#spesh answers

[herecomesaspecialghoul]

Your name is Phil? I thought it was Special? -@bornagainfromwaves

"Aah, technically, neither is my name. We ghouls- er, my sort of ghouls, anyhow- we are very much always and eternally nameless. Makes it easier to summon us, order us around... "Special" became my nickname shortly after I emerged. The Imperator herself called me "a special one" on account of my fucked up voice. An' then decades later I did a little interview video an' the host fella expressed discomfort at my nameless nature so he gives me this sticker that says "Hello, my name is Phil," and the fans decided I should be called Phil sometimes."

"... To simplify it, uhhh, I have no true name, only two nicknames that peoples mistake for true names. Eheheeheheheh. I'll answer to 'em, of course, since I know that the fans call me such names."

[pinkiepiebones]

Do the ghouls have favorite colors?

"We do, but they haven't got human names. We can perceive, ehhhh, 'auras' or 'midichlorians' or whatever you wanna call it. Some of this, these things that are of such a 'oh, how bland, we are all the same' nature to us ghouls are, as I have perhaps said before, hard to quantify in, y'know, speaking words.

"This all being said, I am more than happy to tell you about my band siblings's favourites, if you're so inclined to be listening!

"Mostly, collectively, their favourite colour is the light that comes off of all y'all at the shows. Ehhhhhh... closet visible to humans approximation I can say is, it's like glitter, but alive, and quite vivid, but not painfully bright. A dazzling, pulsing colour! We ghouls cannot, ehh, create it. We only see it in you. So, good job! You're quite lovely.

"Individually, they of course have differing answers. My mountainous drummer sibling, for instance, is quite fond of the colour of a garden just before the leaves breach the surface and breathe in air. I suppose you could call it the colour of anticipation, eheheheehehe... My watery bassist sibling enjoys the colour of the earth just after an overdue rain. The tall lioness enjoys the colour of remembering a joyous moment- I like that one too, it's kinda this, ehehehe, wiggly glowing in the dark thing. The small lioness likes most the colour of snowfall- not the landed stuff so much, but as it falls, there's a woven sort of, ehhh, dance of colours.... Little Sunshine, perhaps most relatably to you all, says the best colour is the one that comes from music. I say that's cheating since music is nearly infinitely colourful, but I guess "every colour" can be favourite, eheheehh. My big strong Aether sibling loves banana yellow. Kidding!! It is actually most a fan of the colours that shadows leave behind- a brief colour, beyond that of shadow itself. Swiss likes the bubbling, poppy colour that electronics give off. And the ghoul some of y'all call 'Dew' or 'Sodo'... neon red, it says. Huh. I ask, "is this a trick? Are you forgetting the colour of thermal updrafts or abandoned houses or graveyards or sunsets or fossils?" No, Sodo says, I just like neon red. So. I still think it's a trick or a joke, but what do I know? Ehehehehehhh."

"My favourite colour is Copi- Papa's eyes. Errr, the right eye. If I cannot choose from that which brings me lovesickness, then I'll choose the colour of a vinyl record when the needle first touches down on the grooves. Ah! A crackling, stirring from slumber sort of shade!! Eheheehehheh.

"I wish very much y'all could someday see the colours we can see. Maybe a hair dye company will get on it first. Some of y'all have really cool hair colours. Ooh, and tattoos! Those two peoples types, maybe they'll concoct something I can look at and say "oh shit, they bottled the colour my boyfriend turns when he is dreaming!" Or, y'know, whatever."

[musashi]

Omg a pfp change

people keep trying to talk to me about pokemon even tho it hasn't been my special interest for like 3 years

[sanguine-salvation]

🕯️ for @herecomesaspecialghoul ((I know they've only interacted like twice but still... Spesh is curious))

[ send me 🕯️to hear my character's inner thoughts about your character. - ACCEPTING ]

Strange thing. He's clearly lying by omission at least, yes, but... he's... so... normal. Hm. He's very not normal but painfully normal at the same time? How...

