#i'm supposed to be singing in this event and people got really hyped to see me in a fancy dress and it's squicked me the hell out. so here.

[wolverinedoctorwho]

when people tell me i'm pretty - vent poem

when people tell me i'm pretty i think we're looking at two different people.

when people tell me i'm pretty i think they couldn't possibly mean me. they mean the idea of me in their head. they mean the me that comes out of my mouth, my traits, my personality. i'm funny enough that they find me attractive.

when people tell me i'm pretty i think they're looking at me from a completely different angle. like watching a show on a monitor where the colors are more vibrant than they should be.

even on the days when i feel pretty, i couldn't tell you what features of mine are actually desirable. undesirable, sure. i wish i was in better shape, i wish my hair wasn't a mess all the time, i wish my face didn't just look "wrong" in photos without great lighting and effort.

when i wear skirts i feel the least feminine i've ever been. when i try to do my own makeup i feel like the kid in the movies everyone made fun of for putting on his mom's dresses. i feel like someone trying to do what's expected of them, and failing, miserably.

when people tell me i'm pretty, i want to tell them they're wrong. i want to tell them they don't have to say that, that it's ok for me not to be pretty, that it's fine if i'm average at best. i want to tell them it hurts more to hear that than it would to just not talk about my body ever.

whenever i dress up and try to do my own makeup i feel like the ugliest person alive, and when people tell me i look pretty that way or smile and compliment me on stepping out of my comfort zone i want to cry. why are they so invested in me getting a passing grade in gender expression?

when people tell me i'm pretty, i wonder why it bothers me so much. is there another word that would suit me better? or is it simply my own anxiety and dislike of my body that makes me uncomfortable? is it because growing up i was never remarked on positively, only chastised by my mother for my messy hair and my stretch-marked thighs and my small chest and my stomach that sticks out no matter what i do? is it because nobody my age ever told me i was pretty, only old people who would have said that to me no matter what?

my ex-boyfriend used to call me sexy. we'd be in his bathroom, nude in front of the mirror, and he'd smother me with compliments, and i would stare at myself in the mirror and wonder what he saw that i didn't. it's hard to leave a bad relationship when they're the only one who's ever found you sexy.

when people tell me i'm pretty, i wish for a moment that we could swap. that i could see the girl they think is so pretty, and they could see the me that i think is not. maybe then we would understand each other. maybe then i'd *get it*. maybe i'd think she's pretty, too.

when people tell me i'm pretty, i smile, and i thank them. like you're supposed to do when someone compliments you.

and then i change the subject.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 10/02/2024

Nostalgic Blood of the Gregg ~ Old Source

Season 5 Featured on: Bloodstained Bounties ~ The SiIvaGunner All​-​Star Summer Festival 2021 Collection [Event Side]

Ripped by minindo

Way early into the blog's life, on the 20th of July 2023, I covered the rip Everything Circus - a Season 2 rip featuring one of my all-time favorite channel memes, hhgregg. I didn't cover all too much on the guy back then beyond the basics: The source was sparingly used in Season 1, then gradually received an uptick in popularity until finally earning himself a full-on channel event in Season 5. Last, we covered a rip from before this uptick - now, I think its only fair we tackle one that shows the fruits of that initiative.

The hhgregg meme was one of many that I only discovered through SiIvaGunner, yet it was far from the first to actually popularize it: HydroDalek's "doin" YTPMV was uploaded a year prior to SiIvaGunner's premiere, and sits at a 1.5 million views as of writing, and is of course paired with the excellent remix "ReDoin" by JerryTerry, made two years later, sitting at 2.4 million. hhgregg's infamous attempt at creating a memorable mascot for their brand seemed to at first be met with nothing more than annoyance, only for a subset of internet users to slowly mutate feelings into feelings of...affection, I suppose. Either way, as someone entirely out of the loop on all things relating to American retailers, that affection definitely rubbed off on me - after just being exposed to a small handful of rips, and then later being led to the rabbithole of YTPMVs dating back to 2014, I was hooked on the guy.

And its not something I believe I can put quite so easily into words, either, beyond pointing you to a rip like Nostalgic Blood of the Gregg ~ Old Source for a direct demonstration. Wally Wingert is an excellent actor and performer in perhaps everything BUT his role as singing for hhgregg's Christmas sales of the summer season - yet YTPMVers throughout the last decade have been able to put those vocals, and vocals from the hhgregg mascot's entire television career, to incredible use. It's almost comparable to PSY in what I wrote about him in Korean Idiot - manipulation of hhgregg's distinctively nasally, yet self-assured voice has effectively become an instrument all of its own.

Pair that with the hyperactive yet constantly rhythmic and engaging flow of much of Touhou's music, Nostalgic Blood of the East ~ Old World not excluded, and you get something truly special. Yet the crazy thing is, Nostalgic Blood of the Gregg ~ Old Source was but one of several other incredible rips utilizing the source during Season 5. It was, after all, his long-overdue event - the long-awaited Christmas in July - and the amount of rips that went completely above and beyond just as Nostalgic Blood of the Gregg ~ Old Source did was absolutely remarkable. Speaking as someone who used to get hyped up back during the early days of seeing...what, the fourth or fifth ever hhgregg rip be uploaded? It did genuinely bring me so much excitement to finally see the most underrated SiIvaGunner source get the spotlight all to himself. hhgregg is, in all honesty, an oft-overlooked titan of recent YTPMV culture, a shining example of just how far some crazy cool people are able to take a series of voice clips that only initially spread online out of distaste.

