#but I didn't plan to wear color lenses anyways.

[wanderingmene]

3/7/2024

I got everything for my rwby Neo cosplay except the wig. Thats awkward lol. I wanted to dye my hair a little bit pink as a substitute, but I can't afford that.

Edit:

It actually came in time for the convention, and I was so shocked lmao

[ckret2]

One of my wishes in this fic is that Bill is forced to watch a movie with his family using 3D glasses, and that the movie includes a scene where Venetian blinds are shown, and when a character in the movie rotates them, the signal goes away and shows static. I want Bill to suffer the biggest scare of his existence.

u didn't expect a serious In Depth Writer Reply but ur getting a serious In Depth Writer Reply, sorry anon.

It's been a while since I wrote about this so there's no way I'm gonna be able to dig up the posts again—but I've got beef with the phobias listed on TINAWDC. Mainly because I can't figure a way for them to all make sense.

The TV static makes plenty of sense—we know from the deluxe version of TBOB that Bill hears voices in the static, it wouldn't be a stretch to guess that the messages hidden in the noise and in the visual static and in spectrograms on TINAWDC and the Lofi album might be the kinds of things he sees/hears in TV static. Hearing the Euclidean Massacre and seeing messages and songs from his parents and people is a damn good reason to have a phobia.

(So I plan to do a lot with the static in the fic. Multiple times. I have an entire plot arc around the static. Rainbow Brite is there. It's gonna be great.)

On the other hand, 3D glasses make less sense. The most obvious connections are "oh, 3D vision, 3D stuff is a big deal to Bill" and "the lenses are red and blue—like his parents!!" Except that's not sufficient for them to make sense as a phobia.

On the 3D front, 3D vision doesn't work like that, "3D glasses" don't give you "3D vision"—what 3D glasses do is make specially-colored 2D images have the illusion of depth due to how your binocular vision works. They're called anaglyphs, you can learn the science here.

A) Bill doesn't have binocular vision, so 3D glasses wouldn't have any affect on him anyway, because he'd only be able to see through one lens at a time, B) what we typically mean when we say "3D vision" is actually "depth perception" and Bill can already see depth just fine—he can see things that are close to him and he can see things that are far from him, that's what depth perception is, he can perceive depth, he wouldn't need the glasses for that even if they did work, and so C) the only way "he's scared of them because 3D vision" could make sense would be if... he was scared of them because they don't successfully let him see anaglyphs as an illusion of 3D? Which is goofy. He'd be frustrated, not scared.

We already see how Bill reacts when he's told there's an image that lets you see an illusion of depth if you have binocular vision. He talks about magic eye/autostereogram images in TBOB. He's not afraid of them; he says that people who claim they can see things in them are liars. He publishes an autostereogram in TBOB himself!

So much for the 3D vision theory.

And if he were scared of them JUST because their colors make him think of his parents... then why would he be drawing a bunch of red and blue triangles in art? Logically, he ought to be scared of a bunch of red/blue things, oughtn't he. But he isn't.

As it happens today I did think of a way for the Theraprism staff to have gotten the impression Bill has a phobia of 3D glasses that makes sense with canon and that I'm satisfied with... but, operating under the headcanon I've got now, "wearing 3D glasses" in general wouldn't trigger the phobia, and Bill can't be triggered by it as long as he's stuck in his current situation. For Reasons That I'm Not Going To Tell You. The right conditions don't exist to trigger it. (Might draw a comic about it.)

And the Venetian blinds thing I can't make sense of at all. I've yet to see a single theory for the Venetian blinds phobia that isn't either proposing it triggers him for a reason that would cause a lot of other things to trigger him too (ex: "maybe seeing narrow slits of light in the dark makes him think of how vision in Euclydia works"—if that's the case, then why isn't he also triggered by the slit of light under the door when you're in a dark room and the room outside the door is lit?), or just wholesale completely making up an explanation (ex: "maybe the jail he was locked up in after his post-breakup bender had a window with Venetian blinds"—okay, you can headcanon that, but you did just make it up).

I don't believe that "Venetian blinds" would've been listed as a trigger unless it was for a reason that we're supposed to be able to logically deduce (like the TV static). So I don't wanna just make up something unfounded.

So how can I write him being triggered by Venetian blinds if I don't know how they trigger him, why they trigger him, or how he reacts to them? Like, if (made-up example) he's scared of Venetian blinds because seeing the white slats with strips of black night sky between them makes him think of black and white striped prison uniforms, then if I wrote him getting scared of closed brown wooden slats on a sunny day... that wouldn't make any sense.

Without knowing how & why the blinds trigger him, writing him getting triggered would just be going "AAAUGH OH NO IT'S VENETIAN BLINDS AAAAH!!" with no depth.

So until we get the truth and/or somebody comes up with a theory I like, I'm just not including Venetian blinds in the fic at all. Everybody has beautiful curtains or quaint old-fashioned shutters now.

