#alexkablob

[kdinjenzen]

I've found that if you just state a harmless opinion on tumblr without explicitly couching it in a whole bunch of "but it's okay if you think differently everyone is valid!" type language there's always some people who find it rude and get angry because they think that you're trying to tell them what to think.

Which, like, okay, I think maybe everyone on the internet would be happier if they stopped reading everything that people say in the worst possible faith?

You’re 100% correct, but I couldn’t hear you over drinking gallons of mayo because I love it so much apparently.

[windona]

@alexkablob replied to your post “Me: Huh I should go into Mel's tag, see what cool...”:

Mel is THE BEST CHARACTER and fandom has no fucking clue how to handle her because they're racist assholes yeah

​Mel: A complicated woman who desires to handle things through politics and is good at it, who also has a complicated relationship with her mother and was exiled for not being bloodthirsty enough. She pragmatically aided a brilliant young inventor and his partner to let them have a chance to put their money where their mouth was, and used that to help propel her city to new heights. She then fell in love with said inventor and mentored him in politics while enjoying his sincerity. Her one political failing was having the same blind spot towards the undercity that literally everyone else in the Council had.

Fandumb: Is this a manipulative witch? Or a girlboss who don't need no man? Is she a monster?

Mel is so damn good and cool, I just wish her tag had more... her... in it.

[swan2swan]

*pokes head into the Dragon Room* Are ya winnin', girl?

[eighthdoctor]

Rhubarb Rose

exhausted gesture at rwby fandom for those 2 squares

ruby is our plucky young hero! she's our audience expy (except for when it's jaune), she's there for us to project onto! but as the show goes on, she's...traumatized, and has never really processed what it means to be the leader of a team where her teammates are 2 years older or unpacked the buckets and buckets of parental-figure-related-fuckery (including all of STRQ here) or like. oz-related-fuckery. and boy is that about to boil over.

also rwby character designs are all fucking stunning.

[alexkablob]

I am tentatively deciding that I am going to stream over the weekend, so look for that at 12 EST on Saturday and Sunday.

[mylordshesacactus]

You got married?! Congrats!!!!!!!

Yeah!

I haven't been posting about me and @eighthdoctor's wedding much because, frankly, the arrangements in the leadup have been so stressful that the idea of using my FREE TIME to CONTINUE THINKING ABOUT WEDDING STUFF was absolutely appalling.

But it was wonderful, our rabbi did an amazing job with a really intimate personalized ceremony. All the parents cried multiple times. I killed my sister dead on the spot by asking her to walk me down the aisle with our dad in recognition of how the three of us were a unit for so many years. Everyone was deeply appreciative of the fact that our catering choices were "dietary-restriction-friendly taco buffet" and "Costco sheet cake". @alexkablob roasted us-but-mostly-me just the right amount in her maid of honor speech.

There was a mule.

You know. Wedding things.

It was really lovely.

[professorspork]

⭐️the triple meet cutes pls >:)

well, here is where the downside of the way I outline -- i.e. putting it directly into the document and then just replacing it with the prose itself as I go -- shows its head, because I'm not sure I can stitch the timeline on this together as perfectly as I'd like. luckily I can for some of it because I narrate the vast majority of my life events to @alexkablob thanks for being my searchable diary pal

lol gonna cut this too bc I AM VERBOSE

the true meet cute was always going to happen at a bar. "My friends are being jerks right now, can I sit with you?" is a line that was actually used on me (collectively, addressed to my friend group) at a bar, and it remains one of the BEST lines I've ever heard (love that poor little meow meow rizz), and it was always going to belong to Yang. I knew they'd begin there, and they'd end at "So you don't date. Do you make friends? I've been told I give great friend."

the question then became: how the fuck was I going to get Blake to go to a bar when I knew she's sober and a total hermit?

