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sgiandubh · 11 days

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OMG! I can practically see her pulling at her pearls in indignation and fury! I wonder how many wet dreams he rejected her to result in this anger 🙃🙄😜 https://www.tumblr.com/maximumwobblerbanditdonut/747779411400671232/public-intoxication-sh-was-invited-to-the-landcon?source=share

Dear Pearl Clutching Anon,

This woman is the worst mythomaniac and the most pathetic know-it-all of the entire fandom. Mark me: probably a sock account of one of the Mordor sopranos, who'd like to play it cool otherwise. She is an impostor, pretending to be a Scot. But her grammar and spelling recurrent mistakes point to anything else but an English native speaker.

Prized and praised as she is by the dim-witted, she is living proof of the fact that you cannot reasonably and endlessly pretend to be an expert in hair implants, cocktails/bartending, audiovisual production, copyright, alcohol sales and pretty much everything in between. To me, she is at her most pathetic when she pretends to analyze the legal intricacies of the French regulations applicable to public alcohol tasting events.

What happened, in fact, at the Landcon 6 whisky tasting?

Ok. So, this was announced by the French organizers on March 5th and presented as a limited audience event, priced at 350 euros.

This idiot's comment is absolutely priceless:

She would be surprised to find out that, unlike the US, there has never been any Prohibition decreed in France (Hell would have frozen). Even more interestingly, the only venues where French law specifically prohibits alcohol tastings and sales are enumerated very clearly in regulations far above her intellectual abilities:

The main idea is that you cannot sell/organize alcohol tastings in public health venues (hospitals, clinics, etc), rehabilitation clinics (d'oh!) - both for alcohol and drug addictions -, schools, youth summer camps, sports arenas, swimming pools or any other public or private sports venues.

(Source: French Public Health Code, https://www.dalloz.fr/documentation/Document?id=CODE_CSPU_ARTI_D3335-1&scrll=CSPU022225&FromId=CODES_SECS_CSPU_TALPHA)

To these limitations, the French national professional organizations add, as best practice, the following: churches, cemeteries, prisons, military barracks, railway/public transport facilities (including depots).

(Source: Vin & Société's Guide juridique de la dégustation/Tasting Legal Guide - https://www.syndicat-cotesdurhone.com/upload/article/file/202103guidejuridiquedeladegustation-60658bb9468b4.pdf)

To my knowledge, Landcon's venue was neither a cemetery, nor a church (the latter could be, however discussed: wee & lame joke, btw). And for that poor woman's information, you would not need an exemption, but a permit, or licence. In current French law, there are four such sale permits, ranked from I (soft drinks, such as Orangina) to IV (all drinks, including spirits). The fabled Licence IV (also the name of a beloved 90s French kitschy music group, LOL) is now impossible to obtain and if you want to have one, you have to buy the venue (cafe, nightclub, bar, bistro, restaurant or buvette) that had it issued first, many moons ago.

That problem solved, we would have to further analyze the type of event hosted by the Landcon. Was it a tasting or a sale, according to French regulations?

If it was a tasting, no licence is needed. If it was a sale, you might need a temporary licence, granted by the Mayor, provided you have notified them at least 3 months before the event. These are also famously hard to get and very sparingly granted, too.

Because tastings are an exception, they are strictly defined by French regulations as 'free alcohol consumption' and their regulations are excruciatingly detailed. Procedures and limitations vary according to the type of event: sports, tourism promotion, markets and fairs, public gatherings or cultural events (which is the one that seemed the closest to our situation). But a cultural event-cum-tasting would have to be completely free of charge (no paying access tickets), in order to be exempt from any legal obligation. This was not the case, as we know there was a rather steep, 350 euros fee, to be able to attend it:

(Source: Vin & Société's Guide juridique de la dégustation/Tasting Legal Guide - https://www.syndicat-cotesdurhone.com/upload/article/file/202103guidejuridiquedeladegustation-60658bb9468b4.pdf)

That new activity was certainly not a tasting, as defined by French law. An amateur could then conclude, that S's event was, in fact, a disguised sale and that he is either a sinister fool or a filthy conman.

The trouble is, French legislation tolerates one single, overruling exception to everything I wrote above: sale by the producer of said alcohol. It is to be found (or rather interpreted - and it has been so by myself AND the French professional organizations), in the Code Général des Impôts/ French Tax Code:

To avoid a tedious legal translation, the idea is that if you do not sell your own produced booze, you are automatically considered as a stockist/trader and as such, subject to alcohol sales' regulations. If the Landcon organizers would have sold/promoted Laphroaig, for example, they would have needed the permit. But hosting a paying tasting event organized by SRH, promoting SRH's whisky and which profits entirely belonged to SRH is a sale by the producer, as defined by French law, not needing a permit:

(Source: Vin & Société's Guide juridique de la vente/Sales Legal Guide - https://fgvb.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Vin-et-Societe-Guide-juridique-de-la-vente-19042021.pdf)

So: even if the tasting event was, in fact, a sale, French law allows a producer to sell his own alcohol, for promotion purposes as a side event, with no further need to obtain a permit. And this is exactly what their legal team rightfully advised them to do and completely what I would advised them to do, too.

That woman is so often and in so many ways completely wrong, that she is absolutely ridiculous. She (and also her other Big Friend) should perhaps stop pretending to be whatever they are not. Infantilizing, bullying and snarling at people does not help with their credibility.

Such women are genuine Frauds and absolutely despicable. People spend years fucking their eyesight in law school and we do not joke about interpreting and reading legalese. Ever. But to see idiots pretending to know just because they fucking used Google for ten minutes is just infuriating: it took me two hours to find the exception and another two to write this comment.

I hope this long, tedious answer was helpful, Anon.

#anon #fandom #shitshow

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screech-bling · 10 months

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i finished TSATS a couple hours ago and i have a lot to say on some of the shit it’s been getting (keep in mind, i truly did not care abt solangelo before this novel… so this isn’t even coming from a solangelo stan)

TSATS SPOILERS

on nico’s characterization:

- before reading TSATS, i was the FIRST person to complain abt fanon nico. i’ve always HATED when ppl make him dark humor-y and proud and stuff bcz he literally grew up a catholic in 1930s. in the HoO and lowkey ToA era, his ass was NOT frequently making gay jokes and “lol i’m so dead inside” jokes

- i like how in ToA we get to see him be slightly less brooding than in HoO, bcz it shows us that he’s evolving as a person (kinda like real three dimensional human beings tend to do)

- in TSATS, with him now being in a healthy relationship and a safe environment, i think it’s fair to assume he’s changed. i would say the change was fast… but he’s a teenager, and coming from another teenager… im a completely different person than i was 3 months ago so honestly i can 100% believe it

- the one nico characterization thing i didn’t love was his talk w/ piper (and the lil nas x thing but i like to pretend that didn’t happen) … it was pushing it. but i’ll allow it bcz i imagine it could be beneficial to some kids… just wish that same message could’ve been conveyed through will or something?

on will’s characterization:

- i don’t think it’s fair to say he was just “dumbed down” or being an asshole… he was in tartarus. and he spends 90% of the book being injured or severely exhausted.

on them being cringe:

they’re teenagers and it’s a middle grade book. if ur gonna tell me u wouldn’t have said that kinda shit in ur first or second relationship as a teenager… ur fuckin lyin.

on them being a percabeth “rip-off”:

honestly, i truly thought this was the case until they started genuinely bickering. that’s when i realized that they’re a completely new archetype to the riordanverse… a VERY fresh and nuanced one at that.

- love for percabeth comes easy, percy’s bullshittery is endearing, annabeth’s know-it-all-ness(???) is endearing, they’re obsessed with each other 100% of the time. even when the other does something stupid it’s always “i was annoyed, but i love them so much”.

