#Actually a lot of stuff in this post is basic :^

[tanadrin]

Can you explain in what what you think eugenics doesn't work? Does this basically boil down to skepticism about the accuracy of GWAS studies? My understanding is that academic consensus is "G probably exists, disentangling direct genetic inheritance vs genetic cultural inheritance is complicated but possible, we can identify a number of alleles which we're reasonably confident are directly causally involved in having a higher G factor"

when it comes to intelligence, its heritability, and its variation at the population level, my understanding of the science is:

highly adaptive traits don't, in fact, vary much at the genetic level between populations of a species because they are strongly selected for. in an environment where a trait is being strongly selected for, a population that failed to express that trait strongly will be rapidly outcompeted.

intelligence is probably the quintessential such trait for humans. we have sacrificed a great deal of other kinds of specialization in favor of our big brains. we spend an enormous amount of calories supporting those brains. tool use, the ability to plan for the future, the ability to navigate complex social situations and hierarchies in order to secure status, the ability to model the minds of others for the purposes of cooperation and deception means that we should expect intelligence to be strongly selected for for as long as our lineage has been social and tool-using, which is at least the last three million years or so.

so, at least as a matter of a priori assumptions, we should expect human populations not to vary greatly in their genetic predisposition to intelligence. it may nonetheless, but we'd need pretty strong evidence. i think i read this argument on PZ Myers' blog a million years ago, so credit where that's due.

complicating the picture is that we just don't have good evidence for how IQ does vary across populations, even before we get into the question of "how much of this variation is genetic and how much of it is not." the cross-national data on which a lot of IQ arguments have been based is really bad. and that would be assuming IQ tests are in fact good at capturing a notion of IQ that is independent of cultural context, which historically they're pretty bad at

this screed by nassim nicholas taleb (not a diss; AFAICT the guy only writes in screeds) makes a number of arguments, but one argument I find persuasive is that IQ is really only predictive of achievement in the sense that it does usefully discriminate between people with obvious intellectual disabilities and those without--but you do not actually need an IQ test for that sort of thing, any more than you need to use a height chart to figure out who is missing both their legs. in that sense, sure, IQ is predictive of a lot of things. but once you remove this group, the much-vaunted correlations between IQ and stuff like wealth just straight-up vanishes

heritability studies are a useful tool, but a tool which must be wielded carefully; they were developed for studying traits which were relatively easy to isolate in very specific populations, like a crop under study at an agricultural research site, and are more precarious when applied to, e.g., human populations

my understanding based on jonathan kaplan articles like this one is that twin studies are not actually that good at distinguishing heritable factors from environmental ones--they have serious limitations compared to heritability studies where you actually can rigorously control for environmental effects, like you can with plants or livestock.

as this post also points out, heritability studies also only examine heritability within groups, and are not really suited to examining large-scale population differences, *especially* in the realm of intelligence where there is a huge raft of confounding factors, and a lack of a really robust measurement tool.

(if we are worried about intelligence at the population level, it seems to me there are interventions we know are going to be effective and do not rely on deeply dubious scientific speculation, e.g., around nutrition and healthcare and serious wealth inequality and ofc education; and if what people actually want is to raise the average intelligence of the population rather than justify discrimination against minorities, then they might focus on those much more empirically grounded interventions. even if population differences in IQ are real and significant and point to big differences in intelligence, we know those things are worth a fair few IQ points. but most people who are or historically have been the biggest advocates for eugenics are, in my estimation, mostly interested in justifying discrimination.)

i think the claims/application of eugenics extend well beyond just intelligence, ftr. eugenics as an ideology is complex and historically pretty interesting, and many eugenicists have made much broader claims than just "population-level differences in intelligence exist due to genetic factors, and we should try to influence them with policy," but that is a useful point for them to fall back onto when pressed on those other claims. but i don't think even that claim is at all well-supported.

[phacheltheprophetess]

How Stranger’s Perceive You In Public!?!? Piles 1-3 Respectfully

Pile One: When people first see you based on your attractiveness and the way you look, they assume that you are smart or well educated. This can be because of the way that you dress that is very classy or in luxurious clothing. People see you’re well put together and they assume you have your stuff together as well. They see you as stylish and diplomatic but still flirty and fun. People assume you’re very youthful no matter your actual age they can tell life is being good to you based on your aura. People assume you have money but that you wouldn’t be the type to be generous with your money or assets. You’re not the flashy type but still prefer to have a more than comfortable lifestyle.

Pile Two: People can see you’re very structured in your demeanor and behavior. You may wear a straight face a lot which makes you unapproachable to strangers. People assume if they were to say something to you, you would be a hard nut to crack. People would like to make you smile even if they think it would be a hard task. Strangers love how you dress no matter your gender and can tell you base your style on your inner personality. Strangers assume you have a lot of inner restraint and discipline. They think you’re fit or just care deeply about your physical health. You don’t seem like the type of person someone would feel comfortable to cuss or do a crime in front of.

Pile Three: In public you come off as someone who is busy or constantly on the move. If someone wants your attention they assume they better hurry up and try to get it before it’s gone. People see you has in your air or in your own world most of the time. Not very aware of your surroundings, thinking of things else. Energetically people assume you’re not even in the same dimension as them, no matter if you’re in the same room or not. People see you as closed off and not interested in welcoming any new people in your life. You’re in the energy of inspiring but not hiring.

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Picked up on the collective general energy for this reading. Much like every other pick a pile it had no specific audience in mind. So if you felt drawn to this post it was simply meant for you to see 💕

I offer more personalized & concise messages always available via dms and/or email divineempress777@gmail.com

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[spoonfulofmilo]

Hello hello! How are you?

I saw your guidelines and wanted to request for the special!

Can I get a V & 13 (Happy to see my sport included, btw!) for a GN!Turkish!Reader?

Basically after Seb's retirement (Come back, bee whisperer...) he sets up a small archery practice place in his backyard for Reader and sometimes you can see it in the background of his Insta posts. People speculate he's trying it out himself but he says it's actually for someone special instead and refuses to elaborate like the bastard man (affectionate) he is. The rest is up to your imagination!

Please and thank you! Have a good day! ☀️

this was such a sweet request, I actually loved it

if you want to participate in my 400 followers event, look here :) (which I think explains how long this has taken me)

Please keep requesting - y'all have awesome ideas we agree on a lot of stuff :) - my guidelines are here, and if you want some prompts, they are here.

also feel free to come in and start chatting to me in my asks, would love to get to know y'all better

and if you want to be added to my taglist lmk :)

v - sebastian vettel x 13 - archery!turkish!gn!reader

It was his idea for the archery practice

You insisted it would be fine for you to continue to travel

But he insisted it was good for the environment

So he built it

And obvs the fans noticed

Insisted that it was for him and it was something new he was trying

Ha no - he built it for you

He’s tried it a couple of times

Almost broke an arrow

Almost shot himself

Almost shot you

Never again

It was a very seb thing to do to set up the archery

He is contemplating learning to shoot again

Not that he’ll tell you

The archery practice is his way of soft launching you

But the fans aren’t smart enough for that

taglist: @leosxrealm, @tallrock35, @wolf-knights, @janeholt3, @camelliaflow3r

[jtophat]

LOL at your bisexual Ponyboy post about his great taste in women but awful taste in men. 😂😅 I can totally see that! I don't get how he hangs out with Curly and befriends Mark.. and I'm thinking how does this introvert hang out with these guys...? What do they talk about? Like.. do they talk about movies and stuff? And don't get me talking about how he draws Dally a lot in his sketchbook. Why draw and hang out if you don't like him? Hmmm.. 🤔

So I mainly see this happening in a world where Johnny and Dally die. It’s possible he’d still get with Curly if they live though, but not Mark

Curly:

I feel like they’ve known each other their whole lives and were basically family frenemies

They started to get close after Curly got out of reform school

Both him and Ponyboy were in a really bad place mentally. Ponyboy still hadn’t gotten over Dally and Johnny’s death and Curly was stilly messed up after reform school so honestly when they got together it was a bit toxic. That’s also why Soda and Darry didn’t really like their relationship much initially

At that point it was really just an intense situationship

Over time with a lot of maturing and late night talks and telling each other things they had never told anybody else they eventually properly got together and were pretty healthy

Honestly a lot of their conversations are pretty typical teenage boy topic. Usually when it’s more emotional stuff it’s during late night walks home from the movies and it’s almost always started by Ponyboy

Curly actually loves to hear Ponyboy’s perspective on things. He doesn’t know anyone else who thinks the way Ponyboy does

While Ponyboy is a pretty quiet person he will yap about things he’s interested in to certain people, including Curly. Once he start yapping it’s hard to get him to stop

Curly is a massive yapper and since Ponyboy is someone he feels like he can tell anything and everything he will tell Ponyboy about even the smallest things going on in his life

This post is honestly long enough so I’m going to make some more posts about Mark and the Dally thing you mention

[the-far-bright-center]

It’s a good point that you bring up about the Disney canon poaching from the EU, that’s been apparent even in things like Star Wars: Rebels fairly early on in the Disney era. So I didn't mean to imply that the Disney stuff was the first to cover certain topics – as you say, there’s quite a lot of crossover, even if done more ‘sneakily’. But once again, the difference is that the Expanded Universe was not canon on the same level as the Lucas films, whereas the Disney stuff is now trying to synthesise everything and claiming that everything they churn out, regardless of quality or whether it even respects the basic themes of the Lucas saga, is the ‘real’ canon of Star Wars. 

