#make this the next big meme of 2023

[spoonsisland]

for a very long time this specific image from the flipline wiki consisting of Cooper just standing there with the caption “Cooper enjoys his pancakes” was an inside joke with me and a friend and i still think about it constantly. here are some highlights during the peak of us quoting it constantly

[inkblottzz]

Not a traditional request, but I'm curious to see how your art is formed and what your process is. It's so cool that your art is similar to comyet's!! I always wondered what other people in their newer artstyle would look like but they only ever drew Ink. I guess now I have a chance :D

Drink water and i hope you have a good day!!!

this is a really interesting request!! thank you for asking, actually! i like questions like these :-D

i'll start by explaining my personal art process—how i, 12-year-old me started out, and then explain how i got where i am with my art today! buckle up, because this will probably be a lengthy post :-)

The Progression of my Art

my first ever art posted online was at the beginning of 2020, when quarantine first hit. i had always had a knack for art; doodling in class, making OCs, etcetc. however, when i heard about undertale through a friend, that's when i really started to take things serious.

i did all the things kids do when they first find out about undertale—i watched countless comic dubs, animation memes, looked up fanart, etc. i first started my real art journey when i began making fanart for undertale and the AUs. this is why undertale is so special to me, and why i have loved it for so long! it has fueled my creativity for almost five years now.

this is the first fanart i ever had done. i posted it on amino sometime in may.

i was SO so proud of this piece. i showed it to my friends & family, and then decided to show people online! this was my first big milestone as an artist.

as time went on, i improved more and more, creating countless UT AU artworks in my spare time. and it was all because of the people who were kind and supportive of my art! the UTAU amino will always hold a special place in my heart, because of the positive experience i had. the positive feedback i got is what drove me to really want to start improving my skills and become a better artist like the ones i looked up to 💛 this is why it's so important to be kind to beginners. even if their art isn't the best at first, you bet your asses it'll be in the next few years!!

SO! i drew and improved, really just trying to find my own style that i liked. i had always loved ink sans, and that prompted me to look into his creator's artwork around late 2022-early 2023. i followed her instagram, and at first, just admired her work from afar.

then, i tried out replicating her style! this is the first piece i ever drew inspired by mye! i made this last fall, in 2023.

after that, i tried to find my own style some more, leaving the lineless style behind. but, in may of this year—2024—myebi decided to hold a DTIYs, and that's when i decided to replicate her style!

i know, i know, kinda defeats the whole "draw this in your own style" thing... but i had been wanting to try and replicate their style for quite some time, and i saw this as a perfect opportunity to try it out!

this is myebi's OC, aheran, that i drew for the contest !! it isn't exactly like her style, obviously, since i didn't want it to be too similar and weird mye out. however, i did replicate the lineless style, the grain textures, and the shading style as best i could. i also played around with shape language.

this piece was SO fun to do, and i did end up earning an honorable mention!

this was also my first post on instagram. after this, i started to draw all my art in a style inspired off mye's!

How do I draw in Comyet/Myebi's style?

here is where i'll be answering your question: what does my process look like when I'm replicating myebi's style?

i'll try my best to break it down into seperate steps that i usually take!

1. References!

References, references, references! References are the most important thing you need when trying to replicate something specific. I am currently at a point in my style where I do not usually need references, but you bet I used them big time when I first began to replicate mye's style!

Personally, I believe her instagram (@mye_bi) is the best place to get recent refs of her style! It's the social they post most often on. For Undertale specific references, I gathered them from her Tumblr (@/comyet) because her insta doesn't have Undertale related art. You may have to scroll a bit, but you'll find it on her blog!

I also have some niche references from other online sources, but I had to dig quite a bit for them. You don't need to be that thorough lmao

all art by myebi/comyet!

2. Sketching

After I gather references, I start with a sketch! Really, it's just taking a bunch of references and finding things you like/need to replicate in your piece. If there isn't a reference for something you are trying to draw, then the best you can do is guess! I have to make guesses on how Myebi would draw something all the time, because I draw a wide range of different characters. It's all about experimenting and doing your best!

sketch by me, ink reference by @/comyet, error reference by @/loverofpiggies

3. Coloring over the sketch

After I finish the sketch, I go straight over it with all my base colors! I typically do everything on seperate layers, which procreate... hates. I use a lot of layers.

And, to finish off, I really just add details! Lines, textures, shading, etc. I can't quite explain how I do it—I just go off Myebi's style!

Finding the right brushes

I have spent a long time trying to find brushes that best replicate Myebi's style, and the one I linked below is the best I've been able to find! It's the pack I use right now.

I use Weak Pencil 3 for any lineart I do, I use Fine Pencil 2 for color blocking, and Weak Pencil 4 for the grainy textures/shading :-)

The pack does cost a bit of money, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a free brush pack that gets the job done quite the same!

and that's all there is to it! i hope this answers your question and gives you some insight on how i make my art :-D

DISCLAIMER: i am not attempting to be a "myebi 2.0" or anything like that. i simply really enjoy how their style looks, and i enjoy drawing in a similar style! i mean absolutely NO ill intent towards mye—she is my biggest inspiration, and i will always have the most amount of respect and admiration for them and her work. 💛

[shygirl4991]

Next Step With You Chapter 1 High Rollers of affection

Cover made by @lizaluvsthis Chapter art done by @b-r-i-n-g-x do not repost! A Reboot of the next step! Next chapter Summary: SMG4 and SMG3 relationship changed after realizing their feelings in WOTFI 2023, now together the pair can take the next step together. That is until a strange gift arrives on SMG3's birthday making him face his demons from his past. 

Tags: Fluff, Boyfriends, Love Confession, Watch Wotfi 2023 before reading, first love, mention of igloo

SMG4 was giggling as he played club penguin, it was surprisingly a normal day given yesterday SMG3 snap after they failed to stop Mario from taking his notebook. Knowing Mario as long as he has there was no way he was keeping the notebook, given how peaceful it is, the notebook should be back in Three’s hand in no time.  He thought too soon as the door to his room flys open to reveal a panicked SMG3 “SMG4!! MARIO STOLE MY NOTEBOOK! I NEED YOUR HELP GETTING IT BACK!” he starts to wave a photo of the notebook at him.

He was facing Three in his computer chair, annoyed and surprised at the fact that Mario kept his notebook “Pfft It's just a notebook, get a new one.” Four wasn’t sure what the big deal was. He knew it meant a lot to the man but losing the notebook doesn't mean the world will end. Three walks in the room visibly nervous “It’s not just any notebook it's got secrets,” he drops to his knees making Four get nervous “Including…” he looks around “Secrets about you and me, and certain events in an igloo.” SMG4's face goes pale as the hidden memory unlocks. The need for food, how they both needed warmth though Three was stubborn and rather die there then cuddle him for warmth. They both thought they were going to die, with this thought in four’s mind he looks at SMG3 he did find him attractive so why the hell not. The event that follows haunts the pair as they agreed to never talk about it again. Remember everything he screams jumping out of the chair “WE GOTTA GET THAT NOTEBOOK!” 

After that he runs out of the room to ask a casual question to Melony leaving Three to nervously sit in the room, seeing the man return he runs up to him grabbing his overall straps “What did you learn?” Slowly pulling away from the man he goes to sit on his computer chair “So Melony told me she noticed Mario taking something to some billionaire tycoon which has to be the notebook,” he points to a photo that Melony took of the location “and they both are inside this brand new casino. Its exact location? The CEO office.” SMG4 starts to type something on his computer, using the software Melony used to hack the cameras he connects to one in a safe showing them drilling into the notebook. He was warned that the place was tough to hack and not to stay on the cameras for long, shame they can't hack the cameras down would have made this situation easier.  Seeing the drills on his notebook Three chuckles “That’s right, that idiot Mario still needs my secret key to open it!”