- for solangelo, they have moments where they are genuinely just annoyed and frustrated with each other because- say it with me now- they’re three dimensional!!! not every couple is percabeth, not every couple has to be percabeth, and not every couple should be percabeth. they’re very sweet (they’re my favorite ship in all of riordanverse btw), but also pretty unattainable and rare in the real world.

- i also think it should be noted that percy and annabeth went through a lot of their trauma together vs. will and nico, who didn’t experience most of their trauma together… so instead of it bringing them closer like percabeth’s might, it puts a strain on them.

in conclusion: TSATS is my second favorite percy jackson book. (my first being HoH)

⭐️ ☀️

#TSATS was not even bad guys calm down #don’t let the milennial humor ruin it all #and don’t let the concept of characters (who are teens) changing jumpscare u #rick riordan #riordanverse #rrverse #pjo #hoo #toa #the sun and the star #tsats #tsats rant #tsats spoilers #solangelo #percabeth

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catboybiologist · 7 months

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1 month HRT update and journal thingy!

So as I said in my pinned post, I'm gonna be doing a monthly kind of progress check on HRT. Well, it's been 32 days, so here it is! Here's some measurements of interest:

But, I found that the raw measurements, and a single "other column" wasn't sufficient to really catalogue my experience. So I wrote a long, probably overly detailed account of some of the things I've experienced in the past month.

And holy shit, what a month it's been.

So first off, lets start with what’s not happening. Some good, some bad. I think I missed the skin softness gene or something. I’ve really noticed no change in skin texture, and that’s often cited as the first noticeable physical change from HRT. My skin was somewhat soft before, but nothing like the transfemmes I know irl, so this was a bit disappointing. But in all honesty, it’s not that big of a deal.

The other thing that I haven’t noticed yet is a reduced aerobic capacity or physical ability. I’m sure this will come in time, but the interesting thing here is that one of my main physical activities, freediving, is actually a far more direct measurement of aerobic capacity than most others. I can’t do this in nearly a consistent enough way to actually log it, but my casual breath hold times in the couple of times I’ve been freediving since starting HRT haven’t changed. On a fairly standard dive, I usually stay down 60-70 seconds, and that’s still true. With good prep and good air conservation on the bottom (I like to hold onto rocks and kelp, and stay motionless while looking around lol), I can get 90 seconds or beyond (I don’t like pushing it). Part of the problem is that so much of this is variable, and is highly dependent on how good my equipment prep is that day (insulation and weighting), water conditions (cold and rough=more energy=shorter dives), and my boy physiology (how much I’ve eaten, caffeine intake, etc). But in general, I haven’t noticed major physical fitness changes yet.

Weight gain has been intermittent. I’ve always been a bit swingy on my weight, and can easily go +/- 5lbs in no time at all. At one point, I was 4lbs over my pre-HRT weight (3 week interval), but now I’m down to 1 pound over. My waist is slightly thinner than it was pre-HRT, but that seems to be normal fluctuation. Where did the extra 1-3lbs go? We’ll get to that, LOL.

My waist measurement hasn’t changed, but anecdotally, I do think there’s changes going on there. The 43 inches measurement is still at my widest point, around my thighs (which have always been pretty good). Now, however, I’m noticing what seems to be some growth on areas that aren’t covered by the exact circle I’m using to measure that. My butt seems slightly bigger, although I could just be lying to myself. Time will tell.

Onto the stuff that has changed!

Mood. Oh my god mood. My resting state is no longer a crackling misery. I don’t think I was ever suicidal because of dysphoria alone, but I was certainly pushed to that point far, far easier when it was a contributing factor. I also just… didn’t enjoy anything about my body. When I was happy, it was a distraction. Now, it’s already much better. I still don’t like my body. I got a long way to go. But, I’m seeing progress, and it’s been incredible.

Emotions overall have been more intense. I’ve had a couple of downswings, and I get misty eyed easier. I haven’t had a proper cry yet, though. I get excited about things again, which was a COMPLETELY dead feeling. And I have also gotten angry at some things, which is also something I killed as a teenager because I was scared of where it took me. It hasn’t been as uncontrollable as I expected, however, and the negative emotions I’m experiencing more viscerally have been immensely cathartic.

And then, there's the big one. Hopefully that's literal. And that's breast growth. Almost immediately I noticed some kind of perking up, but no breast bud formation and no immediate growth. At about week 2, I was able to feel the distinct disks of breasts buds under my nipples, and my bust size started increasing. Now, at 4.5 weeks in, my bust size is 1.5 inches larger than it was pre-HRT.

This is ludicrously fast. As in, so fast it has me questioning if I'm actually intersex or something. I think my E levels will be enlightening.

I really, REALLY don’t want to get too hopeful. But overall, if some of these trends continue… I’m gonna get a LOT curvier. Honestly, my ideal body would be pretty tight and trim… but I’m fucking estatic anyways. I’m just really, really hoping that the breast growth trend continues, and also that the tiny observations I’ve made about a bigger butt and thinner waist are actually real. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to boymode like this LMAO.

There’s also the opposite fear: if my estrogen levels are too high, it could signal the end of “puberty” too early. It’s looking like a possibility, but I gotta wait until next week for my levels check.

There’s one final set of observations I wanna put here, but y’all gotta not be weird about it LOL. I WILL block you and erase this part if you treat this as anything more than impartial observations about myself. Got it? Good. NSFW warning for the next bit.

I want to make some remarks on libido and erogenous sensitivity in general, because that has also been one of the most notable changes.

First off, I heard so many stories about HRT killing libido. Holy fuck, this has not been true for me. I’m going crazy sometimes LOL. I absolutely have a somewhat higher libido on average, but its already changed the way its expressed itself.

First off, my entire body is more sensitive to erogenous soft touch. The right kind of touch and care on my waist will feel very similar to more traditional erogenous zones. I’ve NEVER had this before, and was completely blindsided by it. I’m absolutely fascinated by what neural change caused that, but its really cool even if I don’t know the underlying explanation.

Second off, my libido spikes and hot flashes sometimes. I think this is pretty typical of anyone going under a hormonal change, and tbh I’m not surprised.

Third off is the weirdest one, and something that I’ve asked other transfemmes about, and none have been able to answer. My chest sensitivity seems to be going through very distinct mini-cycles, on the approximate span of time being one full “cycle” per week. Essentially, when I started HRT, my chest first got very sore, itchy, and sensitive to sources of pain and itchiness. It stayed like that for a few days, and then all sensitivity to the area cut out. My nipples pre-HRT were always more sensitive than other cis men, and in this phase, they were actually less sensitive than they were pre HRT. This lasted another couple of days… and then there was a period of massively increased erogenous sensitivity. Soft touches made me wild, and I started wearing bra not for the support, but to block my shirt from rubbing against them and distracting me. Holy FUCK, this phase is insane. And then after that, they went back to sore again, and then dead again, and then erogenous again. Right now, I’m in the erogenous “phase” of what I think is the fourth cycle here since I started HRT. I have no fucking clue what’s going on. It’s not the period that some trans women report getting, its not a monthly thing. It might just be my body adjusting strangely to new hormones in general, but yeah. Its weird, bc it seems like a pretty unique thing.

So yeah. That’s a journal thing. I had a LOT more thoughts about HRT starting beyond just the initial measurements, because so much hit me way faster than I thought it would, so I wanted to write something long form. I think I’m going to write something similar each month along with my measurements update, but I expect future writing to be much, much shorter. It’s been incredible so far, but I’m guessing less will be novel- I think things will only be different when I change aspects of my HRT regimen. We’ll see.

#trans #transitioning #trans progress #trans journal #hrt #trans hrt #transfemme hrt #transfemme #trans woman #transgender #hrt progress

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pinksatinsashes · 5 months

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The end of the year is the best time of year for us self improvement obsessed girlies because the planners are out, everyone's making vision boards and its finally time to write a nice long list of New Years Resolutions and achieve precisely nothing! Nothing!