Regarding the ‘grimdark’ EU material, I realise that I’m not qualified to comment on specifics as I largely stayed away from post-RotJ stuff. But with the Prequels-era EU, I don’t really have an issue with this material being quite dark at times, as it’s in keeping with the Prequels’ own established themes. Perhaps you are referring to the overall ‘tone’ of these stories being more ‘gritty realism’ than the mythic space opera tone of the Lucas films, but to some degree that is inevitable with written material vs. visual material – after all, Lucas treats his films almost like silent films, focusing more on the interplay of cinematography and film score than on spoken dialogue, etc. Not to mention all the references to, and influences from, Old Hollywood films. There’s a decidedly old-fashioned tone to his work that is rarely captured in contemporary novel form; probably the only thing that comes close is Matthew Stover’s famous Revenge of the Sith novelisation. I’m presuming some of the EU material you are referring to has a more gritty vibe to it which contrasts with the more heightened and stylised tone of Lucas’ work. This is at least partly due to, as you say, the trend of the 90s and 2000s, though from what I recall this was a trend not just in the Star Wars Expanded Universe but throughout a great deal of post-modern speculative fiction in general.

Though if by ‘grimdark’ you are referring moreso to nihilistic themes and storylines, my feelings on this depend greatly on what ‘era’ of the Star Wars universe we are talking about. If it’s the pre-canon/pre-Prequels time period, then I actually don’t see that as being inherently at odds with the PT x OT saga. While I personally prefer the more mythic and stylised aspects of Star Wars to more ‘realistic’ takes, I don’t have an issue with exploring darker themes. And the repetitive cycles occurring at that stage actually make sense….something huge and dramatic needed to happen to ‘break’ those cycles, and that’s where Anakin as the Chosen One and the Skywalker saga comes in. That’s what breaks that cycle.

The only issue I see here is when it’s implied that the Skywalker family’s story had zero positive impact on the fate of the galaxy in the post-RotJ period…whether that be on a political, personal, or cosmic level. First of all, since the PT x OT saga is supposed to function as a myth, its outcome is not supposed to be ‘realistic’. And secondly, as a story about duality, the Original Trilogy has to have a happy ending with a lasting positive impact because we have already seen the tragic ending and destructive impact in the Prequels. The saga is all about duality and mirroring, so the apocalyptic destruction of the Prequels must be followed by restoration. THIS is where any kind of ‘grimdark’ perspective has to be dropped, when we’re talking about the ‘bigger picture’ of the story’s overall outcome. If the Prequels and the Original Trilogy are to function as the visual and thematic mirrors of one another as they were created to be, then there has to be at least some lasting positive outcome. There is absolutely nothing in the Lucas canon (aka, what we see on-screen in the six main films) to suggest that Luke and Leia would repeat the mistakes of the past. On the contrary, their milieu is completely different to that of their parents, and thus the implication is that they will succeed where their parents failed. Luke and Leia’s unequivocal heroism and success is in fact the vindication of Anakin and Padme’s forbidden love. Without that, there simply isn’t any point to the story. 

Frustratingly, some people seem to believe that the Skywalker saga is just a petty family drama with only a fleeting neutral or barely-positive impact on the individual members of said family, while insisting that the negative and dramatic impacts are felt galaxy-wide. That’s more or less the interpretation that Disney has gone with. But I completely disagree with that because the Skywalker family is established in the Prequels as being ‘the galaxy in microcosm’. That’s the whole reason why Anakin and Padme are essentially a Jungian/alchemical Union of Opposite with a cosmic love story. Their fates and galaxy’s fates are intertwined, and so this has to carry forward into the OT-era and beyond. Which is why I disagree with the notion that only the negative or destructive effects of the Skywalker family’s storyline would be what ‘lasts’. Anakin’s fate represents the galaxy’s fate, and he starts out the story enslaved and ends the story finally, finally freeing himself of his chains. To imply only the former part matters but not the latter? Now that’s a ‘grimdark’ view that, in my opinion, doesn’t align with the themes of the saga and has no place in this particular mythic story. The outcome of which should be transcendent.  ‘Love can ignite the stars’ is more akin to the concept of eucatastrope as described by Tolkien, rather than anything found in post-modern gritty fantasy. 

It’s also more in keeping with the comparative mythology analysis of Joseph Campbell, one of Lucas’ biggest mythopoeic influences: 

 “The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.” — Joseph Campbell 

None of this is to say that there could never be any further ‘conflict’ in the galaxy later on down the line, just that it would need to be written in a way that didn’t negate the meaning or impact of the story that came before. There are plenty of potential ways of approaching the post-RotJ period, it’s just that the EU authors of the past and the present-day Disney creators haven’t cared enough to do so respectfully. They are simply writing ‘more’ for the sake of ‘more’. And from my (very cynical) standpoint, the only reason to make anything post-RotJ ‘bleak’ or ‘depressing’ or ‘repeating a never ending cycle’ is as an excuse to continue the franchise indefinitely and therefore continue to make more money.

Star Wars isn't a tragedy. Only the Prequels are. Disney (and most of tumblr it seems) may think all of Star Wars is supposed percieved in a sad or tragic manner, but it's not. Return of the Jedi is triumphant, redemptive, and uplifiting. It's the fairytale ending that bookends the greek tragedy. The combination of fall and then redemption of the human soul is the entire point.

Anakin is a tragic character, but the Skywalker saga itself NOT meant to be tragic, neither in its tone nor its actual outcome.

[yusiyomogi]

honestly I'm sort of surprised that people (that I've seen anyways) tend toward "Oh I didn't like dunmeshi's second half as much as the first half" cause like I read 1-40 over the course of a week or so but as soon as I hit chapter 45ish I locked the hell in and finished in a single day. Genuinely the second half so much more fun.... ofc I also tend more towards incredibly plot-heavy stuff so that might be a factor but like it's weird to me

yes, for sure, i loved the second half so much more than the first half! i love worldbuilding and plot-heavy stuff, so it was more interesting to me too. i also like complex characterization, which ofc was present in the first half of the story, but truly shined in second half, especially with characters like kabru, mithrun, laios and marcille. as fun as "monster of the week" can be, there are certain limits in what aspects of the story you can explore. and dunmeshi wants to explore these aspects and it does a great job!

i feel like a lot of people who find themselves disappointed by the second half, simply had incorrect expectations. many people enjoy this kind of simpler storytelling and there's no denying that dunmeshi is super funny as well, but the first, like, 1/4 of the manga can give very wrong impression of what this story will eventually develop into. and fandom doesn't help! like, when anime started people basically treated it as ultimate dnd show, silly rpg-inspired fantasy with all the familiar monsters and funny characters bound by their class and race. the impression was so strong, that i only became interested in dunmeshi when people started posting their reactions to falin resurrection. i thought, oh, maybe this story is actually something bigger than i expected.

and it's another problem too, because some people constructed the opposite idea: that dunmeshi develops into something "dark and gritty" down the line. and ofc it has very dark elements in it, but it never fully commits to that sort of tonal shift or subversion, it's just a natural development of the story which stays mostly light-hearted. and this is something people also dislike and find disappointing in the end.

