#I’m not tagging all thus

[cowardlybean]

oh god it’s a doodle invasion everybody run oh god they’re taking over

[gracebethartacc]

Erm?? what the fuck??? 🤨 Paper????

[unordinaries]

presented without comment

(chapters 280 + 344)

[aldieb]

[rihanna disturbia voice] dysphoria

[ghoul--doodle]

Silly scribbles from my first interactions with characters in pokemon violet!

I’m really liking this game so far!!

[sportsthoughts]

Sorry if I missed this lore drop previously, but how'd you get into the Pens? I love your gifs and positivity that you bring to the lb!

Buckle up anon. I thought about one line answering this but I enjoy the phrase 'lore drop' so much I think you deserve the deep dive. It'll take a while to get to the pens but you asked for lore so...

I have been sportsthoughts on tumblr since 2015 ish - maybe slightly earlier - and this has always been a sportsblr/sports rpf-y type blog in various iterations.

This blog was originally used for liveblogging UK Premier League and La Liga football matches. I have always been a huge football fan (my childhood team is Arsenal - north London forever ❤️ etc etc) and when I moved away to university at 18 none of my new friends were into sports and I really missed watching games with my family.

Finding other likeminded fans online who were also watching games and liveblogging them was such a beautiful experience and I have amazing memories of 2015-2018ish when I was a very active football blog, spent a lot of the time in the Arsenal/FC Barcelona communities here and had some beautiful trips to Barca.

I do have a sideblog where I still dabble in that space but in truth I very rarely liveblog football anymore because nowadays it's returned to being something I watch with friends and family so I'm not on my phone during games.

Here's where the pens come in - sort of. I've scrolled back through my AO3 bookmarks and can see in 2015 I also got into sports RPF for the first time. There are some incredible football RPF fics out there (let me know if you'd like some recs!). Somehow - probably through raiding people's bookmarks - in early 2015 I ended up reading a Sid/Geno fic called And Never Been Kissed and I was absolutely hooked. At the time of reading this I had:

1. Never watched a game of hockey in my life (side note, I don't think I can understate how little hockey coverage there is in the UK. Even the most ardent sports fan would probably not be able to name a single NHL player or team. Not even Sid! Not even Gretzky!)

2. I had no idea, nor any desire to look up who these people actually were. It was just like reading really well written original fiction.

For the next 7 years I thoroughly enjoyed hockey RPF and created (in my mind) entire personalities and appearances for Sid and Geno, along with all the other 'characters I came across regularly in hockey fic. Sid, I got pretty close to the mark. Geno, not so much. One day I will try and find some reference pictures for what I thought they looked like because it’s quite hilarious. When I re-read fics I love from during that time I laugh because I remember my Sid and Geno and how different they were from reality.

So, hockey was sort of in my life from 2015 but exclusively in the form of fics. I would scroll through the actual hockey bits of works because I didn’t understand the rules and why every single fic was an AU where professional sports people were allowed to fight each other mid game.

At this point I’d left university, and because I no longer liveblogged football games, I found I really missed sports fandom. Another sport I grew up watching and loving was Formula 1 so when lockdown hit in March 2020 I started liveblogging F1 races to pass the time (and still do sometimes - now over on @vroomlive). I loved/still love F1blr, but it didn't quite fill my fandom itch because:

1. We joke about it, but F1 is a deeply unserious sport run by a dire organisation (Liberty Media). They change the rules every week and it's managed badly to the point of being comical. There have been a few major cock ups over the years (including the 2021 championship literally being taken away from the rightful winner and given to someone else. To put this in hockey terms: imagine a completely valid goal being overruled in the last 5 minutes of the Stanley Cup final and then the ref deciding to give the other team a 5 on 3 powerplay Just Because) all of this is quite disheartening for long term fans - and has resulted in quite a fractured and angsty fandom.

2. There are only about 20 F1 races a year - so it's just not a sport that's on regularly. I love sports, and I want to watch sports all the time - so a sport that only gave me content every third weekend or so just wasn't really enough for me.

At this point, when I was feeling rather sports fandom bankrupt, the wonderful work of Sid/Geno writers and the influence of the tumblr dashboard converged. I worked this out by scouring my AO3 bookmarks - in April 2021 I read a Sid/Geno fic called Game Plan that I fell head over heels for. I’m still not quite sure what about this fic grasped me so deeply but I started reading a lot more hockey RPF.

Around the same time an F1 blog I followed started posting about Mat Barzal All. The. Time. I had no interest in this man and did not know he was a hockey player but over the course of about a year I became vaguely exposed to hockey content on Tumblr through that blog, and at some point in early 2022, saw Sid on my dash for the first time. I don’t remember the exact post but I remember seeing the name, doing a double take and thinking oh Shit! That’s Sidney Crosby from fanfiction! I was flabbergasted because in my mind Sid was in his early 20s tops, so seeing this early thirties, bearded, fat bottomed man on my dash and realising that that was Sid was such a shock. 

My hockey lurker era lasted from mid 2022 to early 2023 and I spent a lot of time, um, lurking. That sounds so creepy. I suppose I had never thought about actively joining a fandom before because my fandom engagement (one direction > football > f1) had all happened really organically so actually choosing to join a space as an adult was quite an interesting process.

