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#and they have a ton of stuff in common lmao?
scarthefangirl · 11 months
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Giving to the poor
Hobie brown x G/N!reader
Request: hobie with a ballerina reader who is also a HUGE bookworm-dont ask me where the idea came from because idk either lol- I kinda just wanted to see how that would maybe look?
Warnings: none? Mentions of theft
Story type: Headcannons
A/N: Not my best but please read my other fics!!
Masterlist | REQUESTS OPEN
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You and Hobie don't have a ton in common
You are graceful, very sweet, and a little more awkward
Hobie is a little more- bold and rough
But you two couldn't be a better pair
He loves your smooth and sophisticated fighting style, thanks to your ballet
He thinks its hot how you almost make fighting into a dance, and can whoop anyone in heartbeat
You encourage him constantly to take up ballet, insisting that it'll do him good
"Football players do it! It helps balance and control, and you'd look fine in a leotard." You always plead
"I don't need help, I'm doin' just fine love. But I certainly would look good," He always says
In secret he'd probably watch ballet tutorials to see if its for him, to make you happy
He is FLOORED when he finds out how often you have to replace ballet slippers
"Every 6 months? That has to be so expensive!"
Just wait till he hears that you also have pointe shoes that get replaced every few months...
He will start to time out when you buy shoes and buy them for you
He listens to you rant about your terrible dance teacher and fellow ballerinas for as long as you want, nodding in agreement about how horrible they are
He'll do yoga with you (although he's not very bendy) to keep you flexible and let you laugh at how bad he is
As for your reading addiction, Hobie finds it adorable
The way you gasp and yell at your books as you read, your facial expressions that convey the emotion of the chapters, your particularity for how books should be handled, everything
He isn't the biggest reader but if you hype up a book he'll definitely check it out
You guys bond over ones you both like
"I like hunger games. We need more katniss's in the world to stick it to the man!" He says after finishing the series
Dystopian books make him mad and go on lectures about how the real government is just as bad and deteriorating and loves the wah you'll go off with him and agree and listen
Sometimes he loses you around headquarters and looks EVERYWHERE for you
Loses trust in everyone
"Have you seen them? Come on, think would ya? Yes you have, I know you have!"
Only to find you in an empty room either reading or practicing your ballet
Either way, he leans on the door frame and admire you until you notice him
"If you're gonna sneak away darlin' you could at least tell me, I worry." He scolds but smiles and sits next to you.
Hobie LOVES making people uncomfortable
He'll admire you fighting and just yell out how hot you are or how turned on he is, not caring who hears
He'll make out with you in front of anyone, anytime.
On a different note, when you obsessively buy books he wants to stop you but he can't because you look so cute with the way your face lights up at each cover
"I've been wanting this one!" Or, "I have this one but this is a different cover!"
He isn't all for traditional gender roles but he will pay for your stuff, just because he loves you. He lets you pay for him sometimes if you offer
He sometimes sneaks a book out, stealing it just because he hates the way you insist on following rules
"Here, I took this one for ya," he says
"Hobart Brown!" You scold but can't help being happy for the book
"What? I'm stealing from the rich," he gestures to the book store. "And giving to the poor," he ends, gesturing at you.
He gives to 'the poor' a lot
If you ever talk about a book to him that you want, it randomly appears on you bookshelf
~
Sorry for the abrupt ending lmao
Tags: // @liliummz // @themarvelprince // @misselsbells06 // @american-sataness // @cr0ssoverf4n4tic // @depressednoob // @cerene-ciderr // @leighanne03 // @inluvwithfictionalwomen // @singhfae // @mythixmagic // @itsyourboymicheal // @Ravensinthedaylight // @dai-tsukki-desu // @url0calw3irdo // @daisydark //
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illwynd · 6 months
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man ion even like thorki but yall been carrying this fandom on your backs since 2011 lmao. like the thorkies and the half dozen insane (affectionately) loki fans still left are the only reason theres anything posted in the tags
ilu, nonny <3
one of the things that was so special about this fandom back in the day was how good we largely were about just like. coexisting, happily. the thorkis rubbed shoulders with the people who only broTP'ed them and with people who shipped other thor or loki ships but who nonetheless couldn't help but acknowledge their canonical importance in each other's lives, and the sheer overlap of those categories, because the main thing was that these two characters were essential to each other and that their relationship was essential to what made us care about the fandom in general. thorkis made tons of gen works, people who didn't ship it were often totally fine with people looking at their stuff through shipper goggles, we were totally able to have enjoyable meta discussions... not saying it was perfect and conflict-free, but in general, we supported each others' work regardless of whether we shipped thorki romantically or not, because we were still all on that same axis of "these two characters' relationship is interesting, compelling, worth thinking about and discussing and making art and stories about, regardless of exactly how you interpret the details of that relationship" and honestly I think that blurring of the line between shipping and gen is part of what gave the fandom the longevity and strength that it did have, because it gave just that much more richness and dimension to the ways people could approach the material and still find plenty of fellow fans to talk about it with.
Either way, it's no surprise that the thorki shippers were such a solid foundation of the fandom (i mean, we are on the shipping website for shippers) given just how compelling that relationship was in the earlier canon installments. it's also no surprise that canon taking a hard turn away from even mentioning the other one in their respective separate media has coincided with the active fanbase essentially evaporating, and so many of the new people deciding that AKSHULLY their relationship is irrelevant, any common ground with other fans is to be deliberately shunned, and attempted ship wars and harassment and anti-ism are the hot new trends. It's also also no surprise that the handful of remaining stubborn cockroach motherfuckers from the old fandom are stubbornly continuing to do what we've always done.
in any case, i appreciate you and every other non-thorki in the fandom who is still out there willing to share that common ground of "these two characters' relationship is important and interesting and that's what we're all here for," because fandom is just so much more pleasant that way. [legolas-gimli-side-by-side-with-a-friend.jpg]
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lavendersacid · 3 months
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we gotta stop all of this
you guys are saying that people should write whatever they want and then you heavily criticize and bully them when they share thoughts on smut or porn. it's really hypocritical. i am neutral on this, idc what people write and following the logic that many of you claim to have (people can write whatever they want to about tlou and ellie!) you shouldn't be getting upset when someone says that they don't care for all of the smut under tlou tags and would like to see more fluff and angst. on the other end, you shouldn't tell people what to write, if they want to write smut, you shouldn't care. i've seen a couple controversial posts going around one of them was a girl who complained about smut but had also posted porn links to twitter, which is ridiculous idk how you can even dig yourself out of that lmao. the other one i've seen quite a bit of people bring up as an argument was a more popular writer on here pointing out how common porn addiction is and people really found a way to twist her words, she said explicitly in several posts that the smut and porn wasn't the issue but if you find yourself craving compulsively (needing it to help you sleep, having increased tolerance to it and needing more or more explicit content to satisfy yourself, withdrawal symptoms, that typo stuff. which are addiction symptoms if you don't agree you need to do some research and stop being in denial.) that you may have an addiction to porn. i've seen a ton of people say that she was claiming everyone who read or wrote smut was addicted to porn which is far from the truth and i was shocked when i went on her account and saw that she posted nothing of the sort. pro-smut people are claiming that tlou-warriors are trying to start issues but to me, it seems that they are the ones trying to start issues when they blow an informational post out of context and spread lies about the author who wrote it, i actually can't find her account anymore but if anyone knows it pls lmk. many have said that smut authors are going to get bullied off the platform while actively bullying authors who don't like smut off the platform lol, seperate the artist from the art. as for tlou-warriors harassing pro-smut people, leave them alone, just scroll or block the account if the content you don't like keeps showing up in your feed. that goes both ways. "but people are flooding the tags!" okay? use your own logic and scroll if you don't like it. this is tumblr, ppl are going to write so let them. what if you don't agree? who cares everyone is entitled to their opinions whether you like it or not.
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cherrieguroo · 1 month
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Animal crossing new horizons headcanons for the nerd bunch
Steph
- normcore I think that's what people call it but it's basically just like. a normal town with no specific style. but her house is decorated to her liking and she has her villager's home in a forest she planted herself. she also has mods and she has just a part near the top of her island where there's just a shit ton of bells just dropped on the floor.
-steph definitely gives me black tulip door wreath vibes.
-steph's favorite villager is cherry and she changed cherry's catchphrase to 'bitch' so now she says stuff like "Yeah, go for it, bitch. This oughta be good…’
-steph has a room in her house purely for 'summonings' after she found out if you combine a specific wall and flooring you can create a summoning circle.
-steph refuses to pay tom nook, so her house isn't upgraded that much.
-steph set up a small space in her island for the nerds to fool around in whenever they visited. that space now mostly consists of pit falls and stumps. someone also left a switch there and steph didn't even try to figure out who put it there and just kept it as decor for her house. also Steph has green mums outside her house which she says is supposed to be a weed farm.
Grace
-grace definitely has meticulously designed her island and it's fairycore. rip star fragment trees grace would have loved those. her island has a shit ton of pink tulips everywhere too. grace has a part of her island which is just a forest with a lot of flowers. she also has those like custom design paintings in said forest that read 'god is good' or some shit and she thinks every island should have a god forest.
-grace has the pink wedding event door thingy.
-grace has two tricycles she put outside of nook's cranny that she pretends belong to timmy and tommy
-favorite villager is ruby sorry
-grace loves the wedding event items and her island and house are full of them
Ruth
-her island is a mess to me lmao. her island tune is the iconic part in careless whisper and tiffany is her favorite villager. none of her island is actually decorated btw. and she constantly wears one of those custom design dresses that make it look like the villager has a bikini. ruth collects gyroids after she was taught how to get them by Richie. she just collects the little guys and has them outside her airport as a welcome thingy. ruth uses the effects feature a lot, mainly putting hearts on stuff. only decorating Ruth really did on her island is make a rainbow flower field which she and the rest of the nerds call the gay flower trail. ruth seems to be eternally broke. Richie offers her money and she accepts and ten minutes later she somehow managed to waste it all on the most useless decor
Richie
-his island is littered with references to animes. he has two godzilla statues outside his house. has definitely gotten much more advancements than the others. wishes he could have started out on a modded island but it's too late. his house is made to be his dream home and his room has custom designs of anime posters on the walls. he completed his museum and probably has most furniture items in his catalog. he also completed happy home designer and has a lot of amiibos. richie redecorated all of his villager's homes, both interior and exterior. richie made a crab rave on his beach. richie also collects gyroids and uses them to decorate. he also likes setting up little songs with them for specific rooms in his house.
richie's island flag is this.
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Pete
-somehow the one with the best looking island. it's five stars somehow and each villager gets custom personalized yards. pete is really into flower breeding. he's also trying to complete the museum but keeps forgetting to catch some seasonal creatures and fish. pete NEVER skips blather's fun facts. in fact he writes all of them down and annoys Ruth and Richie with them. he's even memorized some for the more common fish and bugs that especially pissed Richie off when he was collecting everything (like sea basses)
petes house has the highest happy home academy rating
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absolutelynotsanebaby · 2 months
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haiii :DD do you have any sandstorm headcannons (general or from your aus)
SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG TO ANSWER. i saw it and then was gonna reply on my computer (easier to type) but then I. promptly forgot. but anywho!
i DO have a ton of had canons for them lmao. I'll start with some general / morro lives AU (not a specific au just. general had he survived concepts) stuff before getting into more specific AU nonsense
-I'm of the opinion had Morro came back during dotd (or even survived the end of Possession) that he wouldn't have joined the ninja, at least not right away. I like to think he'd have gone on a sort of vigilante arc. not quite ready to try to make it up to the ninja (or Wu and Lloyd specifically) but. attempting to make amends for what he's done yk. He essentially becomes Ninjago Batman LMAO. And I think, considering how much he really helped save Cole during Dotd, Cole would be the most open to giving him a chance. I like to think the ninja and Morro end up fighting the same guy by coincidence one night, Morro ends up saving Cole from a really nasty hit and from there on out that's where their relationship really start to develop (read: cole joining Morro on his night-stalks whether Morro likes it or not until he Does Like It)
-Cole 100% strikes me as a very physically affectionate person and I think Morro would be. jumpy about that at first. Partially just because he's not inherently physically affectionate and also because the cursed realm was a Nasty place. Also Morro strikes me as someone deathly allergic to PDA because it Embarrasses Him (<- very strong feelings on How People Perceive him).
-I think if he comes back to life (or had long hair from the get go) Morro's hair would be something Cole really enjoys playing with. Eventually Morro would just let him do what he wants lmao.
-Morro and jay would ABSOLUTELY beef over Cole. That's my boyfriend vs that's my best-friend type beat. It would annoy the fuck out of Cole and greatly assume Nya.
-Morro strikes me as a sort of protective person when he really attaches to someone, so. yeah. He also strikes me as someone who'd get jealous romantically very easily lmao. Cole is very much more laid back.
-Morro likes Cole's eyes. will he say that? no.
OKAY onto some Samurai AU stuff!!
-They take forever to drop the surnames lmao. Cole drops them first simply because it annoys 'Kazama' to have 'Kuroiwa' call him 'Morro' and demand to be called 'Cole'. I think the first time Morro ever calls him by his first name is after they reunite and Cole finds out he's actually alive.
-Cole has a lot of layers lmao. So when he wears like. a yukata it sends Morro into a spiral.
-They fight together better than either of them expected. Very solid fighting style (cole) in combination with a significantly more vicious loose style (Morro).
That's all. i need to think about them more BUT. REAPER AU oh reaper au how i love you
-whenever Morro has his hair loose Cole is Enamored. It goes down to a little past his nape and it makes Cole crazy for some reason lmao.
-Likewise, whenever Cole wears more feminine clothing (something he started exploring at one point or another) it makes Morro Crazy. love-sick, a fool.
-they tend to sleep together and very closely. Mostly because of some (route 3 specific) experiences and also because the place they where staying at for two years was Very small. if you walk into them sleeping you'd find Cole wrapped around him like an octopus, head resting on Morro's chest or shoulder. Morro tends to sleep more starfish-esc but its common for him to have an arm around Cole's shoulders or waist. This actually really annoyed the ninja when they and Cole reunited because Morro Stop Stealing Our Friend We Want Cuddles And Also Dislike You Heavily.
-Generally, there was a lot of conflict between Morro and the ninja. They were worried Cole had been coerced because of how isolated he was when Morro had popped up next to him (something they feel really bad about -- they werent ever supposed to forget Cole) and Morro because he's allergic to having good social skills.
-When they started first being around each other Morro was. very flighty. Didn't quite know how to handle his feelings so he'd fuck off a lot which unfortunately aggravated Cole's abandonment issues. It was sort of rough until Morro got his shit together lol.
-Their first kiss was a very quiet thing.