[boxheadpaint]

oh god when did i diary post last. Well as good a time as any

another year older today, though birthday festivities are actually taking place yesterday and tomorrow due to conflicting schedules and hannukah party stuff. spending this last week of DEMBER watching found footage / mockumentary horror and doing my best not to worry as much as usual to varying levels of success. still need to get refill on blood pressure meds because sleep is annoying again thanks.

joycon controller journey where in the end i grab those ergonomic ones which they only had the pokemon print ones in stock but theyre very nice. they make my switch wide and intimidating and it doesnt hurt to use which im not sure why i ever got used to that for normal joycons? I can take a few guesses though namely being yay videogames and being good at ignoring pain until its gone for a bit.

waiting back for exciting surgery news though knowing state health that wont be for a while! in the mean time just gonna look at fish and have a beautiful time. didnt actually super celebrate christmas this year, stayed home with partner. did have a gift from my mom (MICHEAL FATCAT VOLUME 2 LETS FUCKING GO. And a book on color combinations) for it and another for my birthday (immensely sexy natural illustration book) which was very nice and makes me happy. since she moved to mexico our schedules dont line up as well from timezones but the few calls we have had are nice. she got a puppy that made me cry over video from the smallness.

at this point i miss digital art enough that i am willin to brave the overheating and bluescreening of my surface again but maybe instead i could set up some stand made of welded paperclips or something so it can sit up and breathe again. Mom gave me her old one but its windows 11, then theres the yogas that doug has where one doesnt work with my pen and says ACTIVATE WINDOWS in the corner because it was probably some sensitive work thing while the other yoga has like. a mystery charger we have yet to find. we will likely try to downgrade moms from the windows 11 shit as best we can but god im not confident in it.

Every month i think i need to stop worrying about what people will think of my art, that their interpretations dont matter and i am doing what makes me happy and what keeps me interested. i also manage to forget this every month around the same time. i miss drawing very very quickly to make stupid funny pictures for people, its a lot better at conveying how i feel and think than trying to pull from my limited vocabulary. written words are basically just another kind of picture that are funny and dont make any sense in any order you say them and will never get across what you are trying to say.

okami HD was 5 dollars on the switch. its been a lot of fun to play through it again after all this time- when i was a kid i thought after orochi i beat the game and that whatever else was going on was a weirdly long postgame. i stopped at the VERY near end of act 2 because of the fucking blockhead warrior guy was impossible for me. i was trying to get footage of the weakpoints on a flipphone with my family behind me like mission control. now that im an adult man with reading comprehension and a smaller screen with a built in screencapture function im sure i will get just as mad as i did back then.

12/28/2024, I keep accidentally not hydrating enough day-to-day and i still need a shower. gonna go fuckin water mode

[vesanal]

POLL TIMEEEE!!! <3

Howdy hey again! We are almost at 100 follows! So, I'm going to do something extremely special for y'all is to see for the upcoming new year. I'm going to actually post some information about my WIP(s) O_O no wayyy!!!

Ok ok being serious now. For the past few days, I had been a little burnt out because of all the writemas cramming. Writemas took a lot out of me, leaving me with 16,648 words and less motivation than ever. It was a bit tough to get through, which is why I didn't post my last day's work! But thankfully, I have recently recovered from the burn out!!

Now that I'm back from a writing slump, I'm extremely motivated to work on some things for y'all to see. Of course, one of the many reasons I went into the But there is a lot of things i need to do to get to and post so here they are LOL, and it's kinda overwhelming to look at right now, so I need some help on what you guys really wanna see! What do y'all think you want to see more of? What kind of stuff do you like to see from me?

From now on, I will be moving writing memes, art, life updates, shitposts, and stupid memes/rants about my Ocs posts to my side account -> @vesanalt

BUT, I will be continuing tag games(uhhh when I actually do them LMAO), WIP updates, exeperts, reblogs of moots work, answering asks(when I turn them back on!) and writing games/challenges!!

Basically, I'm becoming an actual writeblr blog.

Thanks everyone for such an amazing 3-ish months on this horrible hellsite! Have a good day/night!!! <333

(inspired by this post here)

[yandere-daydreams]

I absolutely love your newest dc fic "fawn instinct" 💕 I was actually going through your old dc posts and saw this one: https://www.tumblr.com/yandere-daydreams/737919212379586560/other-batfam-anon-gets-it-id-just-like-to-add?source=share

Which stood out to me because of the last part; Damian being angry that the batboys want to fuck his step-mom. I was basically wondering thaf if you chose to continue the fic, would Damian warm up to reader and view her as his mom? (And obviously be seething over so many people monopolizing His Mommy Time with their Horny Time.)

a tasty question,,, damian's one of my preferred robin's, so i do lean towards including him wherever possible, but i think when it comes to step-parents, he kind operates on an 'aggressive stray cat' philosophy - meaning that, the more you pretend to like the rest of his family, the louder he's going to yell "you're not my real mom" and go out of his way to avoid you. when the reader inevitably drops the act and starts cursing out 80% of his family members on sight, he's definitely going to be taking on a more 'hmm maybe you are my real mom' tone and start bother bruce to let you take him on field trips and stuff. depending on how jaded you are at that point, using him has a child-shaped shield might still be an option. the whole 'you shouldn't say anything you don't want a nine-year-old to hear' thing gets a lot more convincing when the nine-year-old is carrying swords.

[lumiidragon]

This is probably a weird question but do you have any advice on spotting those scams where someone asks you if your commissions are open

I remember you posting about someone who asks if you can draw their kids pet or something (I can’t remember very well)

Are there any others you know of?

I'll be honest, I've rarely gotten potential scams that weren't PAINSTAKINGLY obvious, but my biggest red flags for the one that I had posted about were:

-They were a blank blog that wasn't even following me. Why would you commission an artist you're not even following, yanno? If you get a commission request from someone, do just a little basic check such as check out their account. If it's a blank account, an account that's not following you, or an account that has shady shit on it, then that needs to be your first sign that something is off.

-They sent me the exact same message they sent a friend of mine. It helps to be involved with other artists and the art community. You'll catch things like this easier. What they sent me was basically word-for-word to what they sent a friend of mine, and she wasn't even offering open commissions, just HTTYD head shot commissions. Commissioners aren't sending artists copy-paste messages. So if you see other artists saying something about a scam with those types of messages, watch for that.

-The type of commission didn't align with my usual subject. I am a fanart artist with some original work speckled in. I don't draw IRL stuff unless it's for IRL people simple because that's just not what comes my way. I draw HTTYD as my main with some other fandoms so my usual commissions are OCs. In fact, every commission is someone's OC, not someone's pet. So although there's nothing against someone wanting a commission of a subject you don't main in, it is weird to go and commission a fan-artist "your son's pet" (and weirder that it has to be specified as "their son's pet" as well.

-The BIGGEST one, they refused to go to my Commission Carrd link. I have a commission section on my Carrd that I expect people to go to, read up on, and fill out a form. I do this because I need people to known and understand how I work, what I do and don't do, and so I can guarantee that people are reading and accepting my terms. I don't want to do business with someone who can't be bothered to read my terms. When I offered my Carrd for them to read my rules, they flat out said "No. Just post your prices here." That reply alone made me tell them "professionally" to fuck off, I'm not interested then.

A super easy way to protect yourself from scams is to really make sure your bases are covered in your TOS and make sure that you're sending proper invoices with those terms and conditions and have all of the information set so people are less likely to scam you.

Most scams you're going to see are going to be pretty obvious, so follow your gut instinct. If something seems "off" or "uncomfy" about a client, politely decline the commission and move on.

The more "complicated" your hiring process is for a commission, the easier it is to spot a scammer in the process because most are not going to go through all of that. People who are actually interested in commissioning you are going to take time to read your rules, terms, prices, ect. If they don't have the time to bother with your commission information, then they aren't someone you're going to want to work with regardless if they're a scammer or not. I'm sure that there are a lot of other ways other artists' can provide, but these are just my basic takes on it~!

[a-dragons-explanations]

Okay, I'd initially decided not to respond to this chain any further because it didn't seem like we were going to get anywhere other than stressing us both out, but in the interest of... idk, respecting the fact that I appreciate you stopping to explain what this has looked like from your end and clarifying some things, I guess? I do want to actually respond.

Which - thank you for doing that, genuinely, because I think we've been talking past each other for a lot of this conversation, and I apologize for my part in that. I have clearly misunderstood some things you've been saying. (For instance: at no point did I get the message that you thought I'd misunderstood something, and to be honest even reading back I can't parse that out of anything said prior to this response.)