Four nods wondering what the key could be as he starts to type in the program “Well..it's not just Mario that's behind this…he’s too stupid to do this on his own.” as he switches cameras Three could only watch in shock that Marty was the one truly behind everything.  Why a living cardboard meme that Mario made wants SMG3 notebook Four had no idea, given how badly  it wants in the notebook it has to be something huge. “MARTY!? THAT PIECE OF CARDBOARD CRAP IS BEHIND THIS?!?” glaring at the screen he takes out dynamite from his pocket. He throws the dynamite in the air and catches it with a smirk causing SMG4 to smile without noticing “Lets just break in and take it then!” after that he starts to run off only for Four to grab him “Slooow down cowboy.” he throws Three down getting a growl from the man.  SMG4 then points to another camera view on the screen “We can't just go in there guns blazing. This place is heavily guarded, I'm talking about state of the art security that will blow our asses up the moment we get detected.” he wanted this notebook back fast but they had to play their cards right. SMG3 slowly blinks looking at the picture on the screen “SMG4..this is just a picture of Mario.” 

Four nods pointing at Three “Exactly! So we’ll need to be sneaky and cunning about this! Who knows what that stupid fat Italian has up his sleeve.” After hours planning and Three fighting about Fours idea on letting his subscribers pick how to get his notebook back it was the day of the heist. SMG3 smirks, fixing his fedora and tie “Alright looking fresh!” he winks and snaps his fingers making Fours stomach flip. Something that has been happening ever since the pair became friends, he wasn't sure why it only happens around Three after days of thinking on the subject he assumed it had to do with their link and lived on ignoring the way his heart would race when being near the man. With their spy rizz outfits on they walk to the casino, SMG4 was smiling and waving at the crowd not noticing the loving look Three was giving him. You could ask Three why he was looking at the man like that and you can bet his answer will have nothing to do with how charming he found the man's outfit to be. They walk into the casino with no issue, SMG3 smiles getting ready for the mission only to hear someone humming. Turning he sees SMG4 sneaking as he hums the theme from Mission Impossible, letting out  a sigh as he walks up to the man smacking him “Dude, stop it.” four frowns and looks down agreeing to stop. 

“Hey!” the pair jumps hearing Mario’s yelling, they turn to see Mario checking everyone coming into the casino. He then pointed at his brother demanding answers, the pair watch as Mario lets Luigi in only to burn him alive for letting out a cough. They slowly turn to each other, nervous about what they just saw before Three shakes himself out of it, they had a mission no time to get cold feet.  “Alright, what the hell are we doing here?” hearing Three’s voice, Four looks at their watch to see what was voted. They both nod at the result and put on clown masks getting ready to scare the Italian man, they sneak up to him and start making loud sounds to scare him. Mario slams the table making the men nervous as he gets closer to them as he checks them both out then focuses on SMG4 “Your color schemes look awfully familiar..”

The more Mario stares at Four the more anxious Three feels, then he sees Mario start to drool and reach out to Four. He wasn't sure what was going on with Mario but he was sure it was something stupid and he had to stop him “THATS IT WERE WALKING THROUGH!” he pushes Four causing the mask to fall off. They all stay silent staring at the mask before SMG4 turns to mario “uhh i can explain..”  Mario screams, surprising the men “AHHHH A SCARY CLOWN!” SMG4 frowns seeing his best friend run from him, Three throws the mask off “Hey works for me, lets go.” he was going to walk away before four grabbed him “Am…am i really that horrific to look at?” Three felt himself blush as four looked up at him with puppy eyes. He looks away sighing “You look like how you always did, a shit head with a huge ego now can we go?” Four pouts at the comment before moving forward. 

They stand in the main lobby looking around to see the cameras in the lobby. “Great…Mario must be surveilling the place intensely, we have to shut off those security cameras.” they nod as they look at the watch. Their eyes go wide seeing the vote that won “Uh heh maybe the watch counted the votes wrong,” Four smacks the watch hoping the choice will change. SMG3 sighs seeing the panic four was going through, he looks around and smirks as he walks over to a booth asking for a song change for the lobby. Four sighs finally admitting defeat then starts to think “Do a sexy dance? How do I even pull that off? Is there a meme dance that could come off as sexy?” 

That's when Three grabs his arm pulling him close to his body, SMG4's face turns completely red seeing how close they are “T-Three?” the man moves Fours hand on his shoulder while holding the other one “Your dumb subscribers did the vote lets get this over with so we can get my notebook, follow my lead!” He then placed his hand on Fours lower back causing the man’s heart to start racing. SMG3 makes sure that Four was pressed against his body before moving, Four did his best to follow the steps that the other man was doing.Then tango music started to play making Fours eyes go wide “How is the tango a sexy dance?” SMG3 kept moving to the music then smirks “That idiot seems to get off with us being gay, so if he catches us this close dancing he will freak and knowing that idiot he will end up breaking something!” Four nods understanding where his partner was coming from. As they dance, Three picks up speed as Four attempts to keep focus on his steps, his mind starting to fill with strange thoughts. As he dances his eyes slowly drop to SMG3 lips those thoughts start to play louder in his head, he wants to kiss the man right there and the thought causes him to miss a step. 

Mario catches the dance on the camera and zooms in his eyes pops out as he sees the pair, he knows he should have hit the alarm but the close dance made him want to cheer the two in hopes they finally get together. Seeing Four missing the step Three takes the chance to do a final hit on Mario, dipping SMG4 he leans in close, pressing his forehead against the other man making it look like they kissed on the cameras. Four held his breath at how close they were, while Three was looking into Four’s eyes. A strange feeling hit them both, they were on a mission they had to get the notebook and yet Four couldn't help slowly moving his hand to the back of Three’s head. It was the perfect moment to kiss each other, something they both wanted at the moment, only to be broken out of the spell hearing Mario scream in excitement and blowing up all the cameras. SMG3 lifted up Four and smiled seeing that the mission was a success “Great! Let's go!” SMG4 watches Three walks ahead acting as nothing has happened, was he the only one that felt that spark. He follows Three, his thoughts filled with what happened. He takes out his phone and starts to search his feelings. Distracted Four agreed to a plan that Three made without knowing what it was about, his eyes widened as he read what the results showed “A deep romantic connection..me and Three?” he looks up to realize he missed what he had to do and Three was now being taken by Swag and Chris. Four panicked and was going to save Three only to feel something heavy hit him, knocking him out cold. 

He opens his eyes and look around the room confused only to see Mario pop up in front of him “Hello mother fucker!” seeing the plumber he starts to scream which woke up Three making him also scream. He turns to see Three was tied down, panic starts to build up inside of him thinking of what they could do to the man. Mario chuckles as he approaches Three “Mario?? LET US GO DUDE!” He was hoping that his call out would bring the man back to him.  Sadly the man he is growing a romantic attraction to was SMG3 “AND GIVE ME MY NOTEBOOK BACK YOU ASS!” Mario smirks at the tied up Three making Four wiggle against his restraints. “I’ve been waiting for this! We finally got them, didn't we Marty?” Marty sighs and agrees with Mario, he was annoyed that the plumber let them get away once and was lucky the spies got distracted. Mario turns his attention back to Three “Just give us the key to your notebook SMG3! We’ve tried everything but it wont open yet!” This was all Four's fault for searching on his phone, the guilt was eating him as he watched the scene play out in front of him. Three gives Four a soft look before gaining back his snarky personality “NEVER! I’ll never tell!”

Mario lets out a chilling laugh that caught both men's attention, he takes his phone out smirking, he hits play and starts showing cringe memes to Three. Their avatar knows them too well and had the perfect videos to make Three cringe, the more videos played the more he saw the man break to the point he started shedding tears “NOOO! HE CANT TAKE IT! LET HIM BE!”  Mario grins as he pulls up one last video the moment SMG3 sees it he screams. Four’s eyes flicker yellow as he looks around the room “Come on four think of something worse than what SMG3 is dealing with right now!” he focuses on all the cringe he has seen on the internet till he shrivels up from it. Now free from the rope he runs towards Mario he can hear Three about to break “Hey ass!” catching Mario’s attention he throws Eggdog out, the pup attacks the plumber while he runs to untie Three. The moment he unties Three he starts to shout “IM FREE! IM FREE!” rolling his eyes he grabs the man pulling him off the table to run out of the room with Eggdog following. 