By summer of 2023 my husband’s job changed again meaning he works away from home most weeknights and suddenly my late nights were extremely free because I’d hang out with friends and then go home at 10/11 to an empty house which I hated. I really found myself wanting to make fandom friends and have an at home hobby I could do late at night before going to bed so taking on a sport that happened 12am-2am (timezones!) seemed like a good fit. 

Alongside this on a totally separate track was my longstanding interest in fandom - most of my professional work/research is pretty standard psychotherapy stuff but I’ve done a little bit of work over the last few years looking at sex therapy (not as sexy as it sounds) and I have a real interest in the role that fandom and especially shipping/fic plays in shaping and expressing sexuality. It’s a bit of a back burner research topic for now but I suppose over the years researching fic and expressions of sexuality via fandom and shipping has just made me fall in love with fandom itself a little bit.

Plus having lurked around the edges of hockeyblr for a while I was just like, yeah, I really want in on this, this seems like an awesome community. The reason why I chose the pens was pretty straightforward - I felt like I knew Sid and Geno and after exploring the real life hockey, I, like most of us, was quite struck by who Sid is as a person and was just completely enchanted. Another side note - hilariously, when my husband first saw a picture of Sid last year he immediately said “Oh, he looks like me!” - do with that information what you wish. 

I really eagerly awaited the start of the 2023 season and without sounding too soppy, had already fallen in love with you guys before I ever watched a live hockey game. Every fandom has its difficult corners (pensblr included!) but I can honestly say - especially after the chaos of spending my teenage years knee deep in 1D fandom and my early and mid twenties in various parts of sportsblr - being part of this space has been the most lovely, fun, friendly, lighthearted, positive and beautiful fandom experience I’ve ever had. I feel like it’s the goldilocks zone of all the previous fandoms I’ve been in and I love it.

So yeah! That is the extremely long winded answer to your question, anon. I hope this is the ‘lore drop’ you were looking for lol

TLDR: I stumbled my way through sportsblr until I accidentally ended up here and I’m never leaving.

[cuteniaarts]

Wine stains on porcelain

(Alternatively: @katkastrofa and I have created 5 OCs in 3 days and I suffer from chronic “I wanna draw the little guysssssss” disease)

[wanderingmausoleum]

mostly-finished the dlc last night which really made me realize how many npc quests i fucked up or locked myself out of despite trying to be really careful to avoid that lmfao

[tariah23]

oh sorry!! yeah a lot of people are being really weird about her and i keep seeing compilation posts like that that have all these gross tags. sorry for the assumption!

No, it’s okay!!! I just rly like her design!!

[solacebean]

Another dump of some Null AU designs, because I am having far too much fun drawing all of them

[sesamestreep]

WIP tag game

tagged by the lovely and thoughtful @firstelevens 🥰

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

this is not ALL of them because I’m a maniac who needs to have 19 WIPs going at all times but these are all of the drafts I’ve added to recently/that I still consider active WIPs:

MIDDLE AGED GAY FLUFF

college shenanigans for the soul

florence nightingale effect is NOT real but it can still hurt you

gilded age turn of the century ass love story

oh god we gotta find another dessert themed lyric now

this is OUT OF HAND, you monster!!

thots and prayers

hope springs eternal (that this draft will ever see the light of day)

I’m far too lazy/sleepy to tag anyone, but if this crosses your dash and you’re a writer (or any other kind of fan artist/creator) and you want to do this, consider this your invitation to join in! ♥️

[falinscloaca]

my sympathy for vegans getting a flood of “DEBATE MEEEE” comments versus my frustration that their explanations and reasoning for vegan-ness still being fucking shit

[aldieb]

it’s so goofy how scared i get of bringing mac to the vet for his normal checkup… baselessly terrified they’re going to be like “actually this is the worst a feline has ever suffered.” i wonder if my mom felt like that bringing me to the pediatrician as a really little kid but i doubt it

[beepmon]

i think the worst part of having a large but close immediate family is i can’t cut out ppl without cutting out others that i like

[poebrey]

Posting this now because I know how often my full recaps make it out of my drafts, but shipping aside and no hate on Christine (in fact I really want character development for her!), and this is 100% not about Spirk either, this was hands down the most disappointing episode of snw so far by a lot. Not just because of this needlessly white and hetero relationship but because of the incredibly indelicate way Spock’s major character conflict was handled? I was ok with it being played for laughs in the beginning with him coming off as a moody teenager but why are the writers conflating bigotry he’s faced since his childhood with his love life? Also I’m really not trying to bring up Discovery because I’m well aware they did the going into the future plotline to never have to bring it up again, but Spock’s sister was killed in a terrorist bombing and we’re bringing up moms being mean at the playground? Absolutely think Amanda suffered through a lot but what the fuck kind of writing is this? I’m glad Spock is seeing things from her perspective, I’m happy they got where they are even though the last time we saw her she was feeling bad about borderline emotionally neglecting her son…., but the way this was handled was genuinely so bad.

[thegodsfindmecrazy]

Feeling Dionysus in this moment right now hardcore

Finally listening to my favorite band’s new album (about a month late from release but eh ^^’) and just feeling the music and dancing around my living room

Hair flying in whichever direction without a care

The slight wooziness of my head from head banging a little too hard

The ecstasy of excitement and joy of music I love running through my veins

A smile I can’t help but have grace my face as I party alone with my dog just watching me flail about

Dionysus is here for all moments of ecstatic joy, whether at a big concert/party or a party of one at home with music that satisfies an itch you didn’t know you even had