#really didn't think I could finish it in time for the queue lol

[tummieaching]

hey it's ✉️, sorry about the delay, this is the second part of what happened the day I had to go to the post office 🤭

(Two). [cw for brief p1ss mention] Home now. Oh my god. I could barely function when I got to the front of the queue, my mind was just racing with "I think I'm going to puke, I'm going to be sick etc.", then I actually gagged when I was talking to the cashier and she asked if I was ok and did the signature for me so I could get out of there. I was so embarrassed.

It's hot and I started feeling so dizzy walking home so I drank a little water, and as soon as I swallowed it came straight back up, with a little of the milky stuff mixed in, I didn't even have time to move and it came out all over my t shirt and some on my leg. I don't think anyone saw. I sat on the grass for a few minutes because I was sure it was all coming up then, but I think maybe the shock and embarrassment kept it in because I just kept salivating and getting waves of dizziness (didn't dare drink more water), so eventually I got up and slowly managed to get home.

The smell of the puke on my t shirt was making me want to just bend over and heave but I made it. I was shaking when I finally closed the door behind me and went straight to the bathroom with a towel, my water bottle and the second glass of green tea which had steeped to a very dark colour. I was still feeling awful but turned on about all of this.

Since I already threw up on myself I left my clothes on and sat in the shower. I started reading stories on here that other people wrote about themselves being sick and hoped it would help me release my own stomach. It turned me on more and I rolled up a second towel and sat with it between my legs, rocking and starting to salivate as the motion irritated my stomach. I let the saliva run out of my open mouth down my chin and started to say things out loud about how sick I felt and how I needed to get it all up. Then the dizziness hit me hard and I had to lean against the wall to stay upright. I moaned a little and told myself I just needed to let it come and be sick and then I would feel better.

I grabbed the tea and drank it, it was cold so I could drink it very fast. It was incredibly bitter and as soon as I finished the cup I could feel it coming back up. I always get a bit scared right before I throw up so I told myself, let it come, get it up and before I could even finish a stream of sick gushed up out of me and splashed in the shower. I couldn't move because I was trying not to faint so it got in the cup, all over my legs and socks and part of the towel. I burped and retched and gasped for breath and then got sick again, this time it was soft, milky sludge that felt foamy in my throat and landed quietly on my chest. It moved really slowly in my throat and made me gag hard again.

The towel felt warm and I realised I had pissed a little as I gagged. The waves of retching came again and again and I got desperately, loudly, uncontrollably sick all over myself, this time it was like a thick soup with berry pieces. The chunkier stuff was sitting a slimy pool in my lap. I told myself I was doing a good job to calm me down because I didn't have anyone there to help me.

Next time I heaved so hard I had to grip the shower rail, it was gurgly and sounded much deeper than my usual voice and I brought up a big puddle of thick slightly darker coloured vomit that felt heavy as it settled in the pool on my top. It was sour and had pieces of pastry which, when I felt them sticking to the roof of my mouth, made my eyes roll back and I threw up again and soaked the towel. One memorable moment was when I tried to soothingly call myself a good girl but as I was saying "girl" I was violently sick so it came out as "good blbleeeuuuurghle" lol.

This carried on for about 40 mins and towards the end I was just burping and burping and every few burps I'd bring up a blob of rice pudding into my mouth and have to spit it out. It was a bit more intense than I planned but really hot.

The only issue is that now I've puked so much, my stomach is very sensitive and will be for hours - I vomited a bit of water while writing this just from my own descriptions and then when I was cleaning it up, another glob of rice pudding sick came up out of nowhere (I just managed to lean over the edge of the sofa in time to let it up onto the floorboards). I have a bowl with me now because I'll probably keep having these small sudden vomits for another few hours but I'm going to try to settle my stomach with mint tea.

Thank you very much for telling us your story here ... it's very arousing to read, I'm proud of you for getting it all up like that, I bet you felt so much better afterward ... the puddle in your lap oh goodness, it must have been warm for a little while ... and wow, you peed yourself too ♡ I would have loved to help you get it up ... your poor sensitive belly, I hope that bowl serves you well ♡

I'm rubbing myself reading this, sitting in front of the toilet myself, I hope it will help me puke soon ... I'm going to read it again after I post this ♡

[pliablehead]

I guess if I want to write a travelogue/write up post about my 4-stop journey following the first chunk of Everything Everything's 2023 US tour then I have to just... do it!! If this is of interest to anyone other than me then GREAT and if not then it's still special to me to try to write down and remember everything I can uwu

FIRST STOP WASHINGTO-- wait, no, actually, first stop, on my way out of town, the local donut shop in my neighborhood, a place that I absolutely adore and patronize all the time with staff who mostly know me by now/some of whom are my instagram friends/etc. i'd checked with the Pittsburgh venue ahead of time to see if it was okay to send in outside food as a gift to the band even though they have a cafe/bar in their own right, and whoever I corresponded with said it would be totally fine, so I talked to the donut shop manager and set up a delivery of a dozen for the lads for Saturday before their show here. advance paid for that, as well as getting my own breakfast and coffee hehe, and then hit the road. OKAY FOR REAL FIRST STOP WASHINGTON DC!!! This was the second-longest leg of my Car Driving and it was definitely a wee bit exhausting but I had a podcast or two and a ton of E E on shuffle to bolster me through and I made it to my mom's friends' house, where I was staying, with relative ease. The venue was within a not-too-unreasonable walking distance too so after a change of clothes (I had very distinct and deliberate Show Outfits for each night that were fully separate from my travelin' clothes) and a bunch of fussing with the bracelets™ I headed over!! stopped for empanadas and a smoothie on the way and then queued up!!

aaaaahh this was such a nice fun queue. I was maybe about a dozen-ish people back from the front, down about half a block, and once I finished scarfing down my food this was my first real experience with doling out the bracelets. so fun! I'm glad it was basically an instant hit! AND I even got a few trades in this queue--one person gave me a Man Alive / Tin / E E bracelet with teeny tiny beads, super fun, and one person with a SHITTON of kandi stuff gave me one that had the name of a flower genus on it?? i think they said it was?? I love the colors on this one! And one person traded me a Blow Pop. lmao. I should eat that before it sits in my fanny pack for too long. I also really enjoyed chatting with the two guys right in front of me (Nick and Alex?), who were from south-central PA and had a couple other fandom touchstones in common with me (mcelroys/dnd/BDG! I love this Venn diagram!!) as well as a big love for E E. We didn't really see much of each other beyond the point of getting inside but I liked y'all a lot!! Hope you had as great a time as I did!!

Black Cat is where I saw E E the first time I EVER SAW THEM, which was almost exactly six years ago from this gig, which is insaaaane. The space is kind of narrow so there's not a huge amount of stage barrier space right at the front, so Becky and I ended up pretty much at the front but almost aa-all the way stage left/Jeremy-side. coulda been worse hehehe. We kind of loitered and chatted with nearby folks, I think maybe becky checked out merch ahead of the show ? but I kind of just held down the fort, enjoying setup stuff, pete running around etc hehe. getting BLASTED by the AC, which was nice.

the ummmm the opener! our first experience with Pierre! I gotta say his general style is not for me, despite the fact that I do think he's very talented and good at the thing he's doing. this first night especially he was SO sweaty and I felt bad for him lmao, you could like see it dripping off him. i am so curious as to why/how he got paired with the boys for this tour, like, what aligned in such a way that this match was made, because my general vibe on the crowd/his audience/etc was that we the fans of the nerdy white english mathy rocker guys were not exactly his demo LOL. BUT i will say in DC I do think he had one little pocket of strong-contingency fans because I kept hearing big whoops and cheers coming from one specific audience spot and I loved that for him lmao. for some reason i cannot explain I actually almost found his backing/support musician guy (the guy who was basically his version of peter) more compelling. I wanna know THAT dude's story lol.

so when he finished up we had a little interlude aaaannndd the setlist appeared... hehe. I could def have peered up to look at it from where I was, but I was telling myself I wanted to be surprised, and was deliberately looking away........ until suddenly everyone around me was gasping and going HOLY SHIT and I was like, ugghhh okay, I will check JUST enough to figure out what that's all about, and what that was all about was immediately apparent because smack in the middle of the set were a Man Alive track (which we never get in the states bar MY KZ) and something that just said "New Song." AND LIKE, OKAY, THAT'S A JUSTIFIED HOLY SHIT. new song????? so now we had THAT to contend with coming up, and aaaaaaah. ahh. yeah holy shit indeed.

it's also while we're standing there that AG pops into view, (or maybe I first spotted him during Pierre's set? Chronology is irrelevant), back off behind Becky from me in the other direction, and we waved over at him to say hi and he says to us, "All four of them are bleached blond." And my gut instinct was to be like, I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, but also the truth in my heart was that there was absolutely no justification for not believing them, because of course they would, and sure enough these bozos roll out onto the stage and they are all four draco malfoy-ass bleach blond. God it looks a mess on Jeremy LOL and while the color/dye job wasn't bad on Alex, it was clear his finer hair wasn't holding up as well against the chemicals because it was just a fluffy riot mess. BUT GOD IT WAS REALLY SO INCREDIBLY STRIKING OF A VISUAL for them to be all be wearing all pure white/beige clothes and then to have this bleach-white hair and all of it catching and glowing under the stage lights... god... clearly the effect they were going for and it WORKED, IT REALLY DID. I think it looks so damn goofy (mostly on jez) out of context but it's ABSOLUTELY nailing the Everything Everything Gig Costumes energy/uniform thing that I felt like they'd drifted away from a little the past couple tour cycles, I'm so incredibly here for it

The set!!!! The gig!!!!!!! it wasn't a wildly different set from what we'd seen in CA last year, obviously RDF-heavy supplemented with a heaping helping of singles from the other albums too, but I remember thinking Leviathan and Pizza Boy were especially excellent aaaah. And Schoolin'! And the NEW SONG! The two pieces of it I IMMEDIATELY absorbed and retained were 'the image of a little yellow face to tell you that I'm sorry' and 'I love you like an atom bomb,' and I was spouting those two pieces back to anyone who wanted to talk to me about it for the rest of the night. I'm so lyrics-pilled/vocalist-biased. Which was.... Unfortunate, for this DC gig, because I do think the audio mix was pretty rough - at least from where we were standing so close to the front, I wonder if it was at least a tiny bit better further back into the crowd in the area the sound system was probably primarily calibrated for - and we were REALLY losing Jon in the mix, especially underneath how enthusiastically the crowd was singing along a lot of the time. We were on Jeremy's side of the stage and we were really just getting a LOT of Jeremy. (Which, the bass did sound absolutely fantastic, so hard to complain about that, at least, but still.) I was very thankful to be going to a few more gigs beyond this one so that this wasn't my only experience with it, especially New Song!!! Plus there were a bunch of other little tech difficulties too? Near the beginning of the new song, Jon's guitar strap came detached and wouldn't reconnect, and after struggling a bit with that he decided to just drift back and pass it off the stage to their tech guy--but he was still kind of singing/holding the mic, so as he moved on stage, the mic cable yanked the microphone stand straight over, too. Then the rest of the night that stand was pretty precarious and nearly fell two other times, only caught at the last minute by a true homie who was standing directly in front of it in the audience lmao. I think Becky yelled HIRE HIM! at one point. Annnnd also for like a whole verse of NOTLK jez's bass boards just kind of Gave Up. He tried switching to his other instrument but that wasn't working either, and then finally it all sort of came back online, so he played a little stretch with the wrong bass and then was able to switch back to the right bass when there was a lull in his part. SHAMBLES. lmfao. god it was a great gig though. SO FUCKING GOOD TO BE BACK I LOVE BAND UWAAAAAHH I WAS SO SWEATY AND HAPPY

afterrrr da gig, we needed very badly to drink water and so we managed to do that I believe, and we kind of loitered in the Merch Line Situation trying to figure out what was going on. I had kind of resolved not to buy merch until at least NY, part because I really didn't want to be lugging anything around with me for too much of my trip (esp on this night where I walked) and part because I'd read a post that Irving Plaza was among the venues who'd committed to not taking a cut of band merch sales and letting them keep it all, and I was like, well obvi that's where I want to spend my money. Plus it was cash only in DC and since I'd kind of told myself NY I didn't even have cash out, so it was nothing. BUT!!! homie Adrian whomst I had met at the DC Foals show last December had been there, a few people ahead of me in the queue and also rocking out yaayyy, and he was trying to get merch but the ATM inside the venue literally did not have any more cash left inside it to dispense because everyone was taking out so much of it to buy merch AAAH. so he reached out to me like 'you're going to more shows than just this one right?' and asked if I'd pick him up the stuff he wanted later and then mail it to him so he didn't have to contend with international shipping and I was like aaaah absolutely! yay gig comradeship!

