#outing myself as a band kid …

[mavigator]

i talked about it a little bit already but i have things to say about it. for context, i was born with amniotic band syndrome. the amniotic band wrapped around my left wrist in utero and stunted the growth of my hand. i was born with about half a palm, four nubs for fingers, and a twisted half of a thumb. i can open and close my thumb and pinkie joint like a claw.

yesterday at work i had a shift in the room with 5-10 year old kids. i had my left hand hidden in my sleeve (a bad habit of mine). a kid asked if he could see my hand, and even though internally i was debating running into traffic, i said “sure you can” and showed him my hands. he stared for a moment, looking disturbed, and then said “i don’t want to look at that anymore”. that hurt to hear, but i understand that kids are new to the world and he probably didn’t mean it out of malice. i put my hand away again, told him that it was okay, and that i was just born that way.

he then went on to talk about how he knows a kid with a similar hand to mine and called it “ugly”. i told him that wasn’t a very kind thing to say and that he wouldn’t feel good if someone said that to him, and he replied that no one would say that to him—because he has “normal hands”, and he’s glad he does because otherwise he’d be “ugly”. i tried to talk with him for a bit about how everybody is born differently, but he just started talking about a girl he knows with a “messed up face” and pulled on his face to make it look droopy. i went on some more about how it wasn’t very kind to talk about people that way, but the conversation moved on to something else.

i’ve told my supervisors about it and they’re going to have a talk with his mom. what i wanted to say is this: i’m genuinely not upset with the kid. kids are young and naturally curious, and he clearly simply hasn’t been taught about disabled people and kind ways to speak to/about others. which is why i am upset with his parent(s). i know he’s encountered visibly deformed/disabled people before (he said so himself!), yet his parent(s) clearly haven’t had any kind of discussion with him about proper language and behavior. i knew from birth that some people were just different than others, but my parents still made a point to assert to be kind to and accepting of others. i wonder if adults in his life are the type of people to hush him and usher him away when he points out someone in a wheelchair. that kind of thing doesn’t teach politeness. it tells children that disabled people are an Other than can’t be acknowledged or spoken about; which, to a child, means disability must be something bad.

i’m lucky enough that this was a relatively mild incident, and that i’m a grownup with thicker skin. i’m worried about the other kids he mentioned to me. has he been talking to them this way? when i was a kid, i had other kids scream, cry, and run away at the sight of my hand. or follow me around pointing at me and laughing at me. or tell me i couldn’t do something because i was ugly or incapable or whatever. one time a girl at an arcade climbed to the top of the skeeball machine, pointed at me, and screamed at me to put my hand away and wouldn’t stop crying until she couldn’t see me anymore. another time, a kid saw my hand, screamed at the top of her lungs, and ran into my friend’s arms, crying hysterically about how i was scaring her. that second incident made me cry so hard i threw up when i got home. i can kind of laugh it off now, but having people react to me that way as a child is something i’m still getting over. why do you think i have a habit of keeping my hand in my sleeve? it just irritates me to see children that have clearly not been taught basic manners and kindness—their parents Clearly missed something pretty important .

[copia]

COPIA'S JOURNEY TO RITE HERE RITE NOW ⛧ PREQUELLE ERA

"We need someone new. A firm leader; with youth, and stamina—and sexual charisma...."

video sources | comic bubbles | latin transcript | title font

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Thank you all for voting in the poll to decide who was going to be the leader of the band! It turned out to be such a close race!

[ottersdontdance]

introducing my trollsona, Birdie!! 🦢🎭

Birdie is a musical theatre troll!! a lot of her story is still being worked out, but i’ve just been so excited to draw her i just had to!!

some Birdie fun facts!!

⭐️ the notes on her skirt are from the sheet music for the song ‘Anything Goes’ from the Broadway musical of the same name

⭐️ her name is a reference to another musical, Bye Bye Birdie!

⭐️ probably one of the only trolls that actually wears shoes, and they happen to be tap shoes bc there is literally nothing more musical theatre than a good tap sequence

i may post more about her in the future if i stay inspired!! thank you for being kind, i hope you like her :)) <3

apologizing in advance bc i know tumblr is going to ruin the quality of this :(( </3

[asurrogateblog]

Cannibals, Pirates, and PhDs: How Did I Get Here?

I mentioned in some tags earlier that I’ve only actually been a real fan of Pink Floyd for under a year, and that the confluence of events that led up to it is pretty absurd. Some interest seemed to be taken in this, so I though I’d elaborate.