-Cole used to have a crush on Jay and that is something that will annoy Morro very much when he figures it out lmao.
-I like to think of them when listening to bags by Clairo. I mean... "I don't want to be forward / I don't want to cut corners / savor this with everything I have in me / I'm not the type to run, know we're having fun / but what's the rush? kissing, then my cheeks are so flushed" and "pardon my emotions / I should probably keep it all to myself / know you'd make fun of me" and "Can you see me? / I'm waiting for the right time / I can't read you, but if you want, the pleasure's all mine / can you see me using everything to hold back? / I guess this could be worse / walkin' out the door with your bags" ? very themcore.
lastly, here's some vamp-morro rambles. I don't have a fully fledged au for this just various sketches and ideas lmao.
-Cole would've originally let himself be used as the main source of blood for Morro so no one else would have to do it. It's a bit of a painful process and strangely intimate and something he'd rather no one else on team do.I mean, Zane's a android, Lloyd is obvious no for obvious reasons, Jay would freak out, Kai's too emotionally invested. That would leave Nya and he wouldn't particularly like that either so, he offers himself.
-Morro finds him kinda stupid but Cole's blood is just oddly sweet enough for him to not care to much.
-Cole thinks the bite marks are kind of embarrassing, hard to explain, and oddly Vulnerable to show so he tends to keep his collars pulled up high.
-Morro tends to drink from areas like the side of the neck, the trapezius, and right under his Adams apple like any good vampire. Sometimes the wrists.
-Over time this evolves into a weird little bond neither of them know how to feel about.
okay i think that's all for know! lord, this is so long. hfiewohfeiofne i think too much, send help.
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ancanosaur · 1 month
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Does anyone else remember how weirdly toxic the MK Fandom was around MKx era? Becuase I do.
Those like handful of blogs that were just getting into beef with random Kano fans and their whole thing was "Kanno is a peice of shit! And so are you for liking this fictional antagonist!!!" I remember a few who put anti-Kano in thier description of their blog and it was just a hobby to shame people for drawing Kano fanart or liking the character in any way. (And a small revival with mk11 since they made him a bear for that game lmao)
Weird uncomfortable age gap shipping... That whole thing about that one artist that drew Cassie cage/subzero stuff and a shit ton of people were like "uh, he's friends with her dad and is like 52. So that's kinda weird." But then it also turned into a headcanon argument bc people were like "yeah subzero definitely watched Cassie cage grow up and he was a part of her childhood." Wich is so funny looking back at it bc there was no need for people to theorise anything about the characters relationship any further than what is Canon for it to be weird.
That fucking Sektor fan who just casually wrote headcanons about Sektor being a huge fucking racist for no goddamn reason?????!?!??? The headcanon specifically was about how they ship him and Cyrax and how Sektor calls him slurs and physically, mentally, and sexually abuses him as part of thier romantic relationship????????????? And they even gave examples of the horribly racist things he says to him¿¿¿? And that Cyrax was just okay with it??? And ended the post with like " I love my evil little man 🥰" No trigger warnings on the post either and when they were critiqued for it they were like "it's realistic and it's just my personal headcanons and you don't have to agree. Sektor is my comfort character and this is just how i see him." -type shit. (Deeper lore about said person. I actually interacted with them way before the headcanon thing. They approached me wanting to rp and they were so controlling they were basically just telling me what to do the whole time. super rude and impatient. So they just suckedl lol.)
Art blogs getting wierd asks that requested them to draw the fem characters in what was very obviously kink art but the asker would ask it in a way to trick the artist into making free fetish art for them. I got so many requests back in the day to "could you draw mileena for me :) but with her jaw wired shut? :)" or "could you draw kitana wereing a new pair of flip flops for me? That would make my day." like ????? Vague to the point of its sus but there were alot of minors in the fandom at the time including myself, i was in highschool at the time. but I was raised on deviantart so I could smell a wierd fetish from a mile away. But I did see other young artists fulfill these requests and several of them completely unaware that they were drawing kink art. Kink art is cool. But not when you're tricking minors into drawing it for you for free. (There was this mileena anon that was the most common one and I swear it was the same dude bc it was always something to do with with her getting her jaw wired shut, her getting bracess, or some other hardware being attached to her jaw/teeth.)
Selfshippers/heteroshippers being like "I know Kung Jin is the only Canon gay character in this very cis het and hyper masculine video game franchise- but im gonna ship him with my girl oc :) becuase he isn't real and it's not wierd to just pick the only gay one :) out of a huge line of big muscle men to choose from :) to ship with :) my female girl she/her lady with a vagina self insert :) or ship him with Cassie :) bc they are friends and should date :) I know he likes men :) and erasing that part of him :) erases :) a big part of his character :) and character arc :) but he would look cute :) kissing girls :) bc im :) girl :) and so is Cassie cage :) and my oc :) - is what I remember.
2015/16 really was a time for the fandom.
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badchoicesworld · 10 months
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hi again, i’m the guy who requested hobie x trans vigilante reader and i LOVED IT. the details felt so true to his character and all in all it was an amazing read. you’re definitely one of, if not my favorite spiderverse writer. (btw, your spidersona sounds very interesting.) so, as expected, i have another request for you!
if you’d like, will you do a hobie x masc reader where they’re in bands? of course, hobie would be a part of a punk group, but maybe reader is in a metal one? they keep running into each other at shows and people think they might not get along, but they instantly get comfortable around each other. it’d be cute if they wore the other’s merch and showed up to some gigs. thank you :)
hobie’s punk, you’re metal (band edition)
hobie brown x masc!reader
EYYYYYYY ANON
had me gripping my knee, tucking hair behind my ear and kicking my feet fr ily tysm - if you’re planning to keep coming back (more than welcome <3) feel free to give me some kinda name to call you ! claim an emoji if you’d like or give me some kinda alias if you’d like, or remain anon, completely up to you !!
anyway such a slay idea thank you so much !
i’m gonna have to be a little brief w details cause i know hobie’s band is completely different in the comics and i have no fuckin clue what’s going on w this hobie’s band, no clue if gwen’s the drummer or what so mans being BRIEF but as far as i’m aware hobie does all of his gigs as “spider-punk” so secret identity still stands. i’m not gonna call him that cause he doesn’t like the name, but you know what i’m tryna insinuate
i’m a guy who can listen to all types of music so i enjoyed indulging in punk and metal music to get a better feel for this, so thank you !
i tried to do research into style, music and history so i hope this is half decent lmao
also wanna stress that i know there’s a shit ton of political stuff when it comes to punk and metal scenes, i ain’t touching it and i want none of you to ask me about it
warnings: none
pairing: hobie brown x masc!reader
requests: OPEN actually begging for them im stuck in a car tomorrow
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★⋆ ⋆☆⋆ ☠︎︎ ⋆☆⋆⋆★✧
AIGHT ! so you twos both belong to bands that are pretty prominent in london, and if someone doesn’t know one then they’ll eventually learn about the other
you both like to perform at these smaller gigs instead of going mainstream, and it results in you two bumping shoulders every now and again
now, it’s impossible to miss hobie since he’s dressed as a punk spider-man
the same can apply to you if you choose to also have a secret identity lmao
but it’s on sight
it’s a common thing for people to think that punk and metal fans are like cats and dogs (an expression, animals are lovely.) for some fuckin reason
so naturally, both of your fans had always speculated the day that you crossed paths
what would you do ? fist fight ? poke hobie’s eyes out w the 🤘 gesture ? dear god will hobie swing his guitar at you ?!?!
no lmao
it’s like two old friends meeting, you guys have definitely heard of each other before but not yet met, so you’re both pretty psyched to see each other in the flesh !
it’s more like a “Ayy! my guy!” kinda thing instead of typical london stabbing
friendly hug, accidentally get impaled on a spike, that kinda thing
if your fans are sane they’re just kinda like “oh dope lmao” instead of “NOOOOOOOO” because who tf would
instead, opens doors to unlimited possibilities
friendly rivalry ? i think so
depending on what you play/your role in the band, you can get competitive for funsies
if you’re both guitarists you’ve got this ongoing joke about who’s the better one, shows are dope whenever you two are competing cause you go above and beyond for the sake of bragging rights
you win, metal takes a lot more out of a man (from the research i’ve done metal takes more “skill” in a literal sense, way more going on w the cords, correct me if i’m wrong)
hobie insists there are no losers, of course (he doesn’t believe in losing)
hella friendly banter, nudges, cutely whiplashing each other w water at shows whenever you spot the other in a crowd while they’re performing
collaboration ? possibly, imagine that shit
speculation of you two dating ? no because hobie doesn’t like labels
i’m gonna let u decide if hobie is the typa guy to kiss whoever else is on stage w him
back to secret identities for a little- aight so we all know hobie’s identity is a secret because he’s this spider-lad saving london, a conversation starter fr
in the events that you bring it up, he’ll probably just brush it off and tell you to focus on your scene, not in a mean condescending way but because he’d rather talk about music together since it’s his passion
depending on where your guys’ relationship goes determined if he’d reveal his secret identity to you or not, same applies to you if you have a secret identity
but i’ll leave that up to you
back to the gigs ! if you two ever spot each other in the crowds, it’s on sight
wether you recognise each other as your alter egos or secret identities, you will be either drowned by the end of the gig or mercilessly stared at
don’t think hobie would bring people up on stage unless you’re both performing, it can be a super awkward thing, other people might be uncomfortable and also favouritism aint his thing
wear each others merch, see what happens
you don’t have a secret identity and you wear it casually ? will likely catch the eyes of the media and words will spread
i cant actually imagine hobie having official merch, i think he’d like it more if his fans just made things so there’s not that whole “poser” stuff i’ve been seeing (again if i’m wrong and band shirts have significance other than sentimental value let me know)
punk is about diy, so he’d love his fans all the more if the “merch” he had was super unique diy stuff all hand made by his fans :]
so hobie either makes you merch, or you make your own ! he’ll probably make his own merch of you band, too
absolutely wears it to gigs, why wouldn’t he ? how fuckin punk is that ammarite
trade guitar picks, do it
you’re both real comfortable around each other, it’s an honest treat to cross paths whenever you’re both at a gig and if you guys become friends outside of it, that’s all the better
slaps stickers on your instruments case while walking by you, they have accumulated overtime
a lot of friendly call outs at the start or throughout shows, shit like “this one goes out to y/n, he ate my fuckin sandwich” before playing or probably banter along the lines of “refund his show and come to mine instead, it just makes sense” if your shows aren’t free
i expect you to do the same
you are each others worse nightmare
★⋆ ⋆☆⋆ ☠︎︎ ⋆☆⋆⋆★✧
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lepertamar · 3 months
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Since it was buried deep in a long esoteric fandom post, i kinda want to extract and expand on this comment as its own post
There is an ancient, global, historical and cultural meme that gets glossed over a lot: a ton of christian concepts of Satan, and of Hell, and satanic-ness, is based on antisemitic interpretations of jews, but also, and i mean this in the coolest possible way, as a Jew, much of it is based on Jewish imagery -- in particular, it is based on Jewish G-d.
there's the explicit, overwhelming, absolutely ubiquitous association with fire, to the point where it is the overwhelmingly major attribute of G-d, and any invocation of fire in the jewish tanakh hints at connotations of G-d. Blood dashing and blood marking, and flesh sacrifice by slaughtering and burning of offerings throughout the jewish Tanakh, especially in Exodus. The frightening imagery of fire and brimstone has entered basic western vocabulary so deeply that this imagery -- imagery that in the sources characterizes all of G-d's and the Jews' presence and religious behavior in Exodus and throughout the rest of the Tanakh -- is casually described as hellish and satanic. Volcanoes' lava fields are 'hellish', fires of natural gases producing pillars of flame and smoke are 'hellish'. rituals of fire and blood and burning and heavy costumery and ancient crumbling scrolls hidden in arks embossed and engraved with strange tongues are satanic. and the devil is given a characterization thinly echoing torah's depiction of jewish G-d: as a challenging and frightening and alluring figure who straddles fae-adjacent borders between tricksterish disruption and extreme legalism, who makes deals and bargains (covenants, even) with humans.
In christianity it's usually a distancing game -- a forcible identification of all these recognizable attributes of G-d and judaism with the non-god, christian figure of the devil; and simultaneously a forcible identification of jewish g-d with christian god (after all these attributes are stripped out), and of christian god with extremely different attributes, or at least opposition to the devil. But not always.
It's found in exactly as many words in foundational Gnostic theology that had a great amount of influence on the development of early christianity: it explicitly and actively (rather than the implicit coding above that mainstream christian imagery does) identifies Jewish G-d, as in the exact God of the Jews who is depicted in the Torah, as a false god, the archon and demiurge, who should not be, who is responsible for creating the material world as an illusory, fallen, sinful, inherently corrupted world as an intentional prison, rather than an incomplete starting point a la grapes-but-not-wine, and whom Jews evilly or deludedly follow to maintain the existence of this sinful world rather than escaping to the neoplatonic purity of true forms, where the True God, the New Testament god who includes Jesus Christ, rules instead.