As they leave room Three turns shaking Four “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO YOU!?” Four frowns looking down, he starts to play with the button of his vest. “I was feeling strange so…i wanted to look up what was going on because it was distracting.” SMG3 lets four go and sighs giving him a quick look up and down before nodding “you seem fine now, just we are a team talk to me.” He didn't know what to do, Three was rarely this soft and now knowing the strange emotion he has been ignoring is he could feel his heart racing. Taking a deep breath he grabs Three's hand “If my viewers make the choices that land us in green, I have something I need to tell you.” They looked in each other's eyes, seeing how serious four looked the man nodded before they moved forward. 

The pair were losing it after being chased by Mario and ending up in a game show forcing them to watch what happened to them in the igloo. After that the pair found Depresso and used him as a distraction to get ready to fight the plumber in which Three was surprised to see Four was good at fighting the avatar out without breaking a sweat. Now they opened the door and were standing across the safe with their prize. Three was going to walk only to be stopped by Four, he then pulls out baby powder and blows it revealing lasers in the room. “Yep, just as I expected! These lasers will probably explode if we touch them.” SMG3 looked at the bottle then back at Four “Why do you have baby powder?” SMG4 sighs “I have a sensitive ass!” with awkward nods they both turn to focus on the lasers.  SMG4, seeing the results, smirks “Watch this!” SMG3 watched in awe as he watched the meme guardian front flip, avoiding all the lasers and making it to the other side. He hits the button and winks at his crush making Threes face red “What are you waiting for we got a notebook to save!” 

That moment SMG3 wished he had his notebook to doodle the moment he saw, though he was sure those flips and wink will haunt his mind all day. They cheer getting into the safe only to be stopped by Marty and Mario, together with their meme power they manage to put a stop to the pair and grab the notebook. After more attempts by Marty and Mario to stop them, the pair escape and win the day with their watches landing on green. Four smiles seeing how happy Three was, then he looks at the watch nervously knowing what he has to do soon. Hours later they announced to the subscribers that thanks to them they saved the notebook, Three was so happy to get it back he started to smooch the book making Four giggle. After teasing SMG3 about why he was building a new evil lair right next to his castle he lets out a small yawn, who knew doing a heist could take so much out of you.  “Speaking of cafes…I’m dead tired.” he gives his partner a small smile “Lets have some coffee.”  For the first time since they have known each other things felt peaceful, maybe it was them both being drained from the heist or maybe this whole event brought them closer together. He remembers back a few weeks ago how SMG1 and two told them they had to get along in order for their powers to get stronger, all that event did was give him work to tell the world how they two weren't together due them being caught holding hands thanks to Marios gum. 

SMG3 perks up hearing his words “Now we’re talkin!” walking together they sit on a pile of wood  waiting to become a part of SMG3 cafe, SMG4 smiles looking at the sunset as SMG3 starts doing their coffee. They smile at each other doing a small cheer as they clink their

cups together and drink, as SMG4 enjoys the warmth of the coffee he notices SMG3 writing in his notebook with a huge smile "What are you writing?" he knew he wasn't going to get an answer but it wasn't going to hurt him to ask you never know what mood SMG3 is in.

He smirks and turns away "I'll never tell!" SMG3 makes sure the other cant see the drawing he is doing of them both with cups of coffee.

With a giggle he nods "Don't worry i wont push it," as he looks back at the sunset his heart starts to beat faster. This would be the perfect moment wouldn't it? He had to admit the closer they got the harder it was for him to keep his feelings in check. When he hears the notebook close he decides now is the time with one last gulp of the coffee he turns to SMG3 "You know...this heist got me thinking,” 

SMG3 sips his coffee and stares at his partner "What that we should be full time spies, cause i'm not a fan of the idea of your fans telling me how to live my life," SMG4 shakes his head with a small chuckle "No, nothing like that...just we make a good team don't we?"

He keeps staring at SMG4 feeling confused on what was going on with the man next to him, seeing this SMG4 sighs feeling himself blush. "You know...people ship us together...and uh with all that's happened to us i started to wonder...." he had no idea what he was doing. Every TV show he has seen made confessions look easy, even Axol made it look sweet and easy with the manga he was making before everything.

SMG3's eyes go wide as he also starts to blush "Why are you bringing this up all of a sudden, idiot!!"

SMG4 closes his eyes "WHAT IF WE MAKE IT CANON!?"

Everything was dead silent, he was nervous to open his eyes to see how SMG3 was looking at him. Finally he hears a whisper "you....what?" Slowly he opened his eyes to see a stun SMG3, his face was as red as his eyes, it almost made SMG4 giggle for how cute it was to see him like that. "I..well i like you i figured it out today when we were on the heist, so i was wondering if maybe we can try...the next step?"

SMG4 started to get worried he broke the man for how long it took for him to move again, he watches as SMG3 stares at the floor then his notebook. His heart sank, did the guardian not feel the same as him?

SMG3 gets up and stands in front of him "Fine, i guess i...i like you too! But don't let it get to your head...Baka!"

SMG4 lights up, standing up and hugging him, ignoring the heat on his face, Three hugged his boyfriend back. They separated and gave each other a small smile before Four spoke up “Need a place to crash till the cafe is done..you can stay with me till then.” SMG3 looks at the castle then his hand thinking about the graveyard, staying here they both could figure out this new step easier then him in another location “Yeah that could work..but can we keep this thing with us on the down low not sure i'm ready for the idiots to learn about us.” with a nod they both slowly reach for each other's hand and let out nervous giggles. Now holding hands the pair walk into the castle to move SMG3 in,Little did they know a shadow was watching them from a distance growling at what they just saw. 

2/6/24 date written

[rivalsforlife]

Ace Attorney News Roundup

Very behind on several of these, but news doesn't always cross over from twitter to tumblr, so I thought I'd recap some things here:

AAI 15th Anniversary

First: today marks the 15th anniversary of Ace Attorney Investigations! Tatsuro Iwamoto, the art director for AAI, made a celebratory sketch of Kay to commemorate the occasion (link to tweet):

Iwamoto has also been drawing fanart of minor characters throughout the ace attorney trilogy on his twitter page. These include: April May, Dee Vasquez, Yanni Yogi (and Polly), Richard Wellington, Turner Grey, Moe the Clown, Max Galactica, Oldbag (alien mode), Matt Engarde, Doug Swallow, Luke Atmey (and Mask☆DeMasque), Viola Cadaverini, Valerie Hawthorne, Lisa Basil, and Glen Elg. Technically these aren't official art, but it's always good to have more art of obscurer characters!

The Great Ace Attorney Hit A Million Copies

Some big news: The Great Ace Attorney's 2021 port hit a million copies sold, making it the second ace attorney game to hit Capcom's platinum titles list, the first being the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy from 2019! This comes just under 3 years since the release of the duology in July 2021. In comparison, the original AA trilogy hit a million copies in December 2020, shortly under two years since the release of the game in February 2019.

The update to the platinum titles sales shows that Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy has reached 3.3 million copies sold, which means that it has sold over a million copies in less than a year! (My last post that had information on sales, where I said the trilogy had sold 2.3 million, was in September 2023.) It also makes it the 30th highest selling title for Capcom, which I think is pretty impressive considering giants like Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Street Fighter are making up the majority of the top 30.

So, the AA trilogy made its first million in approximately 22 months, but now it has sold a million over the last 8 months. I don't know anything about game sales and so this next part is just speculation, but I wouldn't expect it to be very common for games to sell more years out from their release compared to at release? I think that's really saying something about the long-term staying power of this series, and its increasing popularity over the last few years despite not having any new releases (aside from ports - and porting the series to all platforms probably has something to do with the popularity.)

The AA Twitter Is Very Active Right Now

Here are a couple of bullet points with no relation to each other:

-The official ace attorney twitter has been VERY active, particularly the last week. They've been doing the same "weekly book club" for each case that they did for the Great Ace Attorney duology, but that wrapped up last week and now it's just been memes, at least one a day. In most of my time following this account over the last uhh six years, they mostly ramp up marketing around new releases but are kinda silent the rest of the time, with the occasional meme, but definitely not at this frequency.

-Summer Game Fest is next week.