I considered her going to see a band she likes play, but didn't love that because it would put Yang in the rude position of interrupting something important that she was there to enjoy. I considered it being an open mic night, maybe something where they had an overlapping friend in common and didn't know it, but again-- that directs the scene, and suddenly it's about their mutual buddy rather than them and their chemistry. I considered several different settings (coffee shop? the park?) instead of a bar, to try and make it read smoother, but bar just Felt Right. as someone who's gone to bars to watch baseball when I didn't have access to cable, that cropped up as an idea, and then it was just a question of coming up with a sporting event Blake would possibly have interest in, and ice skating seemed feasible enough. back when I lived in the East Village, I had a corner bar I'd go to down the block from my place that had amazing fried pickles and I'd often do my homework there before it got busy, so that's where that came from.

the "last ferry out to Menagerie" paragraph, in which Blake recontextualizes and basks in her attraction to Yang after learning she's trans, is hands down the single excerpt I worked hardest on. the first step, as I was drafting it early last august, was coming up with the right metaphor in the first place. I wanted something which would help me avoid it reading like a "well you can always tell with those transes" cringefest

me: so now the thing i'm chewing on is-- is what we talked about before, which is figuring out how to write about blake being attracted to the parts of yang's appearance that are sort of self-evidently trans without it accidentally becoming a weird bioessentialist screed me: the best metaphor i've come up with so far is glasses, like-- like putting on your glasses after cleaning them when they've been smudgy for a week, and you suddenly have this wonderful appreciation for crisp little beautiful details me: but blake does not wear glasses and i'm not enough of a hack to give her glasses JUST FOR THIS (i did consider it) so now i'm trying to think of other ways to talk about that, like-- moment of dawning clarity

(sorry I did not give blake glasses. similarly, this past march while writing the big sex scene in chapter 9 I was like "well yes i'm 123k into this but what if I went through and edited everything to give Blake a nose ring wouldn't that be hot" and alexis talked me out of it so blame her.)

once I came up with the "last ferry" concept ("me, rollerblading down Main Street, AO3: HAVE YOU MARVELED AT THE CELESTIAL BEAUTY OF TRANS PEOPLE TODAY") I worked on those two sentences for over an hour. i am particular about my language and cadence always, but even for me this is uh absurdly excessive. WORTH IT THO, because it's the most important passage in the whole fic. i deleted and rephrased it probably a hundred times, trying to get the right flow, the right lyricism, and crucially not say "stars" 8 different times.

Blake's deep dark secret being that she's a country fan has been baked into this fic's essence from the very beginning; the title, "something wild and unruly," is from a Dixie Chicks song for this reason. IT WILL CONTINUE TO BE RELEVANT, and I had to get it in early.

as I've told several people, the "deck building game" joke also comes directly from my life. Helen and I went to New Jersey last June to do wedding errands -- tastings, fittings, engagement photo shoot -- and while we were there we visited a very cute bar in my hometown as a potential night-before-wedding hangout space. she casually mentioned that her sibling was texting her about... oh gosh, I can't remember the name of it, but I went "what's that?" and she said "a deck-building game" and because I was home, and thus around my mother and how she has HGTV on all the time, instead of oh, like Dominion I went "like a porch?" and then she laughed and laughed and I said "well that's definitely going in the fic."

luckily my wife is used to that, because I stole from our lives a great deal. she first started having car battery trouble in January of 2023, and then we opened up the hood and found scary corrosion and my dad talked me through how to clean that out the way Neptune does. from then on it was sort of floating in the back of my mind that this could be something I used in the story-- Blake's car is 100% based on Helen's car, which she bought at a police auction and clearly had a Rough Backstory-- but it was three weeks later that we finally got tired of jumping it all the time and called AAA. the guy really DID come like 2 minutes after I put the request in on the app, so shockingly Yang's fast turnaround time is actually based on life. and about ten minutes after that happened I declared:

me: no real-life anecdote is ever wasted and this is DEFINITELY happening to blake after she and yang have their meet-cute and it's yang who shows up and has to be like WELL HOW ABOUT THAT SERENDIPITY :D

about three months later I then had my OWN battery troubles, and that's when I went out of my way to ask the tech who came about a million questions about what the multimeter read and how cold crank amp tests worked. I pretty much wrote our conversation verbatim into a note on my phone, which became what Yang said. (the fellow who came then also had a very sharp and snazzy work shirt, and that's when I thought about how cute the little Yang on her breast pocket would be)

only it would be--

Yang

:) okay anyway

I don't know what it is about competent service professionals that make me go "you're Yang Xiao Long actually" but I've done it twice now, with my wedding DJ and with the AAA people

I went back and forth on whether the library meet-cute would come before or after the car scene, but in its earliest incarnation the idea was just that Yang would come up to the circ desk to check something out and oops Blake's standing there. at one point I even considered having Yang ask her out to lunch. once I realized it behooved me to have Yang and Pyrrha already be friends, so Pyrrha could vouch for her, I knew it had to come at the end to tie everything in a bow.

[partly-cloudyskies]

She’s done!

So I guess this is fanart, cuz I named her after the ship from Star Trek: Challenger, the excellent series written by @alexkablob​ and @mylordshesacactus​. I’m really happy with how this turned out.

I made a special effort to get all the windows this time. Even the shuttle bay:

POV you are an Orion slave ship about to get body slammed by this funny looking thing from some place called Earth:

Oh shit!

There are a few more things I could have done, but it’s all little stuff. I’ve improved on assembly, I think. There’s not as many gaps showing up, though I can still see a few I wish I had taken care of but ah, well. I do NOT want to get into the difficulty I had with the ship name decals. I had a better time putting on all those hull marking than I did a few lousy letters. But again, ah well.

Here she is alongside her successor, maybe? The Challenger Refit:

I painted the refit similar to the TOS Constitution. I like thinking that the change in materials leads to a more kind of ceramic look to the hull. And there are a few discolored hull panels because, well, the Challenger is just a ship that Goes Through It.

But ain’t that always the way.

[powerbottomblake]

I’m new to the RWBY fandom and I was wondering if you have any blog recs? I really ship Bumbleby but I honestly love how this fandom has so many ships and fun ship names!

ok first of all welcome WELCOME glad v9 brought in new blood. and boy do I have recs for you I'm a great recommender if I do say so meself. gonna file them by category actually.

thee artists: for bumbleby: @corvophobia @sango-blep nuts and dolts enjoyers: @cosmokyrin rosebird central: @sunnyteea great many thingies: @smallandsundry

if you're a fan of bumbleby you've GOT to go through these people's backlog of fanfiction and also these are just some of the greater people to be around ngl!: @thirteenyasmin (I'd honestly advise to start here and start with Walk Where the Wild Things Grow that fic has been living in my head rentfree for the past three years it is dire we are Fucking Under Attack etc etc) @lightsaroundyourvanity @fiddleabout @pugoata @thecousinsdangereux (haley is still in warrior nun mode but on god we're gonna get you back here)

luscious luscious VIBES, miscellaneous rwby content (and jokes!) and also some great gif makers in here: @kienava @handsomejaclyn (do you like star wars. i hope you like star wars.) @pixelwishess @almea (<- some of thee best gif making on here. uniquely instrumental to me actually making a tumblr in the first place) @yeahbumbleby (al you're not included in the luscious vibing in here jsyk)

what I like to call the rwby Think Tank or ye olde meta posters: @aspiringwarriorlibrarian @professorspork @theseerasures @alexkablob (<- not active for v9 but I'd say take a look at past meta)

mewchies if I forgot one of y'all it's not bc I don't love you it's bc I have swiss cheese for a memory but yeah anyone I follow and consistently reblog rwby content from is a yes 10/10 recc

also anon. welcome to hiatus babe. let me be your shield in these trying times of people going absolutely haywire trying to post the worst memes of your life. just stick to me you'll be all good

[bedlamsbard]

I am. hmm. slightly drunk. (was out for dinner and drinks and department gossip with a friend. boy do we have some gossip.) (it was two hard ciders but I've had a very rough could of days.)