I will be honest in saying that I do think that disagreeing on whether people are allowed to exist or not is not "just having a different opinion." I did not start thinking you were interacting in bad faith until the last couple of messages (where if I'm completely honest, I started getting the same "being dense on purpose" impression you've clearly been getting from me in turn), however expressing disbelief in the legitimacy of someone's experience is not really something you can just agree to disagree on. (Bad faith is different from malice.) I do appreciate that you weren't trying to be rude, but the fact remains that coming onto someone's post defending endogenic systems calling me "genuinely insane" and "probably why people say leftists are sensitive" for doing so is rude by I think anyone's measure. That's not a very neutral or respectful way to express an opinion, and it came off to me as starting an argument on purpose, which is why I responded the way I did.

My second response, to your initial "I don't want to discuss this right now" reblog, was not me getting upset about it again - it was me trying to explain why I'd gotten frustrated, while acknowledging that forgetting to respond to stuff happens and that explained why it had looked like you'd ignored me the first time.

The context that you lost the headspace for having the discussion after the initial comment explains why you suddenly reversed course after you started the conversation initially, and that's much more understandable now that I know that - if I'd known that to start with I wouldn't have been so annoyed. Without that context, from my perspective, the exchange basically looked like:

A: here's my opinion defending an often-bullied group's right to exist. B: hey this is a stupid opinion you have and I disagree. A: why do you think it's stupid and disagree? I'd like to talk about it. B: I don't want to talk about it actually.

Does it make sense why that felt frustrating and like shit-starting for no reason to me? (I don't want to keep overexplaining myself, just - this conversation looked very different without that piece of context you just provided, which is why I've been reacting the way I have.)

I'll be honest, I completely misunderstood what you were apologizing for. It sounded to me like you were apologizing for either not realizing I was the same person (???), or more likely apologizing for doing this twice on my posts/reblogs, without acknowledging the thing I was actually annoyed about, which was the perceived A-B interaction I just described above. This was a misread on my part, and I probably should have asked for clarification; that seemed clear enough to me that it didn't even occur to me that I might have misunderstood. (To the point where to be honest, even rereading it now knowing that's an incorrect interpretation, it still reads that way to my brain.) I apologize for that; that one's on me.

Given that understanding that the apology was actually meant to be for the thing I was annoyed about and not the mostly-unrelated things it seemed to be about, I appreciate the apology, and I think we can probably let this conversation rest there, unless some part of my explanation for why I've responded the way I have to all this needs more clarification?

Genuine question, does our system need to label ourselves as ‘endo-neutral’? (Mostly because we just really, really cannot bring ourselves to care. Also people are people and we can’t care (low empathy))

I ask asking because I (and the system) are not involved in syscourse, and I’m not sure what to put in the tags to prevent people from being upset.

Ignore this ask if it is rude in any way (genuinely)

(This was written by the co-host)

If you want my opinion, if you want to say “we don’t want to be actively involved in syscourse,” that exact sentence is the only way to say it.

Personally, I’m kind of of the opinion that “endo-neutral” isn’t a real thing unless you’re “neutral” in the sense that you haven’t done enough research on it yet to have formed an opinion (which, that’s valid but a different thing than true neutrality). You can’t really be neutral on whether people are allowed to exist or not. Either you’re okay with people fakeclaiming other people, or you’re not. “Endo-neutral” just tells me you are okay with it, you’re just not actively doing it yourself - which is a little like this comic:

Y’feel?

This is not me saying you have to involve yourself actively in syscourse. As a matter of fact, I recommend you don’t actively seek that out, in most cases - it’s not really good for you, generally speaking. Not wanting people to drop syscourse on your doorstep is perfectly reasonable. But unfortunately, if you interact with other systems much, it’s probably going to come up eventually, whether you like it or not. Eventually you are going to be in a space where someone starts talking about how endogenic systems aren’t real, and you’re going to have to decide how to respond to that and whether you’re willing to tolerate it.

Ultimately, I don’t think you have to be emotionally invested to decide whether you think something is right or wrong. I know there’s probably some extra energy investment required for that for you, but unfortunately I think that’s just something you’re going to have to deal with, as harsh as that might sound. I don’t really see a way around it. Which, it’s as good a time as any to ask yourself - where do your morals lie? What basic principles do you build your morality on? Are they internally consistent, and if not, what needs to change to make it so? And if you follow those principles to their natural conclusion, what does that tell you about the situation you’ve been given?

(Also, entirely pragmatically, if your goal is to avoid people getting mad at you, “endo-neutral” in my experience kind of just gets both sides upset anyway - endo supporters because of everything I just said, anti-endos because anyone who tolerates endos is the enemy according to them. You’re probably better off just stating you don’t want to argue about syscourse to achieve that goal.)

But that’s just my two cents’ worth. Hopefully it’s good food for thought at least.

[moldypoff]

you should totally drop your procreate brush settings.... it looks so nice ;;;

Oh boy, I’m about to blow your mind rn/j

I use the basic brushes

No motion filter, no stabilizer, we rawdog drawing like it’s on paper/hj

Speaking of paper tho

This is my screen protector! Also a BIG reason why it’s easier for me to draw digitally because of how FRICKEN awesome it feels to draw on it! Paperlike is kinda balls, sorry y’all :( - P.S. I only got it yesterday to replace my old one.

Also I lied, I do modify the 6B pencil brush(2) a bit! But it depends on the situation (I’ve only turned the pressure size down because I didn’t need my lines to have weight for a bit) Also the Maximum Size is huuuuuuge because it’s a painting brush!

But yeahh, rn it’s kinda just the 6b pencil brush, Inka, soft brush, and that one medium hard brush thing I made by just going to Apple Pencil on a medium hard airbrush and upping the size to max <- This use to be my main brush a long time ago but now I just use it for erasing.

Also also also, I use a drawing glove for smooth, long, continuous lines!

(I think it’s this one, I don’t exactly remember :,3)

This might not really matter too much but I also changed theee uhhhh, the thing

YEAH! That think, Pressure and Smoothing in Preferences :D

I think by turning the motion filtering expression all the way up it gets rid of that stupid auto stabilizer procreate has??? Idk, I’m not really sure how it works, also I’m completely lost on the App pressure sensitivity, I watched a video on youtube on how to adjust it twice but I still can’t figure it out for sheeit. I kinda got something I liked, but that took experimentating- which didn’t take long! And even tho it’s confusing I didn’t change it too much to, again, find something that works for me.

Remember, it’s not the brushes that make you a good artist, it’s how you use them! Digital art is difficult as hell as is if you’re working on the glass surface itself, so accommodate it to you (if you can’t, no shame if that’s what you got to work with) also ARTISTS WHO RAWDOG THEIR ART ON A PURE GLASS SCREEN SCARE ME/j/silly/lh(👀 Moonie) @paper-starz

Moonie, Moonie tell people what you use to draw, you’re literally going to knock their socks off

(They’re really humble! I have “fancy” stuff to help me draw but their digital art is still, in a lot of ways, still better than mine! And that’s credited to their creativity and knowledge of art, but I won’t speak for him, she can tell you all abt it themselves!)

[bacchuschucklefuck]

class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)

[remxedmoon]

i hit 1k followers recently!!!! yipee!!!!!!! thank you all!!! so in celebration here’s all of my completed isat doodle pages, from oldest to newest. go nuts with them!! and maybe don’t look at the first doodle page too closely. it’s Old.

(no greyscale version below for once! just some mushy ramblings. you don’t have to read them don’t worry)

hhhhhha?? so many people. where did you come from. how did you all find me.

ok but seriously, thank you all so much for all the support. i never really. expected to make it this far? like, ever?? i’ve mentioned it a few times on here, but i’ve been a lurker for the past… 2 years, i think? and even before that, i never gained much traction outside of a couple posts. so this has been. very new to me!! in a nice way!! it’s weird to feel like an actual member of a community!! that people know about!

the idea of finally coming back to social media was Daunting (i literally got stress hives writing my first post lol) and the warm reception really. meant a lot?? i don’t think i would’ve ever gotten the courage to come back if i hadn’t been encouraged to by the people over at the isat discord!!

the fact that people actually care about my art still doesn’t feel real?? seeing people take inspiration from my art is just. surreal. just. auagssh. thank you all so so much for everything, i really do appreciate it!!! i’m really glad to be in this community. sorry if this all sounds sappy and long winded i’ve just got a lot of emotions about this whole thing!!