Then the end of that year comes and we start the cycle again, making lists, checking them twice, achieving absolutely nothing, staying exactly the same and sometimes worse! How exciting! :)

When I was 16 I thought I'd have my life together at 18...lol! When I was 18 I figured I'd be totally together when I was 20. I'm 20 now...I think I've genuinely gotten worse.

But this year I am determined! I have said absolutely no more, absolutely no way is another year going to pass me by and I'm going to be stuck here in the exact same place. I NEED change.

Your 20's are meant to be the 'best years of your life'!

This is probably the easiest I'm ever going to have it! I have no children, no husband and I don't pay rent yet, if I don't do it now I will never do it..I don't want this to be my life forever.

Want to know how I'm going to make this year my year? Keep reading.

About two weeks ago I coined 2024 as the year of the Glow Up and started to meticulously plan out exactly what I wanted out of it.

My main goals for 2024 are:

To Hit My Goal Weight.

To Save Up Enough Money to Move to London.

To Be 75% of my Dream Girl

There are tons of other things I want to achieve of course, but If I don't achieve those three 2024 would genuinely have been a waste of time for me.

Now a couple years ago I would've just written those two goals down, put them on a vision board and went about my business...but Oh No, not this time.

I had a nice long think about the person I wanted to be at the end of 2024, financially stable, clear skin, goal weight, ready to move in spring 2025, closer to God, found her signature scent.

Each of these goals had a wider theme:

Routine

Fitness and Body

Food

Skincare and Hygiene

Beauty & Makeup

Hair

Clothes

God

Books & Brains

Music

Budget

I fired up Notion, created a home page that had a sub page for every month and then finally I created the Overall page, which has a sub page for every Goal Category and then I broke down each goal into lots of SMART goals. (Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Time-Based)

So my 'get down to my goal weight' goal became:

Fitness and Body:

[ ] Size 10 clothes or under and 140 lbs (I'm 5'9 with naturally big boobs so this is my ideal weight)

[ ] Hour Glass Figure, building up glutes and upper body

[ ] Maintain Goal Weight for at least 3 months

[ ] Able to Stair Machine for 10 minutes

[ ] Able to go on a full Run

[ ] Do at least one form of Excerise a day

[ ] At least one form of Excerise a day

[ ] Take the Dog on Daily Walks

Food:

[ ] Try 12 New Recipes

[ ] Learn How To Cook 4 Different Nigerian Recipes

[ ] Form Consistent Eating Routines

[ ] Eat out twice a month or less

[ ] Stay in a Caloric deficit until I reach my Goal Weight

See how much more specific this is?

Having my goals listed like this makes everything so much easier because I'm tackling multiple things at once. First I'm changing the majority of my goals to habits or tasks (things I can control) from outcomes (things I may not be able to control).

Now I know that if I do all of these things written out, staying in a caloric deficit and excising daily there's a 90% chance I'll reach my goal.

This is much more effective than writing an outcome with no plan on how to achieve it.

From here, I'll break the Goal Down Even Further, into monthly goals.

For example, to reach the goal weight Goal by the end of December, January may look like this:

Eat at 1500 calories a day or 10,500 calories a week (to allow for the high calorie company lunches I often attend as part of my work, I'll simply eat less on the other days

Go to the gym 4 times week,

Complete X Fitness plan

Go on one Dog walk a week

Meal Prep ever week.

Lose 10lbs

To Save enough Money to Move to London by the end of the year, January might look like this:

Prep for no Spend Months in Feb and March (stock up on skincare, budywash etc)

Meal plan every week

Sell £200 worth of clothes on Vinted to spend on Spring Wardrobe (I'm not buying any clothes unless I use the money I get from selling my current clothes)

Stick to Budget

My Goal to get Smarter and Stop Mindless Scrolling may look like this in January:

Read at least 1 book

Listen to 4 Podcast Episodes

Limit Social Media use to 1 hour a day

Write 6 Blog Posts

Watch one Documentary

Setting the tasks in this way also allows me to feel a sense of achievement, every month I'm able to tick off my goals which can increase my motivation, instead of writing down a list of things to do and forgetting about it until the end of the year. It also allows me to recognise when I'm going off track faster and adjust for the next month.

You see how this is better?

I was strategic in using notion because I knew that I could then use it not only to set out my goals, but as a home base, a setting point to house all the things I could use to achieve them.

Under each section I've also included a bunch of things to help me, the Food section for example has a list of my go to recipes, so that when I can't think of anything to eat and want to run over to the closest KFC I have something to choose from. The Hair section has a list of hairstyles I've done and the Pro's and Cons, the Skincare section has a list of the products I've tried, if I liked them and If they worked for me.

Each month has its own page with a section for each wider goal and a spot for me to have a monthly write up, detailing what works and what didn't work so I can change and approve the following month and prevent falling behind.

I'm determined to make this year my year so let me know if you'd like me to keep you updated, feel free to ask any questions or send them to my asks. Also let me know if you want my notion template, here's a little peak-

Till we speak again!

-hannah🤍

#level up mindset #hannahlovesyou #level up #hypergamy #black femininity #black hypergamy #hypergamous #black women in luxury #glow up #new year #new years resolution #new year new me #dreamgirl #dream girl #lovehannah

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pluckyredhead · 2 months

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hey! if you have time, do you have any recommendations on what comics to read for a good grounding for the arrows? i know you have a roy-specific reading list, but if you have any comics recs for the family in general, or especially mia and connor, i would be forever in ur debt 💜 thanks!!

Sure! Here's a Green Arrow/Arrowfam recs list, with emphasis on Connor and Mia, in chronological order:

Green Lantern/Green Arrow: This has been collected under various names but anything with "Green Lantern/Green Arrow" in there is likely to get you what you're looking for. These are the iconic Hal/Ollie teamup stories from the 70s by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams (originally published as Green Lantern (1960) #76-87 and #89. Ollie had been around since 1941 but it wasn't until around this time that he really developed into the character we know him as today, and this is a great introduction to that. It also contains "Snowbirds Don't Fly" and "They'll Say It'll Kill Me But They Won't Say When," the two-part Roy addiction storyline; the beginnings of Ollie's relationships with Hal and Dinah; and John Stewart's first appearance. These comics are 50 years old so they are definitely dated in many ways, but they're masterpieces and so, so beautiful to look at.

Green Arrow v1 (1983): This four issue miniseries is hard to find but I love it. It's basically what if Ollie starred in an Agatha Christie novel, and it's so fun.

The Longbow Hunters: The miniseries that created the "modern" Ollie (this was in 1987 but that's still "modern" according to comics historians). Ollie and Dinah relocate to Seattle and deal with several serial killers, including Shado. Great characterization, beautiful art. Content warning for sexual violence and torture.

Green Arrow v2 (1989): Continues on from The Longbow Hunters and runs for 137 issues. The first 80 issues are written by Mike Grell (who wrote and drew The Longbow Hunters) and they're all very solid. If you're just looking for Connor, he is introduced in #0, which comes between #90 and #91 (comics lol); he's a regular character until #100, at which point Ollie dies and Connor becomes the lead for the rest of the book. If you really just want to read about Connor, you can completely skip to #102, which is the first one he stars in properly, and just read from there. He's delightful in them and the art is solid. Content warning in that Connor's globetrotting adventures mean a lot of ethnic stereotypes and orientalism, sadly.

Green Arrow v3 (2001): This is the book where Ollie comes back. It begins with "Quiver" by Kevin Smith and Phil Hester which is my FAVORITE GA book of all time and serves up Arrowfamily in a way it's never been served before: we get Dinah, Roy, Connor, AND this story introduces Mia! This volume unfortunately gets worse as it goes along and by #60 it is hot garbage but I would recommend the following key issues:

#11-15, "Sounds of Violence," in which Connor gets shot and Ollie loves him so so so much.