I am rapidly sobering up so if you were curious about what very slightly drunk Bedlam thinks about anything I guess now is your chance. (NOT STAR WARS I DON'T WANT @alexkablob TO TRY ANOTHER INTERVENTION YOU REBLOG ONE ANAKIN GIFSET --)

[ct-hardcase]

First three for that ask game for I believe emerald and mercury from rwby?

holy shit thank you I love talking about these two:

Emerald

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?: First and foremost, @alexkablob's influence lmao. In all seriousness though, Emerald's redemption arc being projected, telegraphed, and executed well is a huge part of the appeal. Also, I liked Mercury more first, so her relationship with him helped kickstart my enjoyment of Emerald, and remains an important element of why I like her character (but certainly not the only one).

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?: The fact that she takes a few moments to be sad, and then immediately gives a "wait, I defected just for you assholes to get defeatist on me?" speech that ends up being the rousing inspiration. The more her non-Cinder appeasement personality shows, the more I love it.

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?: I'll copout answer this and say it's that we didn't get to see more of her in earlier volumes.

Mercury

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?: What can I say? I have a bit of a tendency toward underdeveloped villains who are sort of cocky. That, combined with my enjoyment of speedsters, kind of made Mercury a shoo-in.

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?: Other people have done better metas than I have, but the amount of implications that the writers packed in about him without actually saying it out loud is nuts. Mercury Black is rash and cocky to peers and victims, but he's an abuse victim who almost never lashes out around the villains who has more power than he does (among the notable exceptions being his "back off, freak" to Tyrian, which speaks again to his dynamic with Emerald). He tries to climb the ladder within Salem's structure, because power through violence over others is all he's really known his whole life (raised by an abusive mercenary, murders him, joins the woman who wants to kickstart the apocalypse). hyasinthum said in the tags of this post that any time he expresses emotions like fear, he does it away from the camera, as if the audience is someone he has to mask against. And this is all with a C-tier character (in terms of distance from the main cast) who was very recently elevated to B-tier.

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?: In the manga, he has an added scene where he's being kind of a creep to Ruby during Dance Dance Infiltration (or: these characters' prom). It doesn't feel entirely ooc, but it definitely doesn't feel great to read, given that I wasn't originally enjoying his character with the "[x] is a creep" mindset. We do get chivalrous Weiss out of it, though.

[cosmokyrin]

https://at.tumblr.com/alexkablob/remembers-the-inverted-color-schemes-of-em/hwcmkn0tuzwb

not to bring back an old rarepair while ur going through it but I remembered this 👀👀👀

EMERALD / ILIA BELOVED,

also like

YES

I want them to meet, be gay and do crimes

[random-french-girl]

tagged by @hackshbo thanks <3

favorite color: red

currently reading: jane eyre. i have four chapters left. thoroughly enjoying myself tbh

last song: waterloo, abba

last series: i just finished paper girls. it was fine? i loved the quiet moments between the girls the most, these four kids have wonderful chemistry. still in deep mourning over the wilds though, which maybe explains my subdued reaction overall

last movie: watched “la grande séduction” with @sshepardcommander recently!

currently working on : icing my back >:(

tag 9 people: @sshepardcommander @hearticho @dearsheroozle @scvlly @powerbottomblake @alexkablob @jimalim @jewishsuperfam @cannotescape

[swan2swan]

Ah, I guess I know how Alex is spending her evening.

[eighthdoctor]

@mylordshesacactus and @alexkablob are in my house subjecting me to star wars opinions

[alexkablob]

Stream will be starting at 12:30. What are we streaming? You’ll find out!