That probably means nothing, as it has every other time I thought we might get some big ace attorney news, but I think it's worth noting.

So, lots of stuff happened this week! Thanks for reading.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Congratulations to Caihong juji, your Dinosaur March Madness Champion for 2023!!!

(Art by @i-draws-dinosaurs (Caihong, Jakapil), @otussketching (Heracles), @alphynix (Kholumolumo). Graphics by @i-draws-dinosaurs)

Well it’s been a wild month-and-a-third of competition, but Dinosaur March Madness 2023: Rising Stars has come to an end! Congratulations to our four finalists: Big Parrot, Meme Reboot, Spikey Creatur, and Gay. After a final brutal slugfest Caihong emerged as the victor by a significant margin, winning all three separate matches. Shockingly, the Queer Neurodivergent Web Site felt rather fond of the shiny fluffy rainbow colours dinosaur!

Caihong joins the hallowed halls of DMM winners past, alongside Corvus, Maiasaura, Halszkaraptor, and Amargasaurus, making it the third maniraptoran to claim the top spot! The people love a bird, is what we’re learning.

A huge thank you to the members of the ADAD team who pulled this all together with planning, researching, writing, arting, the whole lot! @zygodactylus, @raptorcivilization, @i-draws-dinosaurs, @otussketching, @albertonykus, everyone who’s put their time and effort into this project is an absolute legend.

And thank you so much to everyone who voted, made posts and debated in the notes!! It was absolutely wonderful to see how much people got into it especially after having taken A Bit of a hiatus, the enthusiasm that all of you have really makes the contest what it is!

That’s all for now, we hope y’all had a fun time and got to learn about some sick new dinosaurs! And coming up next year, of course, we’re leaving the dinosaurs behind... on our long-awaited trip... into the Permian

[centrally-unplanned]

I saw this slightly-old post making the rounds recently by former alt-right memelord Walt Bismark, on how the alt-right "won" in the late 2010's - positing that as the cause of why it generally vanished. I agree overall with the vanishing part, its not gone-gone ofc but it waned as a cohesive movement. But I saw a lot of people (and generally not alt-right figures) agreeing with its conclusion and I am a bit more skeptical of those.

Its largely a personal essay so I wont address most of it, but it has a summary of five main points that outline essentially "the agenda of the Alt Right at the beginning" to evaluate success upon. Bismark thinks they won on all five, but overall I think this is playing a trick of inventing an enemy to claim you defeated. Anyway, the points:

1: Shift the “Overton Window” of acceptable public discourse to make it politically viable to openly discuss the interests of white people in mainstream politics, in the same way black people or Jewish people discuss their collective interests. 

This one I will grant a partial victory - there was a legitimate intensification of "white as identity" in politics, a making explicit what was implicit in the 2010's. Now ofc I consider this to be a classic horseshoe moment; the hard left at the time was also extremely interested in abandoning race neutrality and valorizing racial identity as an organizing principle, and did it in a very ham-fisted way that the right capitalized on, so it was an easy battle to win - but that is what it is, ofc the wider environment defined the goals & strategy. I mention it however because I do think this is only partial, and the gap between implicit and explicit isn't that relevant. He mentions as an example of this success:

Affirmative action was of course squashed by SCOTUS and the necessary legal infrastructure is being deployed to burn it down. Mainstream conservatives are mobilizing a lot of resources and energy to this end.

But conservatives have been fighting affirmative action for 20+ years, easily. Here is a 1999 article on precisely such a campaign, I literally just googled "conservatives affirmative action [year]" and I get results each time, 2003 had big cases (the Bollinger cases) on AA, etc. I remember "affirmative action bake sale" memes from like 2006 at my uni! What changed between Bollinger and 2023's Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard is that conservatives had just had enough time to stack courts, and wait for Supreme Court justices to die. That just...takes time to do! The strategy hadn't changed between 2003 and 2023. And meanwhile, did they win? They won that court case, sure. What do you...think the ethic makeup of the next Harvard class is gonna be? Wanna take some bets?

His other listed victories are things like:

"Vivek defended the Great Replacement Theory on national television and remained a major Trump surrogate. The SPLC would have marginalized him for that 10 years ago. Today because of polarization and MAGA closing ranks they can’t do shit."

And like, the Southern Poverty Law Center would have successfully marginalized a Republican politician in idk 2003 are you completely high right now? Strom Fucking Thurmond was an active Senator in 2003! This is the repeated tactic here, the imagined enemies - there was never a time where liberal institutions could consistently force conservative politicians to kowtow, so you can't claim it as a change.

This is why I mention the social justice horseshoe, because he has this point here:

These days you can complain about quotas etc. being unfair to you as a white man and it’s not inflammatory or low status among centrists and conservatives. Even non-woke liberals won’t really hate you for it, just quietly think you’re a bit of a chud. This was not the case in 2015. 

And this is partially correct, I agree there was some norm shift. But that is because in ~2010 there really weren't any quotas against white men, it wasn't a thing almost anywhere outside of university applications, so the complaint would make no sense. What happened was that starting in ~2012 a huge left cultural movement started that just openly supported active discrimination against whites, Asians and men. They were a small minority of course, and never had much power, but they got enough power in certain institutions like non-profits and universities that there was a string of just very obvious cases of clear racial discrimination against in particular whites & asians (both men and women, white women often got it very bad in this wave). And the large majority of people just saw that and went "uh yeah racism is still bad?" and so now you can say that because its actually relevant to say. From that lens, is this a successful cultural victory on the part of the alt-right? In some sense sure, but really its more a cultural failure of the hard left. The status quo just kept on chugging along.

Ugh that point went long, the others repeat so we will go through them quicker.

2: Elevate identity issues like anti-immigration and the promotion of traditional gender norms to the center of Republican politics. 

A fake enemy here - anti-immigration was already a huge issue for Republicans in the 2000's. It had a huge wave under Obama actually, it goes in cycles like that. And it responds to material conditions; it's a big issue again right now because the immigration numbers spiked massively under Biden, its just way worse of a problem now (primarily due to the booming economy of course). Again a partial victory for the first part, I agree its more salient due to Trump platforming it, but I'm skeptical that it is a big shift - people are memory-holing the Tea Party movement really badly here for example.

And the second point is just obviously false, Republicans always cared about that, and they care about it less now, giving up the ghost on gay marriage for example. The Alt-Right coincided with a decline of the influence of the Religious Right, and it shows on this issue, 0 points.

3: Make it socially acceptable to discuss HBD and the resulting moral implications for leveling mechanisms like affirmative action. 

Peak "log off" moment, it was always acceptable to discuss this outside of liberal/professional circles and there it still isn't acceptable to discuss it. Charles Murray wrote the Bell Curve in 1994 and his been an American Enterprise Institute Scholar for this entire span of time. This is confusing churn for change - the mid-2010's had a bunch of big, mainly online fights about HBD, and then everyone just sort of moved on with the status quo pretty much unchanged. Nothing like education policy, even in Republican circles, has shifted over this.

4: Convince conservatives to stop ceding moral authority to liberals and allowing them to determine who on the Right is verboten or beyond the pale. Make it unacceptable among conservatives to “punch Right” or purge people for wrongthink. 

Sigh, again when have Republicans ever ceded moral authority to liberals? Harvard University could not condemn Newt Gingrich in ~2009 and make him change his mind about anything. And "Republicans don't self-criticize while Liberals eat themselves alive" has been a complaint for literally decades, you would hear that as far back as say Clinton and things like the 1999 WTO protests. Its both true and exaggerated - the Tea Party primaried Republican candidates for wrongthink in 2010, and Trump did the same thing! With disastrous results for the Republicans in 2022. I really, really don't think you can look at Trump's Republican party and say they solved the Wrongthink problem.

5: Expose and dismantle the hypocritical attitude that allows neocons to militantly support Israeli ethnonationalism while brutally repressing any white identity politics domestically.

This one is just a lolwut moment, "brutally repressing any white identity politics domestically", like what does that even mean? Name the concrete policy proposals George Bush implemented in 2007 than Donald Trump didn't in 2018 around this topic. Again a fake enemy, they were never repressed by the right, and ofc are still hated by liberal institutions like universities.