I didn’t know how to shorten this timeline and have it make any sense, so it’s... long. But idk, I think it’s pretty funny. If you’re nosy like I am this is for you.

My Backstory Timeline:

early childhood: my parents essentially mainline me and my little sister with The Beatles. I know almost no songs written past the 70’s until at least sixth grade. I develop a childhood crush on Paul McCartney, a joke that the universe really decides to play the long game on.

2014: my dad calls me over one night, and gravely tells me he’s been waiting to share something until I’m old enough. I brace myself to be told about sex or secret half-siblings. Instead, he tells me I need to listen to The Wall. Irritated at the idea of wasting an hour and half of my night, I nevertheless comply and go up to my room and put it on. I do not come back from this, clearly having inherited some sort of generational curse.

Around the same time, I am also secretly watching Hannibal every time my parents send me upstairs because Game of Thrones is “too gory”. This will trigger three important things: an interest in psychology, a love of horror media, and a classical music phase will train my attention span to last well past the three minute mark.

2014-2023: Over the intervening years, I become a casual fan of Pink Floyd, but make a deliberate point not to learn anything about the band. I like being able to imagine my own meanings for the songs. Also, I am motivated against this by a childhood memory of being deeply frightening by a picture of old Paul McCartney (LOL). I do not want that to ever happen again, so no learning.

Cut to April of 2023: I am finishing up my first year of my PhD program studying media psychology. I am in a bad place mentally, and am going through another horror movie phase to fill the hole. As a result, I get very into American Psycho. The main character, Patrick Bateman, is a fan of superficial 80’s pop music, particularly Genesis. I decide to start listening to Genesis to see if I agree with his tastes. While researching “best Genesis albums”, I come across The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. I listen to it, and am blown away. I had no idea that the Phil Collins band made music like that. This sends me down the prog-rock rabbit hole. I still won't learn any lore.

Summer of 2023: MEANWHILE, I am also going through another pirate phase. I have a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of 18th century piracy (and am still quite active in the Black Sails fan community). Around this time, I get really obsessed with this one random guy named Dennis McCarthy who was hanged in 1718.

I decide to work poor Dennis into a science fiction story I’ve been working on. The premise is essentially that the universe is an abandoned simulation, and a ‘glitch in the matrix’ starts to, among other things, bring people from the wrong time periods back to life. The format of the story is vaguely monster-of-the-week, in which the characters have to solve various problems caused by mistakes in the code. I think, “hey, you know what would be perfect for this? that fanfic I wrote about The Wall in high school.” Said fic (which that stupid fucking beatles movie stole from me) is about a world in which Pink Floyd never existed, but a wannabe rock-star discovers a box full of their records and decides to copy them. While he is touring his plagiarized version of The Wall, he realizes that the events of the album are starting to happen to him in real life. By working this concept into my new story, I go through another one of my periodical The Wall phases. It's in full swing when fall rolls around.

September of 2023: This semester, I take a grad-level narrative theory class in the English department. I decide it would be helpful to follow along with a specific example, so I choose The Wall. Using the terminology I am learning in the class, I start to realize that The Wall is…. incredibly narratologically fucked up. To help orient me, I watch the bootleg concert recordings, and the trick with the surrogate band sends me so out of my mind that I decide I must break my rule about never learning band lore.

This is where the two plot-lines converge. I don’t remember which came first, but around this same time, I think to myself “hey, if Genesis was hiding such an incredible album under the 80’s pop, what must Pink Floyd be hiding?” On that whim, I put on Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which equally sends me so out of my mind that I decide I must break my rule about never learning band lore. I needed to know what the fuck happened to get them from Piper to The Wall.

September-November: In the two months between the onset of this and finally making another sideblog, I dedicate all of my free time to learning as much about Pink Floyd as humanely possible (and writing a 20 page essay for that narrative theory class). As you can imagine, this is a lot to unpack all at once for someone who didn’t even know who Roger or Syd or any of the rest of them were. Luckily, I am over-educated enough to be a very fast learner. Aside from the band lore itself, I of course also fall in love with the rest of Pink Floyd's discography musically-speaking. Having this interest to latch onto genuinely pulls me out of my depression.

Cut to February 2024: I am really enjoying myself, and want to keep this going as long as possible, but I am starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel on Pink Floyd lore. I decide I need to feed the fire by supplementing with lore from another band. The Beatles seem to have a strong fan presence on tumblr, why not revisit a childhood favorite? The universe laughs at my expense.