#32, in which Roy and Connor bond.

#34-39, in which the Arrowfam fights the Riddler and Demons; a very good Mia story.

#43-45, in which Mia is diagnosed as HIV positive and becomes the new Speedy.

Green Arrow v I don't even know anymore, the Rebirth volume (2016): After about a decade of just unreadably horrible comics, this is very much a return to form for Ollie: he's a swashbuckler who is dating Dinah and raging against injustice again, and that's how I like him. It's not a perfect comic but it was such a breath air after so many years of crap.

Green Arrow v who knows (2023): This is the current comic and it is a shot of joy straight to my heart every single month. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

#green arrow #oliver queen #connor hawke #mia dearden #speedy #arrowfam #comics recs

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pbpsbff · 4 days

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happy 1 year of r&r :)

i know it's a lil cringe to like. celebrate the birthday of a series on ao3 but r&r is literally my child. my baby. i birthed this series. and you all signed up for this when u started reading my fics thank u

soooooooo thank u guys for all the support i've received over r&r i know it's hard to stay a consistent reader when my posting schedule is entirely non existent but i am so grateful for everyone who's stuck around this long and been with me for this journey (calling it a journey because a year ago i did not have any sort of overarching plot in mind and now we're 17? 18? fics deep and so many things have happened and i'm usually just as surprised as my readers) it's rlly u guys that have kept me going this long

ANYWAY. i rewrote this like 500 times cause i hate being like. overly sappy on this account because it's way funnier to act like a celebrity with a huge ego, but real talk i am so proud of everything i've done w this series & what it's become in the past year

i've been posting my writing online since i was like 10, so we're going on almost 9 years now and i don't think i've ever ever ever received as much support for something as i have for r&r and something about that is soooo special to me??? idk it's just so nice to see a completely self indulgent series become so loved by others, especially since the only other fics i had up before gmm&m were a little more on the "i'm gonna write what seems popular right now" side???

like shoutout to everyone who was here before/around when i started the series because my account was so empty like. 2 fics and one gets updated every 6 months. r&r pulled me out of the trench i fear. it also cured me of my very horrible disease that makes me delete all my fics after 9 months and then completely disappear from a fandom so everyone say thank you r&r

but yeah idk where i'm going with this i'm very grateful for r&r and all the friends i've made and people i've met through it because i was very lonely before i rejoined tumblr and r&r was like. 90% of the reason i made my account

AND SPEAKING OF FRIENDS. thank u to

@spidergrotto & @sapoteylx for being the first ppl i met on here to openly talk about and support r&r which i thought was so so cool even if you guys have become my haters in the past few months i've known you :/ thank u r&r nation u keep me humble and miserable (and i am very thankful for our friendship i think some aspects of r&r would be very different if we'd never met)

& ao3 user classactical because you've been here since like. a month or two into the series i think and i always always always look forward to your comments because i feel like if you comment, i did a good job on the fic LOL thank u for sticking around for so long, even if ao3 has been actively working against you for a whiiiiile

there's a lot more i want to say and a lot of people i want to mention but that would take a very long time and i always feel weird tagging a lot of people in posts so just know if u read r&r we are kissing rn. or high fiving idk whatever floats ur boat i guess

but yeah anyway tl:dr happy birthday r&r i'm very proud of this series & very thankful for everyone who has read any part of it ever u guys are so cool and hot and have amazing taste and i'm taking your kudos and bookmarks etc. as you swearing your allegiance to me and promising me your undying support no matter what (legally binding btw) thank u guys

#r&r tease #ough i cannot believe r&r is a year old #happy birthday r&r you are my favorite child #gonna go post that fic now #or in like 10 minutes #idk i haven't edited anything #stay tuned

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steamberrystudio · 11 months

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21/05/2023

Hi everyone!

It has been a while since I updated here on tumblr (though KS, Patreon, and Itch have been receiving regular updates. It's just hard to remember to update everywhere!)

But I wanted to pop in and give a status report on Gilded Shadows.

This will be a short update since it's more of a check-in than a proper full update.

Basically, after Reuben's route released last month, I have been focusing on getting Yuu's route written with the goal of having it complete by the end of May.

Yuu's route was around 40% complete when Reuben's route released and at this point it is around 90% complete. I have 1.5 chapters left to draft and then I will be going into revision mode to fully revise and edit the chapter before proofreading, scripting (IE putting it in the game and making it into functional code), before moving into the art side of production.

Gilded Shadows writing, as a whole, is now 99% complete.

Literally. LoL!

The uncoded word count (if you've been around a while, you know that I lose words when I code so the uncoded word count is not really the final game word count of the coded story) is 1,067,000 words at this time.

So yeah, that is where development is on Gilded Shadows.

For those following When Stars Collide, that project remains my nights/weekends project. The writing is around 70% complete right now. I don't think I've mentioned (or maybe I have) that I intend to get the rough draft fully complete before I start the official release journey for that game. I don't want to release it as I write it - that seems like it will stress me out a lot and it doesn't really suit my writing style at all.

So at the time I start getting into releasing the episodes, it'll be 100% complete from a writing standpoint. The episodes will mostly be to allow me time to both code and do the art without destroying my hand more than I already have while making GS. ( •̀ ω •́ )✧

I'm just to the point where Daaz's route splits off into its own separate chapters and endings but have taken a pause to consider a new possible ending scenario for him and whether or not I want to go that direction with things as well as whether it would require additional background art, etc, etc.

So....yeah. That's my check in with everyone. I have put tumblr updates on my calendar now so I should have google pestering me to update here more regularly. LoL.

I will see you all in a few weeks!

~Esh

#devlog #gilded shadows #when stars collide #updates #amare game #otome game

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ruushes · 10 months

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Would love to hear your Zevran thoughts <3

original and ultimate babygirl 🥺

first impression: so i actually knew he was gay romanceable before starting origins and went in with the intention of gay romancing him pretty much solely bc i thought it was cool you could be gay in a video game. i didn't really know much else about him going into it, so his intro was like, holy shit i'm in love with him 😂😂 and i only liked him more and more as the game went on, I’ll admit I took a lot of his humor and bravado at face value at first and the depth of character that unfolded was unexpected and really cool

impression now: it might seem like i love him a normal and reasonable amount given that i don't draw or post about him that often but that's just bc the more i like something the less and less i talk about it out of embarrassment 😅

favorite moment: so so so hard to choose 😭😭 maybe the dialogue after you kill taliesin if you push him to make the decision of what he'll do next himself:

cautiously testing unfamiliar agency.... the look for validation... 🥺

idea for a story: gestures vaguely at the complete origins novelization and chronicle of whatever weird thing he and ailill have going on that exists perfectly in my mind and materially in unconnected 500-word scraps of dialogue that don't even amount to anything you could call a wip 🤦‍♂️i think the last thing i worked on was a bit about how on the morning after zev's recruited he has another chance to finish the assassination and kind of commits to the idea of staying instead

unpopular opinion: i think understandably and naturally people tend to focus on positives when making fan material (i do it too like 90% of my sketches are cutesy shipping art lol) but i'd also like to see more of him being flawed? like i feel like a big part of the appeal of him as a character is the 'healing from trauma and starting anew' theme, and healing is so difficult and messy and nonlinear, not something that gets resolved by falling in love over the course of like nine months, you know? but i don't really fault people for not exploring that, it's just something i'd be interested to see more of (':

favorite relationship: zevwarden naturally😌 especially in the context of wardens with a similar desire to die, where they can sort of figure out how to want to live again together

favorite headcanon: i've been poking around in the toolset and looking at the differences between the m and f romances and i think there's a case to be made for a reading where there's an element of internalized homophobia and/or trauma impacting how he looks at relationships with men that goes beyond generally preferring women. his gendered dialog with men tends to be more physical than emotional, there are instances where suggestive gendered dialog alludes to violence with m wardens and not f, he makes some skeptical comments abt the idea of being in a relationship with a man. i don't have evidence at hand and i certainly don't think everyone Should think this way or anything, i just find it interesting to think about preferences and how they can be impacted by experience in the context of being bi, and how it could both complicate and enrich an mwarden relationship