It's pretty ~normal as a process goes! (it in fact totally mirrors some stuff in judaism, where we identified various things as treyf because they had connotations of a canaanite pagan thing LMAO. semiotics using ingroups and outgroups in this way is very very common, and normal! and our g-d, of course, with Its troubled, complex heart, in many ways is from folding the hearts of many different canaanite gods into one person). but in this case it's maybe unique in scope and subtlety, for contingent historical reasons: a case of the sign outstripping the signified to an incredible extent and also of trying to backdoor-in identification with the god in question (eg the designation of gnosticism as a heretical sect by christianity, because mainstream christians preferred to recontextualize/repurpose jewish g-d, rather than break from It and allow jewish g-d to be defined by/identified with jews, even if in the gnostics’ explicitly evil way).
it does also have a weird consequence more modernly, among ppl who backlash to christianity with eg [demonic imagery is cool] stuff and don't realize what it looks like to people who have a slightly larger camera aperture: just skipping over the entire existence of judaism in terms of why the hell-stuff exists or is a hell-thing in the first place (there are a few reasons, and this is the big one). like, it DOES feel bizarre when there's like, ppl trying to be edgy and subversive by embracing christian demonicness that [checks notes] is just aesthetics and attitudes that are just very traditional jewish imagery and ritual. yk it just feels a bit....'hm....do they....uh.....know...'. when the old satanists 'inverted' the jesus pentagrammaton with uh, just the sigil of baphomet, as if the hebrew lettering etc is originally christian. like….
as most peopel know, the association of judaism with satanism is both extremely a longstanding Thing in antisemitism, but also smth jews are Super dystonic and jumpy to disclaim for obvious reasons.
now ofc jews's flat statement that this association is just fake is like, 'true', in that while judaism certainly developed in the past 2 millennia with an awareness of christianity and in the same world as a variety of other cultural influences, judaism is obviously not about christianity. as in, it doesn't categorize its elements and framework of the world according to christian elements and frameworks. but 'it's fake' is not like...a complete answer i guess. (like, it implies hell aesthetics were totally independent and preexisting and judaism was only associated with it post-hoc); it's also kinda, giving up ground? in the going straight to 'hdu say we're freaks! we r normal!' rather than 'is that supposed to be an insult? being a freak is cool and also your instinct to categorize us this way is telling and interesting'
this isn't unique, similar reactions happen alot where there's a marginalized culture trying to avoid violence lol, but it's sort of. lame. why not lean into this attempted dunk. the material universe as a delicious as well as incomplete and perilous mass of bursting universeness, whose materiality is what brings about both fortune and misery, brought to material existence by jewish g-d who is scary and bizarre and fiery and has a great deal of weird opinions/ideas about a bunch of detailed specifics about this-worldly life and the this-worldly material of the universe, who makes deals with the particular people who engage with them -- who is a recognizable germinating seed of the surface of christian hell and satanic aesthetics and ideas, is metal and interesting!
and it's not like. idk. a set of frames that are incompatible with christianity either, afaict some traditions lean harder than others, but i'm jewish and obviously not exactly an expert in those aspects of christianity lol.
a friend of mine regarding their conversion to judaism said:
like g-d as a... person, for lack of better terms. g-d who is a bit of an unknown quantity? sort of devilish, smirking at you when They offer a deal and you are not aware of the legalese (or maybe you are! ) and it's just like. this is how g-d is. g-d is just being g-d, g-d is this rascal who is quite particular but also endlessly enamoured with what people will do...
i didnt (& still dont!) care for satan in the christian sense because ....i don't find a god who is unchangign and eternal and sort of... impersonal.... in any way interesting. & thus an anti-god who is.... there and personal but like just to "tempt" you or w/e is also boring in comparison.
but g-d who is playful, who is tempting and trying to seduce you and be seduced, who you can bargain w and get into a contract w which might seem "unfair" in some ways (fucking halakhah right wwww) and like bullshit legalese but it's like, you are agreeing to it! you are taking that on bc you find that worthwhile. like how someone sells t heir soul to the devil, because they think it's worthwhile; but ig in this case you're not rlly getting like, "be able to play the fiddle better than any mortal" type just a... you have the option and you want to take it! that is all far more compelling to me and far more godlike. bc it transforms g-d into an active participant
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missbunmuffin · 3 months
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head canons for my favorite punch out boys
Some oc stuff is in here ;-;
Glass Joe
- Has a doll faced Persian cat(I think those are safe to breed but if not she’s a ragdoll) named BonBon. He acts like she’s the sweetest thing in the world but she’s a literal demon.
- He gives the BonBon the teddy bear haircut because it’s easier for the both of them. Her fur is less of a nightmare with it.
- Used to bleach his hair but stopped due to how damaging it was. I imagine at first he did it himself instead of getting it professionally done and a chunk fell out once. Bonbon tried to eat it.
- He has silk bedsheets
- He has a younger sister named Genevieve and she’s only about 11 months younger so that makes him an Irish twin(My logic is to give the French guy a Irish twin but not the Irish guy lmao) she’s married and has two kids while he just has his girlfriend Eleanor.(She’s a oc of mine I’ve posted about her before if you want to learn about her ig) She likes to refer to Joe as her little brother because of this and he has to correct people a lot.
- His sister can kind of be an insensitive asshole sometimes.
- He’s not really scared of doctors and dentists like he used to be he’s more used to it with all those losses.
- He’s still kind of afraid of getting haircuts though(totally not self projecting hee hee) he doesn’t like looking at himself in the mirror with the cape thing wrapped around him along with wet rat hair. He’s been seeing the same hairdresser for years that he trusts more than anyone. Yet he’s still afraid of something bad happening.
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- He wants to take Eleanor to Lorie Valley someday. He thinks she’ll like the castles and shit
- If you’re close to him and you’re being a dick you are basically asking him to be a dick back.
- Scared of those swing rides at carnivals and fairs. Based on a fear of hitting something on those rides since I was a child
- His mom bugs him about not being married or not having kids. She also forgets Eleanor exists and one time said “maybe you’ll find your future wife there :D” right in front of her(based off that one time my grandma said something like that to my brother when he has a gf. She wasn’t in the room but still)
- Always goes along with the games his nieces wants to play even if it’s just him being tortured. Their favorite game is horses which is basically Joe being on all fours on the ground pretending to be a horse.
Disco kid
- Can’t cook for shit
- Responses to texts with these things sometimes
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- Type of person to go all out in just dance
- One of the only boxers Aran’s sister is more friendly with. Also her names Freya posted about her too. He’s actually interested in her artwork and doesn’t try to push boxing on her. They also have a common interest in dancing
- He found out not to look at other people’s sketchbooks the hard way by snooping in Freya’s
- He has a shit ton of those paper star things because Freya gives them to him
- Was one of those kids who would just dance in the hallway
- He was a choir boy and was the only guy to get accepted into the advanced choir because he was actually good and not just because he was a guy(no this is not based on the fact that guys get easily accepted into that more at my school)
- I think he would collect pusheen stuff
- Laughs at the dumbest shit
- Blasting music in the car. It’s so loud you can hear it when he’s passing by your house or something.
Don Flamenco
- He’s actually more anxious than he seems to be he worries about the most random shit (totally not self projecting again hee hee)
- Scared of lice to the point where it’s pretty much a phobia(same bestie)
- He’s tried on Carmen’s heels before for fun and almost twisted his ankle
- Also kind of scared of the swing rides but he would never admit it
- Shaves his legs to show them off
Aran Ryan
- He treats Freya like she’s 8 sometimes he’s not really accepting of the fact she getting older.
- He forces Narcis to play with her old dolls with him because he was forced to play with her as a teenager so he could be *productive* and he misses it. It was never in the normal way there was alway drama.
- They add WVBA action figures into their games and they make stupid stories with the other boxers.
- He’s been aloud to curse in the house since he was like 7 his mom didn’t care just don’t say anything at school or in front of grandma
- Cuts his own hair with kitchen scissors and gets bullied by Narcis and Freya for it.
- His mom wasn’t from Dublin she was from Londonderry
- Basically his sister’s father figure because he died when she was so young
- Type of person to just shake the wii remote in just dance but he still loses that’s the one thing his cheating won’t get him to win
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squidthesquidd · 5 months
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Do you have any favourite headcanons about Nightshade?
(I feel like them being autistic is a pretty common headcanon, so I’m curious if you have any thoughts on that as well)
YEAYEYWYEYYSUSY OH MY GOD YES WE HAVE SO MANY HEADCANONS ABT THEM !!!!! get ready for a fuckn infodump (also sosoos many of these are just us projecting)
warning: i sound like an insane person
okay so YES !!! nightshade is absolutely autistic. and they are stimming constantly. they stim vocally a lot, and a lot of the time its just bird sounds, but sometimes it'll just start screaming lmao. it also likes to rock back and forth a lot!! definitely a verrrry common one.
Also if youve seen how we draw nightshade you might've noticed that we draw xem with little wings in root mode! they also flap those to stim :]
also they love slime!!! this is verry much just me projecting but i like to think xey love slime and they have a huge collection of textures <33 its favorite is bingsu!!!
and NEOPRONOUNS as you might've noticed :P. (we have a nightshade alter that uses neos so we are once again, projecting) but anyway, it was hashtag that told nightshade about neos, and they immediately got into it!! they have many and love hoarding them <3 some of xeir favorites are it/xe/that/owl/web/bot/mur
bones!!! vulture culture!!!!! they collect bones. sometimes theyll go out into the forest and search for bones for hours (it has soooo many antlers) and if web finds a dead animal, web'll take it back with them to clean it out webselves :]
They also have intrusive thoughts. yeah less fun headcanon time. they can be very vivid and very graphic, and its caused nightshade to have panic attacks a few times. i hc that bumblebee also used to have them, so bees helped xem through some of the bad ones <3
also xey have severe emetophobia. yeah i know, a bit of a weird one. if someones sick, they will be avoiding that person like the plague. whenever it watches a movie with the family, it'll always check if there are emeto scenes so it knows when to look away or leave (shout out to doesthedogdie.com i fucking love that website!!!!)
this post cus i think about it a lot
and general terran hc! i headcanon that all the terrans can eat human food :D although nightshade specifically has a difficult time eating (the tism) and xey'll only eat things like noodles or very processed food. murs a huge ramen lover 😎
MINECRAFT. you cannot look at nightshade and tell me they dont love minecraft!! xey have a survival world going where xeyre completely decked out in netherite, have a hundred redstone machines scattered all over the place, and just so many huge projects going on. mur started a multi player world and got all murs siblings to join. most chaotic world ever
and now im thinking abt owls, so. they have night vision, because of course. and it also sleeps in a nest (terrans can sleep hc jumpscare) its just a pile of a fuck ton of pillows and blankets and if you touch it xey WILL bite you
also it has a very strong prey drive. if they see anything particularly small moving around on the floor they are fucking jumping it. its like xeyre the maltos mouser lmao. no small animal that shows up in the malto home is safe
oh and as for music !!! big fan of the big neurodivergent three lmao. lemon demon, will wood, tally hall. that stuff yknow? (yes im projecting) also heres a playlist that our nightshade alter made that is 100% what we hc source nightshade to listen to !!!!
LOVES STAR TREK !!!! you CANNOT convince me they wouldn’t. big fan of the non-human bridge officers <3 Spock, Data, Saru (and also big Odo fan) webs favorite is probably next gen :] also i 100% percent believe it was Alex that introduced xem to it. i look at alex and see a star trek liker. i will not be taking criticism
oh and now heres a weird one. when nightshade was a protoform, they were always very… squinty? i dunno, its just something we noticed. like why are you squinting baby, can you not see? and then when xey got their altmode, suddenly xeir eyes were much wider! and i like to think that they did actually have bad eyesight as a protoform! and becoming an owl greatly improved it :]
also they cant see glass in their alt mode <3 hashtag has a compilation of mur crashing into windows
and about the episode "missed connection", we aren't actually told how long nightshade was helping tarantulas, and while most interpret it as just one day, i like to think it actually took about a week at least or even longer. i dont really know why i hc this, but maybe its cus i need nightshade and tarantulas to be besties or i'll die
okay thats it for now <3 i definitely have more headcanons so i might make a second post abt em later
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nothorses · 1 year
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hi! this is a question about pansexuality that i fear asking. tbh i don't really care what anyone identifies as. everyone's part of my community to me. i am trying to wrap my head around bi v pan stuff as someone who is neither. i know bisexuals who are critical of the pan label because to them it distinguishes bisexuality as starkly Not being pansexuality. when definitions of bisexuality have included "attraction regardless of gender, or to all genders (and including trans and nb people)" for many bisexuals since like the 70s which is how i see pansexuality defined a lot of the time
i know that bi and pan have always been concurrent labels and they have a lot of overlap and that some ppl use them interchangeably. and i truly don't care that ppl id as pan. but i do feel weird seeing it juxtaposed to definitions of bisexuality that aren't inclusive of all bisexuals? (ie that bisexuals aren't attracted to ALL genders, just two or more.. when many bisexuals Are attracted to all genders! part of bisexual history is that people have been fighting to let others know Bisexuality is more inclusive than the literal like latin meaning of bi = two). i don't know where to stand on this divide. i love pansexuals and the pan label and the right to self determination in identity but i do understand the argument that it feels hurtful in a biphobic way to say it is inherently a distinct sexuality from being bisexual when it's. like. many bi and pan ppl would define their sexuality in the exact same way other than a difference in specific label. i feel like people hate this opinion lmao!!! please help! even if you hate my opinion too i literally feel like i need guidance KDBDBS
Tbh I think there's a lot of historical context to this whole convo, and I don't think you're alone in being confused. And honestly given the amount of info you have, I think you're in a pretty respectable spot about it. (And I say "historical" here in the sense that I am. 25. and I'm mostly talking about the things I have either seen firsthand, or read about/heard about from others.)
So like- when I was a Young Queer, it was very common for people to define "bi" as meaning "men and women" (or even "cis men and cis women"), and thus "pan" rose to popularity as an alternative to essentially mean "everyone, including trans and nonbinary people".
This was like, early 2010's? And I'm talking about other Young Queer spaces and interactions. And you kind of have to remember that in that time, it was kind of radical to tell people not to call things "gay" if they didn't like them. Joking that people were trans (usually in terms like "lol Justin Beiber is a lesbian") was common even in progressive spaces. I was stunned when a friend of mine asserted that they were just gonna stop using the r-slur, like, at all.
So I can kind of understand why "pan" might have felt like a needed thing at the time. I think it felt like a kind of shorthand for "I'm cool with trans people", and at least from my perspective, that was something you very much needed to state back then.
I think there are a lot of people my age who, if they don't still understand "bi" and "pan" that way, at least kind of "get" where that definition is coming from. And yeah, it's ahistorical as hell! "Bi" has always been inclusive of trans people. Not to mention people have been defining it all sorts of ways for a long time now; there are a ton of definitions out there, and how the word is defined often depends on who you ask.
But then you ask: if we know "bi" is and has always been trans-inclusive, why does anyone still need the word "pan"? And I think the answer is... complicated. And extremely personal, tbh.
This happens with queer language all the time; as terms are cycled out in favor of new ones, people who've been using them hang on regardless. Sometimes they don't know the language has been updated, but usually it's more than that. Usually they have more of a personal relationship with the word, and the community, that they can't just give up in favor of a new word.
Maybe some people who do understand that "bi" is not actually a transphobic term also still view "pan" as shorthand for "I'm cool with trans people", and that's important to them. Maybe they grew up with that word, formed relationships under it, and came out with it. Maybe the pan community impacted them in some profound way, and rejecting it over shifting definitions just doesn't feel right. There could be any number of reasons.
The other part of this is that much as people have come to understand the original definition of "bi" more widely now, the definition of "pan" and "bi" both have taken on multiple definitions as well. I've seen a lot of definitions that seem to exist just to differentiate the two. For example:
Bi: attracted to multiple (but not necessarily all) genders Pan: attracted to all genders
Bi: attracted to all genders, but in different ways, or with preferences Pan: attracted to all genders essentially the same
Bi: attracted to multiple (or all) genders Pan: attraction regardless of gender
I've also seen people use "bi" as the umbrella term, and "pan" as a more specific label beneath it (often with one of those pairs of definitions).
And you mention that "bi" has a lot of different definitions and understandings- so does pan! How a person understands those words, particularly when they identify with them, is going to be deeply personal and very likely very different from the next person. I think a good rule of thumb is to assume that whoever you're talking to may just have a different definition and understanding of the word they're using than you do, and try to ask them about it if it concerns you.