[beardedmrbean]

Ravioli/raviolo anon here. It occurred to me that I never followed up on my story of how I escaped my roommate's various attempts on my life and I managed to dodge them all like some drunken Mr. Bean. (Is that what I said? I hardly remember, lol. For the record, I don't really drink so much anymore. After I walked home from a birthday celebration a few years back (it wasn't a rager or anything, the bar was just across the road and my birthday is in February so we didn't want to go far) and coldcocked my dome running at top speed into a fence (I was trying to make it into the exit gate before it closed, didn't realize there was a post that came out horizontally across because I don't see very well on account of the fact that I wear colored lenses), I cracked my skull and you can still see where I hit the fence (on my head, I mean, it was a wrought iron fence so I assume I didn't damage it but I never checked), so that's when I realized it was time to slow down).

So it WAS a true story, (I don't really watch television or read much though so if it does resemble a piece of media, I wouldn't know it, lol). Anyway, since I tend to ramble, I will make an effort to keep this in the realm of "less than a novel" but I can't exactly make any promises. I don't know how to add a "read more" or anything fancy like that so in the interest of shortening it I won't be offended if you screenshot only the important parts or even just don't answer it, lol.

There's a little bit of backstory about how I ended up living with the roommate and why he wanted to kill me, long story short he was in the hole about $1600 with me because he bought a motorcycle from me but was "still making payments" on it. He suggested I come room with him in this cheap apartment while we both drove for UPS for peak season. He got fired day two on the job, and so after that he planned to rob me as soon as I finished the season. (In addition to never paying for the bike). I'm a simple guy, though, so I really only had my truck (worthless) and a mattress, and I was just working for the love of the sport so I sent all my checks to my mother and had her send me back a hundred a week. So he can't rob me, so he decides at this point he's mad enough to kill me, and thinks himself pretty clever and that he can do it without getting caught.

About a week into this nonsense, he tells me he's got a job interview in NYC or something, he's gonna be gone tonight, whatever. I'm like, fine, no big deal, hope you get the job, buddy, I'm pretty terrible at this whole UPS thing so I'll be back at midnight or something when I'm done my route. I get home, and I'm about to go to bed, and that's when I decided at about 1AM I sincerely want a grilled cheese sandwich. So I got up, drove across town, and went over to a buddy's house for grilled cheese at 1AM. Come to find out we had a gas leak all night and my roommate is just VERY SHOCKED that we BOTH happened to be out, what are the odds. I'm all "hey, man, God is good, I'll drink to that, get me another beer".

Not long after that, I finish my route at who friggin' knows how late, I'm the last guy in the lot, even the security guards have gone home, and my truck (which cannot be locked, I don't have a key for the door so I leave it unlocked) is, what the heck, locked. I have no way of calling my roommate (same reason why I drove across town to find my buddy instead of just calling and asking: I didn't have a phone at the time), and it's looking like I might just freeze to death out here because it's -3F and it's after midnight in New England, so there's nobody out and about. Well, nobody, except this old Russian guy who sees me standing next to my truck, asks if I need help, and when I tell him I'm locked out, he tells me he's been in prison a few times for carjacking and will get me into my truck in no time. Which he does. So I bring him home with me and we have a beer (he had a few more than me, I had to work in the morning. You know how it is.) (And for the record I have never driven under the influence. I didn't go to college, my CDL is all I have. I don't dick around with that.)

So at this point, my roommate is pretty pissed. I'm either too hammered or too tired to notice. UPS is really kicking my ass. It's finally Christmas time, time to celebrate the end of peak season with a trip to the bar, oorah. He gives me a bottle of Poland Springs and says to drink the whole thing, it's water and we're gonna be drinking hard tonight, gotta hydrate or die-drate, bitch. I knock it back and wouldn't you know it, that son of a bitch didn't give me water, this is straight Everclear. I get to the bar and I'm already sick, I go straight to the toilet and barf all over the place. Somewhere along the line I went up to the bar and started dozing off, at which point they kicked me out, so roommate says "don't worry, I'm gonna take him home". Not sure what the plan from there was, tbqh. I DO know that I realized about halfway out of the city that we weren't headed back to our apartment, and that we were headed towards either Connecticut or NYC, and I told him I wanted to go back home because I did NOT want to go to NYC because if we were going to NYC, that meant we were probably going to watch Eric Andre with his boring cousin in Queens and I was really not in the mood. I'm pretty sure he planned on dumping me somewhere on the highway where I'd freeze to death, and I was slipping back and forth out of consciousness, but I was SO consumed by how badly I did NOT want to go to Queens and watch Eric Andre, I called the cops and told them I was being kidnapped to watch Eric Andre. They were more concerned about the kidnapping part for some reason, (criminal restraint, I think is actually what they called it), caught up to roommate and I halfway out of Clifton Park (we'd apparently been doing 110MPH on the freeway and he was swerving all over the place) and he got arrested.

The next morning the cops told me I should press charges, but that meant staying in the state (because I'd have to be there when it went to trial) and I had other plans. So, I let karma do its work on the roommate (no idea where he is now or what's become of him, but I do know he lost his license and later blew every cent he had on some raffle scam for a Toyota out in California), packed up my stuff, and moseyed on.

I'm marathoning The Twilight Zone with a friend online today (watching the same eps on the same service) this was wilder than any episode I've seen ever.

