaps Simon silently cherishes them every time he receives them... but we'll never know.

MEANWHILE: Aura and Maeve are the last two on their little team remaining. They have shifted to develop some scanning thing that sends out a wave to analyze everyone's psychological profiles in a certain (likely very small) radius to try and seek the Phantom. It's a hard thing to get working, and it never seems to yield results as LA is a huge place. This frustrates Aura and she eventually abandons the project, and Maeve focuses on finishing school (she has a difficult time with it as she is understandably very upset from everything, especially now that the project is over and she has no way to help Simon out in the background). Eventually, she graduates, and she goes back to work for GYAXA on the robotics team full-time doing whatever it is Aura was doing when we met her in DD.

Flash forward to post-DD, where Maeve is the only (only) person left from that robotics team. I think there would be a lot of pressure on her, carrying on both of her old mentors' and Metis' research, as well as the police coming to her for help on making this thing called the Badger Bot using Ponco and Clonco's facial recognition tech (which has a LOT of ethical nuance behind it that will get addressed in TWotP). Because she's working with the police, she does run into Blackquill once he's out, and there's a very strained relationship between them now since they're both convinced the other hates them when the reality of the fact is that they miss each other deeply. Maeve still wears the locket Blackquill gave her when they were younger, though, which he notices (the locket is used to hold a very important SSD that eventually gets stolen, meaning Simon is lowkey protecting those files). They're investigative partners in TWotP since she's doing research for the Bot, and the events of that help to bring them back around to each other again as they get to know each other, both now extremely jaded individuals, and they learn they still have a lot of things in common despite the years spent apart.

Parallels I am proud of in this: Simon and Maeve losing their mentors, Athena and Maeve doing background work to save Simon, Maeve cutting all of her hair off after her and Aura's project gets scrapped vs. Simon's hair growing out as he experiences the length of his sentence.

ALSO: Maven is a piece of software used to build programming projects, and Kaspersky is an antivirus company. In case you were wondering how I Ace Attorneyed her name :,))))))

[fagdykemuppet]

ok i havent done it Yet but i plan on compiling a bunch of ben pics and loading them all in the queue to be a once a day thing. but until then id like to make a little introduction to our dear ben christo/the face behind our beloved ifrit ghoul! mainly because i already wrote something up somewhere else and i'd figure it'd be easy to just translate it all to one big tumblr post instead of doing school work. (update: it was fucking not) note: i have not listened to everything that he's ever done (and actually not a lot of this stuff) and i will miss some stuff but it's a start. if anyone wants to give stuff to put on this post i'd be more than happy to include it + i may update it as i learn more. ok cut incoming. warning for talk about unmasked ghouls if that's not your thing i guess. but also why are you here if its not.

okay so as we all know, ben christo is the face behind our beloved ifrit ghoul! but for those that don't: he played the touring lead guitarist for the band ghost in 2017! but this is all fairly surface level stuff, and i will not be going into much detail, if you want to look into it more just look at ritual footage from 2017. and if you're somehow not here from the ghost side of things hi. i'm sorry this is probably confusing, just ignore it. or dont and get into ghost bc ben played a ghoul in 2017. your choice

but with that out of the way, onto the real reason im making this post!

to get them out of the way, here are some links. (website, insta, twitter, facebook, linktree, youtube, spotify playlist, spotify profile, apple music)

so for some basic info that everyone that knows anything about ben will know: he is the guitarist for sisters of mercy. i don't personally listen to this band, but i do know that another one of the ghouls, the face behind aether, chris catalyst, was also a guitarist for the band. ben has been the guitarist since 2006, and also i think backing vocals. (links: spotify, facebook, twitter, website, (this thing is so fucking outdated but im putting it here for comprehensiveness), apple music, amazon music)

diamond black: this one is a band i do listen to, he is one of the founding members, the lead vocalist and guitarist! used to just be on guitar, but the lead singer (jaakko turunen) recently stepped down and now ben is fronting it. this band also includes another ghoul! jan-vincent velazco (aka vinnie) was the earth right before mountain/hayden scott, and is the drummer for diamond black! they've been around since 2017. and, fun fact, at the time of writing this post they're going on tour in a month with esprit d'air (which vinnie is also the touring drummer for. doing double time). go get tickets if youre in the uk area!! gogogo!!! theyre cheap, only ~£25!!! (links: spotify, website, insta, facebook, twitter, apple music, youtube, buy on amazon music)

speaking of esprit d'air: did you know ben did a collab with them? yep! dead zone off of oceans! (other links: lyric video, buy digitally, buy on bandcamp, buy on amazon music, listen on apple music)

next up is his work on raymond watt's PIG. from 2018-2019 he was a member of the band, going on tour (along side vinnie who was on drums) and even doing some riffs on the album risen (and the ep prey & obey). i haven't listened to these in particular, but i do like some of raymond's other work. (prey & obey: spotify bandcamp amazon apple, risen: spotify, buy it on bandcamp, buy it from metropolis records, buy on amazon, listen on apple music)