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bensonstablers · 2 months
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I was tagged by @sothischickshe (thank you!!! 🥰) to answer 20 questions for writers:
1. How many works do you have on AO3?
205.
2. What's your total AO3 word count?
609,094
3. What fandoms do you write for?
fandoms i've written for include:
Law & Order: SVU / L&O: Organized Crime
Good Girls
Gotham
Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel
Criminal Minds
Graceland
Stranger Things
The Walking Dead
Riverdale
Castlevania
Preacher
Four Brothers
Outer Banks
Gilmore Girls
while no longer available, in the past i've also written for:
Fast and Furious franchise
MCU / Marvel
Boondock Saints
Hocus Pocus
From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
DC
(plus more i'm probably forgetting about)
4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
Shared History (Good Girls/Brio)
Degree of Separation (Good Girls/Brio)
Milkshakes (Good Girls/Brio)
Deep Sense of Belonging (Good Girls/Brio)
Sacred Art of Kissing (Good Girls/Brio)
5. Do you respond to comments?
i read all of them for sure but i'm terrible sometimes at responding although i do try my best
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
ooft, okay. there's probably more than this but the following have major character death warnings that could very well be classed as angsty lmao:
i wrote this little ficlet: Gone (SVU, bensler/EO) in which a raid goes wrong and it's just pain from start to finish and then there's Until Long After She Takes Her Final Breath which is a Good Girls/brio fic in which their reunion at the beginning of season 3 goes very differently.
Why don't we go to Venus? is another Good Girls/brio fic in which the summary is: Rio killed her and that was supposed to be the end of it but Beth doesn’t seem to be done with him quite yet.
that one is probably my angstiest overall but the ending is probably the least angsty bit about it??? haha
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
honestly? i have no idea and i have no clue how to check 😭😂
8. Do you get hate on fics?
there was someone going around the SVU/OC fandom leaving weird hate comments on people's stuff (anonymously) and i got one but while it felt rude, it didn't feel like hate, but also it felt like it was supposed to be hateful, y'know? pretty sure i just deleted it though (i for sure ignored it) 😂
but generally, no. i'm lucky to say that i tend to avoid hate on social media and that includes fanfiction.
9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?
i have done and the variety isn't huge but it's there? i guess?
10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?
i have done! beyond the obvious (where shows, etc share worlds), i did a boondock saints/the walking dead one (which was also co-written) because norman reedus stars in both 😂
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
not that i'm aware of?
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
again, not that i'm aware of
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?
yes! the aforemention boondock saints/the walking dead fic was co-written on ff.net and i co-wrote (with the same person), a fast and furious fic.
14. What’s your all time favourite ship?
i lost myself a ton in writing olivia/elliot from svu/organized crime as well as beth/rio from good girls so they'd probably battle it out for top spot.
BUT
if i'm being brutally honest, my all time favourite ever to write were fast and furious ships 😂 especially the OGs (specifically vince and leon) with my OCs (although there were canon ships i loved to write too!). it was just so fun and freeing and i constantly think about it.
(i also loved when i wrote random marvel/mcu pairings, winterwitch was probably my number one for them and again, i think about it a lot)
15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
i think it's unlikely i'll finish a lot but especially a degree of separation. i kind of hate it, i'm so sorry 😭😭😭
16. What are your writing strengths?
the thought of analysing my own writing right now sounds painful but two of the most common nice things people tell me is that: 1) they like how i write dialogue and 2) they like my writing style in general
(but of which i highly appreciate!)
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
i don't do it enough?
nah. true but seriously, there's a ton, however, i do tend to waffle on and write something in several sentences that could have been just one 😭
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?
I don't think i've ever done it? if i have it'll be dialogue or whatever that's already in the show/move/etc
19. First fandom you wrote for?
The Fast and the Furious 🥰
20. Favourite fic you’ve written?
still on ao3: it has to be Why don't we go to Venus? but also Knock First which is a Beth/Rio/Original Male Character threesome fic that was SO MUCH fun
no longer posted: a fic for The Fast and the Furious. it was a Vince/OC story. it was so much fun to write and it was one of my most popular back when i was posting on ff.net and i miss this story all the time (even though it's probably awful 😂) and always think about re-writing and posting it again on ao3
Tagging: @conscience-killer @constant-sinner @astarkey @xstrawmari @blainesebastian if ya like! (sorry if you've been tagged before!)
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pliablehead · 8 months
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I guess if I want to write a travelogue/write up post about my 4-stop journey following the first chunk of Everything Everything's 2023 US tour then I have to just... do it!! If this is of interest to anyone other than me then GREAT and if not then it's still special to me to try to write down and remember everything I can uwu
FIRST STOP WASHINGTO-- wait, no, actually, first stop, on my way out of town, the local donut shop in my neighborhood, a place that I absolutely adore and patronize all the time with staff who mostly know me by now/some of whom are my instagram friends/etc. i'd checked with the Pittsburgh venue ahead of time to see if it was okay to send in outside food as a gift to the band even though they have a cafe/bar in their own right, and whoever I corresponded with said it would be totally fine, so I talked to the donut shop manager and set up a delivery of a dozen for the lads for Saturday before their show here. advance paid for that, as well as getting my own breakfast and coffee hehe, and then hit the road. OKAY FOR REAL FIRST STOP WASHINGTON DC!!! This was the second-longest leg of my Car Driving and it was definitely a wee bit exhausting but I had a podcast or two and a ton of E E on shuffle to bolster me through and I made it to my mom's friends' house, where I was staying, with relative ease. The venue was within a not-too-unreasonable walking distance too so after a change of clothes (I had very distinct and deliberate Show Outfits for each night that were fully separate from my travelin' clothes) and a bunch of fussing with the bracelets™ I headed over!! stopped for empanadas and a smoothie on the way and then queued up!!
aaaaahh this was such a nice fun queue. I was maybe about a dozen-ish people back from the front, down about half a block, and once I finished scarfing down my food this was my first real experience with doling out the bracelets. so fun! I'm glad it was basically an instant hit! AND I even got a few trades in this queue--one person gave me a Man Alive / Tin / E E bracelet with teeny tiny beads, super fun, and one person with a SHITTON of kandi stuff gave me one that had the name of a flower genus on it?? i think they said it was?? I love the colors on this one! And one person traded me a Blow Pop. lmao. I should eat that before it sits in my fanny pack for too long. I also really enjoyed chatting with the two guys right in front of me (Nick and Alex?), who were from south-central PA and had a couple other fandom touchstones in common with me (mcelroys/dnd/BDG! I love this Venn diagram!!) as well as a big love for E E. We didn't really see much of each other beyond the point of getting inside but I liked y'all a lot!! Hope you had as great a time as I did!!
Black Cat is where I saw E E the first time I EVER SAW THEM, which was almost exactly six years ago from this gig, which is insaaaane. The space is kind of narrow so there's not a huge amount of stage barrier space right at the front, so Becky and I ended up pretty much at the front but almost aa-all the way stage left/Jeremy-side. coulda been worse hehehe. We kind of loitered and chatted with nearby folks, I think maybe becky checked out merch ahead of the show ? but I kind of just held down the fort, enjoying setup stuff, pete running around etc hehe. getting BLASTED by the AC, which was nice.
the ummmm the opener! our first experience with Pierre! I gotta say his general style is not for me, despite the fact that I do think he's very talented and good at the thing he's doing. this first night especially he was SO sweaty and I felt bad for him lmao, you could like see it dripping off him. i am so curious as to why/how he got paired with the boys for this tour, like, what aligned in such a way that this match was made, because my general vibe on the crowd/his audience/etc was that we the fans of the nerdy white english mathy rocker guys were not exactly his demo LOL. BUT i will say in DC I do think he had one little pocket of strong-contingency fans because I kept hearing big whoops and cheers coming from one specific audience spot and I loved that for him lmao. for some reason i cannot explain I actually almost found his backing/support musician guy (the guy who was basically his version of peter) more compelling. I wanna know THAT dude's story lol.
so when he finished up we had a little interlude aaaannndd the setlist appeared... hehe. I could def have peered up to look at it from where I was, but I was telling myself I wanted to be surprised, and was deliberately looking away........ until suddenly everyone around me was gasping and going HOLY SHIT and I was like, ugghhh okay, I will check JUST enough to figure out what that's all about, and what that was all about was immediately apparent because smack in the middle of the set were a Man Alive track (which we never get in the states bar MY KZ) and something that just said "New Song." AND LIKE, OKAY, THAT'S A JUSTIFIED HOLY SHIT. new song????? so now we had THAT to contend with coming up, and aaaaaaah. ahh. yeah holy shit indeed.
it's also while we're standing there that AG pops into view, (or maybe I first spotted him during Pierre's set? Chronology is irrelevant), back off behind Becky from me in the other direction, and we waved over at him to say hi and he says to us, "All four of them are bleached blond." And my gut instinct was to be like, I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, but also the truth in my heart was that there was absolutely no justification for not believing them, because of course they would, and sure enough these bozos roll out onto the stage and they are all four draco malfoy-ass bleach blond. God it looks a mess on Jeremy LOL and while the color/dye job wasn't bad on Alex, it was clear his finer hair wasn't holding up as well against the chemicals because it was just a fluffy riot mess. BUT GOD IT WAS REALLY SO INCREDIBLY STRIKING OF A VISUAL for them to be all be wearing all pure white/beige clothes and then to have this bleach-white hair and all of it catching and glowing under the stage lights... god... clearly the effect they were going for and it WORKED, IT REALLY DID. I think it looks so damn goofy (mostly on jez) out of context but it's ABSOLUTELY nailing the Everything Everything Gig Costumes energy/uniform thing that I felt like they'd drifted away from a little the past couple tour cycles, I'm so incredibly here for it
The set!!!! The gig!!!!!!! it wasn't a wildly different set from what we'd seen in CA last year, obviously RDF-heavy supplemented with a heaping helping of singles from the other albums too, but I remember thinking Leviathan and Pizza Boy were especially excellent aaaah. And Schoolin'! And the NEW SONG! The two pieces of it I IMMEDIATELY absorbed and retained were 'the image of a little yellow face to tell you that I'm sorry' and 'I love you like an atom bomb,' and I was spouting those two pieces back to anyone who wanted to talk to me about it for the rest of the night. I'm so lyrics-pilled/vocalist-biased. Which was.... Unfortunate, for this DC gig, because I do think the audio mix was pretty rough - at least from where we were standing so close to the front, I wonder if it was at least a tiny bit better further back into the crowd in the area the sound system was probably primarily calibrated for - and we were REALLY losing Jon in the mix, especially underneath how enthusiastically the crowd was singing along a lot of the time. We were on Jeremy's side of the stage and we were really just getting a LOT of Jeremy. (Which, the bass did sound absolutely fantastic, so hard to complain about that, at least, but still.) I was very thankful to be going to a few more gigs beyond this one so that this wasn't my only experience with it, especially New Song!!! Plus there were a bunch of other little tech difficulties too? Near the beginning of the new song, Jon's guitar strap came detached and wouldn't reconnect, and after struggling a bit with that he decided to just drift back and pass it off the stage to their tech guy--but he was still kind of singing/holding the mic, so as he moved on stage, the mic cable yanked the microphone stand straight over, too. Then the rest of the night that stand was pretty precarious and nearly fell two other times, only caught at the last minute by a true homie who was standing directly in front of it in the audience lmao. I think Becky yelled HIRE HIM! at one point. Annnnd also for like a whole verse of NOTLK jez's bass boards just kind of Gave Up. He tried switching to his other instrument but that wasn't working either, and then finally it all sort of came back online, so he played a little stretch with the wrong bass and then was able to switch back to the right bass when there was a lull in his part. SHAMBLES. lmfao. god it was a great gig though. SO FUCKING GOOD TO BE BACK I LOVE BAND UWAAAAAHH I WAS SO SWEATY AND HAPPY
afterrrr da gig, we needed very badly to drink water and so we managed to do that I believe, and we kind of loitered in the Merch Line Situation trying to figure out what was going on. I had kind of resolved not to buy merch until at least NY, part because I really didn't want to be lugging anything around with me for too much of my trip (esp on this night where I walked) and part because I'd read a post that Irving Plaza was among the venues who'd committed to not taking a cut of band merch sales and letting them keep it all, and I was like, well obvi that's where I want to spend my money. Plus it was cash only in DC and since I'd kind of told myself NY I didn't even have cash out, so it was nothing. BUT!!! homie Adrian whomst I had met at the DC Foals show last December had been there, a few people ahead of me in the queue and also rocking out yaayyy, and he was trying to get merch but the ATM inside the venue literally did not have any more cash left inside it to dispense because everyone was taking out so much of it to buy merch AAAH. so he reached out to me like 'you're going to more shows than just this one right?' and asked if I'd pick him up the stuff he wanted later and then mail it to him so he didn't have to contend with international shipping and I was like aaaah absolutely! yay gig comradeship!
so I think becky finally committed to getting in the merch line and I was mostly just waiting With Becky and there weren't a ton of people left because the venue was trying to clear out, but the handful of us who were still there, a wild Alex Robertshaw appeared up near the stage/bar. we vibed out whether he was receptive to Fan Bothering at this time but it seemed legit, so a bunch of us went over and socialized with him and took some pics, got some signatures, etc, woooo. We tried to vibe out from him also if the other guys were gonna be coming out, and when and where, but y'all know Alex is the awkwardest member of this band by a country mile and we didn't really have too coherent of a discourse at this point in time lmao. Not sure who talked to him about what at this point as I was just trying to hold down the fort and be Normal. I was able to give Alex the bracelet I'd made for him at this point (he was so cute studying on it and reading it ahaha - "rave-- kevin-- kevins rave KEVIN'S RAVE" and he smiled and I felt cool), and also meanwhile Pete was still running around stage doing roadietech type stuff and I sort of politely flagged him down like "do what you need to do if you need to do it but also: Hi lol" and I got to give him his bracelet as well! yay ♥. He complimented my shirt--I'd been getting a lot of compliments on it honestly, it's their Yellow Bird Project shirt that Jon designed some time ago, only I replaced the plain white sleeves of the original unisex tee with some sort of vermilion "girly fit" sleeves that are more comfy to me and kind of give the shirt a different look haha--and I sort of joked on that, said as much, oh, I swapped the sleeves out, "It's to cover up how sweaty I get." and Pete gave me a deadpan look and went "You don't even want to go there with me" and I was like "YEP I FEEL MUCH THE SAME" and I think we both enjoyed a moment of feeling very Seen about the sweatiness hehehehehe. I love Pete he is my heckin Friend With no additional merch purchases (merchases) (hm, no) the venue was finally for realsies ejecting us so we drifted back out into the streets and just like... okay... now what........ this was the point at which I think our Band Groupie-ing Crew became me, Becky, Danielle in the fox ears/tail, and a lanky youth named S.P. whom I'd talked to in line earlier while doling out bracelets (he had the good E E baseball cap; he asked for an Arc bracelet and I commended him for being an Arc fan, since I feel like they are a dwindling/rarer breed, and then I offered up my hot take that Violent Sun is just the second coming and second pass at Duet, which he thought was spicy, and then he asked for my most controversial E E take and I told him that I don't really like Tin very much and he told me he doesn't really like Shark Week very much and we agreed to disagree and have a good night LOL) (anyway I digress !). It was a warm enough night and none of us really had places to be so we didn't mind just loitering and trying to suss out some more Guys other than just Alex and Pete, but slowly but surely we became basically the only fans left sticking it out. so we stuck together! We split up to try to find if there was a rear stage door at the back and SP and I went one way (the long way RIP) and Becky and Danielle went the other way and it turns out the way that SP and I went was an alleyway just FULL of rats. Too many rats in DC!! People like to talk about rats in NYC but I saw WAY more in Washington just vibing out on the sidewalks and eating trash. I'm not anti-rat, they live there and deserve to live, but oh man it was just. I did not especially want a rat encounter LOL. The rat alley DID actually lead us to where the bus was though!!, but there was also a venue security guy there who was immediately like "Nope, back up, leave, bye" and we were like. understood have a nice day, and doubled around a different way to meet back up with the other two. wwwwelp.