Moving on from any specific point, I think its very telling that very little about free trade vs protectionism or isolationism/support of autocracy abroad enters this list. Because beyond immigration those are the big shifts the Trump movement (which is the mechanism the alt-right has to claim for making its impact) has ushered into the party. They didn't change its stance on sexual politics or "race & IQ" or anything, those haven't changed, but meanwhile the party has completely flipped on things like tariffs or opposition to Russian military expansion. But of course those don't align neatly at all with the issues the Alt-Right fought about in 2015.

The reality the Alt-Right can't escape is that they used Trump as their mechanism for change, and Trump never really cared about any of their goals beyond immigration. He used them and then pursued either bog-standard Republican policy or his own mercurial, autocratic whims, eventually channeling all of this energy into election denialism. I really don't think if you pulled aside frikkin Ryan Faulk in 2014, asked him to put down his graphs about Raven's Progressive Matrices of black Caribbean students, and said "Hey 10 years from now all of this energy is being channeled into pretending that a failed real estate mogul didn't lose the 2020 presidential election", that he would look at that outcome and think Mission Accomplished.

I don't want to fully oversell, there are for example wins Bismark doesn't mention (School choice comes to mind, the biggest conservative win of the past decade besides the protectionist swing). The Alt Right was an influential movement, it earned its place in history. But I do not think it is an example of being a "victim of its own success". I think instead it should be understood as part of the "radical froth" of the 2010's, that bubbled over and then evaporated like its more intense leftwing peers did. It made some mark and then got left in the dust.

Net ranking of the 5 points: 0.5 for Point 1, 0.25 for Point 2, 0 for the rest, 1.25/5.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Matt Bors’s “Justice Warriors: Vote Harder”

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

There's no political satirist working today quite like Matt "Mr Gotcha" Bors, whose 2023 masterpiece Justice Warriors just got a timely – and brutally funny – sequel, Justice Warriors: Vote Harder:

https://www.mattbors.com/store/p/justice-warriors-ffzgn

You've doubtless seen Matt Bors's work, which has repeatedly attained viral liftoff, most notably with his Mr Gotcha strips, easily one of the most useful additions to online political debate in internet history:

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Last year, Bors, along with Ben Clarkson and Felipe Sobreiro, published Justice Warriors, a postapocalyptic cyberpunk graphic novel in the vein of Warren Ellis's classic Transmetropolitan:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/22/libras-assemble/#the-uz

Justice Warriors is the tale of Bubble City, a domed enclave walled off from the teeming masses of the UZ (which stands for "Uninhabited Zone" – see what they did there?). Bubble City runs on vibes, therapy-speak, social media nonsense, memes and garbage hot-takes. And while there's a lot of broad satire here, the thing that makes Justice Warriors stand out is how its creators do the relatively straightforward futuristic exercise of asking themselves, "What if deeply unserious nonsense was taken seriously?"

Others have done this before – Mike Judge's Idiocracy, say – but Bors, Clarkson and Sobreiro attain a density of sight gags, trenchant wordplay, and outrageous cyberpunk imagery that is just next level. Think Al Jaffee meets William Gibson, with art direction by Vaughn Bode, who's had one too many at the Mos Eisley Cantina. To that, mix in all kinds of MAD Magazine style fake ads and social media postings, layering joke on gag, all of it walking the fine line between "you gotta cry" and "you gotta laugh."

Justice Warriors did big numbers, selling out three printings, and now the gang is back together for the sequel, Vote Harder, which drops just in time for the final, all consuming election-season media apocalypse.

Vote Harder sees Bubble City facing its first election in living memory, as the mayor – who inherited his position from his "powerful, strapping Papa" – loses a confidence vote by the city's trustees. They're upset with his plan to bankrupt the city in order to buy a laser powerful enough to carve his likeness into the sun as a viral stunt for the launch of his comeback album. The trustees are in no way mollified by the fact that he expects to make a lot of money selling special branded sunglasses that allow Bubble City (and the mutant hordes of the Uninhabited Zone) to safely look into the sun and see what their tax dollars bought.

So it's time for an election, and the two candidates are going hard: there's the incumbent Mayor Prince; there's his half-sister and ex-girlfriend, Stufina Vipix XII, and there's a dark-horse candidate Flauf Tanko, a mutant-tank cyborg that went rogue after a militant Home Owners Association disabled it and its owners abandoned it. Flauf-Tanko is determined to give the masses of the Uninhabited Zone the representation they've been denied for so long, despite the structural impediments to this (UZers need to complete a questionnaire, sub-forms, have three forms of ID, and present a rental contract, drivers license, work permit and breeding license. They also need to get their paperwork signed in person at a VERI-VOTE location, then wait 14 days to get their voter IDs by mail. Also, districts of 2 million or more mutants are allocated the equivalent of only 250,000 votes, but only if 51% of eligible voters show up to the polls; otherwise, their votes are parceled out to other candidates per the terms of the Undervoting and Apathy Allotment Act).

Despite the structural advantages afforded to Mayor Prince – like the fact that residents of District 12 on floors 120-145 of the Bubble each get 2048 votes, while District 1 (floors 1-7) only get a single vote – he's not taking any chances. Officer Schitt (a humanoid poop emoji) and the lovelorn Officer Swamp (an anthropomorphic catfish) are each prowling the Uz . Swamp – suffering from a head injury and gripped by a delusion that a TV cowboy has sent him to infiltrate the Flauf Tanko campaign – is playing spy/provocateur, while Schitt hunts dangerous subversives.

What unfolds is a funny, bitter, superb piece of political satire that could not be better timed.

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/11/uninhabited-zone/#eremption-season

[greypistacchio]

Interrupting my stream of memes to say that I'm. Genuinely sad about Dracula Daily coming to an end.

It's been quite a journey, from the first days at the beginning of May in which everyone was teeheeing at Jonathan's silly little emails from the Count's castle, to the intense, mysterious updates aboard the Demeter. From the first moments of meeting Lucy and her polycule, to the laborious plans to drive the Count out of London. From the joking about how the Count is kinda funny, to the collective agreement that the Grindr fucker must be eliminated.

This was my favourite thing of the year, and I'm gonna miss it so much. Next year, it might not be as big of an event. I already miss visiting the tag to see new memes, analyses, and art. I miss getting updates, even if there's still one left. I miss us making it trend to the point that actual newspapers wrote about it. I miss the first memes from people who didn't even know that we were reading Dracula, and thought that we'd chosen Jonathan Harker as our little meow meow du jour for no reason.

There will be the re:Dracula podcast, and Matt will launch a paperback version of Dracula Daily in 2023, so it's not like we'll be left empty-handed. But.

I just miss it so much already, and I'm so thankful that this was an experience we got to collectively share.

[coimbrabertone]

Le Mans vs. Daytona, Two Sides of the Endurance Racing Coin.

A bit of a belated blog on the 2024 24 Hours of Le Mans, how it compares to the other major 24-hour race - the Rolex 24 at Daytona - and how IMSA and WEC differ.

First things first, sports car racing in general is at a peak right now.

The largest prototype fields in decades, interclass competition of sorts with LMDh/GTP cars on one end and Hypercars on the other, and equally diverse GT3 fields to go with it. It's not a competition between IMSA and WEC as far as I'm concerned, both series collaborated on these regulations and that has benefitted endurance racing as a whole.

That being said, I've noticed some differences between the two, and I've had some discussions with friends about it lately.

The crux is this: the Rolex 24 at Daytona is the curtain raiser for the racing season, where drivers from every discipline from Formula One to NASCAR to half the Indycar field, plus all the regular cast of characters from endurance racing come to play. It's all within the confines of a 2.5-mile oval with big grandstands and clear sightlines, and the lights are all over the track, meaning you can see all the action pretty well. It's also in Daytona Beach a few weeks ahead of the Daytona 500.

Daytona is a party, a celebration of motorsport to kick off the next season of racing.