[1892]

What do you think of 38 Spesh?

generally i have a good impression. i've only heard features other than the conway collab album from this year which i thought was okay (good on 38 spesh's end) but i think conway sounds fucking bored these days and if his next project isn't legit and good i will have to admit...he s falling off. 38 spesh was very good on that tho. these three r my favs

and i absolutely love this feature.

ya....so um how do i answer this question. i think Good

[big-parma]

The Absolute State of Maths Education rn

Yo so the bigwigs at VCAA (the guys who write the curriculum for all education in Victoria, Australia) have been coming out with new study designs for almost all VCE classes that’ll be implemented at different points over the next 3 years. The VCE is considered relatively prestigious-ish in the sense there’s a fair few people in other countries who send their kids to Victoria to do it (Australia’s biggest export is education after all) so it’s a big deal when major changes happen to how important courses run. Context = understood.

So I’m a maths (…and science) teacher now and the major changes to the three maths streams since I graduated in 2012 can be summed up like this:

Spesh (the highest tier of maths, scales up the most out of any course except stuff like Latin) - Kinematics are less of a thing but they added in Proofs and hypothesis tests(?!) instead

Methods (still high scaling, but more like uni engineering maths instead of theoretical crazy hard stuff) - Stats removed, some more “calculus but if you can’t do calculus to that particular thing” included instead

Further Maths (General maths, scales down(?!) and is the “ya got a mortgage here’s a maths problem” class that a commerce degree at uni usually means by saying you need at least one maths background to get in) - the stats from methods is here now and they call it General Maths to stop the confusion with it and methods

and there’s also now a fourth tier of maths called foundation

I’m assuming foundation is the barebones “pay your bills with x income And do your taxes” class your relatives keep saying they should’ve been taught how to do in school

So that’s all the changes across a decade of education. When they announced “big changes are coming to the way things will work across VCE maths” I think I’m safe to say most of us took it as the usual reordering and in/out for content as described above. Since I’m a good boy (read “I wanted to put on a good front to make sure I got my contract extension” - I’m permanent now dw) I attended the online seminars (lmao webex) that they presented as information sessions on the changes.

First one was Spesh. No biggie, exactly what you’d expect, some stuff’s swapped again, hang on Pseudocode is in..? But that’s just any code that could do any maths?! And they’re mentioning that it’s in methods too??? The chat at this point’s asking a lot of questions, mostly “how can we know what’s examinable so we can actually teach this??” But thankfully they have an example that should satisfy you:

This is not even a half step above “hello world” and it’s in the hardest maths course? How hard does this get? What do they consider legit? Is there an example exam question that they have as a reference? How will they be able to write textbooks on this if that’s all they have?

No answer. Oh well methods is the next day maybe that will elaborate on it.

Methods opens with the same spiel on things, negligible changes imo on actual content… and he acknowledges some confusion from yesterday on Pseudocode! Has he got an answer? What’s the example this time…

Oh. And it’s definitely examinable and we might elaborate on that later but for now that’s all we got.

That was all 2022. Recently (2023) they did the same thing for “revisions” which was for FurtherGeneral Maths’ course (all of these are being phased in kinda since changing a year 12 course when year 11s are running on the old one makes no sense). Guess what showed up in the General Maths study design!

It’s ya boi 21st century life skills!

I’ll be honest, I was a little suss on this from the Meth/Spesh presentations but I think this confirms what I was thinking: this is some boomers pulling the “kids need to learn how to computer” card isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, kids do need to learn to computer, but lol as if they’ve got this as their only example to show off across all three variety of maths!

But wait, there’s more!

They’ve got a page about it now! Yay! There’s some more examples - harder ones now - but there’s still no actual information on how this topic can be presented on the actual end of year exams. What do i teach them? What constitutes legit Pseudocode vs nonsense pretend code? Is this basic computer science 101 or are the kids going to be presented with a max level spesh question through the lenses of a guy saying “yeah but make it code”

eh I’ll just teach them excel :)

[gifsbysimplysonia]

Feliz cumpleaños to my favorite lead singer who for some reason is still wearing the American Eagle Dip Dye flannel I bought him in 2018 🥰 that Rafaela threw to Diony who has always been SO kind to me and my friends when it came to a7x. What a run on sentence 😄 And after the cut is way more nonsensical but intensely personal rambling about this dude. You've been warned.

I been a fan of this dude for coming up on 18 years now- wtaf!!!! And for a very nice stretch of time, I was extremely blessed to see him after shows to talk for a minute or three (though to be honest, i was tongue tied most of the time and just 👀 lol).