#this is quite long just as a warning to the less interested #HOW is there not a crow emoji. devastating.#talkin #dragon age #dao #zevran arainai #my writing #......? i guess we'll see if that tag ever gets used again

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comick · 1 year

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Here are the final results of the fanart challenge :) Had lots of fun drawing them all! And thanks for the ones who participated. List and reason for picking them: 1. King- Owl House. 3 separate people requested it! I have not actually watched this cartoon, but he was the most requested character haha, I like his skull head design! It was weird that he only had two digits O_o I kept drawing him with a full paw in the rough drafts. 2. Rudy- Killer Clowns from Outer Space. I have watched Killer Klowns and when I got this one I thought oh damn that's a hard one. But I had to try it and see if I could pull it off. Turns out I love drawing droopy eyes and lots of folded skin LMAO I think he took the longest to complete from the rest. 3. Happy Mask Salesman - Legend of Zelda. I have not actually played the game he is from, but based on all the pics online he sure likes to smile! So obviously I had to draw that grin and squint in all his glory. He apparently sells an evil mask that makes the moon go nuts and want to kill the world?! 4. Beetlejuice - from Beetlejuice. I love Beetlejuice the movie and cartoon. I was actually shocked that I have never drawn him though! I think people tend to forget he was the VILLIAN of the movie haha. So I wanted to accentuate that part of his character. An evil ghost pervert with a record in the afterlife as a rogue murderer (bio-exorcist) 5. Bob Velseb - Spooky Month (Sr Pelo) This one was the poll winner for the last slots. He apparently is a human in a devil costume who kills and eats people on Halloween! I tried to show that mania in his expression which was kind of hard since he's a very simple design...basically a red smiley face with a sweater lol. But hopefully it reads well, and I was able to get him into my style well enough! XD 6. Spongebob - from Spongebob. This one was a poll winner for the last slots. Anyone who doesn't know SPONGEBOB is living under a rock. but yeah, that fun and cheerful sponge! I realized that he was kind of the odd man out of the list of killers and creatures haha so I drew him as how we would react being in this crowd of others haha. I have to say that although I have not drawn Spongebob he was VERY easy to get down on the first few rough passes....I think its because he comes from the era of late 90s cartoony goodness...yes he has been around since 1999! I had real fun drawing him!!

#sixfanartschallenge #sixfanarts #bob velseb #spooky month #spongebob #rudy #killer klowns from outer space #kkfos #happy mask salesman #beetlejuice #king owl house #owl house #king #fanart

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marnz · 4 months

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2023 book post

I read 63 books this year (i do count short stories & novellas) and there were epic highs (everyone read the school for good mothers) and epic lows (y'all read this shit? for real?).

here are my top ten, in no particular order, followed by thoughts on the rest. it's so long lol okay let's get into it

top ten.

the school for good mothers by jessamine chan - a perfect commentary on the prison industrial complex and how poor, single, and mothers of color are treated set in a chilling near future. loved it. i read this book in june and think about it daily.

edinburgh by alexander chee - this book is a modern classic for good reason. gay tragedy lovers this book is for YOU. the prose is so beautiful, so dream like, that i couldn't stop reading. i read this book in one sitting, very nearly a year ago, and i was completely devastated by it.

in the woods by tana french - love this for: unreliable narrator who sucks but is compelling; prose about the woods and the 1980s mystery; cassie; a police procedure that starts off by being like 'crucially you must understand that the police lie.' i have a weakness for atmospheric books and this has that in spades.

homegoing by yaa gyasi - this book is SO good and the prose and character voices are excellent. it's extremely epic but somehow only 300 pages?!? each character only gets 1 chapter but gyasi does SO much with each chapter 😭 i read this in one day because i could not stop reading. i also read gyasi's other book, transcendent kingdom, which was also very good.

some desperate glory by emily tesh - this book is a mindfuck and is one of the few times i've seen [spoiler] done well. there are a lot of things this book talks about--imperialism; artificial intelligence; fascism; white supremacy and how it intersects with gender; queerness; eugenics. i posted about it early when i had only read like 49% and i was soooo wrong to do so. read this and just trust me.

x by davey davis - okay are you ready for this? X is queer/trans bdsm neo noir mystery set in a dystopian near future. it is dark, it is consuming, it is surprising, it is a book i turn over obsessively whenever i can't sleep. i need to reread and i only read it a few months ago.

baru cormorant series/the masquerade by seth dickinson - this is 3 books but let's count it as one book. much has been said about baru as a cringefail autistic marxist lesbian icon (affectionate) but what i really appreciate about these books, other than how fucking gay they are, is the specificity of the world building. i have a theory that modern readers are in search of detail (and cruelly denied by much of publishing rn). seth dickinson loves details. seth dickinson is going to take semi familiar narratives and tell them in a brand new way using details; math; hyper specific words. god i love it

poverty by america by matthew desmond - relatively short book, read it in a day. i also read desmond's first book, evicted, and it is also SO good but what's sexy about this book is that modern american society and esp. politicians frequently likes to be like 'oh no, poverty is so tragic but it can't be solved' and desmond is like 'watch me.' for people who enjoy reading andrea long chu take downs reviews and want concrete solutions for how to build a better world.

station eleven by emily st. john mandel - many people told me this was the best book they've ever read and i was like 'whatever. i'll get to it when i get to it.' DO NOT BE ME!! read this!! i wouldn't say this is a happy book but it was a beautiful book. i loved it. i cried for about 90 minutes afterwards. for art lovers, weird theatre kids, people unafraid of plague books, non linear timeline lovers, people who have been divorced.

piranesi by susanna clarke - okay i read this on my flight to frankfurt earlier this year and it totally bowled me over with how lovely it was and how emotional i got. just a beautiful, delicate, haunting, eerie book. for fans of mysteries, people who love oceans, gothic houses, people who earnestly believed magic was real as kids and hope it's real today, people who love academic drama they aren't involved in.

okay damn honorable mentions: in the dream house by carmen maria machado (SO good, maybe deserves my rec more than piranesi), normal people by sally rooney (mainly because it did make me insane), under the banner of heaven by jon krakauer (thorough, horrifying), honey & spice by bolu babalola (SO fun), sula by toni morrison (stunning!!), severance by ling ma (millennial alienation during a plague, amirite?), trust exercise by susan choi (who knows what really happened? you'll understand).

okay now the worst books i read this year, aka books i did not vibe with:

broken harbor & the trespasser by tana french; did not enjoy broken harbor due to the themes and did not enjoy the trespasser due to how cringefail the ending was. you can't depict ongoing harassment a woman of color is experiencing in her workplace, make her decide to leave after two years of this harassment, and then back track it in the last chapter? please. this is a problem tana french runs into a lot, but that is a different post

the witch elm by tana french; parts of this book were absolutely delicious. but a lot of it felt very tedious and in need of a stern editor. so many books these days need more thorough editing and the result is that a potentially amazing book is just like, okay. i understand the power fantasy that this book is designed to be, but i'm not the right audience for it (disabled). also, generally i need a character to root for.

amateur by thomas page mcbee; SO sorry thomas. i didn't vibe with this book mainly because i don't think i'm the target audience for it. i'm not cis and i'm not straight?? i also am not interested in narratives about trans men wanting to prove their masculinity by taking up a violent sport. i think this tension is addressed in the book but it wasn't addressed to my satisfaction. violence is often all the world gives to men as a source of power and thus serves as a solace for everything patriarchy takes from them, so i suppose i understand wanting to be able to get a piece of that...logically that makes sense. but also. why.

the late americans by brandon taylor; the thing is, i fucking love real life by brandon taylor and i enjoy brandon's criticism and read his substack (although i disagree with almost every aesthetic opinion he has). so possibly my expectations were too high, but i read this and i guess i was just...wanted to know what the point is. gay people suffering in the midwest? as a genre, it slaps. as a book, i feel frustrated. it felt loose, pointless, in great need of editing. brandon talks about this book by talking about the importance of moral fiction, and this book lacks moral urgency for many of its stories. i've read a lot of moral fiction and this isn't it? anyway I read this in July and looking back all I remember is Seamus' journey and the way brandon dragged workshopping.

the angel of the crows by katherine addison; look. if you're going to write sherlock wingfic, put it on ao3. if you're going to file off the serial numbers, please work harder so i can't tell what it originally was. and absolutely nix the author's note saying it was sherlock fanfic, because that makes me very unhappy! personally!

