#(this is the same friend who calls spike ‘bernard’ and vicious ‘man murder from the murder man’)

[bohemian-rhapsody-in-blue]

Hi, this is for the autumn ask:

🍵💻🍁

I hope you have a good day 🙃

Thank you so much! And sorry for the lateness in answering—I got hit with an annoying cold, like, right after I reblogged the post and had to nap and rest all day. It’s still affecting me, but I feel a bit better now—I hope that today turns out to be better, and I thank you for your well wishes!

Now, without further ado:

🍵 Top 3 favorite tea flavors?

Right now, my absolute favorite tea is an instant ginger chai that my roommate has, because it’s working wonders for my sore throat. (No, I won’t shut up about this cold…)

Interestingly, I was never much of a tea drinker before this year (I’m sorry, Uncle Iroh), but thanks to my roommate and the many college events I’ve gone to that serve tea, I’m learning to develop more of a taste for it! I’d say my top three favorites right now are the aforementioned ginger chai, green tea, and I guess peppermint tea. I’ve tried earl grey, too, but I don’t like it as much. (I’m sorry, Captain Picard.)

💻 To feel nostalgic: what are some old games/websites you spent lots of time on when you were young?

I don’t know if anyone else but me remembers this, but: htwins.net! This was the website that hosted the famous Scale of the Universe 2 and belonged to the people who made Battle for Dream Island, but I didn’t stop there. Oh no. I played all the games and watched all the animations that these funky Huang twins made: Get to the Top Although There Is No Top (and its 100 variations!), Goime 500 (there were parts of that that stumped me for months; after I eventually figured it out and beat the game, that’s what introduced me to the concept of a speedrun); even The Super-Short Stick Figure Show! A lot of these have sadly been lost to time since the demise of Flash…RIP.

I remember being shooketh when I found out how young the programmers/animators, Cary and Michael, were—they were only 12 when they produced, animated, and released the first episode of Battle for Dream Island and 14 when they released The Scale of the Universe 2. Imagine having that much talent! I still follow some of Cary’s videos—he also composes quite well and, in high school, apparently wrote poems of questionable quality.

On the cringier side of things, I also spent an embarrassing amount of time on websites like RageStache (rage comics) and Taste of Awesome (demotivational posters). I was addicted to those—I’d spend hours scrolling through the comics and memes while procrastinating on doing my 5th- or 6th-grade homework, probably learning stuff I shouldn’t have been learning at the innocent young age of 10. I’d also often Google Image Search things like “funny comics about harry potter” (Harry Potter being my obsession at the time), “funny rage comics about ___,” and “funny tumblr conversations”—years before I’d actually join Tumblr.

🍁 A new website, fandom, video, song, fun fact or anything, name a recent discovery you would like to share with your followers.

Apologies for “blorbo from my shows”-ing this, but here are two amazing Cowboy Bebop-related discoveries I’ve made recently!

The first is this bonus track from the boxed set of the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack; here is the Wiki page for it with the lyrics translated into English. It’s called “Wandering Cowboy,” and it’s a version/arrangement of the theme song, Tank!, with lyrics sung by Aoi Tada, the Japanese voice of Edward. The lyrics and the way little Ed sings them (Aoi Tada was a teenager, not much older than Ed, when she recorded her lines for the original series) are just so adorable—innocent, childlike, and filled with love for her Bebop family. I can just imagine Ed sitting or lying at her computer in the Bebop’s living room, kicking her feet behind her as she softly and happily sings this under her breath. Go, go, Bebop! Fly, fly, Bebop!

And the second is this video of Canadian figure skater Kevin Reynolds, who in 2016 skated a routine at the Skate Canada Challenge to Tank! while dressed as Spike Spiegel. Just imagine being that cool. Imagine being a fan of Cowboy Bebop and also a figure skater. Imagine practicing for months and months and years and years to do a strenuous, beautiful skating routine, and it all culminates in you being Spike Spiegel, being him in front of everyone, whirling and spinning across the ice to the frenetic jazz of Tank!, of a show you’ve obviously known and loved for years—as graceful and fluid as Spike himself is in his movements, literally moving like water. I just have many emotions about this. (Also, Kevin Reynolds is cute! He has a sweet smile and thumbs-up :))

[Autumn Emoji Asks]