(also as a bonus for reading all this or whatever. here’s a concept page for isatscryption! it felt a little out of place next to my normal canvases so i’m putting it down here! yipee! sorry my notes here are so disjointed auauau…)

[oensible]

Hello all I have a meandering recap of the research journey to present to you.

....under the cut. this is very long lol

I. The SidelineSwap trawl—Velocity V6

So first things first, we can see this was a Vaughn chest/arm protector because of these two logos (left one is crushed as hell so you gotta open it to see the full image sorry 😭):

I checked to see if there were any Vaughn chest protectors that he's known to have used and this comes up as the red chest protector he uses according to. Checks notes. Dangler96209 on SidelineSwap. (A reputable source, of course.) It is a Vaughn Velocity V6 2000 Pro chest/arm protector. This is one of two instances I have found online (2nd is coming up later!) of a chest protector model name being directly connected with his name, albeit misspelled as "McKenzie".

(I'm presenting this first but rest assured this was 2.5 hours into the hunt. This listing was already sold, so it doesn't pop up in SidelineSwap's search results.)

HOWEVER. Frustratingly. This listing does NOT have a picture of the spine protector in the back. Meanwhile, we have basically nothing BUT Blackwood's spine protector to go off of. At least the cuffs do seem to look alike with the black strip on red, but it's kind of generic amongst Vaughn models so it's not very conclusive. (Plus, as stereax has mentioned in the replies, red is not a common color for these so. what are the odds, right)

HOWEVER!!! If we go look up what the back of this chest protector model looks like, we get. this

WHO IS SHE!!! The middle black segment of the spine protector is absent here. However, I hadn't seen that Vaughn text logo going down the spine in any other models besides the the V5s and onwards of the Velocity series (...yet. foreshadowing), so that was still kind of a promising sign that we might be going in the right direction. Also, the attachments over the shoulder also look different, with more straps on the velcro flaps compared to the solid red flatness of Blackwood's. Plus, Blackwood clearly has two straps that go across the entire bottom of the spine protector, but I had yet to see one that had the double strap thing he's got going on (the Ventus SLR3 and SLR4 do have two straps, but it's not two parallel continuous straps like this). At this point, I'm thinking that his might be too customized to really find a match. Very sad for about 15 minutes.

II. The Ventus SLR arc—SLaRc, if you will

fossore my saviour comes in with the revelation that the black piece in the middle is actually just a piece of tracking tech from Catapult, not a part of the stock product—so we can say with a fair amount of confidence that the middle of the spine protector actually just has the same Vaughn text logo as the Velocities we were looking at. One mystery taken care of!

The next major break is from doing a Youtube trawl for locker room interviews with the chest protector in the background. I find none with the red chest protector any clearer than it is in the first picture, BUT there is this video from the Dallas EBUG, Chris Dudo, about Blackwood's (and Vanecek's) 2024–25 gear. Dudo states that someone at Vaughn said Blackwood currently has a newer, customized SLR chest protector. It's not really clear which SLR it is; I assumed Dudo meant the SLR3 at first, since he refers to the chest and pants collectively as SLR3, but then also says the chest piece is SLR (with no number) afterwards.

(Also I don't really care about his current chest protector for this post, but if he really is wearing an SLR3 then it must be hella customized because the SLR3 does not even have velcro shoulder attachments lol it's all buckles up there. Same goes for the SLR4.)

Around this time, fossore also points out that his current, black chest protector doesn't look like anything currently on the market, so he probably just gets his stuff customized a lot. Let us look at his current chest protector.

First of all I go oh it's the same as the red one. Then I go WAIT IT'S THE SAME AS THE RED ONE!!! Long flat velcro flaps at the top with three distinct layers of material, the logo just peeking out down the middle under the Catapult pouch, the double straps at the bottom... Originally I thought that the red chest protector couldn't be an SLR because the SLRs have a big ol' "SLR" on the back instead of the Vaughn logo. HOWEVER. in my HUBRIS. I only skimmed some of the top search results on SidelineSwap. These top ones are SLR3's and 4's... At no point did I look specifically at the first SLR or the SLR2. UNTIL NOW!! And lo and behold.

Here's the spine of the SLR Carbon.

And here's even a red SLR2 Carbon from SidelineSwap!

Look at that shoulder attachment!!! Dead ringer for his!!! The bottom strap situation is still very different but at this point I think we can all concur it's probably custom.

Now to determine whether its the SLR or SLR2. We know that it has to be a model that he could've gotten at the start of his pro career because he's had the same one ever since then. We know this because when I went searching for videos I found these two podcast episodes:

NUMBER ONE, here is an entire episode of InGoalMedia from 2024 Jan 19 where he talks for an hour about goaltending. It's not actually relevant here at all because the chest protector never comes up but there ARE gear relevant sections: 1) talking about the puck that cost him his front teeth and how his helmet factored into it (59:58), and 2) at the very end of the interview, his glove carousel situation when he was starting out in the NHL (1:10:38). He also mentions at one point that before playing in the NHL he played on teams that regularly allowed a lot of shots on goal lol (1:06:00), so I guess he's always been boiling in that pot <3. Just a bonus thing for your listening pleasure if you like to hear players talking about technical stuff like this.

NUMBER TWO, the actual relevant one to our purposes, is a podcast episode from the DIY Goalie podcast featuring former Devs equipment manager Nathan Belliveau. HOT OFF THE PRESS, TOO!! It was released on Dec 3rd this year, as in like three weeks ago from me writing this. Most of the podcast episode is not about Mackenzie Blackwood; he is a minor character in the story here. If you're interested in the ins and outs of the equipment manager lifestyle in the NHL and/or in hearing some anecdotes on Devs players that Belliveau worked with, that kind of behind the scenes stuff, I would recommend giving it a listen! However, we do still get a couple massive scoops here on Blackwood.

KEY SCOOPS FOR LOBSTERHEADS (edited from original transcript for clarity/accuracy):

BELLIVEAU (25:32–26:54):

"Let's say the average guy's probably about five sets in the NHL between pads and at least three, at least three. And then you get some guys that can't change, like Mackenzie Blackwood has had the same chest protector since I've seen him in pro, and that's over, you know, seven seasons. He might've changed it when he went to San Jose, but I doubt it. But he couldn't change the belly, and like, the padding was so warped[...] like when he got in the butterfly[...] he was feeling shots. Like there's been times he's got bruises underneath and stuff, but he can't, he can't get out of it. He loves it.

"So like, you know, I know the league gave him[...] the player association paired with the, with the NHL and stuff. Um, they, they were on him a bit about how, how rising his shoulders were getting, but he's just a big-built body, but we had to, like, literally take pictures of him with it on to show that we weren't—because they thought like maybe we're stuffing stuff underneath or like adding padding, but he wasn't, it's just the way it sat on him. So I know that the NHL can't wait for him to get rid of it, but he's like he's getting bruises now, but he just doesn't want to get rid of his chesty. Changes the arms out a little bit, but the main piece in the middle is still there."

BELLIVEAU (31:13–32:38):

[Content warning for brief, non-graphic discussion of foot injury/surgery in this quote block. It's not relevant to the chest protector but I thought that you would all like to hear about his reluctance to molt]

"The one guy though[...] Mackenzie Blackwood[...] there was one point he had like, uh, you ever hear of the Bauer bump on the back of like your skate? Right? Like, guys, like, yeah the foot's in the skate, and it rubs, and it creates, like, a little calcium bump, and it gets bigger and bigger as you play. [...]

"Okay, so[...] his got so big, like, the size of golf ball, that the other equipment guy, Schmitty, with us in Jersey, had to cut out the side of a skate, and then put, like, some type of mold on the outside of it, just to to get him out there skating. Just couldn't get him out of the skates either, and it got so big that he had to get surgery on it, I think, and they had to like shave it down and stuff. Like that's crazy. But you know, that's, uh, that's, uh, perks of grinding with, uh, being a goalie, but that guy's a beast. Like I've never seen a guy so in shape, like Mackenzie[...]

"If he could put it all together with everything else, I feel like some guys can get distracted, some can a little bit, but, you know, a machine off ice. His legs were trunks, and he's just so powerful on the net. I'm sure you see that when he plays, like he's got all the tools to be a top guy if he can, you know, dial in his prep. If he had Jake Allen's prep, man, I think that guy would be lights out, but that's my personal opinion."