AKO (pronounced A-K-O. dont make the mistake i did and pronounce it as a word): i listen to this one. i don't know a lot about it, though. from what i've read it was formed in 1998 and disbanded 2005, reuniting briefly in 2010. (links: spotify, bandcamp, listen on apple music x, buy on amazon music x)

night by night: i know nothing about this band other than what i've read. it was founded by ben in 2008 and he plays lead guitar and does backing vocals! also i think vinnie mentioned being in the band at some point but i honestly cannot remember. (links: spotify, twitter, apple music, amazon, facebook, youtube. they used to have a website but i cannot for the life of me find if its still up bc all the links im finding are dead)

last thing ill be mentioning here is his work on lord of the lost's 2021 album judas. he contributed lyrics, guitar, music and vocals for argent (lyrics and co-wrote music) and still life to die for (lyrics, melody, vocals and guitar). (links: spotify x, amazon music, apple music, youtube x, bandcamp x)

there's obviously a lot more stuff he's been in, i just lost steam after working on this for a few days + even then i don't think i could cover everything he's been in i feel like im learning new things everyday. i'd suggest doing your own research + if theres anything you'd like me to add to this post just let me know!

[lark-lomond]

I really do enjoy going through utterly rancid posts to use them as a blocklist. But it's a shame that the blogs I need to fear the most are not just TERFs, but other trans women. The "how dare you say we piss on the poor" types, who jump at every chance to tear down another trans woman for the crime of being on their dash. I don't even need to name the women who've been attacked like this, because I'm sure you can think of at least five off the top of your head.

The trend on these blocklist blogs is unmistakable: either early in transition or unable/unwilling to go further, reliant on uwu nya speak and egg_irl memes, using niche flags and Picrew icons as the foundation of their identity, and PISSED THE FUCK OFF. I have a lot of empathy for that, because I've been there. That was me for most of 2019-2021, Picrew icons and everything. And it sucks! It sucks so fucking bad. You feel so pathetically vulnerable, physically disgusted with yourself, societally beaten down, and hopeless that you'll ever see any success from transition. I've been there, for years, and that was the worst my mental health has ever been.

All of which makes it very difficult to condemn the people in these horrible little mobs, because they are children to me. Doesn't matter how old they are - although many are minors - those early stages, from egg to early transition (or even beyond), are an intense and exaggerated childhood. That's especially true if you're on HRT and undergoing a second puberty. I was such a fucking mess in those years, I'm genuinely astonished (and incredibly grateful) that my friends stood by me and supported me.

Not all of them did, of course. I'm no longer friends with some of the people I talked to most during that era, and that's no coincidence. I was essentially reset to being a teenager. Do you still talk to your high school friends?

And that's what it really reminds me of, in the end. This stupid fucking high school bullying. You can't win. Teenagers will bully you for being fat, being thin, being poor, being a nerd, being a geek, being a weeb, being a dork, and especially being anything that they can call a "creep." They're learning the patterns of society, its vicious judgments, and trying desperately to eke out a role for themselves that shelters them from its worst. And so many of us trans people are temporary (or perpetual) teenagers.

In my experience, high schoolers don't tend to bully you for being rich, or talented, or popular, or pretty. They recognize the power in that. But they sure as hell will resent you, and say vile things behind your back. Nowadays, having put a lot of work into passing and femininity (though I still feel like I'm always falling short), I find the Picrew teens tend to sort me with the "privileged" chicks. If I had any kind of influence or success, they'd see me, and they'd resent me. And once they saw an opening - once they had a bucket of pig's blood to fill at the prom, once they had a bottle of drain cleaner to feed the hungover alpha bitch - they'd pounce.

I see a great irony in how being transgender is so often policed by the people who have the least experience being trans.

We're a minority group politically joined by our shared experience with something that is INTENSELY personal. On some level, it's no surprise it gets this vicious. But it gouges me horribly to see it. There are organized hate groups out there who dedicate their day jobs to eradicating us, and all the while, we do their work for them. Crabs in the bucket, etc. Behind every successful trans woman is a thousand seething teenagers who want to see her stripped to the bloody bone.

God forbid any of us have anything to be proud of.