We loitered a bunch more and eventually saw Alex and his homies like, AT LEAST two more times, but we ultimately never saw anyone else. They p much confirmed for us that because this was the first night of the tour, they had a really intense load-out, and everyone was jetlagged to all fuck, that they probably wouldn't ever make it out, even though at least once Alex had said something ambiguous/optimistic enough to imply that they might yet, but really it just got SO late that we couldn't justify still being there for nothing instead of being like. asleep. lol. SP and Danielle got rideshares, Becky and I walked back as far as her hotel together, and then I hiked the rest of my way back too and went the fuck to SLEEP!!! FIRST GIG IN THE BOOKS!! WHAT A LOVELY NIGHT GOD IT WAS JUST SO BEAUTIFUL TO BE SEEING THEM AGAIN ngl I think the blond is really attractive on Mike with his darker brows/beard and I'm always a sl*t for jonathan so like. beautiful. finally some delicious fucking food
it was super nice of my mom's friend to let me stay with him!!! I was so delighted to see his cats again, I remembered them from the last time I was there like six or so years ago, they're sooooo floofy and beautiful aahh. he also provided me with a white noise fan without me even asking which was SO choice. zzzzz. My plan was to get up in the morning, get coffee someplace nearby at wherever he recommended, and then hit the road forrrr... Philadelphia!!! Night two!!!! I got some breakfast tacos at a hella legit place, messed up my coffee/milk/sugar ratio ever so slightly but not in an undrinkable way, and then frickin. autobot rolled out. This drive was not bad at ALL, I timed it pretty much exactly like I planned it to, which was to: get to my friend's place where I was crashing in philly with, ideally, enough time to take a small nap before I had to do anything else, because, god, despite being pretty exhausted and sleeping okay on the nice guest bed in DC, I had BARELY slept the night before I left just from Travel Antsiness and from both staying up way later and waking up way earlier than I meant to unintentionally, and a second little recharge zzz before I went and did it all over again really hit the spot.
It was soooo nice to see Mads again and to see Mr. Angus and also meet BENNY!! More host cats!! They are suuuch silly good little lads, Mads and I had a ton of Kitty Chat and just vibing out and talking about concerts and fandom and stuff, I was so thankful she let me stay with her and getting to hang out was icing on the cake of this trip! She pointed me toward the trolley I'd need to take to get to the venue, and after my baby snzzz and drinking a ton of water and suiting up in my Arc-inspired look (literally just a sweatshirt dress I bought specifically because it was color-blocked very very much like the jackets/outfits they toured Arc in, I saw it and bought it immediately lmfao) I journeyed into the city, hoping to just find a place to eat in the vicinity of the gig! I was way closer up in the queue this time, the people in front of me were really just like.... the usual suspects, Annika+squad and David+squad (incl. Becky, who'd apparently already been there when I got there but wasn't there when I arrived), and also a super-nice woman immediately in front of me named Robin who I MEGA hit it off with!!! Hanging out with her was such an awesome part of my experience at this gig!!! she's COMPLETELY Offline which is so powerful for her but I hope there's some capacity in which we can continue to be friends because she ruled.
There was a Dominican(? I think) place like one block down from the venue where a couple in front of me had gotten some stuff and so I ran down there to snag food too and holy shit this man gave me so much goddamn food. Just a HUGE pile of rice and beans and some pork ribs, and I got a pineapple fanta, and I just popped a squat on the sidewalk and ate as much of it as I could which was probably not even half of what he gave me but it wasn't even that expensive so god bless. Once I wasn't dealing with my food sitch any more I was freed up to pass out a bunch of bracelets again, and I even got a couple more trades, one that was just a bunch of black beads and a bunch of Xs and one that says 'BUSSY' which I am elated about, thank you so fucking much lmao. Also someone offered to trade me an ibuprofen LOL and I was like no that's fine the bracelet can be free... for now, but I will keep that in mind if I change my mind later LOL aaahhh i was just so excited to give the bracelets out it was such a good vector for socializing and making Friends and Gig Buddies. I did learn p quickly at Philly that I should have made way more Man Alive, GTH, and Raw Data feel bracelets because those were basically the first to go every night and then I got stuck with just sad unloved Re-Animators and AFDs :( I was trying to like! do equal amounts of everything to give everything the love because I love them all! but people got favorites out there damn lmao. I was happy to be able to give Robin the MY KZ one because she said that's the first song she ever heard by them and it's special to her because of that (and then also it's been in the touring set and she got to hear them perform it too yay!!! I don't remember if she said she'd seen them before but it had just been a very very long time, or what, idk, aaaah).
We were R I G H T on the stage at this venue, slightly more to Alex's side this time, and the lip/rise of the stage was not very high at ALL and it felt almost like... intimidating, or like it shouldn't have been ALLOWED, for us to be that close to the stage. :flushed emoji: jeez lmao. I didn't fuck w merch here either but some people around me did I think and I held their spots, and a nice kid from right behind me in the queue brought me a Liquid Death which was so incredibly sweet. Pierre's set passed much as it had in DC, lmao; his other musician guy had a sweet fit on, though, this like two-piece set that was a really really dark/muted camo, a blazer over a black top and then matching like athleisure-fit pants and black boots, it was a fuckin look. They had a song at the very end of Pierre's Philly set that I don't think they'd done in DC (and that I didn't get in PGH either, it turned out), and ironically that was actually probably far and away the song of his I enjoyed the most, so I got kind of into it there at the end! but MAN was I ready to see the boys instead. hnnnn.
LADS SO CLOSE TO ME. JUST RIGHT THERE AND SINGING AND ROCKING. the set was aaaalmost exactly the same as DC, but in Philly they shifted Bad Friday up out of the encore and back into the set proper, and then replaced it in the encore with Violent Sun, which I admit I'd been bummed to not see in DC because I think the Violent Sun/No Reptiles encore double whammy is so incredibly crucial to the vibe. Warmed me to have it back in. Obviously Pittsburgh had so many other contributing factors that put it over the edge, but if it weren't for all of those, I think Philly would've been my favorite/best experience of these four gigs. Jon was spicy (he sang so many of the Original Rejected naughty lyrics, this is where we got 'he's a vegetable now' for the first and only time and also the only gig of the four where he leaned into the 'Arch Jeremy' gag in Arch Enemy, hehehehe, plus also motherfuckin' distant past which is not uncommon), and we got way more of the New Song-- through the whisper network of Becky, AG, David, etc., etc., we'd pieced together enough info to know by now that apparently the title of the song was in the lyrics of the chorus, and so I think it was in Philly that we all pretty much determined/decided that this was Cold Reactor. I love you like an atom bomb and I've become a cold reactor. I wasn't diving as DEEP into SONG DECIPHERING as some other folks were, but I did like kind of working on it at my own pace and absorbing it into my heart and my understanding of the band and what they're about to start doing, and so this was really great, for me, here, beautiful, beautiful. I took almost NO pics and vids at this one because my phone was kind of dying but also mostly just because I was honestly having such an enormously great time and I didn't feel the need to try to do anything other than be present in my body at the gig and experience it live. you KNOW?? LIKE!! MUSIC. man. EDIT TO ADD: I forgot to mention a small tech flub that was actually so charming, where near the very end of Arch Enemy jon seemed to be having trouble with his guitar board in the front, and he spent so long in the outro squinting down at it and trying to resolve the issue that he didn't fully come in on the It's time to show your face! bit at the proper time, and he ended up just saying "It's time to show your face." right into the mic very unaffected and straight-up in his regular speaking voice at the very, very end when the song was basically over. lol. he is cute. everyone is cute.
(I WILL ALSO SAY I got the giggles SO BAD at david and amanda's gudetama they slipped onto the stage, oh my god--I was going to take a joke video just dramatically zooming in on it, as one does, except right when I went to do that it got caught up in jon's mic cable and just TUMBLED AND JOSTLED ALL OVER THE PLACE and that fucking GOT me and I was DYING and it was right at like. the serious, heartstring-tugging, fuck-yeah parts of No Reptiles where I'm supposed to be at CHURCH and instead I'm losing my shit into hysterics over this poor gudetama just rolling everywhere alksdhjglaksd, I had to bury my face in Becky's shoulder for a measure or more and try to recover, oh my godddd. EGGS!) -- (OH ALSO I LMAO I HAVE SEVERAL AUDIENCE MEMBER ~BITS THAT I AM DOING just like, clapping here or there, participating actively in certain parts of things, and one that I kept doing for some asshole clown reason was singing along with/lampshading Alex's quick backing vox on the second verse of Spring Sun Winter Dread-- Philly was probably the place where I was the most prominent/obvious/easy to see doing it, and it made both him and Jeremy REALLY snicker, ahahaha I'm sorryyyyyyy for being obnoxioussssss)
The merch/loitering sitch was sli-iiightly more locked down, in here; there was only so long Marty and I could pretend to be thinking about merch/hanging out with people who were actually in line but not actually being in line before they really truly wanted us to leave, and they were pretty pissed that I even left the venue with an empty/ice-only water cup, never mind any dreams of re-entry. The militant energy of the security at this venue compared to how relatively chill and normal DC had been (for two venues I would say of comparable size/seriousness) was def my least favorite part of the Philly experience. I was outside, finishing my water and chitchatting with some artsy youths who were also unimpressed with security, and Becky's messaging me like "they're in here!" and I'm like "well I'm not and I can't come back so you gotta tell them to come out here!" lmao. But they did!!! All the guys came out before too long and I very delightfully got to talk to everyone. I gave Mike and Jeremy the bracelets I'd made for them - THEY both apologized to ME outright for not coming out to chat the night before?? like hello you’re the band we’re the fans you don’t owe us anything - they kind of came toward my side of the door first, and talked and chatted some, vs Jon sort of peeling the other way to the other half of the loiterers - I honestly have lost track of the sequence of events here and what happened when, but it was largely unimportant hehe. (Gosh, but then I keep randomly remembering other unrelated details. Like, for example, Black Cat gave me their big ol' signature black cat hand stamp, and I'd been thinking, oh this will be fun to watch my four hand stamps stack from these four gigs, the way I got two together from The Altogether/Matt Duncan double feature back in July, and then Underground Arts put theirs on the INSIDE OF MY WRIST and not the back of my hand, and both Irving and T-Bird just did wristbands. BUMMER.) But mostly just Seeing Band, Talking To Band. This was when I overheard Alex definitely confirm to someone that the new song is called Cold Reactor, and he sort of half-seriously half-not said they just didn't call it that on the setlist in case there was another "New Song" they might want to decide to start playing there instead at the last minute, even though the longer this goes on the more confident we are that they're not going to do that and that Cold Reactor is gonna be a new single that probably drops once this tour is over <___< eyes emoji. Also, between Wednesday and Thursday we also knew that the bleach-blond hair is for Lore Reasons, which we assume are to do with Cold Reactor and the album it will be on, because of course it is. stupid. jonathan higgs I want to crawl inside your deranged pisces mind and meld with it vulcan style.
anyway, as far as my short term memory can be relied upon/will tell me is the truth, I think Jon was actually the last person I ended up in contact with on this night; I was drifting over toward him but someone else was still engaged in an active conversation with him, so I was like, well obviously I will wait my turn and let other people have jonathan time even though I'm the biggest jonathan girlie, I can just hang and go in when he frees up, and so I was turned slightly away from him listening in on other convos and talking to Becky and maybe Annika or a couple other people, and then suddenly there's a delicate hand on the back of my shoulder and Jon's right in my fucking ear ominously going "hello." askdjhgka. He was soooo cute and nice, I gave him the bracelet I made him as well (which was "I wanna be there" from Violent Sun and shades of re-animator orange) and he was immediately like Oh, of course you, are the bracelet distributor, and I was like hehehe yes, and he asked if I also had to do with the gudetama and I was like absolutely not I have no idea what is going on there lmfao. and I think amanda and david did take credit for it at that time of course so yes hehe. Ended up in a fun casual chitchat with Jon and Becky for most of the rest of the time here, with her trying to squeeze him for info about the new song and album and lore hehehe and him being his typical cryptic trolly cagey Jon, and it was all in incredibly good fun; he noticed her bracelet too, and she pointed it out like Yes I got the one that says This Is The Prophecy from big climb because it hearkens back to that bit they were doing on twitter from way before that song even came out so I gave her that one on purpose duh lol, and Jon says "Oooh yep I forgot about that. .. Album..." and mimed swiping his hair back like whoopsie lmao and it was such a silly little half-self-neg on Re-Animator lol, and so I said "WELP too bad! because the one I made from you is one of those too haha!" and he took another look at it as if to remind himself about it and then went "Well yeah that one's good" with a wryer wickeder laugh and I was like lmao tell us how you really feel. But like he's right violent sun is perfect and I actually labored so long over what I was going to have jon's say because he was the only person I didn't have a really solid concrete idea of what to make for and ALSO he was the only one I REALLY wanted to get PERFECT because it's important to me and yeah. so it was. reassuring for him to like the violent sun one. idk anyway.