You know what. I have a feeling that I have just learned about a contributor to his health issues in New Jersey.

Anyways, considering how beat up the red one's cuffs look in San Jose in those pictures from one reblog ago, it's probably old as hell lol, Belliveau says he's changed the arm protectors but it looks like it's been a while since that last happened. I've only found high definition pictures of the sleeves at this point but if we look at this filler footage shot of the vacant locker room in this post posted by sor (@/matthewmaticallyeliminated), it's clearly still a red chest piece. I agree with Belliveau that he's probably kept his old one rather than replace it with another red one while he's on the Sharks, not a known red team...

Belliveau says that Blackwood has had the same chest protector ever since he went pro, seven seasons in total. He almost has seven seasons under his belt in the NHL—this is his seventh. However, that means he's only had the red one for six, so I checked the timeframe on Blackwood's minor pro hockey seasons and the math almost works out here because he started playing in the AHL/ECHL in 2016–17, so that makes seven seasons in the Devils' org.

I also went and checked when Belliveau was with the Devs, and he joined the org as an assistant equip manager for the NJ Devils from 2017–2024 and never worked for their minor league affiliates, so he wouldn't have been working with Blackwood until the 2018–19 season. He may have seen him at development camp in 2017, so maybe also Blackwood's 2017–18 season, but that's still short one season, so he either misspoke or included Blackwood's minor league/post-Devs seasons. But anyways, that doesn't matter too much right now because the key takeaway for this SLaRc is that he's had the same red one for as long as Belliveau has known him, and that would be the start of the 2017–18 or 2018–19 season and onward.

On Getty Images, there's a point in time where you can see him go from having a black collar peeking out of his jersey to a red one. (NOTE: The collar color is about to turn out to be a pointless effort in like 8 paragraphs but I wrote it before I realized so here you go anyways. See if you can spot my mistake... or just enjoy the next few pictures of Mackenzie Blackwood. :P)

Here is the first picture of him on Getty Images where he's rocking a red collar, in a 2018 Sept 17 preseason game.

And in the last game on Getty before this, all the way on 2017 Oct 13, his collar under the jersey is black.

But we can get more precise! When working on the Sharks primer, I went to Flickr to get AHL pictures instead of Getty because all the AHL teams that I wanted pictures of posted them there instead (which I LOVE, so much easier to get high-res pics straight from the source without watermarks even when downloads are disabled by the owner lol), so off we go to Flickr. And we can see from their Flickr that he gets the red collar at some point between their 2017 Oct 21 and Oct 27 games

I couldn't find an exact release date on either the SLR or SLR2 but I did find a video on Youtube of Vaughn introducing the SLR2 Carbon chest protector in 2019 March, which is almost two entire seasons after Blackwood had been playing with this red one.

(We will refer to this video many more times than one might expect in this post, so it is embedded here for your convenience.)

It's more likely to be the original SLR, especially since the first generation of SLR chest protector seems to have come out some time in 2017. (The article I pulled that SLR picture from doesn't have a date, but all the images have 2017 watermarks + the metadata has the date 'August 8th, 2017' in it. I'm assuming the review came out not too long after the product came out, but at the very least we know it came out before Blackwood's red collar started appearing.) In conclusion, Blackwood had a red SLR chest protector, then probably upgraded to either an SLR2, or an SLR3 that was generously customized to look like his red SLR from behind.

Case closed, right?

SIKE!

if i could make that 'sike' an even bigger font, i would.

So to go back to Belliveau's words, I was thinking while halfway through writing this post like, 'hey, Mackblack went to development camp before the 2017–18 season, I should check to see what color Belliveau saw him in at that camp because right now it seems like he should have been wearing black instead', so I look up "mackenzie blackwood rookie camp" and oh my GOD

THAT'S THE V6

THAT'S DANGLER96209's VELOCITY V6 2000???

III. WE'RE BACK TO THE VELOCITIES (IT'S LIKE WE NEVER EVEN LEFT)

So first we need a date for this picture, which was published in a 2019 NJ.com article. He's wearing a #70 Devils jersey, but Hockey-Reference shows that he's never worn that on an NHL roster. We hit up Getty with a quick "mackenzie blackwood #70" search and you know where he DID wear #70?

If you guessed the 2017 KRAFT HOCKEYVILLE CANADA GAME, give yourself a pat on the back because THAT'S CORRECT!! (Kraft photo 1 / Kraft photo 2)

[Please imagine a metric ton of confetti and streamers at this time.]

He wasn't in the NHL for either the preceding 2016–17 season or the following 2017–18 season, so this must be a preseason/camp temporary number situation. If we look up "new jersey devils training camp 2017" in our web browser of choice, we can find NJ.com's original article/gallery of pictures from their 2017 camp, which not only includes the above image, but also includes the horribly compressed image below of him putting on his jersey, which only further confirms it's the V6. So now we know that as of mid-Sept in 2017, he was wearing a red Velocity V6 2000. Dangler96209 I never should have doubted you

I looked for a more precise date on when Belliveau started working for the Devs because this is the Devs' training camp, so he should have been working this camp if he was employed by them by the preseason. According to a CBC article published on 2018 Jan 4, he was hired in the August of 2017, so we are in the clear!! That means that when he said seven seasons, this one could have been included, so in that case this SHOULD be the same red one that lasted up until last season.

At first, I was confused because in that camp picture where you can see his face, you can also see that he has a black collar. Same goes for the Kraft Hockeyville pictures. In the black jersey picture, you can see that his collar is black, but in the white jersey picture, you can see that the cuffs are red. HOWEVER however, he's clearly wearing the exact same chest protector as pictured by our friend dangler, which has a red collar and cuffs. And there's still the issue of the top of the spine protector looking more like the SLR.

The top of the spine protector was the easier one to figure out. I couldn't find a picture of someone wearing it, but this product demonstration video by Total Goalie on Youtube clearly shows that the V6 2000 does have layers that can be put into a configuration identical to how his looks in the Devs locker room pic. Yay!

Lesson learned: I've gotta be more thorough with my leads :P. The top velcro flaps still don't look quite right but it's possible that it's just too low resolution to tell, especially since it's all red. Also, I've accepted it in my heart that the bottom of the spine protector is definitely just custom like his current one.

As for the collar color... it took a little longer to figure out, but after paying more attention to how both the SLR and Velocity chest protectors sit on human/mannequin figures and watching some guides on how goalies put on their gear, I think... I think I may just be a fool... It's just a separate clavicle/neck guard lol, not a part of the chest protector. My bad. Again, thoroughness :P

So now we can conclude that Mackenzie Blackwood's red chest protector was a Vaughn Velocity V6 2000, right? :) [I am slowly shaking my head.]

As a ~bonus :)~, at this point I find yet another listing for Mackblack's V6 2000. This one is actually high enough quality that you can see the embroidery of his name on the chest. And it includes a picture of the back!

And...! And......! And THIS is where we are introduced to some major issues!

One of them is the back because what the hell, that's not the custom back that we've been looking for this whole time, but that's overshadowed by a much bigger question:

If Blackwood wore a Vaughn Velocity V6 2000 and he didn't change his chest protector for the entire time he was with the Devs...

...where the fuck are these listings coming from?

IV. i'm probably in too deep

Both dangler's listing and this listing are described as "pro stock". In fact, that second, higher-resolution listing even has the following sentence in the description: "This chest and arm protector came from Mackenzie Blackwood of the New Jersey Devils organization."

Up until this point, as a layperson who has never played hockey, or touched or shopped for a piece of hockey equipment in my entire life, I thought "pro stock" was the same meaning as the "authentic pro" jerseys that Fanatics is making, where they're just manufactured the exact same way as what they were giving to the pros. But as I look into it, first with this video by HockeyStickMan explaining how pro stock hockey sticks are sourced, and then looking at the used gear that is for sale on ProStockHockey, it becomes exceedingly clear that these are actually surplus/thrifted goods...!

And then, looking at the "used" condition marker on both of the Blackwood V6 listings, one suspects that these are items that were worn and used by Mackblack at some point and then sold to one of these resellers later on. One suspects that one or both is the same as the ones he was wearing to 2017 Kraft Hockeyville Canada/ development camp....! (Assuming they are not straight up lying, of course, but it seems unlikely that someone would go through the effort of making counterfeit Blackwood chest protectors complete with name embroidery to be sold at a used price on SidelineSwap, of all things.)