99% mine by sally thorne; classic second book syndrome. except the third one is also not very good. too bad!

touched out by amanda montei; okay obligatory disclaimer that i'm not a mother or parent but rather an adult who loves my friends' kids! this book really frustrated me and i think i would have enjoyed it considerably more if it was all cultural criticism instead of a memoir (other than the dworkin parts????). a memoir is an art form, a set narrative, but criticizing it feels weird because i am criticizing the author's life decisions as presented to me, in a flattened context, in a controlled narrative. if the memoir parts were instead part of a fictional book i would not hold back lol. this book is marketed as the most important work of feminist scholarship in the last 30 years and...it ain't. i also felt the focus was incredibly narrow. while montei does attempt to cite a broad range of theorists i just kept finding myself wondering, what about people from other cultures? what about disabled mothers? what about queer mothers or parents? what about this? WHERE'S YOUR RESEARCH? WHERE ARE YOUR INTERVIEWS? there is a specific kind of feminism where white women act like their specific experience is the pinnacle of all suffering and tbh it isn't. this book reminded me of that very strongly. like, if you're telling me you won't have an epidural because it was invented by a man then you are not a useful person to engage with, thanks.

books that would have been amazing if not for that one part

he who drowned the world by shelley parker chan - man i have mixed thoughts on this book. look away my beloved swbts mutuals. okay the epic highs (ouyang & zhu!! ma!!) were set off by baoxiang lmao. i'm mainly interested in queer masculinity and femininity and a femme straight guy is like. well, good for him, but i don't really care? bring me back to my loveds zhu and ouyang. but my main gripe...tbh i think baoxiang is a hugely unreliable narrator that protests about a lot of things too much. being straight for one thing; not having a thing for esen is another. AND MORE COULD HAVE BEEN DONE WITH THIS? like i honestly wish the implied incest thing, which was brought up at least twice, was more present. taking a step back, if you're like well i'm straight and i don't have a thing for my dead brother i helped kill but i absolutely will be seducing the spitting image of him while i fuck my way to the top of the throne? that should make me insane. possibly it would have in a book that didn't already have ouyang. who can tell. so i wish SPC had leaned into that a lot more, i wish baoxiang hadn't felt like such a plot instrument, i wish there was more Ma, i wish spoilery completely unbelievable storyline was better, etc.

in memorial by alice winn - damn, this book. it was so good but it fell apart at the end. i respect winn's decision to not have it be perfectly easy after living through the untold horrors of the trenches of wwi but the idea of two brits running away to brazil to live out a life of colonial bliss because being gay wasn't explicitly illegal in brazil at a time is like. what? i guess. anyway, it was good, i just have some notes.

romantic comedy by curtis sittenfeld - here's the thing, i love curtis sittenfeld and i knew going in that this is a book by the author that wrote rodham but man, this is a book by the author that wrote rodham. this is the most Online book i've ever read (derogatory) and it's very specific in its liberal i'm an Online author on twitter type of deal. the point of the book is that Not Tina Fey falls for Male Taylor Swift on Not Saturday Night Live and it was good, it was fun, i wasn't expecting [spoiler] ummm but it worked. i had a good time.

this is very long, sorry.

#currently #read in 2023 #long post tag #SO long #look away my beloved swbts mutuals...

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thecurioustale · 9 months

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I am going to try to write here actively again. ("Again," heh; I know I was only active here for an extremely short period many years ago.) To be completely transparent with you, let me explain where I am coming from and what some of my personal limitations and challenges are:

This space will be for discussing both my fantasy story The Curious Tale and my sci-fi Galaxy Federal story, both of which have a novel in active development. Both of these novels are well underway, and my progress in recent years and recent months has been very encouraging. Increasingly, I have given more time to working on them even when I am not inspired, i.e. I have been grinding a lot more (a good thing, in this instance). But at the same time, each novel is well under half-finished in word count. I am fully committed to both endeavors; they are "inevitable" insofar as their completion is only a matter of time (and so the caveat that I may die before they finish always applies, lol). But it is likely to be several more years before the first of these two novels is finished (and I don't know which one that will be).

My reason for splitting my efforts between two novels instead of one is that each world scratches different creative itches for me, and together they provide an outlet for over 90 percent of my creative self-expression needs, whereas if I were to work on them one at a time I would often be plagued with creative needs that have no outlet, which would frustrate my efforts toward whichever one I was working on. For some time I had put The Curious Tale on hold to work on Galaxy Federal, my reasoning being that the latter would be a lighter, smaller affair and would finish quickly. However, that ended up not being the case—at least in terms of the timescale of writing the book—and I realized a couple of years ago that I was committing a folly, and so began working on either novel at my discretion.

What I have to be smart about, and very careful about, in trying to build an active presence on here, is that I have a couple of serious restrictions that I have to work around: First, I can't reveal too much about what's actually in these stories, at least not until much closer to publication. When I was young I was a pretty open book, but in the 2010s I came around to the idea that this was a bad move and that audiences would almost universally enjoy the story more if I didn't slowly trickle out its secrets ahead of publication. So I've played my cards close to the vest these past few years, and I've said very little indeed about the Galaxy Federal novel in particular. This restriction on revealing story details makes it hard for me to find topics to write about in a setting like this. Second, I have to be careful not to put too much time and effort into any posts that I do make here. Due to mental health challenges and my extremely limited mental bandwidth / spoons, I've operated for the past several years under the successful rule of "Don't write about the story when you can just be writing the story itself," which I deem successful because it has corresponded to fewer distractions and more available creative energy for manuscript writing.

So, between these two major restrictions, I need for my posts here to be relatively brief and I also need to find interesting things to talk about that aren't just story giveaways. I've found in my weekly Patreon essays that whenever I do attempt to brush up against discussing the story I often end up stopping just short in a way that I feel has to be pretty unsatisfying for readers. So I am definitely open to suggestions for topics of discussion!

The reason I am choosing this old Tumblr account for this effort is because I know I have at least a handful of people here who are interested in at least one of these two novels, and who use Tumblr on a regular basis. The day will come when I need to start "building my platform" again in order to make these works visible to the public ahead of their publication. I think this is a good starting point because even though Tumblr seems to be in decline, by coming here I would know that I am not talking to an empty room. In the future, however, I may move to a different venue. I really don't know; I'm just saying that I'm not promising that this will be THE place to go forever, ya know?

In the meantime, I will not be doing any social media crossposting, or creating different content for different venues. Other than my weekly Patreon essays, and the occasional indulgent musing on my personal journal, this Tumblr page will be the only place where I talk publicly about either story—at least for the time being. If it goes well here, I will probably try reactivating one of my other old social media channels and doing some crossposting.