At that time in my life, people I admired didn't treat me that great. I was constantly looked at or treated in a way that made me extremely self conscious; I was constantly the oldest fan at shows without kids and I've always been fat and not too attractive in the face. Then I'd be meeting musicians or wrestlers I was so excited to be supporting only to have them act like it was a chore to take a photo with me or keep a distance when doing so...only to hug and smile and be super enthused when moving onto the skinny pretty fans next in line. My self esteem was non existent.

Then I met this dude for the first time, on a sunny warm day in April 2006, Houston Texas. He waved me and my friend across the street, signed our stuff, was fine to take photos with us, and when it was my turn he put his arm around me without hesitation. That one tiny gesture that I'm betting he didn't think about at all meant so much to me. All he did was treat me like he treated everyone else (which I saw that night after the show as he was the only one from the band to come to the group of fans waiting around, and he signed all the things and took so many photos), and something in my heart shifted a bit. Spesh after I looked down and realized he was barefoot? Dude stood there for 4 or 5 minutes, in bare feet, on warm concrete as he signed stuff and took pics before he went onto his bus. Liiiiiiike....

After that, every run in was the same or better as his behavior remained consistently kind and respectful. For me and my friends, Shadows became a kind of unofficial mascot cuz if we didn't see any of his band mates after a show, we seemed to always see him. He always was attentive to whomever was speaking to him, and even when it was the same question for the one millionth time (when are you gonna scream again?!?! 🙄), he would patiently answer. Dude constantly made time for fans, and even in the more recent years when the band wasn't touring, he has demonstrated that he cares A LOT about fans and wants to try and give them the best experience possible (even if they fight him tooth and nail).

I haven't had the pleasure of seeing him face-to-face since April 2011 and to be an absolute brat for a moment 😫😫😫 But my 2 besties got to meet the band when their last album, The Stage, was released. I think October 2016 but, like, don't quote me cuz I'm the worst with dates if they aren't on my list, ha. There were meet n greets in NY and LA; @psycholunatics went to NY and @jillybean1217 went to LA and both had wonderful experiences. I'm always grateful when my besties are treated like the Queens that they are🙏🏼🙏🏼

Back in January 2018, my friend at the time Rafaela went with me to a show in Green Bay Wisconsin despite not being a fan of the band (forever grateful to her for helping me drive AND for being the one to use her magic to make stuff happen, as she did for me CONSTANTLY in life). Thanks to her, the American Eagle Dip Dye flannel I bought him - cuz his other ones at the time looked wrecked:

Got into the hands of their tour manager. And IMAGINE MY ELATION AND DISBELIEF when HE WORE IT THE NEXT DANG NIGHT?!?!? From my IG post at the time it happened:

I'm cringe and I know that. But, like, joy? Is so difficult to find so when I find it, I have a habit of clinging to it like a crab. Cuz it often seems to come out of nowhere, so randomly, and for SO LONG I believed myself to be a person who wasn't WORTHY of good things happening to them, or who was conditioned by how I was treated to think I wasn't WORTHY of basic respect. And honestly, this dude is just someone who has been SO consistently kind and things he had NO CLUE would mean anything to me (like wearing this shirt) would happen & hit me at times in life I really needed a pick-me-up or reminder that there is good in the world.

Since January 2018, my friends and I have spotted the flannel out in the world 13 times, with the 13th being JUST LAST WEEK at a show in Canada. I will forever be impressed with Shadows actually keeping and wearing stuff til he can't wear it anymore (that white Metallica tee? Who knows which one I mean? 😄) AND I will forever shake my head in disbelief anytime I see him wearing this American Eagle Dip Dye flannel cuz like....🥰

Here's wishing him the happiest of birthdays, sending him gratitude for the person that he is and the extreme generosity he's shown myself and my friends repeatedly, and hopes for him receiving all of the good he sends to so many other people 🙏🏼💜

Happy Birthday and thank you for everything, M Shadows 🎊🎉🎂🥳

[fierceawakening]

Yes to both "it can be hard to say what's appropriate to teach kids about sex" AND "kids should learn that their kinks are OK." Another reason to teach (without TMI) about kink: Many curious kids seek answers from porn, a poor teaching tool that's often purposely extreme (which with maledom tends to mean misogynistic degradation). Radfems want to solve "boys pressuring girls into anal/deepthroating/etc." by banning porn and kink, but I agree more with you that better education is the answer.