SidelineSwap doesn't list any dates on when these were posted or sold, unfortunately, but if we sort dangler's sold page by newest first, we can see that of their five listings, the V6 is the oldest of the bunch. Conveniently, they have five reviews on their profile. We can see from the title element that pops up by hovering over the "almost 6 years ago" date on the oldest review that it was posted in the middle of January in 2019.

If we assume that each sale can be matched to each review in chronological order (which I think is a reasonable assumption, that people aren't going to be coming back years or months later to drop a review for a purchase. the next review is in 2019 September, i don't think someone who would leave a review would wait that long to do it), then we can assume that his V6 chest protector either left or was was no longer in his possession in early 2019. (He can't be wearing it while it's on sale/after it's been sold, after all...)

As for that second seller, Valhalla_Sport.... I did not even bother trying to find the date it was sold to be honest lol. Too many entries to look through. They have a massive disparity between their 24,522 sales and 8,502 reviews anyways so unless this listing is mentioned by name in the review, we have no hope of finding out when it was sold. And I am unwilling to click through 1,227 pages of reviews to maybe get a little crumb of extra evidence for this project so we're just going to. Um. Ignore that and go off of just dangler's listing. I'm leaving this as an exercise for any readers who want to embark on that dark, dark journey.

The dangler review alone already gives us a nudge in the right direction of what's wrong here, though.

Things we know for sure:

Mackblack was using the V6 2000 in the 2017 offseason (photographic evidence)

Mackblack has stayed in the same chest protector the entire time that he's been on the Devs' NHL team (Belliveau interview)

There was a Blackwood V6 being sold online in 2019 (dangler96209/SidelineSwap)

The assumption that we are discarding:

I assumed Belliveau saw and remembered him with the V6 at the 2017 development camp.

Therefore, there are two possible scenarios:

He continued wearing the 2017 preseason V6 chest protector into his NHL career. Dangler's listing is a different V6 2000 that he decided to get rid of while it was still in good condition, unlike his other gear which he continues to wear to the point it is actively injuring him. <- this is a leading sentence because it feels unlikely to me but it's too much of an attempt at a character read for me to be confident in saying it. lol

Dangler is selling his 2017 preseason V6 chest protector. In this scenario, at some point Mackblack decided to change to a different red chest protector of an unknown model (could be V6, could be something else) and wore that one in the NHL instead.

And therein lies the problem... we do not have enough information to definitively say which scenario it is, meaning that we do not have enough information to determine whether the chest protector he had in the NHL is the same as the one he had in the 2017 offseason. In other words, we are back almost where we started—it's time to look for more pictures!

V. can someone please give me a crumb of mackenzie blackwood from the front in a state of mild undress PLEASE

I've finally accepted that we've exhausted the spine protector lead. We know that it's a mid-to-late Velocity or one of the first two SLRs unless it's been modded beyond recognition, but that's about it.

We need footage or pictures of his chest piece from the front or maybe even the side, but the man does NOT have public social media that I can just scroll the mentions of, and I don't have the time or subscriptions to scrub through game footage hoping to see a moment where he flashes the camera and besides, it's not like he has any reason to start stripping in the middle of a game—

[USE YOUR IMAGINATION TO INSERT THE URETHRA MOMENT PICTURE HERE.]

DOES ANYBODY ELSE REMEMBER WHEN HIS PANTS BROKE AND HE FLASHED US IN THE MIDDLE OF A GAME!! BECAUSE IM WRITING THIS ON HOUR 26 INTO THE HUNT AND I JUST REMEMBERED WHEN HIS PANTS BROKE AND HE FLASHED US IN THE MIDDLE OF A GAME

And I have GOOD NEWS because one (and by one, I mean myself about 30 seconds ago) may think "well shit that's lost media now" but GUESS WHAT!!!

PAST OENSIBLE COMES IN CLUTCH!!!

The date is 2024 March 30th. You are oensible, 9 months younger, watching the Sharks continue their season sweep of the Blues. Mackenzie Blackwood's suspender breaks and everyone's trying to figure out why he's having a linesman reach into his shorts and then he's getting it fixed with duct tape and a dream on the bench and you are thinking to yourself "I should make this a GIF" so you screenrecord it and dump it in your. Checks. (as of me writing this now) 326 GB folder of Sharks footage. (I am running out of space on my laptop.) Similar to about 99% of the crap in that folder, it never gets made into a GIF. BUT GUESS WHAT!!! We've got ourselves a sliver of Blackwood tummy and that means we have a sliver of BLACKWOOD RED CHEST PROTECTOR IN THE 2023–24 SEASON!!!

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!!!

THIS IS ALL WE'VE GOT TO WORK WITH, EVERYPONY!!!

Well. SHIT, that doesn't look like the V6, the sternum piece in the middle looks round as opposed to how flat the bottom looks in every single picture of our V6, with a skinny trim and no black diamond in the middle. In fact, this looks more like the SLR and SLR2, which we can now indulge in appreciating from the front!! [Please imagine me ejecting the V6 2000 from my brain at Mach 2 as I converge upon the SLRs with palpable lust.]

SLR Pro Carbon (yes, from that SLR review article again):

SLR2 Pro Carbon (yes, from that red SLR2 listing again):

Perhaps you are also looking at the pixel dirt I am serving to you like a succulent gourmet dessert and thinking "oensible I cannot tell shit from crap here" like I was thinking on my first dozen or so replays of the clip.

HOWEVER!! THE CRUCIAL DETAIL (which i have withheld from you on account of the "can't put a video in a reblog")!

Look at the squish.

Apologies for the indecency. Let's break this GIF down: the sternum piece is the little curve disappearing under the jersey. We can see from the earlier stills of the video that the sternum piece sits directly over a column of panels to the left of the two columns that are more visible in this GIF. And just look at the movement of the belly piece! I'm staring at her like. Oh my god those have to be connected <3. It's hard to tell because of how dogshit the quality is but the linesman's finger has to be touching the very bottom of that piece and pushing very slightly up and towards himself, otherwise it wouldn't have that concave shape that curves into Mackblack's belly. You can also see that there's at least four contiguous panels at the very least connected at the corner there, just watch how the shadows and light shift as the material bends!!!

It doesn't look like SLR or SLR2 Carbons; in the pictures above, they have big separate flaps over the entire lower belly that are three panels across and two panels down and they lace into the sternum flap so that they move with it, as seen in that SLR2 demo video. I couldn't find a demo of the SLR, but the flap is also adjustable so I'm guessing it uses the same mechanism. Also here's a listing for an SLR with a lace hanging out of the flap. Mackblack turns his hips as he approaches, but the sternum flap shouldn't be able to shift independently of the belly flap like it does if its an SLR/SLR2 Carbon.

At the same time I couldn't say it's a V6 belly or any other Velocitys because it's so!! low!! resolution!! However I didn't think it could be the V6 2000 because the V6 2000 panels seem too thick to bend like that and in those stills from the game you can see theres a third row of panels above the bottom two rather than just a void-looking gap (combination of black straps there + the deep shadows from how thick the panels are) like you can see in the pictures of the V6 2000 listings and Mackblack wearing it. This is not enough to come to any strong conclusions. My search for more pictures continues.

V. i should have fucking started here

So anyways, someone posted a whole image of his stall in San Jose on TheGoalNet (2023 Oct 9). Hallelujah. How did I not find this sooner? No idea lol <3 (I did actually check this forum before but I think I only saw the chest-protector-specific thread that he was not mentioned in, plus the other thread ripping on how high he wears his pads lmfao, because I did NOT know how to use the search function. Remember to always!! Be!! Thorough!!)

The internet forums are the gift that keeps on giving in my time of need. We can't see the front all that well but we DO now know that he had the SLR2 arm protectors based on the logo (Refer to above images or the SLR2 chest/arm video once more for this. I wonder how many of the views on that video are from me at this point. The original had the 'R' in the small text 'SLR' highlighted, whereas this one has a blob that is probably the number '2' highlighted after the 'SLR'. SLR3 and SLR4 would have "SLR" in the big top row of text.)

The coloration resembles his V6, but the chest floater padding is actually SLR2, too! We know this because it has ~the button~ for the suspender holder on that white stripe (once more. refer to the video lol. that thing is a seminal text for this post). The stripes are also laid out the same way, starting and terminating at the same places and looking about right in terms of distance from each other and width, though this last point is not so concrete because we're just eyeballing it at such a steep angle.

