#i didn't say WHICH 20th september lol

[tacoma-narrows]

Twenty (Three!) Years of Humanistic!

Abandoned Pools' first album, Humanistic was released 23 years ago today, on September 25th, 2001! For anyone who doesn't know, Abandoned Pools is my all time favorite band! I found them through Clone High in September of 2020 and immediately connected with a LOT of their songs, and in that time, Humanistic became my all time favorite album! A spot that it still retains to this day hehe.

So when I found out that the following year, almost a year to the day from when I started listening to Abandoned Pools, was Humanistic's 20th anniversary, I knew I wanted to make something big for that occasion! I ended up making a drawing based on each song in the album! This is similar to what I did for Owl City's album Cinematic later on, which I posted last year.

This is also sort of a look at proto Let's Get Back! in a way! I made this when LGB! was still just a duo act with PB and Shep, since Rye and Pumpernickel didn't join the lineup until I was about halfway through the project, and the band wasn't officially named Let's Get Back! until February of 2022 lol. The cover image here is based on the actual album cover for Humanistic, and I edited later to say "Covers by Let's Get Back!" to make it consistent with the rest of my LGB! art :3

Each piece in the series is below the cut along with the song they're connected to and some explanation about each one. Again, these pieces are three years old at this point, so some of the art is a bit wonky looking and some of these piece I'd do differently if I were to do them today, but most of them still hold up pretty well I think! :D

1: The Remedy

I based this one on the line “save your breath, your soul is hollow” and wanted to do something simplistic but still interesting! According to my friend who also likes the song, this is “exactly how that song feels” lol. It was fun working with silhouettes here, which is something I've done here and there in the time since.

2: Mercy Kiss

I decided to not actually draw them kissing bc the song says “I don’t need your mercy kiss” haha. Wanted to capture sort of a defiant attitude for this one. Posing is a little off here, and I've tweaked some minor things abt their design but overall one that I'm still pretty happy with :]

3: Start Over

I was SUPER happy with the posing on this one, I love the sense of motion it has. Basically, I wanted to express being stuck in a cycle and just wanting to go back to the way things were, which was something I was REALLY feeling at the time, but is still sort of applicable today.

4: Monster

Another one I REALLY like, with this one, I wanted to show that I can be a force to be reckoned with when standing up for myself. Or at least that’s how the song makes me feel. It’s a good rampage song too. This is another case where I really like how the pose came out. As you can also see, this is the only piece without PB since I wasn't sure how to incorporate him into this idea, but I’m sure he’s still involved somehow lol. Also this is the best song called Monster, I do not take criticism at this time.

5: Blood

Blood always feels like a sort of gloomy, spiral-y type song, so that’s what I went for. The line “we watch it burn, and we never learn, this can’t be what you’re waiting for” was really the focus for this one. A neat vibe with this one overall I think that I'm pretty happy with.

6: Suburban Muse

Suburban Muse makes me think of like, a fake sitcom town where things look normal, but things aren’t as great as they seem if you look a little closer. It even says “cue the canned applause” at one point. Also, those sort of, weird reality dreamscape neighborhood liminal space images like this where you can see where it's coming from but they just feel, off y'know

7: Sunny Day

This one is kinda weird because Sunny Day is kinda weird (though in like the best possible way, I love it). I couldn’t quite come up with a solid idea for both my OCs here, so I based them on two separate lines: “my head is inside a cloud” for PB, and “get off the bathroom floor” for Shep. In hindsight, I don't think the two separate lines approach really worked here since it feels more disjointed and not really representative of the full song, but I still like it well enough.

8: L.V.B.D.

This one was hard to come up with something for. I’ve never been super crazy abt L.V.B.D. since it feels, Very Hetero™ and I’m not about that. But it’s still sounds great and I’m definitely super glad it’s part of the album. Went for drawing Shep and PB here as little stuffed dolls, which is related to the acronym in the song’s title (which stands for Little Virgin Baby Doll) and I couldn’t think of anything better aha. I should draw plushies more often though

9: Ruin Your Life

Important: Shep and PB are only upset with upset with each other for the sake of this drawing, as I refuse to let anything bad happen between them for real. Anyways, the expressions were really fun in this one, and oh boy does this song feel very relatable over the last year or so.