Yeah. The issue isn't "a boy learned from pictures that deep throating is cool and would like to feel that," the issue is "that boy is learning to judge people for not trying that with him, instead of feeling super spesh when his partner wants to try."

[nancydrewwouldnever]

To try and change the energy, THANK YOU! I'm also a fan the same age as CE and I don't really come across folks my own age too often, spesh here on Tumblr. And your blog, along with a few others, have become must Stops for me in my daily scrolling. Here I'm constantly learning about CE as well as being exposed to Old Hollywood or cool art. Nothing you do here is required, you aren't getting paid, yet you take the time to put together your super informative receipt posts for so many of us, as well as thoughtfully answer a lot of asks and I truly appreciate it. Sorry for the a-holes invading the inbox so I hope a message on the other end of the spectrum is a reminder that you're awesome 🙏🏼 Thank you again!

Well, thank you for your kind words, but you should probably know that according to my anons we are loser middle aged people who are lonely and unloved and have wasted our lives obsessing over another middle aged turd and we should just end our miserable existences.

Happy Thursday!

[eliotheeangelis]

Top five retro overalls ?

Omg YES thank you for this ask!! Ok so in no particular order:

1985 Lotus

Obviously all the JPS Lotus overalls were a ~lewk~ but the 1985 edition are my spesh faves - the black with yellow stripes (it had been cream stripes in previous years) looked so good ughhh (helps to have drivers who were certifiable qties too)

1978 Lotus

I absolutely love when overalls don't match you may notice a theme of this throughout my answer. Ronnie looks cute in yellow, Mario looks sparkly in white.

1993 Williams

Sonic? More like iconic please. I was torn between the 92 and 93 Williams tbh because the 92 overalls were similar and Nigel looked super cute in them. But in the end I had to go with the greatest f1 driver of all time: Sonic the Hedgehog.

1981 Ferrari

Once again I am a sucker for mismatched overall colours. The fact that both of these divas said 'no' to Ferrari red overalls, legend behaviour. Didier of course looks exceptional in blue and Gilles looks his charming self in off-white.

1985 Williams

Hey look it's mismatched overall colours again! That shade of yellow looks unexpectedly great on Keke! I prefer Nigel in blue but I can work with this.

Honourable mentions to 1968 Lotus (Colin Chapman really never missed with his overall aesthetic huh), 1987 Lotus, 1983 Renault and 1983 McLaren.

TYSM again! 😙

[purple-compromise]

You have any headcanons for what typical meals Spesh cools for the team?

Ah, thank you for the fanfic writer Friday ask even though I'm a week late!

Well, other than the dish I listed in the fic (which I believe was Spam and eggs because that's all that was left in the refrigerator), I haven’t given it too much thought since I want people to be able to imagine their own cultural or childhood dishes to share if that's something they'd like to do.

If it were me, I'd probably pick things from my own childhood or my parents' like navy bean soup, goulache, beef stroganoff, pasties, split pea soup, that kind of thing.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this one! And I'm glad to answer more questions if anyone has any. ^^

[herecomesaspecialghoul]

*pets you pets you pets you pe*

*is petted is petted is petted i*

[pinkiepiebones]

Does Special have any favorite memories of his band siblings? Like favorite memories of each?

"All of the training. We don't have to eat or sleep, so training sessions are probably really long to you humans. But I could never get 'em doing the right sort of shapeshifting in only one prolonged session of training, so, much like the rehearsal of music, there were many shapeshifting trainings, and many opportunities for memories.

"The drummer ghoul, I think I've talked of them making an honest to Lucifer joke, yeah? Proudest moment for me, eheheheheheh. We don't naturally come with, uh, the ability... we have the concept of humourous things, but to see something and create a joke, like, organic... Yeah. It was great.

"As much as I regret having had to teach them to shapeshift tongues, my fiery guitar-playing ghoul took too well to it, and there is very clear in my memories still the moment when Copia- he was still a Cardinal back then, so I can say 'Copia'- was busy reading and asked if anyone had a pen, you know, so as to make notes. The ghoul y'all call Sodo did hand him a pen- with their tongue. They had given themself something of a, eheheh, a froggy, lizardy tongue. Copia did not notice this until Sodo used the shapeshifted tongue to pull Copia's reading glasses from his face. ...We kinda got in trouble for that one, ehehhhehehehehehe...