We can also see the belly in side relief and there's no belly flap on top—not SLR2, we can see in the SLR2 video that even if he removed the belly flap, then there should be a deep, unprotected notch over the lower belly with buckles to either side. We could guess that he's done some modification to it but they would have to be pretty severe—cutting the buckles off is whatever but stitching in a whole new, worse piece of protection in that gap?? I do not think so!! I fear waving it off as custom here is too big of a reach; the belly is the key piece here because Belliveau told us that this middle piece is what he's been holding onto all along. I want to make sure we get this one RIGHT! We will find MORE PICTURES!!!

VI. i spend several hours scrolling through the devils' and sharks' social media

I mentioned this like probably no less than a thousand words ago but looking for social media posts containing an image of a particular guy in a particular situation is difficult 👍 and I WILL lose focus and forget what I was doing 👍. I gave up on Instagram and Facebook first because the search function on there is basically nonexistent lol 👍. Instagram would not be so bad if he had a public Instagram so I could just look at the posts he was tagged in, but unfortunately I did not get into hockey soon enough to follow him before he privated his account. C'est la vie!!

Unfortunately, he does not have an X/Twitter that social media teams may regularly tag him with, which makes searching for him a PAIN because I can't filter it to exclusively posts where he is tagged, instead I must search for variants of stuff like "'blackwood' from:njdevils until:2023-05-30" and then get nothing helpful (though we DO get this delightful glimpse at his neck guard/shirt collar in the background of this interview. Minor detail, but you can see the red collar that was tripping me up all the way back in section TWO. Do y'all remember that. I feel like we've become different people since then; it's been so long). Extra unfortunately, sports team social media posts often do not include a helpful list of names of everyone in the post. This is the point where I start searching for stuff that's some variation on "from:njdevils until:2023-05-30" to look at their posts one by one and then give up because that will take another few days I do not wish to expend on this project. This is a realm of thoroughness that I forgive myself for not daring to venture into.

Inspired by the stunning views we got of his current chest protector in the Avs postgame, I hunt for postgame locker room videos of him but UNFORTUNATELY HE IS TOO UNDRESSED!! (Forgive me for not including all the findings here but there is a 30 image limit)

First video I find, he is SHIRTLESS, tiddies OUT in the locker room (Sharks on X, 2024 Apr 12). Appreciated like a flute of nice champagne in possibly every other context except this one. I do spot the chest protector in a photo from the 2nd to last Sharks win of last season where he isn't even there but the chest protector is! No new information can really be gleaned here except that it looks like he has straight up cut the ends off the shoulder velcro straps at some point (Sharks on X, 2024 Apr 6). (If it's hanging up it's almost certainly useless to our needs; I've only ever seen them hanging with the front facing the wall.)

On to the Devs. He is wearing his neck protector shirt in the background for a starting lineup video. His chest protector? An indistinct red heap on the floor (Devs on X, 2022 Dec 30). I did also find this photo of him in front of his chest protector ("mackenzie blackwood until:2023-01-01") where you get a gorgeous clear view of the double straps but we are so far removed from the double straps train at this point lol (Trey Matthews on X, 2022 Dec 23).

I also find another short video of him on fan appreciation night taking a picture on ice with a fan where he is wearing his his neck protector shirt, chest protector gone in the wind. I did NOT save the link to this one at all and I have no idea where it is, who posted it, what I searched to find it, etc etc anymore which is kind of a bummer because it was a pretty good shot of the shirt and I thought I should keep it on hand for if I want to look into what it is. But again, I need him slightly less nude right now.

At some point, I finally figure I should take a little break from the chest protector search by seeing if I can find that video again. (If this anecdote sounds like a detour, I guarantee you, it is not.) I think saw it in a quote retweet of someone applauding him for treating the fan well, so I figure I should look up other peoples' tweets that tag the Devs to see if I can find it that way.

I type "'blackwood' @/njdevils until:2023-05-30" into the X search bar.

I hit enter.

VII. AND I HIT THAT MF'ING JUCKPORT!!!!

(cropped from a selfie taken by a fan on the Devs' fan appreciation night, posted to X on 2022 Apr 29)

YEAHHHHH BABYYYYY!!!

Have you ever seen anything as beautiful as this image in your entire life? Didn't think so. This is from the Devs' 2022 fan appreciation night—so this HAS to be the one that Belliveau was talking about :D! It matches what he had by the time the Sharks locker photo was taken, too—SLR2 Carbon arms and floaters with that mysterious, single-layer belly section... also I'm just realizing this now but he doesn't have his suspenders on top of the floaters lol my man did not care for their highly-touted suspenders button at all....

All we need now is the belly piece and—oh look at that it's the SLR Pro (NOT Pro Carbon).

I have been trying to track this down ever since I made that post like 4 days ago saying that this post was going to be published 4 days ago. Remember how I was using that review article to talk about the SLR? Yeah, that article was about the CARBON version specifically; there's a non-carbon version as well. These are NOT the same, as I have since learned. If we look at this NON-carbon SLR Pro listing on SidelineSwap, courtesy of presumably Tyler Wall, currently of Cardiff Devils fame, we can see that although the Perani's Hockey World listing I grabbed the pic above from looks like its entire front of the belly is covered in the same blue mesh fabric, Wall's SLR Pro also has the two materials, mesh over the belly panels and some plasticky covering for the rest, that we see in the fan appreciation night picture. It's harder to tell, but you can see two materials in the pixel dirt from that pants repair clip, too! As it turns out! Thoroughness...! 👍

In the spirit of thoroughness, this is not the SLR2 Pro (not Carbon) belly either because the inside lining looks different.

We can see on this Perani's SLR2 Pro listing that except for the lining around the belly piece, it's all just one continuous piece, not the multiple bordered segments that we see in the inside of Mackblack's chest protector. We can also double check that this isn't the SLR Pro Carbon, as this SLR Pro Carbon listing—courtesy of the locker of Ryan Fanti, once of Bakersfield Condors and presently of Orlando Solar Bears fame—features a shot where you can see the inside and it has the same gap over the belly that the SLR2 Carbon has. (Also of note is that Fanti is ALSO A GOALIE FROM THUNDER BAY, ONTARIO!!! Just a fun coincidence.) Above is a comparison of these four, and I didn't have room to fit a picture of the SLR2 Pro Carbon, but in case you don't trust our old friend the SLR2 video, or you want to just see it with your own two eyeballs, you can see the inside lining in this (retail?) SLR2 Pro Carbon listing on good 'ol reliable SidelineSwap. Also a gap, just like the first Pro Carbon!

VIII. Conclusion (FOR REAL THIS TIME)

Mackenzie Blackwood played with a red Vaughn Velocity V6 2000 during the 2017 offseason, but by the start of his time with the New Jersey Devils and the first season he played with the San Jose Sharks (from 2018–19 to 2023–24), he wore a red Vaughn Ventus SLR Pro chest and arm protector. At some point during his Devils tenure, he replaced the arms and upper chest floater/sternum padding with SLR2 Pro Carbon padding, but kept the original belly piece from his SLR Pro. He also had a customized spine protector with two straps at the bottom, where the buckles to hold the bottom of the spine protector to the sides of the belly are. Also a modification to shorten the shoulder velcro (took the ends clean off with scissors or some shit). At the start of the 2024–25 season, he switched to another customized Vaughn Ventus chest protector in black, with the same style of custom spine protector he'd been using on his previous Ventus.

And... I still haven't found the pivotal fan appreciation night video that scored us that chest protector front video... thank you for your service, may we be reunited one day..... <3 but that's a search for another time maybe LOL I'm going to rest my weary mind and soul from this 6-day research journey, many thanks to stereax and fossore for chipping in and to neonfretra and van puckpocketed for being the recipients to a handful of random odds and ends of research over the past week while I was trying to hammer out the details of what was happening here.... xoxo luv u all.... <3

hello to any hockey followers this blog. would anyone happen to know what model of chest protector is in the below picture (Rich Graessle/Getty Images)?

(Image source should be linked in the picture but if it's not, here is the link as a hyperlink.)

based on what little i can see of the branding it should be something by vaughn but idk anything beyond that lol. thank youuuu

[shakingparadigm]

modern college au where model ivan comes home late after photoshoots and listens to till's demos for hours on repeat to wallow in his agony (the songs are always for mizi)