so I think becky finally committed to getting in the merch line and I was mostly just waiting With Becky and there weren't a ton of people left because the venue was trying to clear out, but the handful of us who were still there, a wild Alex Robertshaw appeared up near the stage/bar. we vibed out whether he was receptive to Fan Bothering at this time but it seemed legit, so a bunch of us went over and socialized with him and took some pics, got some signatures, etc, woooo. We tried to vibe out from him also if the other guys were gonna be coming out, and when and where, but y'all know Alex is the awkwardest member of this band by a country mile and we didn't really have too coherent of a discourse at this point in time lmao. Not sure who talked to him about what at this point as I was just trying to hold down the fort and be Normal. I was able to give Alex the bracelet I'd made for him at this point (he was so cute studying on it and reading it ahaha - "rave-- kevin-- kevins rave KEVIN'S RAVE" and he smiled and I felt cool), and also meanwhile Pete was still running around stage doing roadietech type stuff and I sort of politely flagged him down like "do what you need to do if you need to do it but also: Hi lol" and I got to give him his bracelet as well! yay ♥. He complimented my shirt--I'd been getting a lot of compliments on it honestly, it's their Yellow Bird Project shirt that Jon designed some time ago, only I replaced the plain white sleeves of the original unisex tee with some sort of vermilion "girly fit" sleeves that are more comfy to me and kind of give the shirt a different look haha--and I sort of joked on that, said as much, oh, I swapped the sleeves out, "It's to cover up how sweaty I get." and Pete gave me a deadpan look and went "You don't even want to go there with me" and I was like "YEP I FEEL MUCH THE SAME" and I think we both enjoyed a moment of feeling very Seen about the sweatiness hehehehehe. I love Pete he is my heckin Friend With no additional merch purchases (merchases) (hm, no) the venue was finally for realsies ejecting us so we drifted back out into the streets and just like... okay... now what........ this was the point at which I think our Band Groupie-ing Crew became me, Becky, Danielle in the fox ears/tail, and a lanky youth named S.P. whom I'd talked to in line earlier while doling out bracelets (he had the good E E baseball cap; he asked for an Arc bracelet and I commended him for being an Arc fan, since I feel like they are a dwindling/rarer breed, and then I offered up my hot take that Violent Sun is just the second coming and second pass at Duet, which he thought was spicy, and then he asked for my most controversial E E take and I told him that I don't really like Tin very much and he told me he doesn't really like Shark Week very much and we agreed to disagree and have a good night LOL) (anyway I digress !). It was a warm enough night and none of us really had places to be so we didn't mind just loitering and trying to suss out some more Guys other than just Alex and Pete, but slowly but surely we became basically the only fans left sticking it out. so we stuck together! We split up to try to find if there was a rear stage door at the back and SP and I went one way (the long way RIP) and Becky and Danielle went the other way and it turns out the way that SP and I went was an alleyway just FULL of rats. Too many rats in DC!! People like to talk about rats in NYC but I saw WAY more in Washington just vibing out on the sidewalks and eating trash. I'm not anti-rat, they live there and deserve to live, but oh man it was just. I did not especially want a rat encounter LOL. The rat alley DID actually lead us to where the bus was though!!, but there was also a venue security guy there who was immediately like "Nope, back up, leave, bye" and we were like. understood have a nice day, and doubled around a different way to meet back up with the other two. wwwwelp.

We loitered a bunch more and eventually saw Alex and his homies like, AT LEAST two more times, but we ultimately never saw anyone else. They p much confirmed for us that because this was the first night of the tour, they had a really intense load-out, and everyone was jetlagged to all fuck, that they probably wouldn't ever make it out, even though at least once Alex had said something ambiguous/optimistic enough to imply that they might yet, but really it just got SO late that we couldn't justify still being there for nothing instead of being like. asleep. lol. SP and Danielle got rideshares, Becky and I walked back as far as her hotel together, and then I hiked the rest of my way back too and went the fuck to SLEEP!!! FIRST GIG IN THE BOOKS!! WHAT A LOVELY NIGHT GOD IT WAS JUST SO BEAUTIFUL TO BE SEEING THEM AGAIN ngl I think the blond is really attractive on Mike with his darker brows/beard and I'm always a sl*t for jonathan so like. beautiful. finally some delicious fucking food

it was super nice of my mom's friend to let me stay with him!!! I was so delighted to see his cats again, I remembered them from the last time I was there like six or so years ago, they're sooooo floofy and beautiful aahh. he also provided me with a white noise fan without me even asking which was SO choice. zzzzz. My plan was to get up in the morning, get coffee someplace nearby at wherever he recommended, and then hit the road forrrr... Philadelphia!!! Night two!!!! I got some breakfast tacos at a hella legit place, messed up my coffee/milk/sugar ratio ever so slightly but not in an undrinkable way, and then frickin. autobot rolled out. This drive was not bad at ALL, I timed it pretty much exactly like I planned it to, which was to: get to my friend's place where I was crashing in philly with, ideally, enough time to take a small nap before I had to do anything else, because, god, despite being pretty exhausted and sleeping okay on the nice guest bed in DC, I had BARELY slept the night before I left just from Travel Antsiness and from both staying up way later and waking up way earlier than I meant to unintentionally, and a second little recharge zzz before I went and did it all over again really hit the spot.

It was soooo nice to see Mads again and to see Mr. Angus and also meet BENNY!! More host cats!! They are suuuch silly good little lads, Mads and I had a ton of Kitty Chat and just vibing out and talking about concerts and fandom and stuff, I was so thankful she let me stay with her and getting to hang out was icing on the cake of this trip! She pointed me toward the trolley I'd need to take to get to the venue, and after my baby snzzz and drinking a ton of water and suiting up in my Arc-inspired look (literally just a sweatshirt dress I bought specifically because it was color-blocked very very much like the jackets/outfits they toured Arc in, I saw it and bought it immediately lmfao) I journeyed into the city, hoping to just find a place to eat in the vicinity of the gig! I was way closer up in the queue this time, the people in front of me were really just like.... the usual suspects, Annika+squad and David+squad (incl. Becky, who'd apparently already been there when I got there but wasn't there when I arrived), and also a super-nice woman immediately in front of me named Robin who I MEGA hit it off with!!! Hanging out with her was such an awesome part of my experience at this gig!!! she's COMPLETELY Offline which is so powerful for her but I hope there's some capacity in which we can continue to be friends because she ruled.

There was a Dominican(? I think) place like one block down from the venue where a couple in front of me had gotten some stuff and so I ran down there to snag food too and holy shit this man gave me so much goddamn food. Just a HUGE pile of rice and beans and some pork ribs, and I got a pineapple fanta, and I just popped a squat on the sidewalk and ate as much of it as I could which was probably not even half of what he gave me but it wasn't even that expensive so god bless. Once I wasn't dealing with my food sitch any more I was freed up to pass out a bunch of bracelets again, and I even got a couple more trades, one that was just a bunch of black beads and a bunch of Xs and one that says 'BUSSY' which I am elated about, thank you so fucking much lmao. Also someone offered to trade me an ibuprofen LOL and I was like no that's fine the bracelet can be free... for now, but I will keep that in mind if I change my mind later LOL aaahhh i was just so excited to give the bracelets out it was such a good vector for socializing and making Friends and Gig Buddies. I did learn p quickly at Philly that I should have made way more Man Alive, GTH, and Raw Data feel bracelets because those were basically the first to go every night and then I got stuck with just sad unloved Re-Animators and AFDs :( I was trying to like! do equal amounts of everything to give everything the love because I love them all! but people got favorites out there damn lmao. I was happy to be able to give Robin the MY KZ one because she said that's the first song she ever heard by them and it's special to her because of that (and then also it's been in the touring set and she got to hear them perform it too yay!!! I don't remember if she said she'd seen them before but it had just been a very very long time, or what, idk, aaaah).

We were R I G H T on the stage at this venue, slightly more to Alex's side this time, and the lip/rise of the stage was not very high at ALL and it felt almost like... intimidating, or like it shouldn't have been ALLOWED, for us to be that close to the stage. :flushed emoji: jeez lmao. I didn't fuck w merch here either but some people around me did I think and I held their spots, and a nice kid from right behind me in the queue brought me a Liquid Death which was so incredibly sweet. Pierre's set passed much as it had in DC, lmao; his other musician guy had a sweet fit on, though, this like two-piece set that was a really really dark/muted camo, a blazer over a black top and then matching like athleisure-fit pants and black boots, it was a fuckin look. They had a song at the very end of Pierre's Philly set that I don't think they'd done in DC (and that I didn't get in PGH either, it turned out), and ironically that was actually probably far and away the song of his I enjoyed the most, so I got kind of into it there at the end! but MAN was I ready to see the boys instead. hnnnn.

LADS SO CLOSE TO ME. JUST RIGHT THERE AND SINGING AND ROCKING. the set was aaaalmost exactly the same as DC, but in Philly they shifted Bad Friday up out of the encore and back into the set proper, and then replaced it in the encore with Violent Sun, which I admit I'd been bummed to not see in DC because I think the Violent Sun/No Reptiles encore double whammy is so incredibly crucial to the vibe. Warmed me to have it back in. Obviously Pittsburgh had so many other contributing factors that put it over the edge, but if it weren't for all of those, I think Philly would've been my favorite/best experience of these four gigs. Jon was spicy (he sang so many of the Original Rejected naughty lyrics, this is where we got 'he's a vegetable now' for the first and only time and also the only gig of the four where he leaned into the 'Arch Jeremy' gag in Arch Enemy, hehehehe, plus also motherfuckin' distant past which is not uncommon), and we got way more of the New Song-- through the whisper network of Becky, AG, David, etc., etc., we'd pieced together enough info to know by now that apparently the title of the song was in the lyrics of the chorus, and so I think it was in Philly that we all pretty much determined/decided that this was Cold Reactor. I love you like an atom bomb and I've become a cold reactor. I wasn't diving as DEEP into SONG DECIPHERING as some other folks were, but I did like kind of working on it at my own pace and absorbing it into my heart and my understanding of the band and what they're about to start doing, and so this was really great, for me, here, beautiful, beautiful. I took almost NO pics and vids at this one because my phone was kind of dying but also mostly just because I was honestly having such an enormously great time and I didn't feel the need to try to do anything other than be present in my body at the gig and experience it live. you KNOW?? LIKE!! MUSIC. man. EDIT TO ADD: I forgot to mention a small tech flub that was actually so charming, where near the very end of Arch Enemy jon seemed to be having trouble with his guitar board in the front, and he spent so long in the outro squinting down at it and trying to resolve the issue that he didn't fully come in on the It's time to show your face! bit at the proper time, and he ended up just saying "It's time to show your face." right into the mic very unaffected and straight-up in his regular speaking voice at the very, very end when the song was basically over. lol. he is cute. everyone is cute.

(I WILL ALSO SAY I got the giggles SO BAD at david and amanda's gudetama they slipped onto the stage, oh my god--I was going to take a joke video just dramatically zooming in on it, as one does, except right when I went to do that it got caught up in jon's mic cable and just TUMBLED AND JOSTLED ALL OVER THE PLACE and that fucking GOT me and I was DYING and it was right at like. the serious, heartstring-tugging, fuck-yeah parts of No Reptiles where I'm supposed to be at CHURCH and instead I'm losing my shit into hysterics over this poor gudetama just rolling everywhere alksdhjglaksd, I had to bury my face in Becky's shoulder for a measure or more and try to recover, oh my godddd. EGGS!) -- (OH ALSO I LMAO I HAVE SEVERAL AUDIENCE MEMBER ~BITS THAT I AM DOING just like, clapping here or there, participating actively in certain parts of things, and one that I kept doing for some asshole clown reason was singing along with/lampshading Alex's quick backing vox on the second verse of Spring Sun Winter Dread-- Philly was probably the place where I was the most prominent/obvious/easy to see doing it, and it made both him and Jeremy REALLY snicker, ahahaha I'm sorryyyyyyy for being obnoxioussssss)

The merch/loitering sitch was sli-iiightly more locked down, in here; there was only so long Marty and I could pretend to be thinking about merch/hanging out with people who were actually in line but not actually being in line before they really truly wanted us to leave, and they were pretty pissed that I even left the venue with an empty/ice-only water cup, never mind any dreams of re-entry. The militant energy of the security at this venue compared to how relatively chill and normal DC had been (for two venues I would say of comparable size/seriousness) was def my least favorite part of the Philly experience. I was outside, finishing my water and chitchatting with some artsy youths who were also unimpressed with security, and Becky's messaging me like "they're in here!" and I'm like "well I'm not and I can't come back so you gotta tell them to come out here!" lmao. But they did!!! All the guys came out before too long and I very delightfully got to talk to everyone. I gave Mike and Jeremy the bracelets I'd made for them - THEY both apologized to ME outright for not coming out to chat the night before?? like hello you’re the band we’re the fans you don’t owe us anything - they kind of came toward my side of the door first, and talked and chatted some, vs Jon sort of peeling the other way to the other half of the loiterers - I honestly have lost track of the sequence of events here and what happened when, but it was largely unimportant hehe. (Gosh, but then I keep randomly remembering other unrelated details. Like, for example, Black Cat gave me their big ol' signature black cat hand stamp, and I'd been thinking, oh this will be fun to watch my four hand stamps stack from these four gigs, the way I got two together from The Altogether/Matt Duncan double feature back in July, and then Underground Arts put theirs on the INSIDE OF MY WRIST and not the back of my hand, and both Irving and T-Bird just did wristbands. BUMMER.) But mostly just Seeing Band, Talking To Band. This was when I overheard Alex definitely confirm to someone that the new song is called Cold Reactor, and he sort of half-seriously half-not said they just didn't call it that on the setlist in case there was another "New Song" they might want to decide to start playing there instead at the last minute, even though the longer this goes on the more confident we are that they're not going to do that and that Cold Reactor is gonna be a new single that probably drops once this tour is over <___< eyes emoji. Also, between Wednesday and Thursday we also knew that the bleach-blond hair is for Lore Reasons, which we assume are to do with Cold Reactor and the album it will be on, because of course it is. stupid. jonathan higgs I want to crawl inside your deranged pisces mind and meld with it vulcan style.