I will try to post here at least three times a week, with no fixed calendar, and ideally I will post something almost every day. I will commit to running this trial at minimum till the Autumn Equinox in a little over six weeks, and I will reevaluate then.

Please, if you do have any interest in this, don't be shy chiming in with comments or asks or reblogs. On one level I am here for myself, doing the whole "platform-building" thing, but in another sense I am here because I would like for more people than just me to be excited about these works. Two different sides of the same coin, I suppose, but, given that one of my chief struggles in life is alienation and the search for belonging, it's hard for me to see myself sticking with this if no one ever engages with me. Tell me what you'd like me to talk about, and I will aim to please!

#The Curious Tale #Galaxy Federal #My favorite thing about Tumblr is honestly the tags!#The real conversation happens here

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magentagalaxies · 6 months

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hi @liliana-von-k, thanks for the follow! i have answered this question before but i love talking about kids in the hall and my "origin story" with them so i'm happy to tell it again (jsyk it will be a long post bc i always have to tell the full story bc i love it so much)

basically my parents have both been kith fans since the 90s, so even before i had seen any of the show itself there were certain kith quotes that were just part of my family's vocabulary. the first sketch i watched was "these are the daves i know" when i was like 8 years old and i became obsessed with that song. i watched a few other sketches/the first few episodes from season one but i didn't truly get into kith until after their documentary "comedy punks" was released

see, my mom is a big documentary person so she was like "oh hey there's a new kids in the hall documentary! do you want to watch it?" and i just kind of shrugged and was like sure i'll be in the room while it's on, probably working on my own stuff or scrolling on my phone. but like not even five minutes in i was hooked. while i'd always enjoyed kids in the hall's comedy, something about hearing the very personal histories of how the troupe came together and survived for all these years was so affecting. i think it was scott specifically that really signaled to me that this show was something special, and the part where bruce talked about comforting scott while he had cancer by telling him how the rest of the troupe would die first was so powerful. honestly no individual movie has changed my life more than comedy punks did specifically bc it gave me that push to get into kith and approached it from such a human perspective, which definitely informed my approach to the rest of their work and them as people. i remember watching comedy punks for the first time and getting this strange feeling i couldn't pin down yet that was like this is important, not just referring to the show or the troupe, but like this feeling that i had just crossed a turning point in my life, and i remember feeling this pull towards toronto which seemed frivolous at the time but has been so heavily solidified as i'm now planning to move there in just over a year.

so i bingewatched all of the kids in the hall tv show in summer 2022, as well as brain candy, death comes to town, the amazon season, etc. basically as much kith stuff as i could find. but i needed more. so i started getting into side projects, which brought me to "mouth congress" (a queer-punk band scott thompson and paul bellini had in the early 80s that they've recently started putting out new music with again). i found a youtube channel with a bunch of recent live performance clips of the band and each video had like less than 10 views. so since i didn't have anyone to infodump about kith with irl (aside from my very patient mother lol) i started commenting on every video, complimenting the performances and pretending i was talking to a friend, confident no one would actually see it

after 2 weeks of this, turns out someone did see it. PAUL BELLINI HIMSELF. this led to a whole back-and-forth which eventually ended up with him emailing me a copy of the unreleased mouth congress documentary, i emailed back asking if he'd be interested in meeting on zoom (since i am a queer comedy writer myself so both he and scott are my biggest comedy inspirations), and yeah bellini is a delightful person to talk to and we very quickly became friends. i ended up offering to run mouth congress's social media, which can be found on both tumblr and instagram as @mouthcongress and posts both vintage videos from the 80s/90s and recent live clips. they're currently working on an album of entirely new material written in the past 2 years which is going to be released soon (we don't have a specific release date but the recording is completed and they've started filming music videos for it!! but i'm getting ahead of myself lmao)

a few months pass and mouth congress is set to perform at a new year's eve show at a local club in toronto. i'd never been to toronto before, never even left the united states, but paul says it would be so great to have me there and by some miracle my parents say yes to making the trip (they still can't believe this is happening either, since they were kith fans first!). the trip is wonderful, i immediately fall in love with the city, i get lunch with paul irl for the first time and get to have my very first face-to-face conversation with my number one comedy inspiration scott thompson. it's honestly a little awkward but in an adorable funny way. i also have my first legal drink at that show (bc canadian drinking age is lower than the us), specifically saying i want to have my first drink with buddy cole, which both scott and paul are very into

it's actually only a couple weeks until i'm in toronto again, because scott is debuting a new buddy cole show consisting of monologues that were all censored by amazon that he pitched during the revival season. this is my first time traveling a long distance without my family which my mom is anxious about so paul bellini lets me have him as my emergency contact. the show is amazing, i get to stay for the afterparty, and while i'm there i casually mention that i'm surprised no one has made a buddy cole documentary yet. like, this character has such a rich history even beyond the kids in the hall (which i can infodump about all day lmao) and is such an important staple of queer comedy that doesn't get the attention he deserves. the kith documentary is great, but where's my buddy cole documentary? paul accepts my pitch (that i didn't even realize i was pitching), passes along the idea to scott, and yeah now i'm legit directing a film with my number one comedy heroes and i haven't even graduated college yet. what the fuck. i expected this to be the type of thing i accomplish over 20 years into my career, not at twenty!! so yeah that's how the buddy cole documentary started. i'm still in preproduction on it but we're launching an indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for it in the next 2 weeks bc this has evolved into a full feature-length film with some incredible celebrity interviewees, both kith and otherwise.

anyway a few months later it's announced bruce mcculloch is bringing his one-man-show to the city i go to school in. not only that, but his theater is literally 2 blocks from campus. i ask paul if he'd give me bruce's contact so i can set up an interview for my school's newspaper, paul gives me bruce's assistant's email, and i set up a 30-minute zoom two weeks before bruce will be in town. the conversation honestly goes bizarrely well. like it's honestly surreal how close bruce and i got after only knowing each other for a half hour? he's such an easy person to talk to and literally by the end of that conversation he was already calling himself my mentor, asking about my comedy, and offering to let me meet him backstage after his show. which is exactly what i did, launching yet another incredible friendship-slash-mentorship with one of the kids in the hall.

bruce eventually signed on to executive produce the buddy cole documentary (alongside paul bellini), i've been up to toronto in january, april, june, august, and october this year (so essentially every 2 months, though it was slightly offset by going twice in january) and i'm planning on going up in december, every time not only do i find time to meet up with scott, paul, and bruce but they all deliberately try to reserve as much "jess time" as they can because i have a unique and powerful friendship with each of them, every time i finish a new creative project paul has to see it bc he loves how ambitious i am, i repeatedly wake up to texts scott sends me at 3am about the documentary and how excited he is to have me on tour with him to film it next year, bruce thinks it's hilarious he used to think i was "shy" bc i've gotten so comfortable going on infodumps and tangents about things i'm passionate about, and the three of them all feel like extended family. best of all, i actually have plans to graduate from college a semester early so that i can use the money (and time) i've saved to find a place in toronto and start making even more connections with the comedy community up there (also for the record: no i have not met mark, kevin, or dave yet. i know kevin is aware of my existence from bruce giving me a shoutout at a show they both did but that's about it. but i know i will interview all of them for my documentary)

so anyway that's how i got into kids in the hall. i know only the first 2 paragraphs answer your question, but at this point my love for this show has become so so intertwined with my relationships to bruce and scott and paul as humans that i don't really consider getting into kids in the hall and getting to know the kids in the hall as separate things in my life.

(also if you have any follow-up questions on anything mentioned feel free to reply or dm me, this goes for everyone else too!)