Le Mans, meanwhile, is a beacon of history. The start-finish line is where it has always been, the Dunlop Bridge has outlasted Dunlop itself making racing tyres, and it's an old school reminder to when those types of circular bridges were all over racing. Then onto the Mulsanne, the long, dark highway, with bits of civilization interspersed with woods, a theme with continues in the back half of the track. Some corners are named after historic tracks, like Indianapolis, others are named after the marques which defined era of Le Mans history - Corvette, Porsche, and Ford in particular.

Corvette, which has dominated GT racing at Le Mans for decades now.

Porsche, which is the most successful brand at Le Mans, and

Ford, who went back-to-back-to-back-to-back in the late 60s with the GT40, and then returned with the GT1 and GTE models in more recent decades.

That dedication to history shows in the broadcast too, with the broadcast often cutting to Tom Kristensen for interviews or by harkening back to similar events in Le Mans' past. Obviously, that's something that comes up in all racing broadcasts, but it was very apparent at Le Mans this year.

For the record, I'm not saying that's bad, this blog is proof that I'm a massive nerd when it comes to racing history, and I love that, I'm just noting it's a difference.

The crowd burning a couch in celebration after the 12 Hours of Sebring? Fans celebrating the misadventures of the Sean Creech Motorsports American flag Ligier LMP2 with its many cautions at Daytona and now Watkins Glen? You don't really see that at Le Mans.

In fact, there was one very fun thing from the 2023 Le Mans that was missing this year: the Garage 56 NASCAR. Now, i understand that was a one-off thing, and I do get the impression that the hydrogen car they showed off before the race - which was numbered #24, just like the NASCAR had been - was supposed to be a G56 entry for this year but they couldn't quite get it working yet, so I know that it's a bit of an unfair criticism to levy against Le Mans.

Still, 2023 had the big Camaro memes, the V8 sound, all those Freebird on the Mulsanne edits, it made Le Mans more fun.

And of course, Le Mans is fun even without those things - ferris wheels, fireworks, and, you know, the whole twenty-four hours of motor racing thing - all make for appointment television for racing nerds like me, but it is something I've noticed coming out of the 2024 race.

So does Le Mans need to change? No, i don't think so.

I like seeing cars coming down the Mulsanne, I like seeing the Ferrari hypercar racing against Toyota in addition to all the cars that do both IMSA and WEC, I like the announcers getting increasingly delirious as it gets into the night stint, and I like the fact that Valentino Rossi is now a BMW GT3 driver who competed at Le Mans.

The Rolex 24 at Daytona is probably more fun that Le Mans and its position on the calendar probably lets it get a handful of one-off drivers that may not be able to do Le Mans, but Le Mans also attracts plenty of unique talent as well. Ferrari doesn't do IMSA, nor does Toyota, nor does Valentino Rossi.

Would I like them to? Absolutely.

Am I fine with just having two different, successful endurance racing series on either side of the Atlantic? Absolutely. It's like the modern version of CART vs. Formula One as far as I'm concerned, only this time, I'm in a position to enjoy it.

So yeah, there are some things I prefer about IMSA, but there's plenty I love about Le Mans as well.

Hell, the fact that after the sister Ferrari won last year, we got to see the #50 Ferrari of Nicklas Nielsen, Miguel Molina, and Antonio Fuoco win. Both cars have now won Le Mans, and this means that last year's Antonio Giovinazzi, and this year's Antonio Fuoco - two drivers I've followed since the mid-to-late 2010s when they were actively in the open wheel junior series - are both Le Mans winners.

That's cool. I love the fact that drivers can fulfill their dream of winning for Ferrari, not just in Formula One, but now at Le Mans too. It's a great time to see, and between this and Indycar, I'm developing a lot of hope for talented junior drivers without F1 prospects.

Hell, on that very note, Felipe Drugovich raced at Le Mans for Action Express Cadillac this year, which seems to be his first time back in a major racing series since his F2 title campaign. Glad to see him back behind the wheel, just wish it went better for him.

Anyway, this last weekend of racing was a bit of a dud for me and I find myself busy yet again, so I'll leave the blogpost here, but do let you know what you think!

[iodrawsandtalks]

A long-ass testimonial as a player of Honkai: Star Rail. please read if you have the time. I wish all honkai content creators would bear to understand this

goin through exhaustion rn but thats just normal and not something id complain about. Anyways when this game released in summer 2023, I was just as hyped as everybody else. I had started playing since the last closed beta where I had gotten bailu and mained qingque cuz she felt so real for being lazy on the job plus i LOVED playing hard and winning big.

I had a fun time later when the game ACTUALLY did release though I had to say goodbye to my bailu who I replaced with Clara and mained Seele who I knew from playing Honkai Impact for quite a while. I felt like i fit in with every other HI3/HSR player, running high spd seele with bronya and taking my silver wolf to every Simulated Universe fight, and laughing about getting rolled by the blue gorilla that hates when people use skills. I laughed at the launch memes everyone else was laughing at and usually was the first person to beat new bosses fights and stories when they came out.

I've realized that just because you think you fit in with people, doesn't mean they'll act like you do fit. They watch you trip, and struggle, and when the thing you like starts slinging venom at you, they let you fall. They laugh when you get hurt and protect what hurt you. Now when I started this game, as a black guy I was aware dumb, racist things were gonna pop up, as we know with genshin impact with the whole ass glass bottle floating around calling desert explorers/fighters "sand-lickers", and Honkai Impact's one black character being one who hates her dark skin and bleaches it consistently with makeup. She's also the only character to never get special outfit effects. Naturally, I did not bat an eye at the dark skin lightning guy having the SHACKLE BREAKER and SWIFT HARVEST SKILLS.

as we may know im a lore guy who thinks a lot. there is no "character reference" or wordplay that holds up here. This is dumb associations made to dark skinned individuals for doing slave work(harvesting.) and being held in chains(shackle). Anyways somehow even though this eluded me, I found it odd that the one dark skinned character in the roster was the bad one. People would make all kinds of excuses but never show anything concrete. Arlan himself is lacking the skill point mechanic which literally bars him from an entire simulated universe path. see my notes on him here . Point is this got worse as time went on, to a point where this fan that was still crazy hyped after the Xianzhou arc hype was watching every promotional video for the next region. Penacony, and got hit with the revelation that their next region was going to be based on the Jazz Age. Jazz is known throughout the world as one of the most widely celebrated creations of black people for the rest of the world, and the soul of Jazz, Funk, Pop, and many other types of music rest in black history, black stories, and black emotions. I'd rather not revisit the complete amalgation of this soul that is that dumb fucking region with the slave master and the incel-heaven slur slinger invading the quantum meta, but I should still add that the story is an incredibly half-assed take at introducing evil concepts like slavery and trying to add nuance to them. I played through so many routes where there was some implication of slavery benefitting a future society, and there was this one awful point i had to check out at where the player uses CLOCKWORK TO FIX THE MIND OF A DISCONTENT FREED SLAVE SO THEY SEEK THEIR MASTER AGAIN. There is no "makes sense in context" or "theres lore behind this" because that should be taken at face value. Their disgusting apparition of the Jazz Age should not be justified and glorified the way it is today. I believe in protecting the history of those who paved the way for me and I also would like to believe that I shouldn't have to fight to not deal with mockery within games or shows I enjoy. This whole experience I've had has tainted this game for me. I was listening through my fighting game playlist earlier and WHITE NIGHT came on. The first time I had heard it I thought it was amazing and wanted to make a cover of it and enter the 2024 fan art contest. But when I heard it for the most recent time, I wanted to vomit. This 'fun party' song was empty and felt like it was slinging lies of joy and entropy in my face. I couldn't celebrate the media that glorified excusing my people from society. And I really don't get WHY everyone else does. As somebody whose played a lot of mainstream games I've seen a crowd that acts woke to social issues and seemed to stand up in the face of injustice. I don't KNOW any internet culture so i thought activist = good person. recently ive seen and interacted with a lot of "activists" that were willing to watch this billion dollar company perpetuate racism, stereotypes and appropriation. This is usually because the company had given them a "complex" png with "emotions" that was "coded" to be made for them. and their character's emotions outrank real people's emotions in their interactions. these activists were more likely to listen to the billion dollar company's machinations of a white girl fairy princess or whatever their latest obsession was, than real people.

its been tiring and its been sickening. excuse me for being too real for a second but I AM SICK AND TIRED OF MENTALLY ILL WHITE PEOPLE ONLINE TELLING ME RACISM IS A CHARACTER TRAIT OR SOMETHING THAT CAN BE DONE RIGHT, OR SOMETHING THAT SPICES UP A NARRATIVE. SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP. what if we had characters that were abusers, huh? or pedophiles? and what if those characters never had to deal with consequences of their actions? and what if everybody was worshipping the writing team making these hero abusers, and hero pedophiles? would it suddenly make sense then?

can people stop hyping this awful shit up? Pick up a different game or something. stain their brand. Have an audience for your star rail content? can you draw like trees or something,..... instead? this is not a good game and it does not do good things. The developers are incels with a large cult following. They are not good people, they say the right things. stop feeding them. do something else. pick something else up. play something else. I know people may find their games and content dear to yall but if racism is worse to you than losing a game, boycott these rich, selfish snakes.