anyway, as far as my short term memory can be relied upon/will tell me is the truth, I think Jon was actually the last person I ended up in contact with on this night; I was drifting over toward him but someone else was still engaged in an active conversation with him, so I was like, well obviously I will wait my turn and let other people have jonathan time even though I'm the biggest jonathan girlie, I can just hang and go in when he frees up, and so I was turned slightly away from him listening in on other convos and talking to Becky and maybe Annika or a couple other people, and then suddenly there's a delicate hand on the back of my shoulder and Jon's right in my fucking ear ominously going "hello." askdjhgka. He was soooo cute and nice, I gave him the bracelet I made him as well (which was "I wanna be there" from Violent Sun and shades of re-animator orange) and he was immediately like Oh, of course you, are the bracelet distributor, and I was like hehehe yes, and he asked if I also had to do with the gudetama and I was like absolutely not I have no idea what is going on there lmfao. and I think amanda and david did take credit for it at that time of course so yes hehe. Ended up in a fun casual chitchat with Jon and Becky for most of the rest of the time here, with her trying to squeeze him for info about the new song and album and lore hehehe and him being his typical cryptic trolly cagey Jon, and it was all in incredibly good fun; he noticed her bracelet too, and she pointed it out like Yes I got the one that says This Is The Prophecy from big climb because it hearkens back to that bit they were doing on twitter from way before that song even came out so I gave her that one on purpose duh lol, and Jon says "Oooh yep I forgot about that. .. Album..." and mimed swiping his hair back like whoopsie lmao and it was such a silly little half-self-neg on Re-Animator lol, and so I said "WELP too bad! because the one I made from you is one of those too haha!" and he took another look at it as if to remind himself about it and then went "Well yeah that one's good" with a wryer wickeder laugh and I was like lmao tell us how you really feel. But like he's right violent sun is perfect and I actually labored so long over what I was going to have jon's say because he was the only person I didn't have a really solid concrete idea of what to make for and ALSO he was the only one I REALLY wanted to get PERFECT because it's important to me and yeah. so it was. reassuring for him to like the violent sun one. idk anyway.

The woman we'd seen running around doing a lot for them, including merch, who recognized us from DC the night before and was fun and glib about it, and who turns out to be: Tour Manager Sam, finally had enough of our fucking about and started very efficiently organizing us all into "everyone who wants a pic with themself + all four guys come get in Now and I'm gonna play photographer and then we all gotta go the fuck home" and I respected it SO much lmao, so we had sort of a rotating queue of group picture taking and then the guys all went back inside the venue (I kind of fingerguns'd Jon like "New York :D?" and he looked at me just SO Put Out and just deadpanned "Of course you're going to be there." of course!! lmfao) and we started talking amongst ourselves just out of reluctance to let the night end/social energy we still wanted to wallow in and that was cute and nice. I said goodbye to some folks who weren't going any further on the tour. I had such a wonderful night. Then, lo and behold, we turn around and Jeremy's up on the stoop of the venue, and he's like, I think I've locked myself out. I am locked out and I also don't have my phone on me. lmfao jez. he goes "I am going to blame jonathan" and we allowed him that. I was like, do you want me to TWEET AT SOMEONE LOL and he was like good god no they'll come back for me eventually, and then yes they did, and THEN we all left hahahaha. becky insisted on sticking with me part of the way to the trolley but I was like, it is coming in 14 minutes and it says it's gonna take me 12 minutes to get there I gotta GO!, and I freaking missed it anyway!!! and then I had to wait like OVER HALF AN HOUR MORE for the next one and i didn't even get ON the trolley till like 12:50 and it was soooo late before I was back at mads's place aiyaa. But, all in all, TRULY SUCH A GOOD NIGHT I JUST LOVE BEING IN AN ACTIVE BUZZY FANDOM SPACE AND MEETING FANS AND PARASOCIALING AND DANCING AND SINGING AND DOING ARTS N CRAFTS. you KNOW?? you know. you're on tumblr you get it.

The Philly to Jersey (pre-NYC) leg of my road tripping was set to be Thee shortest drive I had to make the whole time, so I let myself have time in the morning to keep snoozing and fucking about, even though I once again woke up way earlier than I'd hoped to and didn't ever make it back to sleep after that. But the tradeoff was still super nice and relaxing vibing with Madeline--I offered to buy her breakfast in exchange for the couch-crashin' and we got hella bagel sandwiches and cold brew from a place real close by her apartment, and scarfed 'em down while watching the most recent ep of Make Some Noise and just shooting the shit (again, largely about either fandom or kitty cats. We are simple folk). My sandwich contained salmon, a fried egg, and the most incredible sloppy caramelized onions, what a banger. The last truly good food I truly enjoyed before my mega super Travel Tummy set in and wrecked my whole shop metabolically speaking, rip. I took a little rinsy-rinse shower at her place too, and then finally made myself get up and Go to do the runaround silly business of driving to and parking in NJ, taking the ferry in to Manhattan, and then taking the subway to Allegra's place for NIGHT THREE IN NEW YORK CITY WOOOOO. I LOVE going to E E with Allegra!!!!! Once again I used her place primarily as a spot to change out of my car clothes and into my gig clothes (it's RDF night; I wore an oversized pale beige button-up shirt, actually left over from my Foals Antidotes costume from last halloween hahaha, gussied up with E E pins and jewelry) and to fuck about with bracelets. I made Allegra a special In Birdsong bracelet, the only one I did from that song :) because allegra is my special E E friend!! and she needs one of her special song!!! Fandom... is good. Allegra also had a kickass outfit. We stopped in at a tex-mex place she really wanted to try that was nearby the venue, and i got pretty nervous that it was gonna be a little late before doors for us to be hitting a sit-down dinner spot, but we rushed it along pretty well on the food and got our slice of dessert cake to go in a box and everything was A-OK. And I had time to hit a bodega for merch cash from the ATM and a pineapple soda for fortitude! let's GOOO irving plaza.

God, Irving was kind of a shitshow when it came to queuing and security though. There were a fair few people in line ahead of us, maybe just as many or slightly more than what I'd had in DC (definitely further back than Philly, although in line near us were the same also-eating-Dominican-food couple from the Philly gig, and I recognized them and was glad to see them again-- I FULLY DO NOT REMEMBER/DID NOT CATCH Y'ALL'S NAMES, AND I FEEL TERRIBLE BECAUSE WE HUNG OUT AND WORKED TOGETHER SO MUCH, i am so sorryyyyy), but then because it's not a sweet local friendly indie venue but is in fact Livenation As Hell, there's some person affiliated with the venue wandering up front offering some sort of VIP/fast pass line experience where you can just cough up some extra cash and get in your own special line and get to go in first regardless of how long other people have been queuing--you know the deal. Wack as hell. I think David and Amanda opted for this in some capacity, so I was happy for them about it, but a lot of the other people who ended up doing it had kind of rancid vibes of just like "concert-going" and not the very lovely communal sardine megafan energy everyone else had had thusfar. Also it put us where we were at in the queue standing in a place that just had a really terrible smell of sewage, which persisted almost the entire time we were there only to suddenly be replaced by a very powerful smell of bleach, as if whatever it was was suddenly being cleaned/sanitized. ICKY!! Annika was enough further ahead of us in line that I thought it might have only been over where we were but she said no she was definitely getting it too. new york city babey

Bracelet distribution got a little silly here, too, since the queue was wrapping SO far back and was being policed a little more stringently, but I had kind of figured I may need some kind of additional plan, especially since I'd decided not to wear my fanny pack (bum bag--fanny pack, says Jonathan Higgs in a derisive American accent, even as he's telling me he likes mine a lot, skdjshgalkj smh) since my shorts under my shirt had really capacious pockets and that just made for one less thing to worry about--I snagged a sheet of paper at Allegra's place, along with a gallon-size ziploc bag, and I put all the bracelets in there with a note that said to just take one if you wanted one and pass it back through the queue while we waited. It was kind of a crapshoot how effective I thought this was going to be, especially since I had to kind of wait to deploy it once there was a substantial queue BUT by the time there was a big queue it meant that I couldn't see exactly HOW big from where I was near-ish enough to the front, so I didn't know how far the bag was going to make it, if someone was going to end up stuck with my whole big bag at the back of the line (esp since I had a fair number of extra Philly bracelets left over that I lumped in with the NYC ones just because I still Had them).... whew...! BUT by the time Marty was there, he was further enough back from me that I asked him to kind of check up on it when it made it to him and keep passing it; and, by the time we were going inside, I could see zero sign of the bag itself but I DID catch a lot of people milling around me wearing bracelets, and one or two of them did stop me to thank me (since I'd indicated on my note in the bag that I was the person with green hair hahaha), and then I never saw 'em again, so I guess it was a relative success!! Yayyyyy!! WAY less conducive to making New Line Friends than the DC/Philly setup had been, but incredibly effective at making sure that all my bracelets found new homes rather than me having to take a huge handful home with me again and them just sitting in my house forever LOL. success! :)

tl;dr about the bracelets. not important compared to concert and band. WE GO INSIDE!! They have such dumb security/bag check. a gender-split process where the men get patted down by a dude guard and the women get patted down by a lady guard? In TYOOL 2023? you hate to see it. She felt the Sharpie in my back pocket and made me take it out and surrender it???? MY METALLIC BRONZE SHARPIE ? ? no sharpies in the venue I guess. Talked to at least one other person who got sharpie-confiscated too, but also at least two people who fully didn't and still had markers just fine. Absolute shenanigans. Allegra and I didn't quite get barrier due in part to fastpass line nonsense but we did end up right exactly behind Annika &co. with perfect sightlines, once again stage-left/Jeremy-ward-of-center. we don't hate it! my Philly pals to my left with David, Becky et al in front of them. Me fully surrounded by redheads. LOL.

this was the laaaatest show of my whole run, a whole lot of standing around just waiting for Band, and also definitely the energy of "trying to politely vibe to pierre kwenders's set because he can clearly see me and look straight at me even though I would much rather just skip to the bit I actually came for and don't necessarily need to see his set" just slowly increasing every night RIP lol. BUT WE MADE IT! ohhhh new york. EXACT same set as Philly but I couldn't even be mad about it because I was still so grateful to get a Man Alive song that wasn't just MY KZ (not that I don't love my kz obviously, but it HAS been in the set literally all eight times that I have seen E E live as of this Irving Plaza gig, and something else from that album is fun fresh delicious) (OH, SWEET THREEP OF FRIDAY EVENING, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW) and to be getting COLD REACTOR again, especially becaussseee by this point I knew just enough of the lyrics that I felt confident singing/mouthing along conspicuously with the parts that I Did know, aka I See You Sir I'm Doing The Thing Just Watch Me, god I wish I knew how to be not so fucking extra but then again no I don't. we did get saddled with some Rather Annoying audience members in our near vicinity--a couple I'd spotted in the fastpass line earlier wedged themselves hard between me and my tall redhead/mask-wearing homie from Philly, all like "ummm we're short :)" because they. were, but that didn't give them a right to be pushy and rude, and their vibes were kind of shit because the sense I got was they were mostly there because the girl really loved the band and the dude didn't know much about them at all, and also they were already drunk so early on in the set, and they were talking loudly with some other fans they'd just met and getting Lore™ explained to them and it was just a lot of. loud talking and shoving. in my vicinity. when I would have preferred for there to. not be. BUT Also materializing behind me was someone who said "I saw your bracelets on twitter do you still have any!!" and I had to be like UHHHH FUCK, NO, I turned them loose into the queue, did they not make it as far as you..?? and she sadly said no, and I was like, well the only one I have left is this one I just left on for tradesies/advertising purposes, and it says "akon in the butterfly house" so that's kind of a deep cut, if you're familiar-- and she went WAIT REALLY and seemed SUPER jazzed to get a Dave Sardine-ass bracelet and I was like OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT, GOOD, ACTUALLY, because I'd made four of these and I knew they were going to be the deepest cut/hardest sell and I was really really hoping that whoever ended up with them would actually get and appreciate them. so thank you, andrea, for being that person, and for appearing exactly when the bracelet needed it most. so glad to have hung with you this night. sorry that you too found yourself among the ranks of the sharpie-confiscatees.