The woman we'd seen running around doing a lot for them, including merch, who recognized us from DC the night before and was fun and glib about it, and who turns out to be: Tour Manager Sam, finally had enough of our fucking about and started very efficiently organizing us all into "everyone who wants a pic with themself + all four guys come get in Now and I'm gonna play photographer and then we all gotta go the fuck home" and I respected it SO much lmao, so we had sort of a rotating queue of group picture taking and then the guys all went back inside the venue (I kind of fingerguns'd Jon like "New York :D?" and he looked at me just SO Put Out and just deadpanned "Of course you're going to be there." of course!! lmfao) and we started talking amongst ourselves just out of reluctance to let the night end/social energy we still wanted to wallow in and that was cute and nice. I said goodbye to some folks who weren't going any further on the tour. I had such a wonderful night. Then, lo and behold, we turn around and Jeremy's up on the stoop of the venue, and he's like, I think I've locked myself out. I am locked out and I also don't have my phone on me. lmfao jez. he goes "I am going to blame jonathan" and we allowed him that. I was like, do you want me to TWEET AT SOMEONE LOL and he was like good god no they'll come back for me eventually, and then yes they did, and THEN we all left hahahaha. becky insisted on sticking with me part of the way to the trolley but I was like, it is coming in 14 minutes and it says it's gonna take me 12 minutes to get there I gotta GO!, and I freaking missed it anyway!!! and then I had to wait like OVER HALF AN HOUR MORE for the next one and i didn't even get ON the trolley till like 12:50 and it was soooo late before I was back at mads's place aiyaa. But, all in all, TRULY SUCH A GOOD NIGHT I JUST LOVE BEING IN AN ACTIVE BUZZY FANDOM SPACE AND MEETING FANS AND PARASOCIALING AND DANCING AND SINGING AND DOING ARTS N CRAFTS. you KNOW?? you know. you're on tumblr you get it.
The Philly to Jersey (pre-NYC) leg of my road tripping was set to be Thee shortest drive I had to make the whole time, so I let myself have time in the morning to keep snoozing and fucking about, even though I once again woke up way earlier than I'd hoped to and didn't ever make it back to sleep after that. But the tradeoff was still super nice and relaxing vibing with Madeline--I offered to buy her breakfast in exchange for the couch-crashin' and we got hella bagel sandwiches and cold brew from a place real close by her apartment, and scarfed 'em down while watching the most recent ep of Make Some Noise and just shooting the shit (again, largely about either fandom or kitty cats. We are simple folk). My sandwich contained salmon, a fried egg, and the most incredible sloppy caramelized onions, what a banger. The last truly good food I truly enjoyed before my mega super Travel Tummy set in and wrecked my whole shop metabolically speaking, rip. I took a little rinsy-rinse shower at her place too, and then finally made myself get up and Go to do the runaround silly business of driving to and parking in NJ, taking the ferry in to Manhattan, and then taking the subway to Allegra's place for NIGHT THREE IN NEW YORK CITY WOOOOO. I LOVE going to E E with Allegra!!!!! Once again I used her place primarily as a spot to change out of my car clothes and into my gig clothes (it's RDF night; I wore an oversized pale beige button-up shirt, actually left over from my Foals Antidotes costume from last halloween hahaha, gussied up with E E pins and jewelry) and to fuck about with bracelets. I made Allegra a special In Birdsong bracelet, the only one I did from that song :) because allegra is my special E E friend!! and she needs one of her special song!!! Fandom... is good. Allegra also had a kickass outfit. We stopped in at a tex-mex place she really wanted to try that was nearby the venue, and i got pretty nervous that it was gonna be a little late before doors for us to be hitting a sit-down dinner spot, but we rushed it along pretty well on the food and got our slice of dessert cake to go in a box and everything was A-OK. And I had time to hit a bodega for merch cash from the ATM and a pineapple soda for fortitude! let's GOOO irving plaza.
God, Irving was kind of a shitshow when it came to queuing and security though. There were a fair few people in line ahead of us, maybe just as many or slightly more than what I'd had in DC (definitely further back than Philly, although in line near us were the same also-eating-Dominican-food couple from the Philly gig, and I recognized them and was glad to see them again-- I FULLY DO NOT REMEMBER/DID NOT CATCH Y'ALL'S NAMES, AND I FEEL TERRIBLE BECAUSE WE HUNG OUT AND WORKED TOGETHER SO MUCH, i am so sorryyyyy), but then because it's not a sweet local friendly indie venue but is in fact Livenation As Hell, there's some person affiliated with the venue wandering up front offering some sort of VIP/fast pass line experience where you can just cough up some extra cash and get in your own special line and get to go in first regardless of how long other people have been queuing--you know the deal. Wack as hell. I think David and Amanda opted for this in some capacity, so I was happy for them about it, but a lot of the other people who ended up doing it had kind of rancid vibes of just like "concert-going" and not the very lovely communal sardine megafan energy everyone else had had thusfar. Also it put us where we were at in the queue standing in a place that just had a really terrible smell of sewage, which persisted almost the entire time we were there only to suddenly be replaced by a very powerful smell of bleach, as if whatever it was was suddenly being cleaned/sanitized. ICKY!! Annika was enough further ahead of us in line that I thought it might have only been over where we were but she said no she was definitely getting it too. new york city babey
Bracelet distribution got a little silly here, too, since the queue was wrapping SO far back and was being policed a little more stringently, but I had kind of figured I may need some kind of additional plan, especially since I'd decided not to wear my fanny pack (bum bag--fanny pack, says Jonathan Higgs in a derisive American accent, even as he's telling me he likes mine a lot, skdjshgalkj smh) since my shorts under my shirt had really capacious pockets and that just made for one less thing to worry about--I snagged a sheet of paper at Allegra's place, along with a gallon-size ziploc bag, and I put all the bracelets in there with a note that said to just take one if you wanted one and pass it back through the queue while we waited. It was kind of a crapshoot how effective I thought this was going to be, especially since I had to kind of wait to deploy it once there was a substantial queue BUT by the time there was a big queue it meant that I couldn't see exactly HOW big from where I was near-ish enough to the front, so I didn't know how far the bag was going to make it, if someone was going to end up stuck with my whole big bag at the back of the line (esp since I had a fair number of extra Philly bracelets left over that I lumped in with the NYC ones just because I still Had them).... whew...! BUT by the time Marty was there, he was further enough back from me that I asked him to kind of check up on it when it made it to him and keep passing it; and, by the time we were going inside, I could see zero sign of the bag itself but I DID catch a lot of people milling around me wearing bracelets, and one or two of them did stop me to thank me (since I'd indicated on my note in the bag that I was the person with green hair hahaha), and then I never saw 'em again, so I guess it was a relative success!! Yayyyyy!! WAY less conducive to making New Line Friends than the DC/Philly setup had been, but incredibly effective at making sure that all my bracelets found new homes rather than me having to take a huge handful home with me again and them just sitting in my house forever LOL. success! :)
tl;dr about the bracelets. not important compared to concert and band. WE GO INSIDE!! They have such dumb security/bag check. a gender-split process where the men get patted down by a dude guard and the women get patted down by a lady guard? In TYOOL 2023? you hate to see it. She felt the Sharpie in my back pocket and made me take it out and surrender it???? MY METALLIC BRONZE SHARPIE ? ? no sharpies in the venue I guess. Talked to at least one other person who got sharpie-confiscated too, but also at least two people who fully didn't and still had markers just fine. Absolute shenanigans. Allegra and I didn't quite get barrier due in part to fastpass line nonsense but we did end up right exactly behind Annika &co. with perfect sightlines, once again stage-left/Jeremy-ward-of-center. we don't hate it! my Philly pals to my left with David, Becky et al in front of them. Me fully surrounded by redheads. LOL.
this was the laaaatest show of my whole run, a whole lot of standing around just waiting for Band, and also definitely the energy of "trying to politely vibe to pierre kwenders's set because he can clearly see me and look straight at me even though I would much rather just skip to the bit I actually came for and don't necessarily need to see his set" just slowly increasing every night RIP lol. BUT WE MADE IT! ohhhh new york. EXACT same set as Philly but I couldn't even be mad about it because I was still so grateful to get a Man Alive song that wasn't just MY KZ (not that I don't love my kz obviously, but it HAS been in the set literally all eight times that I have seen E E live as of this Irving Plaza gig, and something else from that album is fun fresh delicious) (OH, SWEET THREEP OF FRIDAY EVENING, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW) and to be getting COLD REACTOR again, especially becaussseee by this point I knew just enough of the lyrics that I felt confident singing/mouthing along conspicuously with the parts that I Did know, aka I See You Sir I'm Doing The Thing Just Watch Me, god I wish I knew how to be not so fucking extra but then again no I don't. we did get saddled with some Rather Annoying audience members in our near vicinity--a couple I'd spotted in the fastpass line earlier wedged themselves hard between me and my tall redhead/mask-wearing homie from Philly, all like "ummm we're short :)" because they. were, but that didn't give them a right to be pushy and rude, and their vibes were kind of shit because the sense I got was they were mostly there because the girl really loved the band and the dude didn't know much about them at all, and also they were already drunk so early on in the set, and they were talking loudly with some other fans they'd just met and getting Lore™ explained to them and it was just a lot of. loud talking and shoving. in my vicinity. when I would have preferred for there to. not be. BUT Also materializing behind me was someone who said "I saw your bracelets on twitter do you still have any!!" and I had to be like UHHHH FUCK, NO, I turned them loose into the queue, did they not make it as far as you..?? and she sadly said no, and I was like, well the only one I have left is this one I just left on for tradesies/advertising purposes, and it says "akon in the butterfly house" so that's kind of a deep cut, if you're familiar-- and she went WAIT REALLY and seemed SUPER jazzed to get a Dave Sardine-ass bracelet and I was like OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT, GOOD, ACTUALLY, because I'd made four of these and I knew they were going to be the deepest cut/hardest sell and I was really really hoping that whoever ended up with them would actually get and appreciate them. so thank you, andrea, for being that person, and for appearing exactly when the bracelet needed it most. so glad to have hung with you this night. sorry that you too found yourself among the ranks of the sharpie-confiscatees.
ANYWAY, OTHER THAN THAT, THIS AUDIENCE WAS FIRE AND THIS GIG SLAPPED. We were finally in a space and an environment that REALLY lent itself to the crowd actually full on bouncing/dancing instead of just kind of wobbling and vibing and everyone in my immediate zone was really going hard. I LOVE this fucking BAND. I love every song by this band. I love when Jon just points the mic at the crowd and the entire crowd sings the whole song word for word and note for note. I love that Jon was still desperately trying to cram the name of the host city into the start of My Kz, despite the fact that "Washington" subs for "Lucifer" perfectly (he has done this both times I've seen them in DC lol) but "Philadelphia" is WAY too stupid long and "New York City," while a syllable shorter, scans metrically in an extremely busted way and you could have just said EN WHY CEE or. y'know. lucifer. but okay man you do you. Jon was just as rowdy as the rest of us lmfao. he was like, climbing up and down off Mike's riser, he was finding people who were taking photos/videos and staring directly into their cameras (me fucking included--I'm sorry, Jon, you can't make eye contact with me while singing the "When I saw you, I fell in love" part of Leviathan, I am pretty sure that is illegal and a crime against my humanity), and basically all the tracks from Get To Heaven (plus like, Cough Cough and NOTLK) blew the fucking roof off the place. I think he donked some My Kz lyrics hehehe he just skipped to the alt lyrics of the chorus too early without completing the standard chorus first at the end, and a little flubbo in NOTLK and a tiny stutter in No Reptiles too, everyone was just TOO ROWDY and he's THROWN LOOPY and man did we not care. I said multiple times to people on this tour that pretty much the closest things I've ever experienced to true Religion are a) being in an E E audience for No Reptiles and b) being in a Hedwig audience for Midnight Radio. they're the same spiritually in my heart and also like do people who love Jesus feel this way and is this why. insane. the cult leader imagery was Not Wrong!!!!!
I wanna MERCH! I got in the line not too long after the show wrapped, but true to reports I'd heard about the pre-show merch line, it was moving verrryy slowly, with just one guy manning it who was not exactly quick and a card reader that seemed pretty chuggy too (but hey, at least NY was taking card). I'd known I wanted the poster--it's got my favorite neon orange on it, it really really slaps, and I wanted something to get signed--but I let myself talk myself into a t-shirt too, mostly because I was REALLY excited to buy E E merch apparel that wasn't black or white. Yellow!! a really freaking good yellow!! I wish the yellow ones had actually had the tour dates on them like the black and white ones did but the yellow branding has been pretty exclusive to this leg of tour (i.e. vs the red branding of the west coast one last year) and it looks soooo good with my hair that I don't especially mind. I also knew that Adrian wanted a copy of Caps Lock On, but that he also wanted a shirt, but I hadn't heard back from him about which shirt or what size so I just got the book and my stuff and then bounced. Communique from outside was that Alex had surfaced but no one else, but that Alex had promised appearances by the rest of them, but that also Alex was already gone and unlikely to return by the time I made it outside. I posted up with all my friends from inside, god this was SUCH a good sardine squad this night, and it took some waiting but eventually the promises came true! All the other boys surfaced and we had some REALLY great fan chats and mingling this tiimmmmee. oh my gosh. A guy came with a Modern Bison CD that Jon and Jeremy were really truly overjoyed to see and to sign and take pictures with; I talked to Jeremy about the bracelets some more because he'd been wearing the one I gave him the WHOLE GIG IN NEW YORK SO LIKE THAT'S GONNA BE IN ANY PHOTOS THAT WERE TAKEN PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING, oh my gosshhh, he was so nice about it and enjoyed that his Arch Jeremy matched my Arch Emily, the vibes were impeccable; and then I got everyone to sign my poster, but of course Alex was gone already, so Jon offers to forge Alex's signature and goes "look it's like this" and draws some loopy scribble on there and I'm like, lmao, sure.
thing was... I had absolutely heard Jeremy signing something for someone else the night before talking about how he was getting really good at forging Alex's signature for him, since I guess it's normal for him to be the one that disappears the sneakiest (god he really is just the Justin Craig of this band, it's 1:1, huh), and so when I told Jeremy this, he was like "I'll do it" and I was like "no Jon did already do it" and he was going to just leave it then, like, oh, well, okay, but then he saw the mess Jon had made and he was like "--that's quite dreadful actually-- the trick is to not overthink it--" and so now my poster has two forged Alex Robertshaw signatures and zero authentic ones. l m f a o. (To be fair, I do have other things they've all four signed, and Jeremy's fake Alex is at least passable, and Jon's fake Alex is Absolute Dogshit Nothing. I am obsessed.) I even got Peter to sign! He was talking with another fan about a gift she'd given them in the past that had sadly been part of what they lost in their studio fire, it was really heartbreaking to hear. He also thanked me again for his bracelet and told me he planned to give it to his daughter and that she would love it. We took a pic together! Pete the GOAT.