[mahou-queen]

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚lolita fashion then vs now: how the fashion has changed over the last decade ˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

I started getting into lolita fashion in 2010 and so much has changed in the fashion since then. Trends, websites, community opinions, etc. So I thought we should take a look into the past and reminisce about lolita fashion since 2010~~

Everything below is based on my personal experience and perceptions in the egl community. These are not necessarily facts, and other lolitas may not agree or relate to everything stated below. 

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

✿❀Rectangle headdresses:

At the height of 2010-2012 sweet these types of headdresses were not in style. They were considered ita and absolutely taboo for new lolitas. At the time the community was trying really hard to separate themselves from lolita cosplay and maid cosplay which were both really popular at the time especially at cons where a lot of lolitas would also be. In recent years with the resurgence of old school lolita, rectangle headdresses are back in style and I personally couldn't be happier as I have always liked them. 

✿❀Animal ears:

Also considered ita and taboo for its associations with cosplay. Today we see a lot of animal ears, particularly bear and bunny, sometimes cat but not as much. Even big brands like angelic pretty are releasing animal ears regularly. While they can definitely still be ita if they are costume quality or irrelevant to a coord, they are definitely back in style and looking very cute

✿❀Chiffon half blouses:

The 2010 sweet era was all about cotton blouses. And while cotton blouses are still alive and well, these days we have the wonderful chiffon half blouse. Very comfortable, more size inclusive, light and pretty. These were not in style/ not widely available when i first got into lolita. 

✿❀Low collar blouses:

Absolutely existed, but were not as in as they are now. Peter pan collars and high necks were all the rage, these days with the prevalence of chiffon blouses, we are seeing a lot of slightly lower neck lines.

✿❀Chocolate explosion:

Around 2013, it seemed like every release was chocolate themed. All these chocolate prints came out in 2013:

Angelic Pretty started transitioning into “sweet classic” around 2014 which was when I took a break from the fashion. 

✿❀Split wigs:

Split wigs were super popular in the early 2010s both in natural and unnatural color varieties. These day some people would say they’re ita but I think the fashion has come to a really nice place of balancing old and new styles so many loltias still wear split wigs and wear them well. 

✿❀Circle lenses:

When i got into lolita it seemed like circle lenses were almost mandatory. They were a part of every makeup tutorial, every popular lolitas coord, circle lenses were everywhere. I could never wear them due to my astigmatism so I was always upset about circle lenses. I am glad to see they have not been prominent in recent years.

✿❀Replicas:

It seemed like replicas were everywhere, everyone had one, they were generally accepted, and promoted by other lolitas. Dream of lolita was making replicas of all the major AP prints and filled the pages at clobbaonline, oo jia was a facebook based brand that made the most convincing replicas available. Replicas still exist but since 2011 major bans have been placed on reselling them and reputable resellers stopped carrying them for the most part. They are not celebrated and most lolitas are against them now. 

✿❀RTBU:

Refuse to be usual was a taobao reseller on ebay in the early 2010s. Idk if they are still around but i know they up-charged more than twice the price of the item. Secret shop tea parties were going for $95 on rtbu. They had hit or miss reviews and a lot of people didn't trust them. I never bought from them but i did window-shop

✿❀The only real resellers were clobbaonline and qutieland:

Clobba did not have a full website, only a gallery where you had to place your inquiry and order via email. These days clobba has a fully functional website with a wishlist and shopping cart feature. Qutieland no longer exists. These days we have seemingly endless taobao reseller options of varying quality

✿❀Egl comm sales:

I never figure out how this worked because lacemarket took over not too long after i got into the fashion. But it was an entire second hand market being run out of livejournal. It seemed very Intricate

✿❀Bodyline:

Ohhh bodyline in the early 2010s. The lace monsters, mr yan, the sundries department, the items never restocked, good times. I have 3 bodyline main pieces these days and I love them and plan to keep them for as long as i'm in the fashion because they are cute, comfortable, and the prints look good. There was a time in the mid 2010s where bodyline and people who wore bodyline were scoffed at and everyone who had only burandoo thought they were better than everyone else. But these days with the booming lolita industry in china (on taobao) and even western brands getting bigger, the emphasis on brand is becoming less and less and what makes good lolita is based more upon actual quality and coordination skills and less on the tag. 

✿❀My old dream dress list:

I never got any of these and many of them would never fit me anyway. I did get sweetie violet but in lavender as I no longer like the sax colorway and I don't know why I ever did.

My favorite lolita online at the time was @herajika-blog

✿❀bonus:

Sweetrococo.com, does anyone remember this place? You could allegedly design a lolita dress yourself with any colors/prints/images from the internet and they would make it for you. I remember designing a my little pony skirt on the site for fun and not getting it because it was $200 LOL. I swear that site was a fever dream. 

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚as we can see a lot had changed in the lolita fashion community and trends over the last decade. Do you remember any of these things? What is your experience? I really enjoyed this trip through memory lane. And while sometimes i miss the times when i was just starting out, these days the lolita community is so much more accepting, more accessible, and more experimental. It doesnt even seem like there are trends right now, just that any trends are ok as long as theyre lolita. What do you think?˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