ANYWAY, OTHER THAN THAT, THIS AUDIENCE WAS FIRE AND THIS GIG SLAPPED. We were finally in a space and an environment that REALLY lent itself to the crowd actually full on bouncing/dancing instead of just kind of wobbling and vibing and everyone in my immediate zone was really going hard. I LOVE this fucking BAND. I love every song by this band. I love when Jon just points the mic at the crowd and the entire crowd sings the whole song word for word and note for note. I love that Jon was still desperately trying to cram the name of the host city into the start of My Kz, despite the fact that "Washington" subs for "Lucifer" perfectly (he has done this both times I've seen them in DC lol) but "Philadelphia" is WAY too stupid long and "New York City," while a syllable shorter, scans metrically in an extremely busted way and you could have just said EN WHY CEE or. y'know. lucifer. but okay man you do you. Jon was just as rowdy as the rest of us lmfao. he was like, climbing up and down off Mike's riser, he was finding people who were taking photos/videos and staring directly into their cameras (me fucking included--I'm sorry, Jon, you can't make eye contact with me while singing the "When I saw you, I fell in love" part of Leviathan, I am pretty sure that is illegal and a crime against my humanity), and basically all the tracks from Get To Heaven (plus like, Cough Cough and NOTLK) blew the fucking roof off the place. I think he donked some My Kz lyrics hehehe he just skipped to the alt lyrics of the chorus too early without completing the standard chorus first at the end, and a little flubbo in NOTLK and a tiny stutter in No Reptiles too, everyone was just TOO ROWDY and he's THROWN LOOPY and man did we not care. I said multiple times to people on this tour that pretty much the closest things I've ever experienced to true Religion are a) being in an E E audience for No Reptiles and b) being in a Hedwig audience for Midnight Radio. they're the same spiritually in my heart and also like do people who love Jesus feel this way and is this why. insane. the cult leader imagery was Not Wrong!!!!!

I wanna MERCH! I got in the line not too long after the show wrapped, but true to reports I'd heard about the pre-show merch line, it was moving verrryy slowly, with just one guy manning it who was not exactly quick and a card reader that seemed pretty chuggy too (but hey, at least NY was taking card). I'd known I wanted the poster--it's got my favorite neon orange on it, it really really slaps, and I wanted something to get signed--but I let myself talk myself into a t-shirt too, mostly because I was REALLY excited to buy E E merch apparel that wasn't black or white. Yellow!! a really freaking good yellow!! I wish the yellow ones had actually had the tour dates on them like the black and white ones did but the yellow branding has been pretty exclusive to this leg of tour (i.e. vs the red branding of the west coast one last year) and it looks soooo good with my hair that I don't especially mind. I also knew that Adrian wanted a copy of Caps Lock On, but that he also wanted a shirt, but I hadn't heard back from him about which shirt or what size so I just got the book and my stuff and then bounced. Communique from outside was that Alex had surfaced but no one else, but that Alex had promised appearances by the rest of them, but that also Alex was already gone and unlikely to return by the time I made it outside. I posted up with all my friends from inside, god this was SUCH a good sardine squad this night, and it took some waiting but eventually the promises came true! All the other boys surfaced and we had some REALLY great fan chats and mingling this tiimmmmee. oh my gosh. A guy came with a Modern Bison CD that Jon and Jeremy were really truly overjoyed to see and to sign and take pictures with; I talked to Jeremy about the bracelets some more because he'd been wearing the one I gave him the WHOLE GIG IN NEW YORK SO LIKE THAT'S GONNA BE IN ANY PHOTOS THAT WERE TAKEN PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING, oh my gosshhh, he was so nice about it and enjoyed that his Arch Jeremy matched my Arch Emily, the vibes were impeccable; and then I got everyone to sign my poster, but of course Alex was gone already, so Jon offers to forge Alex's signature and goes "look it's like this" and draws some loopy scribble on there and I'm like, lmao, sure.

thing was... I had absolutely heard Jeremy signing something for someone else the night before talking about how he was getting really good at forging Alex's signature for him, since I guess it's normal for him to be the one that disappears the sneakiest (god he really is just the Justin Craig of this band, it's 1:1, huh), and so when I told Jeremy this, he was like "I'll do it" and I was like "no Jon did already do it" and he was going to just leave it then, like, oh, well, okay, but then he saw the mess Jon had made and he was like "--that's quite dreadful actually-- the trick is to not overthink it--" and so now my poster has two forged Alex Robertshaw signatures and zero authentic ones. l m f a o. (To be fair, I do have other things they've all four signed, and Jeremy's fake Alex is at least passable, and Jon's fake Alex is Absolute Dogshit Nothing. I am obsessed.) I even got Peter to sign! He was talking with another fan about a gift she'd given them in the past that had sadly been part of what they lost in their studio fire, it was really heartbreaking to hear. He also thanked me again for his bracelet and told me he planned to give it to his daughter and that she would love it. We took a pic together! Pete the GOAT.

While I was making the rounds with the other boys and other fans, Allegra mostly in tow, swapping sharpies among those of us who still had them, Becky was back with Jon, taking a couple videos for people who weren't there in NY to talk about stuff that they were curious about--I think in the context of Maria, Becky said something like, she thinks the hair is crazy, and Jon said into the camera something like, "If you think it's crazy Now, give it like two or three more weeks, and you're really gonna think it's crazy." SIR WHAT. If the blond is a precursor to something else happening I'm gonna be so the opposite of normal about it, and if the bleach is a stepping stone toward the boys dyeing their hair Other colors I am going to be PROFOUNDLY NOT NORMAL ABOUT IT, AND IF ANY MEMBER OF THE MANCUNIAN ROCK BAND EVERYTHING EVERYTHING HAS THEIR HAIR DYED GREEN ANY TIME IN THE NEAR FUTURE I AM GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY INSUFFERABLE. tyler the creator unfollow me right now etc. etc. etc. The more I've thought about it I don't THINK this is what's up--my sense is that any Cold Reactor music video is probably already filmed and ready to drop alongside the single pretty quick after the tour ends, rather than being something they're going to film/put together entirely post-tour, so they probably needed the bleachblond for some energy similar to how I felt about them when they first walked on stage in DC, but Oh man...... OH MAN............ I digress. anyway.

following up from that, Allegra (I think? Or maybe still Becky and allegra was just Present) addressed the notion of the hair being related to the Lore, and like, did that mean lore for the single/the upcoming album ? ? which was what we were assuming, and Jon said some demented and ominous and extremely exciting phrase like, "The lore for this one is.... b o t t o m l e s s" in his always-startling real deep Jon voice, and that was the fucking sound bite of the evening, folks. FOLKS. ALLEGRA AND I WENT ALL THE WAY BACK TO HER APARTMENT JUST CONTINUALLY SAYING "THE LORE IS BOTTOMLESS!" my body is so god damn ready.

We bid farewells to all our friends for whom NYC was their final stop on this tour!! SAD!!!!!! Going to miss all the homies T___T it's not fair that we're not just all going to every single stop on this tour I don't think? it should actually be illegal for us not to be present when the band is performing?? the hugest RIP. Hugs exchanged all around. Me trying to say bye to Jon but he's engaged with someone else so I think I just awkwardly said "See you tomorrow" twice and then we left. becky maaaybe trying to last minute scramble to also come to pgh now despite not really having accounted for it in her plans originally ? ? I was not certain what she intended here but I supported her. yes. me, annika and AG for sure being there at least. we ride. Back to allegra's where I did, unfortunately, sleep ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLY/BASICALLY NOT AT ALL due to being so hot and stuffy in my little nest on the floor that it was making me nauseated, I think I got maybe 2.5 hours tops, but I didn't really have a choice because if I wanted to be back home in time to do ANYTHING other than just rock straight over to the queue for Thunderbird then I knew I was going to have to leave so GOD DAMN early in the morning to haul ass back to where my car was and then drive the seven hours to pgh. But I did exactly that!!!! bitch!!!!! Other than some issues like, managing to make a timely pit stop for gas/potty/coffee, I endured the miserable long roadtrip despite myself, raging my way through the poconos, downing the largest cold brew Wawa would sell me, having a truly tragic car vs quesadilla incident, etc. My BFF Francis even got on the phone with me for the last hour or so and we chatted and I got to give them the whole update on the tour thus far, so fun! They MIGHT try to go to the Chicago stop next week!!! if they feel like they can swing it, and I was like ok no pressure but also it's been an extraordinary experience for me thusfar and I highly recommend. So if you see Francis at E E Chicago please holler at them kindly from me!!! :) But at the very least they said they did want a T-shirt and venmo'd me money to buy them one, since I was already still gonna have to get one for Adrian. woooooo

I got home with, yeah, basically exactly enough time to shower, get my outfit together, and regroup before heading to the venue !!! I JUST BARELY missed the bus that would've gotten me there the most promptly, largely due to not being able to find another fucking Sharpie since irving plaza took my first one lmfao, and it ended up being quicker to walk there than to wait the 36 minutes it would've been for another bus or whatever. I still had MEGA travel tummy so I just snagged an apple and scarfed it down on the walk over. Annika was already there queuing! so we hung out in line together and waited and drank the waters we had definitely brought in from outside the bar and just vibed lol. and she was like, I heard them checking two new songs that haven't been in the setlist yet, and I was like ha ha lol like what, and she said, kevin's car and leave the engine room.

and listen, I was optimistic. that my social media obnoxiousness and well-known, easily observable public desires might yet sway them, because come on it's my hometown and it's the last show i'm gonna see on this tour and I sent them donuts, and those were MEANT as a KINDNESS and an ENTHUSIASM FOR DONUTS and not as a bribe, but if anyone wanted to interpret them as a bribe anyway whomst was I to say no, but like. just because I want the band i like to do a thing absolutely does not mean that they have to fucking do it. I want to be crystal clear that i have never at any point EXPECTED them to do this. i just. hoped. yearned in my heart of hearts. and also had very sound rationale for how possible/likely it was. Here's How Engie Room Can Still Win. yfm. but the soundcheck all but confirmed it in my soul for me. and I was like... glad, that she'd been there and caught it and could tell me about it, because it gave me time to like, come to terms with the reality of it, emotionally. AAH. AAAAAHHH, OKAY. BITCH, PLIABLE HEAD, IT'S ALL HAPPENING.

we lingered and watched the queue form behind us-- I spotted a kid I'd seen at the Philly show, god bless. Everywhere we turn, repeat customers. I was telling my work friend today, I feel like the US fanbase for E E is significantly smaller than the UK audience, but we make up for it in that we go fucking hard. Every US fan is a superfan. there are no half-assed american sardines. and that has been so BEAUTIFUL and means the WORLD to me to be sharing it with the other ones of you. Bracelet sharing rocked at this gig!! I had exactly as many as I'd set aside for Pittsburgh and no more, since all my spares had evaporated up at Irving, A new person ALSO HAD BRACELETS!!! LIKE, for realsies Made For Trading At This Show Specifically bracelets, it was suuuuch a delight, so in addition to my eclectic collection from the previous gigs I now also have one that says RAW DATA FEEL with some truly choice glow in the dark bric-a-brac on there as well, and my heart was so warm aaaaaah. fwiendship :) Also spotted in the pre-doors queue were the Pizza Boy costumed guy and a woman I met at Foals in 2019?? who I guess automatically recognizes me because of the green hair, but just. omg. the community!!!! I'm dying!!!!!!

There was a slight will-call kerfuffle that nevertheless did not stop me from being dead center dead at the front right in front of where jonathan's mic was destined to be, and I was like. god. here we go. the home stretch. This was ABSOLUTELY the WORST place to be to be pretending to be interested in pierre's set, because he kept looking straight at me and dog I gotta admit four shows in I was feeling pretty tired. like, the energy of E E Itself was going to fully reinvigorate me, but nearly everything else on the planet was like totally disinteresting and I wasn't really up for it, especially when it's my semi-sex-repulsed ace-spectrum ass being just really put off by the suggestive gyrations of a performer that is not to my tastes. UM SORRY BYE HAHA. they didn't even play the one song I kind of liked. I managed to miss like two and a half songs of his set being still locked in the merch line at least lmao. literally WHILE I WAS STANDING IN THE MERCH LINE they sold out of the yellow shirt and I couldn't get me and francis matchies so I had to get them the black instead :( but thankfully they still had the one Adrian wanted because idk what I would have done if I had to scramble for a plan B with him on short notice haha. and I had EXACTLY enough cash for the two shirts left from the day before and I was paying Tour Manager Sam with it like oh my gosh I'm so sorry this is like my sweaty pocket cash from last night this is kinda gross and she was just like, No actually that's honestly exactly how I've been rolling as well and it is kind of gross so like agreed hahaha. She's the best. Idk how long she'll be tenured to them but I'd love to see her continue to exist in like their coterie moving forward. impeccable vibes.

also used merch waiting as a way to distribute more bracelets and get a drink of water! WOOHOO NOW I AM READY TO RECEIVE MY COMMUNION THANK YOU. they put the setlists down and there was a very small fraction of me that wanted to avert my eyes but like I. I had to know. and annika said yes there are new songs in the list. and I peered into the list and my song was there.

hey guys. hey guys? look, this was for me. I have to be honest with you. i manifested this. by being annoying on twitter. by being god's specialest costume-making donut-gifting bracelet-slinging weirdo. I'm owning it and it's mine. I was exactly EXACTLY right with "well, if they put Engine Room in they'll probably take Leviathan out, because they'd kind of fill the same role of slow moody song in the set, and then they'll probably swap in a different non-Man Alive song to compensate for Engine Room being there instead," and this is exactly what happened, and so then not only did I get Engine Room but I also got REGRET, WHICH IS ALSO AN EMILY THREEPWILLOW PLIABLE HEAD SONG, BECAUSE HERE THESE NERDLORD KINGSHIT BANDBOYS ARE IN MY GODDAMN BACK YARD, they're in my house and god it took me the whole fucking set up to then to just prepare, like I had to try not to think about it so I could enjoy what was right in front of me. God it was so fucking, fucking good. our position along the stage had Alex's stuff REALLY forward in the mix which was kind of new for me, but jon was just right there and every time I lifted my hands to dance and to yearn it was like, the only thing stopping me from touching you is my own sense of propriety and not any kind of physical barrier or distance, and the person immediately behind me was seeing the band for the first time and felt similarly about NOTLK as I did to Engine Room and those two songs were literally back to back in the set so we kind of screamed and cried and died together, I gave her a huge hug, and LOL SORRY NOT SORRY THAT I GOT MY KZ AND LEVIATHAN TAKEN OUT OF THE SETLIST FOR Y'ALL, PITTSBURGH, I DO FEEL KIND OF BAD BUT THIS WAS UMMM IMPORTANT TO ME, THANK YOU, goodbye. goodbye I left the planet. I thought I was going to cry and I nearly did but I didn't, but I did actually maybe start hyperventilating. like I'm glad I knew it was coming ahead of time because if it had been a full surprise I think whatever was happening to my lungs would have been exponentially worse and I may have even fainted.