[marimayscarlett]

I wasn't tagged, but I remember that some years ago, something similar went around on Tumblr - and since this year comes to a close, I thought it would be fitting 😌 So welcome to the

Big mood 2023

Rules: Create a mood board for your 2023, using 9 pictures to reflect on the year. You don't have to elaborate or use any personal pictures (you can if you want) - you can create your board using pictures of your blorbos/screen caps/memes/aesthetics/etc. to show your vibes, thoughts, memories and moods throughout the year.

This year sure was... something. Hoping that the next one will be half as stressful (or even less) and will contain double the fun to make up for this one 🤞

No pressure tags for my lovely mutuals @wizzardclown @gothtoast @dandysnob @ms-nerd @gloomy-blonde @m---e---l @meinewellemeinstrand @samshinechester @morgana-lefay @keingesprach-allebeissen @musically--declined @vulnerant-omnes @namelessrammgirl @buuucky-barnes

[starsandhughes]

Penalty Box— Trevor Zegras (Part Five)

SERIES MASTERLIST

previous: four

next: six

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2023

PREGAME

yourusername

liked by anaheimducks, trevorzegras, and 7,486 others

yourusername welcome to my pregame penalty box update! the star of my show and world— trevor zegras— is currently at 2 games without a penalty! on february 20th, when he reached one game, he said “i’ll make it to three out of spite” to none other than quinn hughes. let’s see if he can do it! (ps good luck huggy and jacky boy!) #FlyTogether

tagged trevorzegras, and anaheimducks

view all 562 comments

trevorzegras oh i’ll do it

_quinnhughes bold claim from someone only at 2 straight games

yourusername @_quinnhughes you just want the win the bet huggy!! you got this z-baby!!

_quinnhughes thank you for the good luck y/n/n💙

trevorzegras get that blue heart out of here this is a ducks post

_quinnhughes @/trevorzegras she wished us good luck!

jackhughes❤️🖤❤️

_quinnhughes💙💚💙

yourusername sometimes i question if i actually love you guys (you’re welcome quinner)

user1 me and my friends also started a bet! i’m betting on you Z!!

jackhughes @/trevorzegras i’m rooting for you, z!! and thanks for the good luck y/n/n <3

jamie.drysdale your bet says otherwise

trevorzegras is anybody but y/n betting on me?

lhughes_06 @/trevorzegras i am don’t worry

yourusername ignoring their shenanigans- you’re welcome jacky boy <3

user2 i might love y/n’s posts more than the actual game

anaheimducks he can do it! #FlyTogether

jamie.drysdale betting on our baby boy!

yourusername big night for him!!

trevorzegras 🙄

POSTGAME

yourusername

liked by trevorzegras, _quinnhughes, and 7,924 others

yourusername BREAKING NEWS (brought to you by a very drunk y/n): my boyfriend TREVOR “Z” ZEGRAS has made it to 3 GAMES WITHOUT A PENALTY!!! he has spited quinn “huggy bear” hughes!! AND the ducks won 4-2!! AND there were 2 fights!! what a game!!

bet winners: me👸, jimmy6️⃣, and lukey moosey〽️!

bet losers: huggy🧸, jacky boy😈, and alex👑

(last photo is of quinn obviously crying because he got spited obviously)

tagged trevorzegras and anaheimducks

view all 368 comments

trevorzegras HELL YEAH

yourusername scrapbook moment! i love you, always, and am so proud of you!!!

trevorzegras i love you, forever

_quinnhughes how do you dislike a post

yourusername you’re just mad because you’re out $150

trevorzegras @_quinnhughes you bet $50 i’d lose?!

_quinnhughes @/trevorzegras maybe

user1 i won my bet, too!!

jackhughes i vote me and quinny get our money back because we won tonight

_quinnhughes i agree

trevorzegras @/jackhughes @_quinnhughes we won too?

yourusername @/jackhughes @_quinnhughes that wasn’t in the bet contract you signed! sorry, hughesy boys

user2 WOOO GO Z!!

anaheimducks he’s making us all proud!

jamie.drysdale that’s our boy!!

yourusername they grow up so fast🥹

trevorzegras this is my least favorite joke

yourusername @/trevorzegras in other news, i’m no longer splitting the money with you

user3 a ducks win AND trevor’s at 3 games without a penalty??? manifesting does work

user4 lmao hughes nation rise all three brothers won something tonight

lhughes_06 congrats z!

trevorzegras thanks moose! this is why you’re my favorite hughes

yourusername me🤝luke

yourusername betting on Z

lhughes_06 @/yourusername did you just comment twice for the meme

trevorzegras @/lhughes_06 it’s cute shut up i loved it and you did, too

lhughes_06 @/yourusername i loved it and he did, too

user5 i love how unhinged y/n’s comment section is

_alexturcotte proud but heartbroken

yourusername now playing “get over it” by the eagles

trevorzegras my girlfriend everybody^^🫶👏

[thenightpool]

rinharu wrapped 2023

We almost can't believe it's already time to bring out the kadomatsu again! 2023 just raced by, didn't it…?! Let's take a moment to look back on everything Rin & Haru (and their fans!) have achieved this year.

🌸 Archive of Our Own

The Matsuoka Rin/Nanase Haruka tag on AO3 now holds 3,674 works!

That means 173 new fics were posted this year. (There might've been more than that, but it's hard to keep track of creators privatising their older fics!)

And the Night Pool's AO3 collection is up to 90 works!

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🌸 The Night Pool

Here at TNP, we revived @sakurathon, a cherry blossom-centric event! This year, the event received 40 works by 19 lovely participants.

Since it was such a big success, we're bringing the event back on April 27th & 28th 2024.

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We also held the aquatic-themed Unleashed Blue, during which 20 participants created 51 (!!) otherworldly works for us.

With permission of the creators, we lovingly collected them in a 400+ page commemorative zine. You can download it on linktree

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Writers filled an impressive 35 prompts during our prompt meme Make a Splash! that we held in honor of Haru's birthday.

Read the fills on AO3

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Rin & Haru's Big Warm-Up, our monthly prompt event, received 16 new works on AO3 across the year & more on socials.

Check out our collection on AO3

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We also kicked off rinharu fandom's very first bang: MEDLEY!, a mini + reverse hybrid bang that will start posting in March!

(Psst. Sign ups are still open for a few roles!)

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We held 3 training camps – super fun writing retreat weekends – over on our Discord. We have 4 more retreats planned for 2024!

If you'd like to join us for the next one(s), here's the info

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We posted 33 new fanart translations!

Here's the link to our masterlist

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And finally, The Night Pool beat out Harurinralia to win our Ultimate Rinharu Moments Tournament that we held back in April on both Twitter and Tumblr!

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🌸 Other Fandom Events

It's been a busy year!

In July, @starstarfairy hosted Wave Of Memory (@rinharumemories) to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Free! The event ran in two wave on tumblr and Twitter and combined polls, fan memories, and all types of fanworks.

@sweetheavenfics helped us run the RH-friendly @soumako-week in September!