10: Never

This one is very similar to Ruin Your Life for me, where it’s a sort of comforting during a dark time kind of way. Just crossing the days off hoping that things will get better soon, that’s what I went for here. The calendar is listed as 10/12 since this is the 10th song out of the 12 on the album, and the image is a reference to a previous drawing I had done of PB and Shep together :3

11: Seed

Personally, Seed is my least favorite song from the album as a whole, for similar reasons to L.V.B.D. but in a, more gross kinda way that conflicts with my ace side. The song still sounds great musically for sure. Even tho I’m not super crazy abt the song, I actually really like how this drawing came out, in fact it might be my favorite out of the whole batch, ironically enough lol. The boys are looking down into a hole from the line “there’s no more grace to fall from, there’s nowhere left to go but down” and I'm really happy with how the perspective turned out!

12: Fluorescein

Finally, Fluorescein is my favorite song of the entire album, and my favorite song in general! It’s so aggressive and loud, I love it. I decided to draw PB confronting a giant Shep bc the song makes me feel like I can take on a huge adversary and win >:] Although I do like what I chose to do here, I kinda wish I had come up with something better to represent my all time favorite song lol

So in conclusion, like I said, Humanistic is my all time favorite album and it means so much to me. Really all of AP’s work really means a lot to me, but Humanistic in particular. I found the band through watching Clone High and I am all the better for it. So thank you to Abandoned Pools for making something that I’ve gotten so much out of and I absolutely cannot wait for the sixth album coming at the end of next year!! :D

So I hope you guys liked this little trip down memory lane with me, and if you're also an enjoyer of Abandoned Pools, please let me know what you think of these and what your favorite AP songs are! I'd love to know! And if you don't listen to Abandoned Pools, I highly recommend their music if you can't tell lol. If you enjoy early 2000s alt rock sort of stuff, there's a solid chance you'll enjoy Abandoned Pools :3

[spilltheteawithme]

And didn't the rumour come out after he was reminiscing Leighton?

Since you asked, I wanted to share my observations and opinions about the timeline between September 19th and October 11th. It’s honestly a wild ride! Feel free to post it or not, depending on what you think is best. Sorry if I missed anything—I’m just trying to connect the dots here (You probably know more about PR tbh) :

Sept 19th – Sebastian drops some nostalgia bombs in his Variety article about Leighton Meester, which probably sent CAA into panic mode. Cue the scramble to boost AW’s visibility and deflect attention away from his past. They start throwing crumbs in the following weeks.

Sept 20th – In a Today Show interview, Seb mentions a bracelet from his mom, and you’d think he just declared war on the 'Stall' shippers! Their meltdown over his jewelry being tied to AW is peak absurdity. Like, chill—it’s a bracelet from the woman who gave birth to him—his MOTHER!

Sept 24th – Cleide Klock from CAA casually mentions Seb’s “girlfriend” who grew up in Portugal (ahem, AW) in an interview that went nowhere. Classic CAA move to keep AW relevant while trying to maintain their narrative.

Sept 19th - Oct 4th – DeuxMoi gets questions about Seb and AW’s relationship status, and what does DeuxMoi do? She posts screenshots of AW liking stuff and the stories she had about Seb's movie on IG. It’s like DeuxMoi is trying to portray AW as the supportive GF while also playing a game of whack-a-mole to keep her in the spotlight.

Oct 4th – At the Chiltern Firehouse party, Seb looks straight-up stressed while he pushes AW inside and helps Ruby with the straights instead. That tense jaw and body language say it all—definitely not the romantic vibe CAA is trying to sell. And that awkward selfie from Ruby and AW? Yikes! He legit looks constipated.

Oct 11th – DeuxMoi drops the bomb about Seb and Leighton, calling him a “couch fucker.” Like, can you say character assassination? This feels like a preemptive strike for AW to play the “wronged girlfriend” card if Seb doesn’t renew her contract.

Oct 13th – A video surfaces of Seb looking totally distressed while bolting from a hotel, with AW lagging behind like a lost puppy. The dude didn’t even glance back. Talk about a disconnect! Evelyn was there too, but honestly, who cares?

Oct 17th – AW tagged along with the cast at the Apprentice Gala Premiere in Copenhagen (as if she was part of the movie) —a classic desperate attention-seeking move. And Seb's smirk? Yeah, that’s not the look of a guy smitten. I mean, his eyes were doing something, and that smirk? It sounded more like a sarcastic “I’m amused by your antics, but not feeling the love,” totally contradicting the ‘bedroom eyes’ narrative the 'Stall' shippers are pushing.