#as always i hope talking about knowing some of the kith irl doesn't come across as bragging bc that's absolutely not my intention #bc i do very much feel like a very lucky kith tumblr nerd and my favorite thing is connecting the kith to this part of their audience #hosting little digital screenings of hard-to-find kith media or passing along questions etc #this is exemplified with my ''kids in the archive'' series which you should check out if you haven't already #but yeah this is a very (and i mean VERY) brief summary of how this all unfolded #bc like. yes this all kind of happened over a year and a half. but it was a very eventful year and a half #if you scroll far enough in some of my kith-related tags you can find posts from in-the-moment before i knew some of them #or when i was still coming up with the concept for the buddy cole doc or something like that #which is very interesting to see. this blog is like a living kith journal lmao #also: the bruce interview article was never written bc i actually lied about writing for the school paper lmaooo #but for the anniversary i might write a transcript and/or see if i can post the audio bc i did record it #i haven't relistened to it since the day (march 6th) so it'll be so cool going back and listening to myself being starstruck #compared to now where i see bruce as ''just some guy (complimentary)''

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thoughtfullyrainynightmare · 4 months

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Girl I feel your frustrations with the current chapter. I like BC but the writing has been ass for a while now imo (hence why I'm very bravely going anonymous so I don't get hate and kys mail lmao)

Though I will say the rumors about there being only 3 chapters left are completely unfounded and came from either the subreddit or anitwitter, I forgot which, but they were based on approximate calculations of the remaining battles and their page counts + the average number of giga chapter pages + the fact that this is officially BC's "final saga". So basically.... No worries about the amount of chapters left!

I mean that's what it is; frustration.

And well... to be completely fair, I've joked with my friends lately about the writing in BC during the last year or so with "lol what writing?", which is harsh on Tabs, I know. Because he is trying his hardest. I do believe that he is doing his best with all the troubles and falling ill during the past year, along with the manga industry breathing down his neck. (But dw, I get it. The internet tends to be unkind with these things because there's very little sense of responsibility when it comes to one's own actions, along with... some other unfortunate phenomenon that come with the social media culture these days. But I'm from a time when I went out to a forest to just wander around rather than spend time on my computer; I remember when my parents had to go to a bank to pay the bills, rather than being able to do it from home, so... damn I feel old rn)

Anywho, I'm getting side tracked.

I'm glad to know that the 3 chapters is just some rando from whatever platform that I'm not on, but the thing is... if BC had delivered during the past year or so, I would dismiss such rumour much easier. As in, I started re-reading chapters 366-368 yesterday, and I know that I read them when they came out, I just couldn't remember 90% of what happened in them, because it's not memorable.

I'm sad about the missed potential of BC. (I'll talk about the missed potential in another thread, because there's something I wanna reply to)

But I suppose that the silver lining is the possibility for a Bersek type of a time line where we get 1 chapter every 6 months, rather than Tabs having to go for a quick finish

#anon flamelets #black clover

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djservo · 9 months

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HI CAS!!! you beat me to it for real i also completely forgot about the month ending oopsie <3 but i'm here to ask about your july reading/watching and what's on the list for august??

FEELS SO GOOD TO FINALLY WIN ONE <3 here's july's (vaguely red-themed) shelf:

I have no idea how i read 7 books this month like they were mostly all under 200 pages but that still averages to almost 2 books a week which does not sound right when I reflect on my month but Ok sure we'll go with it

Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas

it didn't really click as I read it but then I watched the film adaptation (Head On '98) and let it all marinate throughout the month I think the distance has made me appreciate the story much more! reminded me a little of Camus's The Stranger (<- girl who has only ever read The Stranger LOL 🫥) in that cold disaffected "why even bother" way, but infused with that self-destructive 90s gay angst + Greek-Australian culture clashes. the film was better to me at constructing the differences of the worlds Ari (the protag) inhabited - the visuals and sounds of Greek language + spaces juxtaposed with 90s electronica + seedy alley hook-ups whereas the written form seemed more focused on illustrating Ari's disillusionment/attitude. there's another book by Tsiolkas I'm curious in (The Slap) but it's like 450 pages and IDK if his style of writing will grip me that long / if it'll feel Worth It by the time I finish ykwim... TBD

Pageboy by Elliot Page

I wanted to like this so bad but it was kinda a mess to get thru :-( nonlinear form so it was hard to follow along as it hopped back and forth from childhood to adulthood and I know that's probably an intentional/artistic choice but there wasn't really a clear thread pulling these drastically different parts of his life together where it justified this random shuffle - mostly just took me out of each stage of life he constructed. it feels unfair to criticize a memoir for content because ofc there's no right/wrong way to reflect and write about your own life experiences but I mostly agree with Nin's review on goodreads re: lack of introspection, especially since this memoir touted itself as an interrogation (as the book description puts it) of his inner journey. there was this one part where he brings up his second-ever experience at a gay bar (with Alia Shawkat!!) but abruptly stops himself and is like "but that's a story for another book" and I was like WHY THO!! this is 10000% a story for THIS book WDYM 'another book'!! sighhhh sigh whatever I still love him and will probs pick up this taunted "other book" when it comes out bc i'm a cuck

Try / Guide / Period by Dennis Cooper

the final 3 of the George Miles Cycle, read obsessively within the span of 2 weeks bc I couldn't bring myself to escape his world!! feels wrong to lump them all in one but I'll be here all day if I talk about them individually, so As A Whole I'm just really in awe of Cooper's style and characters and world-building and blurring of lines of surreal horror and violence + occasional earnest smatterings of autofiction + humanity stripped to its core. one review said the last book read as if it was collapsing into itself, and I think that translates to the series as a whole because his form seems to get more experimental as the series goes on. and while each book felt so distinct in their own tone/form, they all ultimately dissolve into like a singular bare naked truth amidst bleak depravity at the very end, which I really liked. since finishing the cycle I've immersed myself completely in interviews + videos + just about anything i can find about Cooper and realized it's been a minute since I've been this bewitched by an author — so fun!

Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker

in the same realm of Cooper with dark/taboo themes + sexual transgression + teen angst. I feel like I might have been put off by this if I hadn't read Cooper first because things get so blunt and nasty at times, but I feel like I'm better at kind of poking through the rubble of like graphic depictions of moralistic decay to read between the lines/understand the bigger picture of inner-adolescent-torment. I remember watching Welcome to the Dollhouse ('95) when I was like 11 and it just seemed cool and punky and kinda funny kinda weird but then I rewatched it in my 20s and was stunned with how bleak and heavy it was and I feel like there's something there with my feelings towards these angsty teenage requiems, like there's a sort of shock value that doesn't really click when you're younger and in the thick of it because you aren't fully privvy to the extent of how harmful power dynamics work or something .. IDK much 2 think about....

Desire/Love by Lauren Berlant

not too long or dense to make your brain fog, but Freud/Lacan-packed enough to make you feel a little stupid for not reading more Freud/Lacan. I love when I read a nonfiction book and end up adding 458349 of its references to my TBR, it's truly the gift that keeps giving! kinda enlightening, kinda disheartening. made me think of when I read Venus in Furs in college and it rocked my world and put me into a crisis about love + desire + fantasies + the projections we place onto people + whether or not anyone can truly See and Love a person for who they are or if we're all just doomed to subconsciously inject our own imagination of who they can be in our lives ...... light summer reading!

viewing-wise I've taken on the thankless task of watching all 48534 Friday the 13th movies so once I finish I'm sure I'll need a slasher break. a friend and i are also summer buddy reading starting with A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (my first Woolf!), then pivoting to a sorta dark boyhood in classic lit theme with Quarry by Jane White, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, and Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. I'll probably read other books on the side myself (I'm in the middle of Looking For Mr. Goodbar right now) but I'm excited at the thought of a themed plan + discussions for the month(s) ahead! i forget sometimes how rewarding it feels to experience and unpack a book with someone else <3

#ok i need a nap now #asks #cheesehair #reads

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