That about brings us up to date. I have gone through so much character development over the last eight months, it’s crazy. Pink Floyd is definitely one of those things that is less of a “phase” and more of a permanent part of my mindscape. Weirdly enough, since I am studying media psychology, all of this has also been really good for my career? I never took an interest in -real- media figures (as opposed to fictional characters) before, and I feel like I have a much clearer sense of things now. It's definitely influenced my research, so whatever domino effect this has on my future is bound to get even funnier.

Anyway, that’s my backstory!

[where-is-zoro-one-piece]

[just-call-mefr1es]

youre telling me that i have to ‘be louder’ as a FLUTE when the saxophones r literallh playing FORTISSIMO when theyre supposed to be MEZZO FORTE⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️

[mackmp3]

survived first day back at school only made an ass of myself once

[icanseethefuture333]

Healing my inner child and learning to accept I'm not one anymore, makes me cry so much. I'm mourning a childhood I lost while trying to journey onto the path of adulthood. It feels like I leaped through time but my mind wasn't prepared for it. I want to feel more confident about myself and to make my dreams come true. It feels as if I'm taking care of 3 people at once sometimes (my child self, my teenage self, and my current self). I have to learn who I want to be now and what I like, dislike, and what my new hobbies are, but a part of me wishes to be like how I was when I was younger. My imagination was so big and colorful, then at one point things got so dull and depressing when I was a teenager. Depression can take such a big chunk out of your life that you can never get back and it's so traumatizing.

[boysbeloving]

mile has been putting up posts of everything that's recently wrong in his life and i feel like giving him the biggest and warmest hug (and telling him that it's most likely because of the eclipse season that just went by and that it's not him🙈🤣)

his ipad was bent

he revealed he lost his custom-made MP ring in Paris (Paris is now on my shitlist for this reason btw....not a romantic city anymore....it is now associated with loss)

one of the headlights of his car was not working

his luggage's zip got wonky

and today one of the tyres of his car is giving him trouble

he's been whining on insta reels POOR BB!!!

i just want him to take some time for himself and not spend that time buying or playing guitars and just take stock of his things...and get them fixed before the damage happens...i say this coz he's got an entire fucking plaza to run (??)....i mean...ofc he has a team etc but still it's his business (right?....it's not his dad's right? idek lol i just know he's INVOLVED in the business big time)

just....take care mile

[cr4yolaas]

omg im i just wanna say im so in love w ur writing omg... im reading blue spring and im BAWLING my eyes out ૮ ◞ ﻌ ◟ ა it feels so soft, bittersweet and just so comforting even when the story gets a bit sad ૮꒰ ྀི >⸝⸝⸝< ྀི꒱ა y/n is so well written and i love her story and i can see myself in her so much, maybe that's why it's so comforting ｡°(°.◜ᯅ◝°)°｡

u said in some notes that you were "self-projecting", i hope ur okay ꒰ᐢ. .ᐢ꒱

anyway thank u so much for this i'll keep on reading it !! love ur work, i'll make sure to check your past and future posts ૮ ․ ․ ྀིა ♡

hi !! this means sm to me, tysm ♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪ i’m doing okay now but yn is definitely a character that embodies the burnout i tend to feel, as i’m a musician and someone who’s a perfectionist when it comes to my grades (which is a horrible combo, bc marching band schedules combined with ap courses is deadly) so i’m glad to hear that u like how she’s written !!

[toastsnaffler]

for such a supposedly major fan of the national I sure mishear a lot of their lyrics 💀

[adhdandcomics]

you are 2010s transmasc art reigen. to me

i wont lie to you ive been trying to parse this ask out for a minute. do you mean i look like 2010s reigen art? my art looks like reigen art? i embody the spirit of transmasc reigen?? the world may never know. i have a sinking feeling you mean all of these things, though.

[bloodhailmp3]

think im gonna take swimming lessons n i also wanna start taking ballet again bc i think ill enjoy it much more at this stage in my life than i did when i was a lonely little girl..... just not sure whether to start both at the same time or if that would be taking on too much

[guttersnarls]

Why doesn't anyone ever call him Quarto?

Maybe y'all will start calling him that after he's DEAD

muhaha

[yourknightinshiningplastic]

bro he is literally just laying there saying whatever in their head talking about anything and everything but not sleeping.