My two cents:

All this evidence points to CAA trying to keep AW in the picture. Meanwhile, Seb keeps shading her in interviews—like when he mentions how people are addicted to filler, Botox, and social media, implying that those who spend their whole day scrolling lack substance and seek validation elsewhere. I think either she or her team realized he wasn’t going to renew the contract, so they paid DeuxMoi to post the podcast claiming Sebastian cheated on Leighton. Suddenly, we start seeing stories about him allegedly cheating on Jennifer and Diana, too.

It feels like a desperate attempt to either back him into a corner to renew the contract or set the stage for AW to portray herself as the saintly girlfriend who always supported him, only to be cheated on like he always does. Cue the “poor AW” narrative! Seriously, dragging up something that may or may not have happened years ago? Really?

Damn, that was loooong, and I probably forgot some stuff! I didn’t even get into her baiting and lurking on Insta stories because I’d be writing an entire novel instead of an ask (sorry, lol). So yeah, that’s basically my take on things, but who knows… maybe I’m just overthinking this soap opera! 🤷‍♀️

!

[pricechecktranslations]

The heavenly yard blog infomine, part 7: More Albums and Events, Collaborations, Cloture of Yellow, then, a Break! (to do more work)

Mothy is pretty busy in this set, primarily working on making his songs and videos as well as attending events, so we don't get as much concept and idea discussion, but we do finally get him releasing Cloture of Yellow!

4 March 2010 ~ 26 August 2010

---March 2010---

4th

-mothy announces that he'll be uploading "Last Revolver" to NicoNico.

8th

-mothy releases Last Revolver to NicoNico. He talks about it a little bit--he actually made the song in September of last year, but it was much longer than even Moonlit Bear at the time so he's spent a lot of time cutting the song down to size.

-Naturally, Ichika did all the work on the PV this time around.

18th

-mothy announces his participation in VOCALOID PARADISE 3. He's going to be selling Prelude to Forest there.

-he's also working on a new album that'll have his recent song releases on it.

---April 2010---

6th

-mothy thanks everyone who came to the VOCALOID PARADISE event (apparently it was his first Kansai event)

-mothy will be releasing his new album, Evils Forest, at the next event.

-He also announces that he'll be releasing a new song, "Wendy" for the "Haiten Girl 2" CD.

10th

-The Daughter of Evil musical performs tomorrow. The Classical version of Servant of Evil has also released.

20th

-mothy makes the official announcement that he's going to VOCALOID MASTER 12 alongside twinkledisc (SignalP's doujin thingy). He'll be selling Evils Forest there. He makes clear that some of the new album songs will also get videos in the future, as well as the fact that the album booklet itself will have more content than his previous album releases.

25th

-mothy's going to have Regret Message on the VOCALOGENESIS album.

-He answers one or two questions about the distribution of his new album.

26th

-mothy uploads the video for Heartbeat Clocktower onto NicoNico (and specifies it's a re-arrangement of the one he uploaded onto Piapro before).

---May 2010---

8th

-Tomorrow is VOCALOID MASTER 12. Mothy will be in the same space as Twinkledisc, and he'll be selling content alongside SignalP, Ichika, and Tamura. He lists off a few behavioral requests for anyone going to attend (ex, don't take photos of the booth) and a few other minor things people can expect.

-He thanks people for watching Heartbeat Clocktower.

-Someone asks him if he really intends to retire after the Seven Deadly Sins series is finished. Mothy is just "what lol I didn't say that" (this is HILARIOUS).

10th

-VOCALOID MASTER 12 is over. Mothy's been getting so much attention he's had trouble responding to everyone, so he's sorry about that. He's also selling Evils Forest on consignment at D-Stage now.

-He can't give a lot of details yet but he's gonna be hard at work on the series still.

25th

-he talks a bit about the VOCALOGENESIS album. Someone's made an MMD for all the songs on it, including Regret Message, and the album has also topped the charts at Oricon.

-That doesn't mean he's a millionaire or anything. He doesn't even have a girlfriend!

-He's got some work he'd trying to finish by the end of May, and hopes to start making videos in June.

---June 2010---

8th

-mothy announces he'll be at VOCALOID MASTER 13 (this time by himself it looks like). He doesn't have anything new to release there, but he does intend to have something for Comiket later on down the line.

-Unfortunately, despite lots of requests he isn't going to be reprinting Evils Theater. It's all available for digital purchase still, but as an independent producer it's a bit complicated for him to get another physical run of an album that's a year old by now.