Though I lack much knowledge on Touhou, and I wasn't really able to live through any prior attachment to the hhgregg character as a European myself - the sheer power of good ass YTPMV and minindo's undeniable talent in what he does carries Nostalgic Blood of the Gregg ~ Old Source through. It's an absolute banger using one of my all-time favorite SiIvaGunner sources, and I'm so happy it got to be part of the guy's big event. In a Season already defined by its various side events, hhgregg's long-awaited time in the spotlight is still one of the things I cherish most about Season 5, and the rips that came in tow with that day were absolutely worth the wait.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

love my own like theatrical relationship to shakespeare which is a) being so slow to realize like "oh, i've loved theatre? everyone doesn't just feel this way & go 'of course acting onstage would fucking kick ass' & adore rehearsals and hanging around backstage and in greenrooms and changing and performing & etc?' never really occurred to me" and b) my response to most encounters w/shakespeare being "wha" when it comes to anything granular yet the relevance still in the spirit of things lol

namely one prominent example being i was an on campus college student where said campus has a shakespearean theater literally three blocks away, and we had like a freshmen orientation weekly class there doing shit with actors and checking out the theater, not to mention like punchcards to see four shows free (to write up about afterwards but yeah sure whatever) and this wherein also you always got student discount tickets And there were pwyw performances....kicked ass. i went there for shows so many times. i have never fucking known what tf is going on in any of the like dozen shows i saw there when a) audio processing can be tricky enough for real life modern vernacular parsing and b) sure am not used to ye old very stylized language nor any other qualities of shakespearean material so lots of times when i finally started to kind of acclimate to the language it would be like "oh wait that was the conclusion? ok. hoorayyyyy" like also c) You Have A Great Time Seeing Shakespeare Productions Anyways like again i loved going anytime. it's Theatrical and if people are just putting their damn backs into delivering and performing the material it's An Experience even if you're really not following lmfao. and i suppose one can read the text / familiarize oneself beforehand

also like my first and really one of my only like regular theatre performing experiences was my literature class in fourth grade doing a few scenes from julius caesar. i was so hype for getting cassius like one of the most prominent roles? a guy? an antagonist if you're caesar or dante??? oh Fuck yes. b/c of technical difficulties we got to perform it twice in a row when we did a field trip to some other school to perform our respective [scenes from various shakespeare plays] altogether. even back then i was way into it and cared about stuff like "we have like no Effects to make it that dramatic when we kill caesar. or like, non silent. bit awkward" and "also i like, don't know how to act and am just winging it. and of course, i'm also like 9" like in theory i do like to know How to do something vs trying to make it up myself. somewhat lol. a balance, who can argue w/that

beyond that there's also lots of things i just didn't quite realize "counted" lmfao like, when you're a theatre gay with a parent req'ing you go to church every week but you have a good time being in the choir....i was sure on those tenor harmonies & singing loud. and going relatively often to various live theatrical events, having an engaging enough time there, but also would've assumed anyone would be into it And that that's not really the same as actually being in them, of course. but that most of my firsthand experience was just sticking w/ballet for like a decade, and kind of live theatrical performance adjacency there. don't say shit, for years was effectively just like, an ensemble for the occasional performances, but even then it's like hoorayyy i Love rehearsing and being onstage and backstage and dealing w/costumes and coordination behind the scenes and shit. and eventually being like, a distinct individual character in shows, so despite again nobody saying shit you're still somewhat interpreting and doing whatever character work while also enjoying the bennies of [it's dance, so also it's choreographed]....even more clear like oh i love backstage and rehearsing and behind the scenes and onstage and putting together stage character makeup, and i don't mind tackling technical difficulties, and etc etc. didn't even necessarily have the reference like, idk, wouldn't / doesn't everyone feel similarly. classic ye old memory of like being idfk 7 or some shit simply getting to walk with classmates behind a backdrop to the opposite wing of a stage, and loving that lmao. combines a love for [backstage] and [secret passages] type deal lol, big fan of these elements

also in 7th grade doing a theatre/drama class for a few months and we couldn't really get like all this in depth extensive stuff b/c you know, intro course for like 8 weeks for rando middle schoolers, but idk it was just illustrative lmao like after julius caesar, us slapping together some kind of script and my getting to be this fun little theatrical(tm) antagonist guy again? feedback was "what was supposed to be happening" but could've stood to have learned that the enthusiasm and affinity i felt for acting onstage was perhaps indicative of enthusiasm and affinity for acting onstage rather than just, idk, the exact kind of baseline experience any & everyone would have lol. not that i would've necessarily had the chance to really do anything with that knowledge, but even now, ofc i don't particularly anticipate getting to use it, but it's great having that knowledge like ohhh i see. the entire time i've been huge into doing theatre with all these kind of adjacent & gently overlapping brushes with it. gotcha