"Water ghouls, well, all ghouls of course, occasionally need to be submerged completely in their element to sort of, eh, recharge. The bassist is no exception, but on tour is hard to find enough water, so- oh, this was during Papa the Third's era- while Papa's bus headed on to the venue, the bus housing the equipment and us ghouls had to stop at a motel and break into the pool area so our sibling could re-energise. It was just really funny, our wonderful security staff parking to hide our trespassing from the view of the front office... it was I think 3AM or so, so there was not too much worry of someone seeing us while walking to the ice machines...

"My favourite memory involving Aether is short but very good, ehehehehh. It was just before the first Prequelle tour and I had finally gotten the band ghouls to create acceptable moving jaws. I brought in some human foods so they could all practice biting and chewing. Aether grabbed a banana and- well, first they held it, you know, side to side? As one would do with a corn- and they bit it in half, peel and all. Of course this happened before I could explain removal of wrappings and peels. They looked so proud though, holding the two pieces up like horns! And, of course, they have gotten very good at bananas.

"My favourite memory of the, eheheehe, let us call them the elder Air ghoul, is either when I got to instruct them on keytar playing or when they met the younger Air ghoul. They started so stiffy with the keytar, it was just fun to spend time with them, bringing out their showmanship... And then when the newer Air ghoul emerged and Copia showed them his idea for the Ghoulette look... When Air ghouls feel what is most equatable to the sense of joy in humans, they sorta, eheehehehe, like birds, they fluff up, and they float. Copia had to hold his designs upwards so the floating Air ghouls could see. Hehehehhh.

"And the still-newer Air ghoul, when we all realised, hey, you were here before! And yes, the newest band ghoul was one of eh, Nihil's original band ghouls... they were all sent back to Hell when Nihil's little project failed... But one came back! They were quite impressed with the present state of keyboards, ehehehe. They are a fast study, too. I think for now favourite memory of them is when they realised they did not have to treat Papa Four with the same undeserved reverence Papa Nihil demanded. I mean of course they still treat Papa with respect, but it is not forced. Papa Four is not as full of himself as Nihil, this air ghoul said to me.

"As for Swiss, favourite memory is when they came to me and blew smoke in my face. I, understandably, went, what the fuck? Because Swiss is a Water ghoul, why are they emitting smoke, this is bizarre! Then they confide in me that they saw one of the road crew doing a vape- vaping- and was intrigued by the look of it. So yeah, all on their own, Swiss created a sorta, ehehehe, little fake lung inside themself so they can do vapes on stage. Sodo got into it too, but, fuck! They did this on their own! I had no involvement in the shapeshifting work or anything! I'm so proud of Swiss!"

[musashi]

ok then why did you stop engaging with it?

journeys bad

[jumwa-the-cryptid]

oop, I haven't made my own post in a while. My last week of term 3 was very busy 😅 Had a methods sac on monday and tuesday, then an english sac on wednesday and then a spech sac on friday! I'm confident that I passed 💪 I also found a practise exam for spesh that I did a while ago, but it's a bit annoying how vcaa doesn't provide the answers or working out for the samples :( Here's all of that work combined 😵

Also attempted the multiple choice in last years methods exam 2 and oh boy there's definitely things that I need to revise and add to my bound reference yeet rest well these holidays :) 💚

[lenjaminmacbuttons]

i got a tag from @burnt-kloverfield (hi babe! thanks for the @!) for this question thing and i got rly excited and then realized i had the same answer for almost every question

Favorite flower: lavender (though dandelions are also vv high on the list! love thos yellow boys. oh and lilies but thats obvi)

Favorite fruit: litrally everything except like kiwi and papaya. raspberries and pears come to top of mind. also i scarfed down a whole package of blueberries in like thirty seconds the other day

Favorite color: lavender, no contest

Favorite scent: lavender and also cinnamon and campfire

Favorite season: summer!!

Favorite tea: lavender again, spesh in like a earl grey. i also have lots of chamomile that does magic for me!

im just a lavender boy,,, gay rights

(tagging uhhhh @apeironaxiomaton @justthatspiffy @javelin-woman @keepsbeeeees @thegingeralchemist if yall want aaaand hey babies! @just-a-toad & @peeplesthemeeples if you're still on tumblr at all ever. if you aren't then good)