(which, btw: jonathan. jon. when he came out on stage, he almost immediately got his mic cable caught on the edge of where his setlist was taped down, and in jerking it around, he whipped the setlist up off the floor and way upstage toward where Pete was; when he finally put it to rights and taped it back down, he just left it where it was at, far enough away from me that I definitely could not read it anymore; and like DID YOU DO THAT ON PURPOSE? TO MOVE IT OUT OF MY LINE OF SIGHT, TO MAYBE KEEP ME FROM READING IT? SURELY YOU HAVE TO KNOW THAT I'D ALREADY SEEN IT LIKE 15 MINUTES AGO. NICE TRY BUT IT'S TOO LATE I SAW EVERYTHING. i love him. i'm in physical pain.)

knowing this was my final one, I went so, so, incredibly hard, I let myself dance and mosh and scream and take way more pics and videos than I had before, I leaned on the lip of the stage, I had an absolute fucking blast. When the set was over a few other people who were more strategically positioned (i.e. people who had not had their most easily accessible setlists unceremoniously yoinked several feet away) snatched up the closest ones way quick; there was a general tension in the crowd at being able to see jon's, but it being further away out of reach, and one ballsy-ass kid (the "Kevin" person who'd accompanied the pizza boy person) actually clambored up onto the stage and ninja'd over and took it for himself, which inspired two copycats to do the same for some discarded guitar picks (and all of which definitely provoked a very loud, unimpressed, authoritative barking of "HEY!!!" from some security somewhere, like, they definitely shouldn't have done that!! yikes!!!!). I, instead, very patiently waited for an opportune moment to get the attention of their short king guitar tech as he was running around doing teardown, and someone else flagged him first and got pete's setlist, and in my final moments I got him to get me mike's. Gang, I'm gonna be real with you, I was not leaving my Pittsburgh hometown show in which they played Leave The fucking Engine Room without a setlist. there would've been blood or at the very least tears. so like. thank god lmao. Satisfied, we got some water and then headed out!!!

It was a long, chilly wait for the boys outside--god, the chilliness was REFRESHING, though, it's October for crying out loud, and DC and Philly and NY had all been muggy sweaty hot with no need for even long pants, much less a jacket, but I was glad I'd had the forethought to wear my flannel around my waist to cover up the YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT printed around the ass of my shorts on my walk over to deter questions, lmfao. We easily identified the spot on the side of the venue where we assumed the guys were coming out, it was all just a matter of time. (AG and I getting some confusing-to-parse messages from Becky? Idk my phone was SUPER dying so I was trying to leave it on airplane as much as possible, I didn't even make it to the end of the night, RIP needing to use my map all day in the car and even with it plugged in spending more than I was juicing of the battery. Listen i needed PICS and VIDEOS!!) I saw Jon first, and he almost looked past me before spotting me there because I was pretty close to the corner of the block, and I just stared at him, and said, May I hug you. and he said, of course! and I hugged him so long and so hard just like, thank you, I was extremely emotional then and I'm also getting extremely emotional now just typing about it, and he was like omg haha what for? Coming to your town? and I was like coming to my town and playing my SONG!!! And then he said something with the tone of a snarky teasy joke but that was like flusteringly truthful underneath about them legitimately rearranging the set quite a lot for me, and I have not stopped screaming internally since then, and Jeremy joked that I'd just seen the exact same set three times and they felt they ought to give me at least something new ha ha ha but like it wasn't entirely a joke, and I just don't even know how to process this. i am perishèd in the soil. anyhow.

I wanted both my setlist and my Supernormal EP vinyl signed by all the boys, and I managed this with relatively little doing ("A deep cut!" jeremy remarks of the supernormal, haha), but I didn't want to be crowding them and getting in the way of other people getting lad time, so I kind of took a backseat and just talked when the time was right, but Jon did kind of keep wanting to talk to me. We talked about the new song, and we talked about the donuts I sent over--oh my GOD, because I was like, they're from that place over there, you can see the big neon donut sign from here! haha, and he was like dyou know what, I knew that's where they were from, because I went over there earlier in the day and got one for myself, I got a huckleberry one and I came back with it and everyone was like, what's that, they were very jealous, and then not too long after that this box of loads of them just shows up-- And like I am a donut fairy psychic wizard. Also everyone who is ever in Pittsburgh should go to Oliver's donuts and eat their fabulously good products. I will shill for them literally any day of the week. This is the second band I have given Oliver's to this year. I cannot be stopped. ANYWAY. i honestly almost could have written that prediction on an envelope and sealed it, that they'd end up wandering in there on their own only for me to send them some too. i was so tickled that jon got the huckleberry one because it's their signature flavor and it's SO PINK and allegra and I had just decided the night before that jon higgs is hot pink coded. like, in the universe where they are dyeing their hair multicolors for the lore. anyhow. it's good shit.

i had SO much fun after this show, even though it was so chilly and dark and we were scrungling around on a literal street corner outside a wine and spirits store, I was like holding people's things so they could get pics and signatures, I was showing off my supernormal booty shorts, I was talking to Jon about lore----- ohhh, my god, I had exactly two bracelets left when the night was over, literally the end of my stash, and it was one Final Form FIRST BODY LAST BODY that I said, y'know, I'm going to save this for my bestie francis when I send them the shirt, because that's the lyric I wanna get a tattoo of, and it'll match with my PLIABLE HEAD bracelet, and it'll be another sort of besties matching thing; and my one lone AKON IN THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE bracelet that remained, where I'd kind of said, well, if this one doesn't find the right home tonight, then at the end of the night I'm going to give it to Jon too. So I dug in my bag and passed it off, and he was like "what does this one say.... kon... Akon... Akon in the house--what is--OH AND THERE'S A LITTLE BUTTERFLY ON THERE, God--" and he was GRINNING and he was SO TICKLED BY IT and Jez chimed in with just like "The attention to detail--" and Jon was like "this is my favorite one actually," he LOVED IT AND I WAS SO CHARMED AND EMOTIONAL ABOUT IT, and then he offered me up something like "you kno-ow, this, the song, of this, there's actually a reference to it in something, something you've never heard-- and--that you never will," doing his cryptic Jon troll grin, "the one thing that didn't make it," with the implied end of that sentence being "onto the album," and 'album' in this case being implied to be Raw Data Feel, which they have very publicly said that for once was an album where they just put everything on and didn't cull any songs or reserve any bonus tracks to release later or whatever. So I said, "Oh, from the one that we've been told had no cuts...?" also not explicitly saying RDF, and his answer to that was vague/nondescript enough but was probably an affirmative, but then he did follow that up with "that's lore that's SO far down the line, WAY WAY out there," and god, just, how deep does this man's brain and nonsense even fucking go. how far into the future is there LORE. BOTTOMLESS!!! I am obsessed with him. i cannot stress enough how blorbo he is to me.

The shorts came back up in conversation too ("Sorry, let me just look quite closely at your ass for a moment--" "It's okay, the shorts are designed that way--") and him saying, yeah, we do talk about some of the costumes still, and then segueing into asking if I had plans for this year and what I was doing, and I said, maybe, I'm not sure if I want to tell you, and he said, Is it to do with us, and I said, Neither confirm nor deny, and he said, Well if it's not, then, I want to know, with kind of a 'duh' tone ahahaha because like true there would be no reason to be coy if it was nothing to do with E E at all, and I explained that like I kind of have to have two costumes ("of course you do."), WELL because y'know the E E ones don't really play to or land with the general populace (a very cheeky "No!") so I have, just, one that's for going to parties, and one that's for fucking around on the internet. He seemed to find that acceptable hahaha.

Anyway what I REALLY wanted with wearing the Supernormal shorts was a group pic of all five of us normal frontways, and then a group pic of all five of us facing backward/ass to the camera a la the picture of them outside the White House, where you could see the goof of my shorts but also all of their butts, but this was an ABSOLUTE DISASTER TO DO when it was so dark that phone cameras were taking everything long-exposure, and also they'd all had just enough beer to not really be following on what the bit was. Absolute shit results on the backwards pic because I couldn't, y'know, see to coordinate it, because I had my back turned. (Me yelling, "Not just MY butt, EVERYONE'S butts, come on!!" into the streets of Lawrenceville.) Utter failure. Didn't care. I love these fucking guys. The vibe was finally kind of winding down, closing-time energy, the guys still had to get on the bus to Boston right away even with tomorrow being their day off, it was a Boston day off and not a Pittsburgh day off where I could offer them free ice cream sadly, so they all sort of bowed sweetly out. Jon gave me his like, I Am Part Of The Band clearance ID badge from the venue, kind of out of nowhere, he was like "sorry this is all I have to give you, it's the least I could do," and I was like WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU'VE ALREADY GIVEN ME SO M-- YOU COULD DO WAY LESS ??? but I guess now I have that, too. I tried to give him the King Of Oil sign from my fatberg costume, which I'd initially brought because I thought it would be a fun photo taking prop but the photo situation was the aforementioned disaster so that never really came to any fruition at all, so I was just going to gift it to them, and he said "My suitcase is already so full of so much random shit-- that you've given us--" and then right as he was leaving he just said "Thank you for being such a weirdo" with a voice full of all the kindness and affection in the world and I just yelled "ANY TIME!!" and then oh so tragically the night had to be over.

it's been nice, though, because I'm so used to driving the long drive home at the end of an adventure and having that signify the end, of getting to the end of the car ride and having nothing beyond that but the rest of my regular life; and this time, I drove all the way home, but when I got there, the adventure was still happening, right in my neighborhood, right down the street, and all I had to do was walk back home alone in the dark and climb into my own bed at the end of a long and beautiful night. i can already tell that this is going to be one of my most special memories basically forever, and now every time I drive or ride the bus to and from work each day I will be passing by the place where Everything Everything performed Leave The Engine Room for me, and that's so profoundly special that I don't even have words to describe it. I love this band, I love the people in it and I love the people its gravity pulls in to orbit around it, I'm just so goddamn happy. I don't even know what to say or how to end this.

[maybevillage]

hahaha i loved your EW post and read the whole thing while i was in a dps queue. i agree w/ you so much. i never found hermes or fandaniel v. sympathetic and i never liked the argument "if you don't like hermes, you've never been depressed." like. what? there was so much of that flying around when EW was released. i also rlly hated the time loop like WHY DID WE TELL VENAT EVERYTHING. she would have been a stronger character if she knew nothing about the future. it's just unfair that she knew she'd have to spare emet, lahabrea, elidibus from being sundered and she knew they'd wage war on her sundered children... and she let that all happen? just for the wol? i rlly liked her when i finished EW but over time i realized so much convoluted stuff happened just so you could be told that your wol is venat's special little blorbo. omg. i didn't like the emet fanservice either... i wish we had learned less about the ancients actually, the amaurot playground should have been the end of it

lol yayy ty :D i'm happy you think so.. dps queue is brutal rn omg. also huh???? that's so strange like

i don't think being depressed is what's wrong with his char 😭😭 it's annoying bc i really sympathised w him until that post-dungeon part than i really did just stop caring

also yeah i feel really conflicted about venat like i like that she's morally grey i guess and how much she loves the world and everything in it is cool but her actions confuse tf out of me.. i agree i feel like her knowing about what happens makes her so strange to me like then how could she let any of this happen (i mean ik why it's just time loop nonsense) but then why write it this way... like idk just weird writing choices. just makes her seem so weird now. why does she have to spare those three specifically btw i feel like i know nothing abt endwalker help. the answers cutscene made my brain feel like a rock

also you are meeeeeee like i was done learning about the ancients from shb no offense to them. i completely agree. i hate to overcook something

[planetcruspy]

VIDCON AFTER THOUGHTS: a review of my first and sadly final day of vidcon anaheim

SO I'm just making this because I have a lot of thoughts AND for anyone who didn't get to go this year who wants to know what the experience is like! This is going to be really long post so apologies for that :3

Registration was pretty easy for me, but I also could just ask literally anyone for help if I was confused.