---July 2010---

7th

-mothy's going to be participating in the Supernova 3 album with his new song Desert Bluebird (which he intends to upload a video of very soon)

9th

-mothy uploads Desert Bluebird's PV.

17th

-mothy thanks everyone for watching Desert Bluebird. He's switching to a new video editing software, so he's hoping to make more dynamic videos with it. However, it apparently makes the video quality unnecessarily high, so he's concerned some people might not be able to play them. He'll work on fixing that.

-He says the song is inspired by the "Blue Bird" fairytale (I'm not familiar with it but it looks like it might be a French story?), and has some influence from a Wii game he was playing before making it (some kind of…tank RPG??? I think?). He likes the change of pace, making more of a Sci Fi after so many Medieval style songs.

18th

-Tomorrow is VOCALOID MASTER 13. He gives a brief rundown of what he's selling there (again, nothing new). He doesn't expect it to be as crowded, but he'll also be there by himself so he might be busy anyway.

20th

-Mothy thanks everyone for coming to the event, shares his impressions of it a little.

-He makes oblique hints at a book (and I think we all know which one) which has gotten pre-orders on Amazon, but he can't give details just yet.

-Unfortunately he doesn't know what's going on with the Gemini CD for the stage play.

-He doesn't have time to make a new album for summer Comiket, but he will be selling some CD-Rs that he'll be burning himself.

-He'll be uploading videos for Lunacy of Duke Venomania and Twiright Prank very soon.

25th

-mothy gives official upload dates for Lunacy and Prank.

26th

-Lunacy has been uploaded to NicoNico!

29th

-Mothy finally announces his new novel, Cloture of Yellow!!!! Oh, also Venomania's hit 100000 views. He'll talk about it some other time.

-He includes the publisher summary of the book, as well as purchase details (again, it was already getting pre-ordered on Amazon). There is a fanbooklet that's included with purchase at select locations.

31st

-mothy finally talks about his new novel in more detail. He answers questions first, such as where it'll be sold, the format it's written in, if it's a standalone (he says he wants to make a sequel but it depends on how well this one sells), what's in the booklet (mostly creator commentary stuff--I don't think there's anything that isn't included with the VG re-release), etc.

-He talks about the contents a little, clarifying that while it is based on the simple plot he provided for the writers of the stage play, it's different in a lot of ways (such as character names). He's added a lot of things and characters that never showed up in the songs. However, despite all the changes, it does still adhere to the plot of the songs--nothing outright contradicts the earlier work, that is.

---August 2010---

1st

-mothy is going to be participating in the DEBUTANTE5 album with his new song "Flames of Yellow Phosphorous". The song is a collaboration with JounetsuP--apparently they've been wanting to collaborate for a long time now.

-He answers questions. He won't be selling the novel at Comiket since it's an officially published work, so that'll still be Evils Forest and the hand-made CD.

-Also apparently there are some issues with the Daughter of Evil pinups included in Cloture of Yellow? But it won't delay the novel's release or anything.

3rd Page 1

-Twiright Prank has been released on NicoNico!

Page 2

-mothy confirms that the pinup issue has been sorted out and there will be no complications with Cloture's release. I guess there was some kind of copyright dispute? In any case it's been taken care of.

Page 3

-Evil Food Eater Conchita will be released on the VOCALOANTHEMS CD by Exit Tunes. Apparently Exit Tunes will have done a lot of remastering for the VOCALOID parts of the song, so mothy's not sure how it will sound by comparison. Additionally, another, separate remastering of Conchita's song will be on the hand-made CD that mothy is releasing at Comiket (I think this is the Evil Food Eater Conchita CD).

5th

-mothy talks about the novel some more. More sales info, and then contents (primarily the characters this time around). He gives a basic rundown of who everyone is, with name and place in the story. No spoilers. He does note that Elluka might seem a bit of a forced entry, but that's because they weren't selling Elluka at the time the original song came out. He goes on to list Gumillia, Gast, and Keel as additions to the story that hadn't debuted elsewhere, and he applied VOCALOIDS onto them retroactively (so--they might not have originally been the VOCALOID that he turned them into, but their characters already existed previously).

6th Page 1

-Evils Forest will be available online on KarenT

Page 2

-Cloture of Yellow now has its own website (the site has since folded, unfortunately)

7th

-mothy gives some more information on promotional events and goodies for the book, though he reminds people that this is just his personal blog and so it might be better to ask questions to his publisher or the retailer they're planning to buy from, as he doesn't know everything.