@ryu-outsider hosted the month-long daily prompt event Free!cember here on Tumblr. It welcomed the entire fandom. The event was promoted by eleanorenchanted and run via hashtag.

And @rinharuweek ran for a full 10 days this year in celebration of the show's anniversary! They are just wrapping up.

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🌸 Official News

Free! turned 10 in 2023. Omedetou gozaimasu!

Free! The Final Stroke Part 2 broke all of the series' previous records in the box office, bringing in over 1 billion yen

It also finally made it to Crunchyroll.com for the US & select others

Miyano Mamoru & Shimazaki Nobunaga fed us (+ fanartists' inspiration) well by shouting "HARU!!" and "RIIIN!!" at each other before hugging passionately during the 10th anniversary event at the Saitama Super Arena

We got tons of amazing new art; including a cover illustration for Free! The Band Live's Ever Blue performance in Yokohama, Animedia's July W-cover, Sweets Paradise's promotional art, and Kyoani's 10th anniversary event's illustration

Rin's ripped jeans (+ THE ANKLETS) in the Matsukiyo & Cocokara's Top Of Summer collaboration launched a thousand fanworks

Matsuoka-senshu, Nanase-senshu, Kirishima-senshu & Yamazaki-senshu represented Mizuno at the World Swimming Championships in Fukuoka

Spoon2Di recently restocked volume 78 & 85 on their webshop, and Akiba Pass Shop opened pre-orders for some gorgeous tapestries featuring said art

Karatz, Bikkuriman Choco, Iwami & DECOL all bumped Rin up to 2nd place in character listings (where he belongs!!)

Last but not least, KyoaniShop bankrupted us all by releasing amazing new merchandise (and also did not try to hide that Rin is the Free! series' 2nd protagonist, either…)

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Thank you so much for being here with us in 2023. We hope it has been a wonderful & creative year for you. Here's wishing you an even more rinharu-filled 2024!

[nopointic]

i really do laugh seeing blue lives matter stickers on cars next to a harry potter symbol like it's peak white™️millennial in the south. snarky disney meme about baby yoda being in board? check! american flag with a blue stripe? check! deathly hallows symbol or a quote saying lumos! check! congrats you're just as racist and homophobic as your mee maw and paw paw! the bitch apples don't fall far from the tree after all!

"the younger generations will end racism/homophobia/etc!" you motherfuckers can't even let a fucking book series go when the author straight up hates transgender people in the open. but you're the vote everyone worries about every single election??? 😂😂😂😂😂 y'all swear UP and DOWN you're NOT LIKE THEM OTHER WHITE PEOPLE™️ but you are!

boo hoo that was my childhood! hello!!! it was a whole lot of our childhoods and yet here we are in 2023 with millions of people saying hey! continuing to support this woman hurts so many groups of minorities cut that shit out! and i swear y'all buy another legacy game or hardback book with a new cover saying it's not a big deal cos you're sad and it cheers you up etc etc etc

then have the nerve to reblog posts about police brutality and acts of violence against trans and asian and black people saying you're spreading the word to be better.

but you're not. it's empty reblogs empty gestures and i'm fucking tired.

fuck you if you still support harry potter or anything with it in 2023

fuck you. "oh it's my childhood" tired asses.

trans kids don't make it outta teen hood most of the time due to suicide.

black and asian kids are beat the fuck up and killed by police for just being none white. hate crimes are up so bad. and then i go out and i see tons of harry potter shit like it's the fucking 90s. harry potter and friends. and y'all saying everyone is hurting entertainment now with "forced diversity"

y'all are not slick. you're fucking racist through and through. so many of y'all think because you don't actively say slurs or hang nooses or burn rainbow flags that you're not like the other homophobic racist people. but you are like them.

you're fucking pathetic on several levels and basic at that.

you continue to choose a book series over actual lives. you're beyond fucking disgusting.

and shout out to the fuckers who "love" kpop but tell their fav korean artist to speak english. i really do wish the devil would call all you sorry ass bitches back to hell where you belong. fuck you.

oh and the anti semitism that jumps out all the fucking time??? you think i don't continue to see this??!!!! Y'ALL ARE SO FUCKING TRASHY LIKE I FUCKING HATE YOU!!!!!

Y'ALL REALLY ARE FUCKING NAZIS IN THE OPEN AND IT'S THE WILDEST FUCKING SHIT LIKE IT IS 2023 AND YOU'RE BUYING THAT TERF SHIT IN A FUCKING ECONOMICAL CRISIS????? MAKE IT MAKE SENSE YOU ABSOLUTE CUNTS!!!!

FUCK! HARRY! POTTER!!

🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾🖕🏾

[thekilda]

London PodFest 2023!

We had a great time watching other people's shows and catching up with lovely Kilda folk, so here's a big ol' post about the day!

I arrived late and missed the morning shows, but was reliably informed that they were fantastic! Alas, two of our most social-media-averse boys spent the morning together, so we have no pics.

But! Pre-afternoon-shows, here is our most beloved island elder who toootally has a medical degree, and actual legend Kirsty who just found out this weekend young Amy was like 6, lol.

Spent some time lovingly bullying the We Fix Space Junk crew by making memes (Bin Juice is the name of Michael's cat)

Gave someone a delicious frozen beverage that kind of exploded, and Kirsty very kindly provided this extremely legible sign.

Watch the Realms of Peril and Glory live show, which was incredible! So proud of Naomi, who killed it as always.

No We Fix Space Junk pics, a travesty! But they were spectacular, as were Amelia and Greater Boston!

Michelle!!!

And super fun, super funny, very meta Kane and Feels live show to wrap up the day!

Kilda group photo!!!

We lost Rhys to The Grind before the evening shows, rip.

Assorted Scottish people who found themselves in London.

Aaaand finally one giant group photo!

Thank you everyone for a fab day! Hope to see you all next year!

[allthemidnightmemories]

I have so many thoughts and feelings about Josh/Annaleigh leaving Sweeney today, so I’m going to do my best to get them all down without becoming a ball of emotions (which is too late bc I watched their closing speeches 😭)

I’ve been a big fan of Josh since late 2020—though I was always aware of who he was, the pandemic was a chaotic time where his music really spoke to me and helped me through a lot of wild times, and I’ve been such a fan of the passion and care he puts into his artistry.

fast forward to late 2022 and he announces he’ll be starring in Sweeney, and I KNEW I would do whatever it took to get there. after a couple of failed attempts trying to plan the trip with others, my mom finally agreed to go with me.

I couldn’t have known then that March 2023, right before we were set to go, was going to be one of the worst months in my life for a long while. between late night bad news phone calls, family emergencies, hospital visits, and funerals, it was a season filled with anxiety and dread about what would go wrong next. it sounds silly now, but it was almost as if I was scared to even go on the trip because it was just one more thing that would go wrong, one more plan that would fall through where I’d have to chin up and tell myself it didn’t really matter to me, even though it did.

and then, none of my worst fears happened. and for a brief 3 hours seeing Sweeney Todd on stage, everything was pure magic.

it’s silly that a musical about vengeance and murder and bloodshed would be the thing to bring light into my life during such a rough period, but it did. I remember the house lights coming up at intermission after Priest and turning to my mom and saying “I’m so happy right now.”

You could tell the absolute passion these two put into these iconic roles, the way they poured everything into making what could be single-note villains into characters that, at their core, are desperately, relatably human, which is where the real tragedy and horror of Sweeney lies. Josh made Sweeney broken, human, full of tension and the push and pull of good and evil, while Annaleigh created a wacky, zany version of a Lovett who truly just wanted to be loved by the one she loved, and would do anything to get that love.

aside from the show experience itself, this revival reignited this blog and connected me with so many people who have united around this incredible show. from the silly memes to the heartbreaking analysis, it’s been SO much fun to dive deeper into this show with everyone, and I can’t wait to keep doing that.

anyways. I know this isn’t the end of the show and that we’ll hopefully have many exciting future iterations of Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett in this current revival. But today marks the end of an era I’m eternally grateful for, and it all began with these two incredible performers who made such an impact on me during such a chaotic time in my life.

happy trails, Josh and Annaleigh 🔪🥧💈