While I was making the rounds with the other boys and other fans, Allegra mostly in tow, swapping sharpies among those of us who still had them, Becky was back with Jon, taking a couple videos for people who weren't there in NY to talk about stuff that they were curious about--I think in the context of Maria, Becky said something like, she thinks the hair is crazy, and Jon said into the camera something like, "If you think it's crazy Now, give it like two or three more weeks, and you're really gonna think it's crazy." SIR WHAT. If the blond is a precursor to something else happening I'm gonna be so the opposite of normal about it, and if the bleach is a stepping stone toward the boys dyeing their hair Other colors I am going to be PROFOUNDLY NOT NORMAL ABOUT IT, AND IF ANY MEMBER OF THE MANCUNIAN ROCK BAND EVERYTHING EVERYTHING HAS THEIR HAIR DYED GREEN ANY TIME IN THE NEAR FUTURE I AM GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY INSUFFERABLE. tyler the creator unfollow me right now etc. etc. etc. The more I've thought about it I don't THINK this is what's up--my sense is that any Cold Reactor music video is probably already filmed and ready to drop alongside the single pretty quick after the tour ends, rather than being something they're going to film/put together entirely post-tour, so they probably needed the bleachblond for some energy similar to how I felt about them when they first walked on stage in DC, but Oh man...... OH MAN............ I digress. anyway.
following up from that, Allegra (I think? Or maybe still Becky and allegra was just Present) addressed the notion of the hair being related to the Lore, and like, did that mean lore for the single/the upcoming album ? ? which was what we were assuming, and Jon said some demented and ominous and extremely exciting phrase like, "The lore for this one is.... b o t t o m l e s s" in his always-startling real deep Jon voice, and that was the fucking sound bite of the evening, folks. FOLKS. ALLEGRA AND I WENT ALL THE WAY BACK TO HER APARTMENT JUST CONTINUALLY SAYING "THE LORE IS BOTTOMLESS!" my body is so god damn ready.
We bid farewells to all our friends for whom NYC was their final stop on this tour!! SAD!!!!!! Going to miss all the homies T___T it's not fair that we're not just all going to every single stop on this tour I don't think? it should actually be illegal for us not to be present when the band is performing?? the hugest RIP. Hugs exchanged all around. Me trying to say bye to Jon but he's engaged with someone else so I think I just awkwardly said "See you tomorrow" twice and then we left. becky maaaybe trying to last minute scramble to also come to pgh now despite not really having accounted for it in her plans originally ? ? I was not certain what she intended here but I supported her. yes. me, annika and AG for sure being there at least. we ride. Back to allegra's where I did, unfortunately, sleep ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLY/BASICALLY NOT AT ALL due to being so hot and stuffy in my little nest on the floor that it was making me nauseated, I think I got maybe 2.5 hours tops, but I didn't really have a choice because if I wanted to be back home in time to do ANYTHING other than just rock straight over to the queue for Thunderbird then I knew I was going to have to leave so GOD DAMN early in the morning to haul ass back to where my car was and then drive the seven hours to pgh. But I did exactly that!!!! bitch!!!!! Other than some issues like, managing to make a timely pit stop for gas/potty/coffee, I endured the miserable long roadtrip despite myself, raging my way through the poconos, downing the largest cold brew Wawa would sell me, having a truly tragic car vs quesadilla incident, etc. My BFF Francis even got on the phone with me for the last hour or so and we chatted and I got to give them the whole update on the tour thus far, so fun! They MIGHT try to go to the Chicago stop next week!!! if they feel like they can swing it, and I was like ok no pressure but also it's been an extraordinary experience for me thusfar and I highly recommend. So if you see Francis at E E Chicago please holler at them kindly from me!!! :) But at the very least they said they did want a T-shirt and venmo'd me money to buy them one, since I was already still gonna have to get one for Adrian. woooooo
I got home with, yeah, basically exactly enough time to shower, get my outfit together, and regroup before heading to the venue !!! I JUST BARELY missed the bus that would've gotten me there the most promptly, largely due to not being able to find another fucking Sharpie since irving plaza took my first one lmfao, and it ended up being quicker to walk there than to wait the 36 minutes it would've been for another bus or whatever. I still had MEGA travel tummy so I just snagged an apple and scarfed it down on the walk over. Annika was already there queuing! so we hung out in line together and waited and drank the waters we had definitely brought in from outside the bar and just vibed lol. and she was like, I heard them checking two new songs that haven't been in the setlist yet, and I was like ha ha lol like what, and she said, kevin's car and leave the engine room.
and listen, I was optimistic. that my social media obnoxiousness and well-known, easily observable public desires might yet sway them, because come on it's my hometown and it's the last show i'm gonna see on this tour and I sent them donuts, and those were MEANT as a KINDNESS and an ENTHUSIASM FOR DONUTS and not as a bribe, but if anyone wanted to interpret them as a bribe anyway whomst was I to say no, but like. just because I want the band i like to do a thing absolutely does not mean that they have to fucking do it. I want to be crystal clear that i have never at any point EXPECTED them to do this. i just. hoped. yearned in my heart of hearts. and also had very sound rationale for how possible/likely it was. Here's How Engie Room Can Still Win. yfm. but the soundcheck all but confirmed it in my soul for me. and I was like... glad, that she'd been there and caught it and could tell me about it, because it gave me time to like, come to terms with the reality of it, emotionally. AAH. AAAAAHHH, OKAY. BITCH, PLIABLE HEAD, IT'S ALL HAPPENING.
we lingered and watched the queue form behind us-- I spotted a kid I'd seen at the Philly show, god bless. Everywhere we turn, repeat customers. I was telling my work friend today, I feel like the US fanbase for E E is significantly smaller than the UK audience, but we make up for it in that we go fucking hard. Every US fan is a superfan. there are no half-assed american sardines. and that has been so BEAUTIFUL and means the WORLD to me to be sharing it with the other ones of you. Bracelet sharing rocked at this gig!! I had exactly as many as I'd set aside for Pittsburgh and no more, since all my spares had evaporated up at Irving, A new person ALSO HAD BRACELETS!!! LIKE, for realsies Made For Trading At This Show Specifically bracelets, it was suuuuch a delight, so in addition to my eclectic collection from the previous gigs I now also have one that says RAW DATA FEEL with some truly choice glow in the dark bric-a-brac on there as well, and my heart was so warm aaaaaah. fwiendship :) Also spotted in the pre-doors queue were the Pizza Boy costumed guy and a woman I met at Foals in 2019?? who I guess automatically recognizes me because of the green hair, but just. omg. the community!!!! I'm dying!!!!!!
There was a slight will-call kerfuffle that nevertheless did not stop me from being dead center dead at the front right in front of where jonathan's mic was destined to be, and I was like. god. here we go. the home stretch. This was ABSOLUTELY the WORST place to be to be pretending to be interested in pierre's set, because he kept looking straight at me and dog I gotta admit four shows in I was feeling pretty tired. like, the energy of E E Itself was going to fully reinvigorate me, but nearly everything else on the planet was like totally disinteresting and I wasn't really up for it, especially when it's my semi-sex-repulsed ace-spectrum ass being just really put off by the suggestive gyrations of a performer that is not to my tastes. UM SORRY BYE HAHA. they didn't even play the one song I kind of liked. I managed to miss like two and a half songs of his set being still locked in the merch line at least lmao. literally WHILE I WAS STANDING IN THE MERCH LINE they sold out of the yellow shirt and I couldn't get me and francis matchies so I had to get them the black instead :( but thankfully they still had the one Adrian wanted because idk what I would have done if I had to scramble for a plan B with him on short notice haha. and I had EXACTLY enough cash for the two shirts left from the day before and I was paying Tour Manager Sam with it like oh my gosh I'm so sorry this is like my sweaty pocket cash from last night this is kinda gross and she was just like, No actually that's honestly exactly how I've been rolling as well and it is kind of gross so like agreed hahaha. She's the best. Idk how long she'll be tenured to them but I'd love to see her continue to exist in like their coterie moving forward. impeccable vibes.
also used merch waiting as a way to distribute more bracelets and get a drink of water! WOOHOO NOW I AM READY TO RECEIVE MY COMMUNION THANK YOU. they put the setlists down and there was a very small fraction of me that wanted to avert my eyes but like I. I had to know. and annika said yes there are new songs in the list. and I peered into the list and my song was there.
hey guys. hey guys? look, this was for me. I have to be honest with you. i manifested this. by being annoying on twitter. by being god's specialest costume-making donut-gifting bracelet-slinging weirdo. I'm owning it and it's mine. I was exactly EXACTLY right with "well, if they put Engine Room in they'll probably take Leviathan out, because they'd kind of fill the same role of slow moody song in the set, and then they'll probably swap in a different non-Man Alive song to compensate for Engine Room being there instead," and this is exactly what happened, and so then not only did I get Engine Room but I also got REGRET, WHICH IS ALSO AN EMILY THREEPWILLOW PLIABLE HEAD SONG, BECAUSE HERE THESE NERDLORD KINGSHIT BANDBOYS ARE IN MY GODDAMN BACK YARD, they're in my house and god it took me the whole fucking set up to then to just prepare, like I had to try not to think about it so I could enjoy what was right in front of me. God it was so fucking, fucking good. our position along the stage had Alex's stuff REALLY forward in the mix which was kind of new for me, but jon was just right there and every time I lifted my hands to dance and to yearn it was like, the only thing stopping me from touching you is my own sense of propriety and not any kind of physical barrier or distance, and the person immediately behind me was seeing the band for the first time and felt similarly about NOTLK as I did to Engine Room and those two songs were literally back to back in the set so we kind of screamed and cried and died together, I gave her a huge hug, and LOL SORRY NOT SORRY THAT I GOT MY KZ AND LEVIATHAN TAKEN OUT OF THE SETLIST FOR Y'ALL, PITTSBURGH, I DO FEEL KIND OF BAD BUT THIS WAS UMMM IMPORTANT TO ME, THANK YOU, goodbye. goodbye I left the planet. I thought I was going to cry and I nearly did but I didn't, but I did actually maybe start hyperventilating. like I'm glad I knew it was coming ahead of time because if it had been a full surprise I think whatever was happening to my lungs would have been exponentially worse and I may have even fainted.
(which, btw: jonathan. jon. when he came out on stage, he almost immediately got his mic cable caught on the edge of where his setlist was taped down, and in jerking it around, he whipped the setlist up off the floor and way upstage toward where Pete was; when he finally put it to rights and taped it back down, he just left it where it was at, far enough away from me that I definitely could not read it anymore; and like DID YOU DO THAT ON PURPOSE? TO MOVE IT OUT OF MY LINE OF SIGHT, TO MAYBE KEEP ME FROM READING IT? SURELY YOU HAVE TO KNOW THAT I'D ALREADY SEEN IT LIKE 15 MINUTES AGO. NICE TRY BUT IT'S TOO LATE I SAW EVERYTHING. i love him. i'm in physical pain.)
knowing this was my final one, I went so, so, incredibly hard, I let myself dance and mosh and scream and take way more pics and videos than I had before, I leaned on the lip of the stage, I had an absolute fucking blast. When the set was over a few other people who were more strategically positioned (i.e. people who had not had their most easily accessible setlists unceremoniously yoinked several feet away) snatched up the closest ones way quick; there was a general tension in the crowd at being able to see jon's, but it being further away out of reach, and one ballsy-ass kid (the "Kevin" person who'd accompanied the pizza boy person) actually clambored up onto the stage and ninja'd over and took it for himself, which inspired two copycats to do the same for some discarded guitar picks (and all of which definitely provoked a very loud, unimpressed, authoritative barking of "HEY!!!" from some security somewhere, like, they definitely shouldn't have done that!! yikes!!!!). I, instead, very patiently waited for an opportune moment to get the attention of their short king guitar tech as he was running around doing teardown, and someone else flagged him first and got pete's setlist, and in my final moments I got him to get me mike's. Gang, I'm gonna be real with you, I was not leaving my Pittsburgh hometown show in which they played Leave The fucking Engine Room without a setlist. there would've been blood or at the very least tears. so like. thank god lmao. Satisfied, we got some water and then headed out!!!
It was a long, chilly wait for the boys outside--god, the chilliness was REFRESHING, though, it's October for crying out loud, and DC and Philly and NY had all been muggy sweaty hot with no need for even long pants, much less a jacket, but I was glad I'd had the forethought to wear my flannel around my waist to cover up the YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT printed around the ass of my shorts on my walk over to deter questions, lmfao. We easily identified the spot on the side of the venue where we assumed the guys were coming out, it was all just a matter of time. (AG and I getting some confusing-to-parse messages from Becky? Idk my phone was SUPER dying so I was trying to leave it on airplane as much as possible, I didn't even make it to the end of the night, RIP needing to use my map all day in the car and even with it plugged in spending more than I was juicing of the battery. Listen i needed PICS and VIDEOS!!) I saw Jon first, and he almost looked past me before spotting me there because I was pretty close to the corner of the block, and I just stared at him, and said, May I hug you. and he said, of course! and I hugged him so long and so hard just like, thank you, I was extremely emotional then and I'm also getting extremely emotional now just typing about it, and he was like omg haha what for? Coming to your town? and I was like coming to my town and playing my SONG!!! And then he said something with the tone of a snarky teasy joke but that was like flusteringly truthful underneath about them legitimately rearranging the set quite a lot for me, and I have not stopped screaming internally since then, and Jeremy joked that I'd just seen the exact same set three times and they felt they ought to give me at least something new ha ha ha but like it wasn't entirely a joke, and I just don't even know how to process this. i am perishèd in the soil. anyhow.