FIRST MEET AND GREET: MR. TELEVISION aka AIMSEY TV

The queue had 5 lines, the first ones being those with disabilities, so that they could go first. I was in the fourth (or fifth depending) line. The wait wasn't very long, plus we could sit on the floor. They sadly couldn't sign anything due to time, BUT gifts were allowed and there was a little box to put them in. OKAY SO the actually meeting and greeting was VERY quick, infact I think aimsey made a tweet about how they had 20 minutes to spare when they thought the time was up. This being my first ever meet and greet I was SO NERVOUS, as was probably everyone in the line. This being said ITS OKAY TO BE NERVOUS. The best thing to do is plan out everything you want to do and say in the line or even before you arrive! I would make sure you can get everything done, including poses, in under 15 seconds. NOW don't be like me a rush so much you regret it. Here's how my turn went:

ME: Haiii

armsey: hiii you look amazing :000

mE: thankss! :3

oh yeah i gave them a hug

and then we went 👍👍 and ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ and i gave them another hug and then i ran away as fast as i could/j

I really wish I did more, like chatted some and I also thought of some killer poses the day after, but it was my first time like I said and i was nervous so i dont blame me! BUT they were super nice and gave great hugs too!! By far the best M&G

Next I jumped right into another line for ranboos meet and greet!

The wait was the second longest wait out of the three, but I talked to some awesome people in the line so it wasnt that bad. Plus by that time I was a little tired and dehydrated so that didnt help the wait feel any shorter lmao. I planed literally two poses I think and those were just thumbs up and me sucker punching them in the face :3 Other that I honestly couldnt think that good with the nervousness paired with the dehydration and shortness of breath from my binder. AND QUICK DISCLAIMER: DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT WEAR A BINDER THAT IT TOO SMALL FOR YOU, I had a new one waiting at home for me and the smaller one was sadly the only one I had. I also didnt bind at all that week except for that day because I knew how small it was. ALSO DRINK WATER, BRING WATER BOTTLES. I wasn't that badly dehydrated but I still made the mistake of not bringing a water bottle. SO please please bring some water with you, Especially at conventions. Disclaimer over :) SO heres how it went

The photographer was having trouble with the camera (or maybe not just something held him up) so he didnt get to scan my wristband right away, so I just stood there awkwardly for a minute lol. And then he scanned it and then I didn't hear the thing go off immediately so I stopped AGAIN.

Me: Hiii

Ran: Hello! :D

mE: so erm can we do thumbs up?

RRAN: yuh!

Me: and then can I like punch you..

Ran: sure! lets do it

and then i said my goodbye and ran

ran: Nice to meet you!!

THOUGHTS:

I DIDNT ASK FOR A HUG AND IM SO PISSED ACTUALL SOBBING ABOUT IT

I really wanted to talk more but I got in my head about time and stuff and ended up not saying much of anything 😭 And of course I thought of better poses the day after. But again all on my part and it was lovely to get to meet them ^ ^

NOW my third and last M&G was Jack manifold!

This was probably the longest wait out of the three, since there was also someone finishing up their meet and greet when we got there. As well as he was signing things too, which I am so happy about! so I didn't mind the wait.

By now I had loosened up, got something to eat, so I was feeling a lot better. Heres how it went!

Me: HIII

J munee: Helloo :)

me: Thank you sm for being here! (and then something about all the people)

Jack: Its alright!

Then we did thumbs up, mewed like gods and um

WHICH TOOK HIM LIKE 4 TRIES TO GET IT RIGHT BTW

ANYWAYS Then he signed my House of Leaves book! So awesome, big thanks to jack for staying to sign things and chat with everyone!

SO that was my big post talking about vidcon and my thoughts. A big reason why I did this was to also process everything myself lmao. Um thanks for reading lol, sorry this was long tbh I was debating on posting this for a minute cuz of cringe but i am free

[meadow-roses]

WIP! WIP! WIP!

please :D

:D :D :D

Here is a section from the second book of Felix's backstory, secret identity reveal jailbreak scenario :D

I chose this one mainly cause I've got some art for this scene coming up in my queue 😂

Uhhh Felix is not doing too hot, Grace is fighting down a panic attack, and Erin is being MVP like usual. It's a whumpy scenario lol

They were paused for the moment, tucked into an alcove that was storing some kind of generator. The bulky machine served not only as a visual buffer from the rest of the hallway, but also to drown out the noise of their hushed conversation.

Grace needed to catch her breath- a result of her stubbornly insisting that it only needed to take one person to carry him. Erin and Tychus were reviewing the map Erin had drawn over her arm, and coming to the conclusion that they were, in fact, lost.

Felix was slumped against the wall thinking about the fact that this would be a perfect time to be throwing up, since they were already at a stop, but there seemed to be nothing ready to come up yet.

Maybe this meant he was finally done.

They were discussing their getaway route, he realized, and none of them were familiar with the base's layout. Felix still had it memorized.

"Erin," he said, as loud as he could force his voice to go, "Where are you trying to get to?"

She looked up at him in surprise, then back down at her arm. "I don't exactly know. It was this room Tychus and I came across on our way to find you guys. There was a window in it I think we can use to get out so we can avoid doors with security cameras and coded locks. The problem is the hallways aren't adding up to my notes."

She sighed in defeat and sat on the floor next to him.

"Are you feeling better?"

He nodded.

"Can I see your notes? I might know where it is."

Erin seemed confused, but she complied, holding out her arm in front of him and tracing over the theoretical route with her finger as she explained.

Grace leaned in to join the conversation, one arm looped around Felix's torso to help him stay upright.

Felix listened closely, letting his body slump against her so he could put all his willpower into visualizing the route.

After Erin had finished, he nodded.

"Yeah, there's a hallway between these two that's not marked on the map, so we got mixed up when we took the first left instead of the second. The rest of the map looks pretty accurate."

"How do you know the layout so well?" Tychus demanded as Erin added in the missing hallway to her arm.

"I've been here before," Felix replied.

He realized that really didn't answer the question, but he was too exhausted to want to go into detail.

"I hope you're planning on explaining things later," Erin muttered.

Felix swallowed. "I- I'm sorry guys. For not telling you sooner."

Grace gave him a reassuring squeeze as Tychus turned away, shoving his hands into his pockets and biting down on the edge of his lip.

Erin watched him, concerned, then addressed Felix with a sigh.

"It's fine I guess. It's probably not something anyone would want to talk about. I'm just confused why none of this showed up on your government record at all."

"You looked up my record?" Felix asked with a hint of amusement in his tone.

"Yeah," Erin pouted.

[horce-divorce]

the other day my friend assured me that if my parents kicked me out id be staying with him, and I was like, tbh I think we'd be good roommates and he was like "WE'D BE GREAT ROOMMATES AND I BET OUR CATS WOULD LOVE EACH OTHER TOO AND ITD BE SO GOOD" and like to be clear. I've lived with a lot of people, LOTS of whom i didn't particularly like living with. I have a good handle on vibes. and he's right, we are thee ideal roommies. I already know I can spend days on end w him and not get irritated bc we car camp together all the time. and I LOVE his little house it's so cute. and we have really similar taste in decor so I have so many ideas for it. and we have so many tv shows we need to watch together and aaaa now I can't stop thinking about it lol :< I have NO income tho I literally cannot help him pay the bills or keep us all fed by begging online :((

that said... I have been thinking about trying photography as a business venture again now that I'm back home and more self assured... And actually my friend is into that kind of thing too and could probably help me... I am honestly considering trying that instead of appealing my inevitable disability denial... And like I think it could be feasible? I definitely have times where I'm bedridden for weeks, but that's why being my own boss is so important. If I charge enough / choose my gigs right that's totally doable. and if my friend is helping me, too... HMmMMMm. I am scheming....

speaking of. If you wanna encourage/remind me to work on my photos go follow @idleseas. Buncha stuff in the queue rn but I still need to finish sorting and editing my 2022 pics and get ye olde SD cards cleaned out

[kriskalutz]

Hello! I finally got done with my craft projects so I went ahead and fixed up my queue for tommorrow. Since I've been gone for so long working I thought I could at least show you what I've been doing:

It's an embroidery piece I ordered online. I know for most competitions people think of 100% original artwork, but this competition is for our local mental health and wellness groups and a lot of the people participating are older, have limited income, or have mobility issues (specifically in their hands), so there's nothing against using kits so long as you do all the work for it.

This is the first time I've sew in over 2 decades and back then it was mostly cross stitch so I had to learn a lot of new stitches. I screwed up really badly on the ribbons and only figured out what was wrong after I finished it all up. It took over 2 weeks to finish because my hand kept cramping up.

Most of my group is putting in diamond art, though there are some doing original pieces too. We're allowed three pieces each and I didn't know what else to add, so I did my own diamond art too:

Think I picked a bad piece though: look how different the birds look! The more detailed one was supposed to be brown (cause it's female) and it looks that way from afar but up close you can tell it uses a lot of the same red dots as the male. This one took about a week itself and then I caught the flu lol.

But yeah I'm done cramming all the arts and crafts stuff so I can get back into the Sims! I've got Sims 2 stuff queued up and my plan is to keep playing that until it's time for the heir to take over and then we miiiight swap over to the Highlighters again? Depends on how fast I get my mods sorted.

[achillean-knight]

To the person who wanted to see more of my progress with the comic and my thoughts!!

G'day! I finished the OG's, or what the digital bundle provided.

Although there was a fair bit that made me a fair bit uncomfortable, it was an enjoyable time!

It gave me an insight into Noirs character. I look forward to when I read more for him, as I purchased this bundle:

Because I have the first one physically.

However, there's some questions I have in regards TO the newer series I got. Will it get explained how Peter/Noir died and came back? Will it explain how he gets Ding Ding? Will it explain how AUNT MAY FUCKING KNOWS HES SPIDERMAN BUT DIDNT IN THE OG'S??

Because what ended off the digital OG's that I have was the reveal of White Widow and a little spiderverse spinoff where, that's the only thing that could hint at at death?? Where he was gonna be sacrificed then he got taken by spider people after escaping lol

Is there a comic or comic series inbetween I should look into because there's BIG questions swimming in my brain and so many loose ends I feel I should know jumping into the newly purchased comics. (Or did I just simply forget?)

Nevertheless, in regards to the OG's, it was interesting to experience my first superhero(?) Comic and to get a REAL scoop into how they function and how different they are to the graphic novels and manga I've read. I kinda feel stupid that I judged them and avoided them through teenagehood BC the films didn't.. I don't like the live-action superhero films I had to consume as a kid, and judged purely thinking they were very much the same as the comics. FUCK WAS I WRONG, idk how they'd even be able to make a film or series around Noir without it being bloody and/or Gorey BC HOLY SHIT??? LMFAO??

I guess that's why I like spiderverse, the get the artist liberties in the movie, and I feel just purely BC of those films, my eyes have widened at how cool comics can be in regards to marvel and such. I love it so much that I bought the Ghost-Spider comics (mostly BC my friend asked me to read them) and I plan to get the Spider-Punk comics (I just don't know where to start.)

So yeah, besides the very uncomfortable tones and themes with the Noir comics, I fucking love it and it amplified my love for his character more. I can't wait to see more of him in the future, be it by new comics or Beyond the Spiderverse, I'm thrilled to see my Boi more >:D

(also, PS, I review books, comics, manga and graphic novels I've read. I should really queue them huh)

Oh my god this comic is so good but god am I getting VERY uncomfy at the contents in it.

Spiderman Noir comics, absolute BANGERS but should NOT BE 13+??!!!?? WITH THE CONTENTS IN IT, IT FEELS IT SHOULD ATLEAST BE 16+? MAYBE 17+? NOT 13

Just know, I keep feeling like I'm shattering into a million Lego pieces each time something happens.

Also, fuuuuck, poor Peter man, dudes going though fucking HELL with this comic 💀

[slurp-imagines]

yoooooooooo your blog gives me life; love your work, you're amazing !!! thank you for existing 🙏🏻 i was hoping to request some deidara alphabet headcanons, for letters l, o, p, and y? but only if you have the time, and interest, of course! thank you 💕

Fluff Alphabet: Deidara

(ask meme link)

hi again! thanks for sending in a request - writing this made me realize I’d been under-appreciating Deidara lol. he’s cute, what can I say. hope you enjoy xx

L = Love Confession: How would they confess to their s/o?

Probably with a beautiful show of art, to be honest.

Deidara’s a bit of a flashy guy (no pun intended I swear), and he’s not above showing off a little to impress you lol. It’d be a good way to gauge whether he actually wants to get involved with you, too. If you aren’t a person who can, at the very least, respect his art (although the best case scenario would be to enjoy and share his beliefs about his art), that would be a deal breaker for him.

So yeah, you’ll get a little C1 demonstration from him, and he’d probably preface it by saying he just wanted to show you a new technique he came up with. 