9th

-More info on Summer Comiket. He is indeed going to be selling the Evil Food Eater revision CD (which has Evil Food Eater with Meiko's vocals revised as well as any other songs that are not on his other albums), as well as Evils Forest.

-These include the old Clockwork Lullaby demo he made with Len instead of Rin.

-Debutante5 is also being sold there, but not by him.

10th

-Cloture of Yellow releases today!

-mothy answers some questions on Venomania and Twiright Prank. Apparently some people recognized a sound effect at the beginning of Venomania from Umineko no Naku Koro Ni--this is news to him, as he hasn't played Umineko and just took the sound from a collection of free sound effects.

-He confirms that Twiright is deliberately mispelled for reasons of having a double meaning. 1. "Twi"=twist "right"=correct, normal, etc. 2. R=Rin, L=Len, and it was Len that shared his snack, not Rin.

12th

-Flames of Yellow Phosphorous has been uploaded to NicoNico.

16th

-Summer Comiket wrapup. Mothy thanks everyone for attending. He ran out of the Conchita CDs really quickly, so apologizes for that. Apparently due to the logistical issues in making them, he doesn't intend to do any more hand-burned CDs. He doesn't intend to make more of those CDs, but he'll come up with a way for people to get the music on it some other way.

-mothy also intends to take a break from attending events as a producer for the time being. He was so busy with the events and writing the novel that he ran out of songs to upload. He wants to shut himself up and take a good look at how he's going to work on his projects going forward. Though, he'll probably still go to events as a member of the general public.

-…That being said, he is participating in the ECHO charity CD. Despite the uplifting theme of the charity, his song is going to be depressing, apparently.

17th

-Servant of Evil has hit 2 million views!

20th

-Daughter of White has hit 50000 views!

26th

-Little announcements. Riliane and Allen are getting their own avatars with the online game TinierMe, Dwango is releasing Evils Forest ringtones, and the Vocaloanthems crossfade has been released (the revised Evil Food Eater Conchita is on it).

[bluerighthand]

Hi guys!

I live! For various reasons, it’s been a few months since I’ve posted any writing or been active on here - for anyone still interested in my stuff you are an absolute gem and I love you and I’m sorry for being so awful and inactive. 

But - I took a break, went to the other side of the world to escape my problems (literally), and now I’m back home for a week! Although to avoid spoilers until I’ve caught up on the new season I won’t be on tumblr for a bit. But I will be lurking on the alfie/tommy discord if anyone wants to chat (or be spammed with travel pics!), I’ve missed you guys <3

Chapter 7 of Growing Up A Shelby will now not be posted on Friday 20th September because I am a mess but it will be posted soon :)

[theartificialdane]

Hey honey I want to apologise on behalf of all of us for driving you to this point. I'm really sorry that we took you to the point where you didn't enjoy it anymore and you felt like you owed us. I hope you're feeling better soon though. Again man I'm so sorry

This is all the way back from when I took a hiatus, and I’m pretty sure I responded in a post, but first of all: Thank you so much for thinking of me - second of all: 

I’ve been chronically ill since I was 14. It goes up, and it goes down. Right now I’m on some new meds, and I have a doctor who’s incredible at listening to me (I honest to god sobbed the first time I visited him after returning to Denmark because he did not only understand me he also genuinely listened)

I started a new job september 20th, and I use about 2-3 hours each day commuting, but I haven’t felt this good in literal years. I don’t need to nap, I haven't puked from pain at all, I can walk distances and I haven’t felt like crying because of pain in months. This is very very new, and I’m beyond thankful for the extra energy it has given me.

Phyiscal pain is something I use a lot of mental energy on, so when I’m done with my full-time job (which in Denmark is thankfully only 37 hours a week) and my other hobbies (I cosplay (lol) and is the founder and editor of a cosplay magazine, I bookblog (lol) and I’m politically active) I have had no energy left for my last hobby, which is writing. 

I haven’t been fully gone for the last 5-6 months, and I have been writing, but it’s mostly just been dribbles for friends since Tumblr isn’t always the kindest, and I know that what I find intersting right now (Violet and Sutan, lol once again, haha) isn’t something all of you enjoy.

This has turned into a crazy long update on how I’m doing, but this is a long winded way of saying that I’m surprisingly good right now, and that I’m excited to share the 10+ pages I have already written of the new Andromeda series, which I’m really really enjoying.