I wanted both my setlist and my Supernormal EP vinyl signed by all the boys, and I managed this with relatively little doing ("A deep cut!" jeremy remarks of the supernormal, haha), but I didn't want to be crowding them and getting in the way of other people getting lad time, so I kind of took a backseat and just talked when the time was right, but Jon did kind of keep wanting to talk to me. We talked about the new song, and we talked about the donuts I sent over--oh my GOD, because I was like, they're from that place over there, you can see the big neon donut sign from here! haha, and he was like dyou know what, I knew that's where they were from, because I went over there earlier in the day and got one for myself, I got a huckleberry one and I came back with it and everyone was like, what's that, they were very jealous, and then not too long after that this box of loads of them just shows up-- And like I am a donut fairy psychic wizard. Also everyone who is ever in Pittsburgh should go to Oliver's donuts and eat their fabulously good products. I will shill for them literally any day of the week. This is the second band I have given Oliver's to this year. I cannot be stopped. ANYWAY. i honestly almost could have written that prediction on an envelope and sealed it, that they'd end up wandering in there on their own only for me to send them some too. i was so tickled that jon got the huckleberry one because it's their signature flavor and it's SO PINK and allegra and I had just decided the night before that jon higgs is hot pink coded. like, in the universe where they are dyeing their hair multicolors for the lore. anyhow. it's good shit.
i had SO much fun after this show, even though it was so chilly and dark and we were scrungling around on a literal street corner outside a wine and spirits store, I was like holding people's things so they could get pics and signatures, I was showing off my supernormal booty shorts, I was talking to Jon about lore----- ohhh, my god, I had exactly two bracelets left when the night was over, literally the end of my stash, and it was one Final Form FIRST BODY LAST BODY that I said, y'know, I'm going to save this for my bestie francis when I send them the shirt, because that's the lyric I wanna get a tattoo of, and it'll match with my PLIABLE HEAD bracelet, and it'll be another sort of besties matching thing; and my one lone AKON IN THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE bracelet that remained, where I'd kind of said, well, if this one doesn't find the right home tonight, then at the end of the night I'm going to give it to Jon too. So I dug in my bag and passed it off, and he was like "what does this one say.... kon... Akon... Akon in the house--what is--OH AND THERE'S A LITTLE BUTTERFLY ON THERE, God--" and he was GRINNING and he was SO TICKLED BY IT and Jez chimed in with just like "The attention to detail--" and Jon was like "this is my favorite one actually," he LOVED IT AND I WAS SO CHARMED AND EMOTIONAL ABOUT IT, and then he offered me up something like "you kno-ow, this, the song, of this, there's actually a reference to it in something, something you've never heard-- and--that you never will," doing his cryptic Jon troll grin, "the one thing that didn't make it," with the implied end of that sentence being "onto the album," and 'album' in this case being implied to be Raw Data Feel, which they have very publicly said that for once was an album where they just put everything on and didn't cull any songs or reserve any bonus tracks to release later or whatever. So I said, "Oh, from the one that we've been told had no cuts...?" also not explicitly saying RDF, and his answer to that was vague/nondescript enough but was probably an affirmative, but then he did follow that up with "that's lore that's SO far down the line, WAY WAY out there," and god, just, how deep does this man's brain and nonsense even fucking go. how far into the future is there LORE. BOTTOMLESS!!! I am obsessed with him. i cannot stress enough how blorbo he is to me.
The shorts came back up in conversation too ("Sorry, let me just look quite closely at your ass for a moment--" "It's okay, the shorts are designed that way--") and him saying, yeah, we do talk about some of the costumes still, and then segueing into asking if I had plans for this year and what I was doing, and I said, maybe, I'm not sure if I want to tell you, and he said, Is it to do with us, and I said, Neither confirm nor deny, and he said, Well if it's not, then, I want to know, with kind of a 'duh' tone ahahaha because like true there would be no reason to be coy if it was nothing to do with E E at all, and I explained that like I kind of have to have two costumes ("of course you do."), WELL because y'know the E E ones don't really play to or land with the general populace (a very cheeky "No!") so I have, just, one that's for going to parties, and one that's for fucking around on the internet. He seemed to find that acceptable hahaha.
Anyway what I REALLY wanted with wearing the Supernormal shorts was a group pic of all five of us normal frontways, and then a group pic of all five of us facing backward/ass to the camera a la the picture of them outside the White House, where you could see the goof of my shorts but also all of their butts, but this was an ABSOLUTE DISASTER TO DO when it was so dark that phone cameras were taking everything long-exposure, and also they'd all had just enough beer to not really be following on what the bit was. Absolute shit results on the backwards pic because I couldn't, y'know, see to coordinate it, because I had my back turned. (Me yelling, "Not just MY butt, EVERYONE'S butts, come on!!" into the streets of Lawrenceville.) Utter failure. Didn't care. I love these fucking guys. The vibe was finally kind of winding down, closing-time energy, the guys still had to get on the bus to Boston right away even with tomorrow being their day off, it was a Boston day off and not a Pittsburgh day off where I could offer them free ice cream sadly, so they all sort of bowed sweetly out. Jon gave me his like, I Am Part Of The Band clearance ID badge from the venue, kind of out of nowhere, he was like "sorry this is all I have to give you, it's the least I could do," and I was like WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU'VE ALREADY GIVEN ME SO M-- YOU COULD DO WAY LESS ??? but I guess now I have that, too. I tried to give him the King Of Oil sign from my fatberg costume, which I'd initially brought because I thought it would be a fun photo taking prop but the photo situation was the aforementioned disaster so that never really came to any fruition at all, so I was just going to gift it to them, and he said "My suitcase is already so full of so much random shit-- that you've given us--" and then right as he was leaving he just said "Thank you for being such a weirdo" with a voice full of all the kindness and affection in the world and I just yelled "ANY TIME!!" and then oh so tragically the night had to be over.
it's been nice, though, because I'm so used to driving the long drive home at the end of an adventure and having that signify the end, of getting to the end of the car ride and having nothing beyond that but the rest of my regular life; and this time, I drove all the way home, but when I got there, the adventure was still happening, right in my neighborhood, right down the street, and all I had to do was walk back home alone in the dark and climb into my own bed at the end of a long and beautiful night. i can already tell that this is going to be one of my most special memories basically forever, and now every time I drive or ride the bus to and from work each day I will be passing by the place where Everything Everything performed Leave The Engine Room for me, and that's so profoundly special that I don't even have words to describe it. I love this band, I love the people in it and I love the people its gravity pulls in to orbit around it, I'm just so goddamn happy. I don't even know what to say or how to end this.
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s0urdoughs · 6 months
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So do either Matty or Graeme have/keep any more animal or monster-like behaviours when in a human form? Like seals taking naps and lazing around after feeding to give their body time to digest before going to the next meal.
Either way I think they both look absolutely adorable and cannot wait to see more of them <3
thank you!!
AND YES OF COURSE! I love this sort of stuff.
you hit the nail on the head with Graeme. whenever this guy eats a ton, he needs to nap it off or at least get cozy on the couch or bed or else he’ll get cranky and uncomfortable. he pats and rubs his belly a lot after eating. In fact, I think I’m going to incorporate that into my own selkie culture…like it’s custom to show you enjoyed the meal by patting your tummy. :]
he’s also got big, wet seal eyes
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since matty is a dragon guy, i kinda incorporate typical dragon qualities as well as reptilian and feline traits because dragons are just big scaly kitties to me. his silly ears twitch when trying to hear something and go “airplane mode” when frustrated or angry. he likes to “nest” when sleeping and curls up in a bunch of blankets and pillows. also tbh i think him purring or “dooking” like a ferret when happy is super cute.
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and you know what seals and lizards have in common? loving to sunbathe
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graeme has the effect of a sleeping cat where being close to him infects you with sleepy guy disease. matty is suffering from the most coziest naps. too bad these two snore horribly lmao
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olderthannetfic · 1 year
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Having more fandom friends around my age/mindset (context: late 30s, rare fandoms, reads some nsfw but not the type to post about it a lot in my main account) might be nice. I ignored the fandom part of myself a long time due to my RL friends being shitty about it (I dumped the worst of them) and I'm trying to enjoy it more.
But I keep leaving comments on fic and art and don't get any reply, let alone a conversation or follow. When I do get a response, the person stops posting fic in that fandom shortly afterwards. In an earlier more active fandom, I would send requests to people (clearly open for requests!) and 99% of the time I'd be ignored, or they'd draw the request at a level clearly before their usual stuff then delete it because they didn't like it (their words).
I'm not writing anything inappropriate or critical? I try to make my comments more interesting than 'i love this write more thx', maybe they get too confusing and off-putting to read? It certainly isn't because my ship is too weird because even non-shippers ship my current OTP lmao
I am trying to be realistic about it, maybe they aren't replying because they don't have the energy, or they have a life and they can't reply to the comment immediately and forget to, or they moved on, or they think I'm a tit which is totally fine?
The issue is it keeps happening, it's depressing, and the follows I do get are people in the same fandom who only like the parts I'm not invested in at all, have really tired takes and are significantly younger to the point I'm concerned about looking like a creep if I interact with them at 100% of my full power. It feels very much like I'm wishing on a monkey paw.
I have a very small number of friends I can talk to about fandom stuff I will cling onto with both hands. I just wish there were more. This is mainly me venting but if anyone has any suggestions feel free.
--
Hmm... Well, I share your suspicion that if you're the common factor, you're at least somewhat contributing to this situation. It may not be that you're offputting but that you inherently like things most other fans don't like—not just rare ships but also rarer tropes.
Or it may not be rarity exactly but prompt style: while tons of people love found family and slice of life, a lot of prompts for those are so generic and boring that they inspire exactly zero new plotbunnies. Meanwhile filthy kink is not for everyone but often has the seeds of a specific fic in a prompt, so if you do like it, those prompts are super inspiring.
A lot of people are pretty terrible at responding to comments. I'm extremely hit or miss on AO3 myself. I'll respond to a zillion things on tumblr before I remember to actually answer comments on AO3. Partly, it's that I get said comments in my email inbox, not on AO3 itself, so I read them and appreciate them but am not in the space where I'd respond right at that moment.
Sadly, people making one fanwork and moving on just comes with the territory when you're in rare fandoms. It's much easier to make friends who like to vid Asian dramas or who are learning a language for fandomy reasons or who are doing fandom historical preservation than friends who share your exact current taste in blorbos and who will continue to do so.
In my case, I love rare things, but I also love to move from fandom to fandom rapidly, and I find it really stressful to have friends who end up resenting that.
I tend to befriend fans whose overall vibe I find compatible more than people I share ships with: people who will probably be in fandom for life, people who are loud and proud about it, people who are interested in fandom history and pan-fandom meta. I also tend to be drawn to accounts that are not only horny on main but horny for kinky shit that draws haters. It does a wonderful job of weeding out the whiny children and finding me fans with a spine. Hilariously, one of my closest offline fandom friends with whom I share the most character opinions doesn't even like sex scenes. But that's not somebody I'd have gotten to know online.
It's going to vary for the people you're approaching, but that may be one reason they're not as enticed by the sight of another fan of their current rare fandom: they may have totally different types of criteria for fandom friends.
It's hard to know how much of the problem is you without examining your internet presence more, but I get why going "here's my account, plz critique" is not attractive. This ask seems fine. No particular writing style red flags jump out at me.
I've definitely known people who were dicks about my tumblr popularity and wanted to know why I didn't reblog them... but it turns out they interacted with me only once every six months so I don't remember them or their tumblr is entirely shitposts or their writing style is incoherent or they sound angry all the time.
One problem you may be running into is that findable fans in their 30s and 40s are self-selected for Fandom For Life types who already have a bunch of close fandom friends. They're likely doing a lot of socializing in private with people they've known for ages. I like to think of it as people with very full dance cards. They tend to be the most attractive because they're living happy, fulfilling lives, but that same quality makes them too busy. Meanwhile, people who are sad and alone and desperate for friends are often less visible and less compelling. If someone figured out how to connect with them, they'd be a great friend, but fewer people are trying.
It's not that every compatible late 30s fan is too busy for new friends. It's that the fans who are visible enough that you know they exist and know their approximate age are a very specific slice of overall fandom.
As fans age, some of their fandom friends leave fandom or die, so there can be periods where people are going "Shit, I need new friends!" later on, not just in college and such. But I'd say late 30s is a tough-ish period. A lot of people are busy with young kids and/or haven't lost their inner circles from younger years yet.
In general, a lot of my closer fandom friends aren't actually looking for new friends and haven't been in quite a while. Some don't even post publicly anymore. I'm something of an exception because I'm both extremely friendly and always on the lookout for minions to convince to go to Escapade con or take up the banner of fandom preservation yadda yadda. I have a vested interest in remaining open to new people.
Thoughts, everyone? Have you gone through friend-seeking and full dance card phases?
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shinesurge · 3 months
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your custom cassettes are really really cool! ive been thinking about making custom cassettes for a bit, would you be willing to share what kind of paper you used for the label stickers and j-cards? also where do you get blank cassettes from? ive been looking at cassettecomeback but i was wondering if there was a better option.
Thanks a lot! They're really fun to make hehe
So full disclosure: I run a merch shop for my webcomic and I make most of my stuff myself in my studio. I've been doing this for the better part of ten years and over that time I've accumulated quite a bit of specialized, expensive equipment like the photo printer and cutting machine I use to make my cassette ephemera. THAT SAID mixtapes don't necessarily need all that!! Unless you're running a bootleg business on etsy or somethin I don't think you and your friends gotta run out and spend a ton of money to make these (beyond tracking down a deck and a player, obviously).
Unfortunately most of these items are found on Amazon because I'm a professional artist trying to Live, but if that's something you'd rather avoid buying through I'm listing the brick and mortar places I can find them when I need to for whatever reason!
My j-cards are just the 8x10 glossy photo paper from Pen & Gear, it's usually less than ten bucks a pack at walmart lmao. I use it with an inkjet photo printer! There are plenty of laser printer options out there though, which is probably the type non-artists have access to. Honestly I think the look of black ink on colored copy paper is super cool for handmade tapes, especially between friends.
My sticker paper was a bitch to find and I'm not sure if it would be useful without my specific equipment, but it's this glossy adhesive photo paper from some rando company called LDProducts. Literally just called "Sticker Photo Paper" pf. It's more expensive but I get it in stacks of a hundred because I print tons of stickers for my shop. Again, glossy adhesive paper might not be useful without a big boy printer but MATTE sticker paper is everywhere, that's also pretty common to find at walmart or at the very least at an office supply store; you can print on it or even get out some markers (not sure i'd suggest anything besides ink tho, I'd be worried it could come off and damage the player). I design the labels in clip studio and then load them into cricut so it's super easy to get the right shape every time, but if you're Determined you could get out a measuring tape and an xacto knife and get similar results.
I've only found my tapes on amazon unfortunately, and it's been a while since I bought any because I sort of inherited a bunch of sealed ones when my dad died and i'm still going through them lol. Almost all my custom ones are 90 minute Sony High Fidelity, last I checked you could order them in packs of five or ten but I'm not sure what the prices are like rn. If you REALLY want to get fancy with colored shells/custom lengths i did find this cool site you can order from, Duplication.ca, but the shipping is kinda rough. One of these days I wanna make some cassettes for my webcomic and I'll drop some money on some pretty ones then, but for now the Sonys are treating me fine so I haven't dug too deep.
I hope something in here is useful! I'm always happy to share what I know but again, I'm very fortunate to have access to quite a bit of stuff most people don't and I try to be up front about it alskdjf. Cassettes are best when they're sorta janky and handmade tho, it's kind of the whole point, and if they're just for you or someone you care about then marking them with a sharpie and masking tape is just as cool in my opinion. probably cooler. everybody should put music on physical media and trade it i think.
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