Surprisingly, it’s nothing huge and crazy– the initial clay molds are something rather small but endearing, and he definitely put a lot of thought into it. And the explosions? Very deliberately timed and positioned. Deidara’s a meticulous artist when he has the time to be

And when he asks you what you think, he’d have the cutest grin on his face. Not his usual smirk, but something easy, hopeful, and happy. Maybe even somewhat innocent?? He genuinely looks like sunshine for a moment there

If you respond positively (how could you not, looking at a face like that), then you’ll get the confession. He’d be pretty straight forward about it, too. 

“I knew you’d like it, hm. It’s part of why I love you.”

O = On Cloud Nine: What are they like when they are in love? Is it obvious for others? How do they express their feelings?

It’s pretty obvious for others, especially to those who are more observant. I don’t know how to explain it except by saying that you’re like his… you’re just his favorite

Like he’s more interested and animated when he’s speaking to you compared to others. Somewhat like with his artwork, there’s a certain note of pride in his voice whenever you come up. And he’d defend you with vigor and without hesitation, both in battle and in simple conversation.

All in all, despite being kind of reserved with the PDA at times (more on that in the next letter), Deidara is too passionate a person to really hide his affection for anyone or anything. He’s basically got passion coming out his ears

P = PDA: Are they upfront about their relationship? Do they brag with their s/o in front of others? Or are they rather shy to kiss etc. when others are watching?

Deidara is definitely one to brag lol. He can’t help it sometimes. When he’s proud of something, he likes to talk about it

He’s pretty big on physical touch in private or around strangers, just not so much around the Akatsuki (he’s the youngest member and he’s pretty sure a handful of them don’t take him seriously enough already, which is So Rude)

So when other Akatsuki members are there, he uses touch sparingly and deliberately. Maybe he’ll give a firm squeeze of your shoulder as he passes by you, nothing too intimate though

But if they’re not around, he doesn’t care to hold back very much on PDA. Some days you’ll have an arm around your shoulder at like all times lol. If you want a kiss in public, he’s not shy about it as long as you aren’t like straight up making out in front of an audience lol.

Y = Yearning: How will they cope when they’re missing their partner?

Since he’s a member of the Akatsuki, he definitely has to spend long periods of time away from you for missions and such. He’s had plenty of time to get used to it but he still thinks he’s pretty terrible at coping lol

For the first few days, anyway, it’s not that big a deal. He’s just not a person who misses others straight away, it’s not how he’s wired. But eventually it would get to him during an extended absence

Mostly he’s just... upset. He keeps a reign on it pretty well, but his partner can probably tell when he’s really starting to miss you because his sadness quickly gets converted to frustration. He becomes so easily annoyed, and honestly, he turns into a bit of a diva (although if anyone used that word to describe him, he’d be furious lmao)

He knows the distance is unavoidable, though, so he just tries to speed things along. No more traveling by foot, he’ll have a clay bird fly them everywhere. It’s just faster.

“Let’s get this over with already, hm” precedes every fight

If his partner does anything to slow them down, he’ll be extremely pissed and will definitely nag them about it until they get in gear

[clove-pinks]

I just finished Hornblower disc four, and I know there has been some interest in me liveblogging my reactions. I'm worried my takes won't be well-received, even though I'm really enjoying the Hornblower TV series so far, because of my severe Captain Marryat/Frank Mildmay brain worms, and also my hatred of the fan favourite (?) Archie Kennedy.

I thought fans were upset that he gets killed off? I personally can't stand him and he can't get killed off soon enough for me. I'm wondering how much more of this character I have to endure (although it makes me more interested in the books, since at least I know they're Archie-free).

Ioan Gruffudd as Hornblower continues to literally glow with his radiant beauty in almost every scene. It reminds me of those memes about the anime main character, who is the only detailed, vibrant and unique character in a crowd of dull, ordinary people: except it's the most beautiful man on God's green earth, in a crowd of hideous filthy character actors. Like they really stacked this production with the ugliest men they could find, as if young Ioan didn't look pretty enough.

I'm sorry about the swooning, this is definitely not typical for me is all I can say. The fact that Hornblower is a swashbuckling age of sail hero means he almost inevitably has some Frank Mildmay-like moments, besides his curly dark hair and other attributes. Come to think of it, Frank's pretty cold-hearted—maybe this is why I hate lovable sidekicks idk.

I continue to enjoy fictional Pellew and even think he's handsome, but no one is half as gorgeous as Hornblower. He's like Frank Mildmay-tier beauty, except he has that stupid queue and breeches because it's (ugh) the 1790s. [eta: to clarify, I mostly dislike the long hair, and prefer 1810s hats too, breeches are okay if they are with hessian boots or gaiters, don't kill me breeches fandom.] I thrill whenever Hornblower shows some steel and takes command—ohhh Frank Mildmay dreamy sigh—although I always wish this was set in the 1810s. Or at least like, 1806-1814. What good is a new lieutenant if he doesn't have a shiny epaulette to admire in a mirror!

I still enjoy a lot of the costuming, and this is the part of the 18th century that I find most tolerable (the very end of it lol). I remind myself that Newton Forster takes place partly in this time. The production values feel overall better as the series goes on, and I really loved all the Napoleonic combat scenes and the redcoats. I appreciate that the douchy Earl of Edrington is a balanced character who is actually a competent soldier and leader. (Too bad his nice wavy hair couldn't be in a short early 19th century style, sigh.)

Captain Marryat, Navy guy that he was, took every opportunity to dunk on soldiers and said things like they never read books, and hate long sea voyages because of it. I feel like Marryat might actually have less evil French and Spanish characters? Not sure, and I'll evaluate Forester separately from the TV adaptation.

[youichi-kuramochi]

I- I don't even know what to say. I actually would have been able to finish long time ago but I just could not continue after that scene. I WAS FULL ON SOBBING HAVING A WHOLEASS BREAKDOWN OMGG HE GOT THE ACE NUMBER HES THE FUCKING ACE I WAS JUST ASGSJDJDDKDLDL

Just as that scene came up I just had to stop I could not keep going on and each time I tried to continue I started crying. IM SO FUCKING PROUD OF HIM. I felt bad for furuya but OMG MY BABY IM CRYING AGAIN

And omg I love Amahisa he's so cutee I wanna join his LINE group 🥺🥺 And Misawa being Misawa the whole time 🥺❤

I kinda figured out how Sawamura's first match would go but im just 😭😭😭 It's okay baby you can do better next time is what I said BUT WHERE THE HELL IS THE REST VIV??? THAT'S IT??? THAT'S IT??? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY JUST ENDED LIKE THAT?? WHERE IS THE NEXT SEASON 😭😭😭

I even started reading the manga after it cuz I couldn't stop seeing them.

Imma now go rb all the daiya posts from you. I'll put them to queue so you won't get bombarded with notes. I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE THAT'S IT??!!! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE

I just wanted to say thank you so much for getting me into daiya. This changed my life and I love all of them so fucking much. I'm gonna miss them so much i didn't even want to watch the last episode cuz that meant the end. Thank you so so much 🥺🥺❤❤❤❤❤❤

RIGHT????? RIGHT!!!!!?!??!?!?!?!????!?!???? LIKE BRO THAT EP. THE FUCKING. THE MONTAGE WITH GO EXCEED PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND. I remember watching it with bf when it aired and both of us just YELLING I am SO PROUD like FINALLY HIS TIME HAS COME WE LOVE TO SEE IT.

amahisa my BELOVED......... the boy just wants to have friends in a group chat he’s so cute :’)

ADKLJFLAKSDJFS YOU SOUND LIKE BF AND I MEAN THAT IN THE KINDEST MOST LOVING WAY POSSIBLE LMAO at least once a week he turns to me like so when’s daiya coming back huh asldkfjlaksdf but I know what you mean they really just. ended it. LMAO I’m reading the manga too now lol though I’m a crazy person and I can’t just like. start where the anime left off bc idk Reasons and Rules in my brain so I started from ch1 of act ii so it’s uhhhhhh slow going but I’m working on it!! and I hope u have a great time with the manga!! I think terajima-sensei is a lovely visual storyteller and there are so many stunning panels and stuff!! (and bc I physically Cannot stop myself from looking at spoilers........... many good moments to come after where the anime left off 👀👀👀)

I am SO HAPPY you enjoyed daiya so much!!!!! I really really think it’s SO underrated. the characters and the story and EVERYTHING is just. so good. and it made me learn baseball rules better than literally anything else in my life which bf, a former baseball player, is forever ELATED by. I’m so glad you gave it a shot it’s like. my only goal in life to get more people to watch and enjoy daiya and it’s been a treat getting to re-experience it all for the first time through you :’))))))

[hopeswriting]

[ID: Tumblr banner that reads, "My tumblr year in review". /END ID]

I posted 1 689 times in 2021

298 posts created (18%)

1391 posts reblogged (82%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 4.7 posts.

I added 2 446 tags in 2021

#queue - 700 posts

#image id - 351 posts

#khr fanarts - 348 posts

#self reblog - 239 posts

#timezone reblog - 239 posts

#sawada tsunayoshi - 133 posts

#khr - 130 posts

#katekyo hitman reborn - 126 posts

#khr fanfic - 97 posts

#khr skull - 83 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#but lal won't take his bullshit and he loves to see her not taking his bullshit but she's /supposed/ to take his bullshit like everyone els

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

i got myself worked up thinking about the cradle affair lol, so can i just ask: why didn't nono tell xanxus he was adopted before he had to figure it out himself?

he could literally have done it at any point between day one and xanxus building his whole damn identity around the fact he'd be decimo one day?

and nono was watching him grew up that way, knowing damn well it was never going to happen the whole time, and still, still didn't say anything?

make it make sense??

70 notes • Posted 2021-06-20 23:34:53 GMT

#4

gokudera really is so smart. i guess i never payed much attention to the fight scenes before lol, but his fight against chikusa is just smart, on the spot strategical decisions one after another that all pay off.

his first attack is clearly to see what kind of fighter chikusa is and what weapon he uses, but also just from the way chikusa deals with it he knows right away he's a professional hitman too. and when he uses his mini dynamites with no hesitation to doge chikusa's attack because he realized at once he wasn't gonna be fast enough to dodge it on his own (and then even if he still wasn't fast enough, he uses the momentum to attack chikusa). and how he takes advantage of his first failed "double bomb" attack to trick chikusa and hit him head on with his mini dynamites, and then finishes him off as he's distracting him by explaining his trick.

and like, it was also pretty much one-sided! he's literally chilling at the end of it, smoking on the floor with no care in the world lol. he makes the mistake to think chikusa done for without making sure of it, but if it wasn't for tsuna i one hundred percent believe he would have won round two too.

i just? gokudera man. he's great.

74 notes • Posted 2021-09-22 15:04:22 GMT

#3

under covid 19 guidelines and specifically the social distancing rule, would hibari kyoya:

A) thrive, because now not only herbivores can't crowd anymore under his law, but also under national law too

B) be pissed off, because like 70% of his daily deathly bitings come from people crowding, but now?? they just don't??? anymore????? or show up outside their house at all for that matters even when he's craving violence (and it simply doesn't hit the same if he bites them to death just because)

C) immediately turn his tonfas appropriate to use under covid 19 because the devil works hard but hibari kyoya works harder, meaning he adds the exact length to his tonfas so he can always be six feet away from the people he's biting to death (using his chains simply isn't as satisfyingly violent as his tonfas), and he bites them to death too fast for them to laugh or make a comment at how fucking ridiculous he looks

D) ruthlessly apply the guidelines on the willing and especially on the unwilling, and makes namimori a covid 19 free zone before it even had hope to spread in any way at all, and all that of course solely so all the namimori students can keep going to school

E) all the above because hibari kyoya isn't one to half ass things or be perceived in a way that makes sense

Bonus:

F) feel mortifyingly lonely during quarantine now that he hasn't herbivores to bite to death anymore (but no one has to know that), and chooses random students to send texts to ("psychological warfare" every dc member thinks but wisely keeps their mouth shut, and cheers on their president as he's trying to make friends the normal way for once)

G) tsuna is the only one terrified enough of not answering back he turns brave enough to actually send a text back, and apparently it means that if he doesn't answer the following texts within the seven hours he needed to answer the first one, hibari kyoya shows up at his fucking house

79 notes • Posted 2021-08-01 19:23:54 GMT

#2

prince of tennis is so funny. it starts with fairly realistic tennis as far as i can tell (by which i mean i know exactly nothing about tennis just to be perfectly transparent here lol), exaggerated to make it look badass of course, but the techniques are all explained and all around everything looks believable enough.

and then by the end of the manga there's suddenly devil mode where a guy feels so much bloodlust his eyes and whole body turns red because?? and it exponentially improves his skills somehow, and another guy can deprive his opponent from their senses with his playing style because he's the child of god so obviously it's a given he can do that, and also very visible tangible auras that let them see in the future, and at least by that point we still have somewhat explanations of how the fuck they're doing all that.

but then new prince of tennis takes it to another level entirely, and very tellingly we're not explained shit anymore. these guys can destroy walls with the strenght of their swings, or send their opponent flying, literally flying all the way out of the tennis grounds and more, and they play with one ball but can make it look like ten somehow, and there's black aura involved now too, and demons, and power from other dimensions, and like.

it's never ever acknowledged. none of it is ever fucking explained. their skills are clearly in the magical/supernatural realm now, but you're just supposed to nod along and go "yep, this is tennis, believable tennis i could definitely learn to do too with time and efforts, totally. just your everyday tennis i could witness if i were to turn the tv on a tennis match, absolutely, i believe all of you guys, keep up the good work". and it's so funny when you stop to think about it??

tho don't get me wrong it works, it's good and i love it, it's fun to read, but also. it just sends me how no one ever blinks at it in universe, even the ones that aren't tennis players akdksld.

165 notes • Posted 2021-06-10 00:24:54 GMT

#1

actually you know what, reblog and add what was your last straw/when you realized prince of tennis was going to be that kind of manga (or only add in the tags, or reply, or even send me an ask, whathever you feel like best!)

i'll go first, and it might have been way sooner for most of you, but i'm dumb and i literally knew jack shit about tennis (and still don't know shit about it, beacause pof sure as fuck doesn't teach anything about tennis qjdnqlw 😭), so it's only with the tezuka phantom that i was squinting my eyes at the bullshit half baked explanations, going like "oh, you're really going to go there pot? are we really going to do this?"

and then we did so much worse 😭😭😂

192 notes • Posted 2021-06-27 01:20:03 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[colour-outside-the-liness]

Hey, I'm doing good too. Just normal amounts of stressful stuff right now. Just moved to a country I've never been to before but can't complain, things are not as hard as the last time I did this so. Thanks for asking! Yeah, I saw you posting about some pretty scary health issues before, I'm glad you came out of that alive and hope you're healthier now!

The nerve some people have! Haha I know I would be pissed if people were questioning my intelligence like that especially after a couple of drinks in haha. Though I do like taunting people when I play group games, I'll be like "don't need to try that hard guys, you're gonna lose anyway" just to mess with them or just call people sore losers if they accuse me of cheating haha (they're probably right on the accusations tho). People get real mad sometimes it's kinda funny. 😂

Omg literally laughed out loud reading this! Hahaha, how did you manage to fall over a road sign then end up in a ditch? lol omg hope you didn't get hurt too bad 😂 I was trying to downplay my drunken escapades but since you shared yours I should tell you my worst one:

I was at this summer street party at night and got drunk on something made out of tropical herbs and cachaça (which is about 48% alcohol), drank 3 and a half bottles of that like it was apple juice, made friends with a bunch of strangers in a bathroom queue (who tried to talk to me weeks later but I had no idea who they were), had to be held by my best friend while I peed (mostly missing the toilet), fell in the middle of the street and scraped my knee, threatened this boy who was helping me walk and told him not to try anything funny or I would beat him up, then dragged my friends to the beach and left them shortly after to go make out with my ex, came back with lipstick all over my mouth and chin and when my friends asked what I was doing I said I was just talking to my ex and they were like NO YOU WERE NOT, hahaha then I kissed all my girl friends on a dare and we danced under the full moon, then I told my best friend I had to puke so she took me to the ocean but I changed my mind and happened to step on a dead turtle on the way back and started crying bc of it, but last month my best friend told me it was a rock I had stepped on (I believed it was a dead turtle for 7 years!). Had the worst hangover of my life the next day. ✌️✨

Ah I'm happy you liked it! I've never listened to Six musical before but it sounds fun! I can see why you like it haha made me want to dance around my apartment 💃. And hey if liking musicals is your thing then it's great, I'm sure Hozier will understand if he's not your top artist of the year. 😋 Here's my "damie" Pinterest board if you or anyone else wants to check it out, totally recommend making one if you're a visual person like me!

https://pin.it/UcHVlkq

Oh I could talk about Dani and Jamie forever I think. I love the beast in the jungle speech too and it's so painful to watch, VP delivered that beautifully, but I have to admit I'm always a crying mess from episode 1 when older Jamie starts reciting that song about being sad while waiting for her lover to return, this show is fucking cruel I hate it and love it at the same time hahaha. Omg your mom 😂 but I mean it's truly an honor to be compared to someone like Dani, no? She's really great even if she needs a little help haha (don't we all).

Aaah you're amazing! Thank you so much, I'll read this pirate AU soon!

I used to draw a lot, really loved doing it when I was a kid as I said before, and all throughout adulthood too but I haven't done that in almost a year now bc I've got a bit of a case of burnout I guess, it just takes a lot of effort to do it when it shouldn't be like that at all. I used to do fanart too, for other fandoms. Even made one for Dani x Jamie but ended up not liking how it turned out haha. I've got a lot of respect for writers and fanfic writers also! Yall can make words make sense in really interesting and beautiful ways, build worlds so enthralling I can see them vividly in my head. Writing is such an incredibly fascinating skill to have! And I guess the most important thing is that we enjoy doing these things right? Even if we think we're not particularly good at it.

Anyway, have a lovely weekend! 👋✨

Good I'm glad you're doing great but sorry you're dealing with stressful stuff!! Hope living in a new country goes well for you I'm so jealous that you've lived in different countries I'd love to live somewhere else even if just for s few years!! Awwh thank you so much I definitely came out of it alive and am feeling so much better now thank you I mean I do some pretty ditzy things so when people say it to me it's pretty deserved sometimes, I'm secretly smart and people just don't expect it so I never mind too much haha I might have to start saying the things that you do and just taunting them over it I mean, I usually do win even when they make me answer different questions so I will definitely have to start saying things like that to them Haha I love that you're just like "yeah they're probably right in their accusations" I agree seeing how mad some people get over games and stuff is funny (it's me I'm people I hate loosing games depending on what it is and I am very competitive) So it was very dark and all we had for light was my roommates flashlight on her phone but while we were walking home a friend of ours that lived else where kept texting her to make sure we were still safe (my phone as dead at this point) so while she was texting him her flashlight was facing down and someone had moved this road sign to the footpath and it was on that sits on the floor so while I couldn't see it I walked into it and fell over it but while I feel I grabbed hold of it and flipped with it and fell in a ditch with it on top of me... I was fine and was just laid laughing while my friend looked down at me and in the most northern accent ever just said "get up you dickhead." and helped me off of the floor and then asked if I was okay... and I was so it was all good!! Haha 😂 I love this drunken story that sounds like one hell of a night and is a roller coaster from start to finish!! I'm sorry you thought you had stood on a dead turtle for 7 years though, someone really should've told you that it was just a rock!! But that sounds like my kind of night!! I love nights like that... stories that will last a life time... the only down side is the hangover... luckily I have only ever had one hang over in my life and it wasn't the morning after the road sign fiasco... I felt surprisingly good the morning after that haha 😂 It's such a good musical it's about Henry VIII wives and I just love everything to do with his wives and that musical is so much fun and actually gives a little insight to the lives the six Tudor queens had away from Henry and with him because at school we're mainly just taught about him which sucks!! I loved the Hozier song and am definitely gonna have to listen to more of his stuff!! I love musicals so much I mainly listen to musical soundtracks at the minute- usually, Legally Blonde and Six on repeat haha 😂 Ooo thank you I will definitely check out this Pinterest board thanks for sending it to me!! I could talk about them forever too... since watching Bly Manor my niece has been asking me so many questions about it and I am more than happy to talk to her about it haha!! The beast in the jungle speech just breaks my heart every time I relate to it so much and VP just delivers it so beautifully!! Oh yeah now I know at the beginning that it's older Jamie I am just a wreck the whole show is just so beautiful and heart breaking at the same time I LOVE IT!! Even though it makes me sob- I keep putting myself through it!! I mean, yeah I was happy that she said it Dani is great but it was the way she said it... my mum can be something else sometimes... she said she thought Dani was like me the first time she does the accent when she says "I've fallen quite in love with London" because I just randomly do accents a lot too but it was the way she was like "She needs help... but I like her she reminds me of you" I was just like... "Should I go get help?" I still don't know the answer to my question about if I need help or not but I mean I probably do need it You're welcome I really hope you like it!! It's a

great fic I love it!! Yeah I get that if stuff starts taking too much effort and burns you out you're not gonna wanna keep doing it so it's understandable that you stopped!! I think fan art is great and I really would love to be able to do it myself but I just don't have the skill it takes!! Awwh it's a shame you didn't like the Dani x Jamie one you did I would've loved to have seen it!! Honestly there are so many talented writers out there and when I read their fics I am just in awe of the worlds they have built and the stories they have created we are so blessed in this fandom to have so many amazing writers and so many amazing fics out there Oh yeah definitely its important to enjoy what you do!! I know I love writing and love writing fics for Dani and Jamie so I think I'll be doing it for a while even if I'm not great at it haha Awwh thank you very much I hope you have a great weekend too!! ☺️

[functionally-immortal]

Talk about 5 or 8 or 39 (or all 3?)

(Link to the post.)

5: Talk about the best birthday you’ve had.

Ok, so first, I'm going to acknowledge the fact that I've had a lot of really shitty birthdays. There's a bit of shared pain here with anyone who has a birthday around a holiday. Mine falls near, and sometimes on, Memorial Day here in the US. As a kid, I had a lot of birthdays where only one or two people showed up (and some where no one showed) because everyone else's parents had opted to go camping or they were hosting a BBQ on the same day, etc.

Anyway! I have two "best" birthdays. The first was when I turned 18. I had finally admitted to my closest friends that 1) I have a history of bad birthdays where no one shows up and 2) no friend had ever thrown me a party. So my friends threw a pool party for me! Complete with smashing a slice of cake in my face!! LOL

We ate too much sugar, threw too many water balloons, and spent hours acting like little gremlins. There were 20+ people there, which was a far cry from the usual <3. I still think about that party nearly 20 years later, despite no longer being friends with any of those people anymore. (Some times when you grow up, you grow too different to stay friends. Still glad to have known them when I did.)

The second one was just this year, where I took myself to Disney for the first time ever. I had always wanted to go, but always found myself prioritizing other goals. I finally decided to commit, and went for a weekend at the beginning of May. The weather wasn't too miserably hot yet, and spring break was long gone, so it wasn't too horribly crowded either. Every ride and show blew me away with the level of detail, and I finally got to meet some princesses! It was an exhausting but amazing time.

8: Talk about the thing you are most proud of.

Ok, so the real answer here is "going to therapy", but that's boring. So let's talk about the time I got to work on theming for a ride/show at Universal Studios Orlando!

A little over a decade ago, I was employed at a shop that did "scenic design" - if you've gone to a mini golf place that was all decorated top to bottom with the same theme, or one of those restaurants that makes you feel like you've stepped into another time and place, or if you've been to Disney or Universal Studios, things like that - there are shops and studios that make all that theming stuff happen. I worked at one. I was a composite artist which means I worked with fiberglass. (I also did paint, metalworking, and woodworking, but my primary assignment was composite artistry.)

So we get a contract for a new Universal Studios attraction called Disaster Studios, which is a show/ride that showcases how special effects in movies and rides are done at Universal. A few weeks after taking the contract, Universal ships us a tank, a small airplane, and a bunch of other miscellany, and tells us to make things like "giant tentacle crushing a tank" and "recent plane crash still smoldering" and "house struck by meteorite". These things would be installed along the queue for Disaster Studios, to give park-goers something to ogle while waiting for the show to start.

I have never had as much fun as when my director handed me a crate of power tools, the sketches for the finished install, and said "go ham". I got to destroy parts of a tank! And then later build and paint a giant tentacle crushing this destroyed tank! I got to tear into a real plane with a Sawzall!

Actual footage of me working on the project:

I didn't get taken on the install job, which was a pity, but here's the finished tank on-site (colleague for scale):

THE BEST PART?? They shipped us an old JAWS shark prop and we turned it into the DUMBEST and BEST mechanical shark you have ever seen!

The tank was actually my second favorite part, because working on this shark was the highlight of my career. I could not stop chortling over how incredibly stupid this shark was. Every part was a joy to work on. See those stretched skin ripples, with the hooks in 'em? That was my favorite part! It makes no sense! I love it!

If I find the rest of the photos (buried somewhere on a CD in the back of a closet, I'm sure), I'll rebagel this and share.

39: Talk about things you wish you’d known earlier.

Oh, I have a whole bunch of these!

"Having boundaries is good, actually. Having emotions is, too. And it sucks to have to teach yourself how to have boundaries or how to have emotions as an adult, but the effort is always worth it."

"How another person treats you does not define who you are and has no impact on your intrinsic worth."

"Shame is a piss poor motivator."

"People give what they need to receive. What are you giving to others that you deserve to ask for and receive?"

"Instead of focusing on what you are running away from, look instead for what you'd like to run towards."

"Embrace the concepts of radical kindness and radical acceptance, and you'll accidentally unlock the ability to forgive yourself. Yeah, even those ugly parts that you think are unforgivable."

(Btw, your mission, hoomhum, should you choose to accept it, is to answer these in return. :D Thanks for the ask!)

[cycat4077]

Hello. So I finished Changes and may or may not have read it again and jumped immediately into reading how she meet the Carisi's thereafter.

I loved it... I may also have gotten myself emotional when she was about to leave the precinct on her last working day and he said to the affects of 'your not leaving without saying goodbye' and that whole emotional unsaid exchange totally got me. I was reading it at the right time, listening to the right music. Sorry that sounds ridiculous and maybe I'm not explaining myself well but hope you get the right idea 😊

As I think I mentioned earlier I think as I was reading, to me Sonny being Sonny which from I've watched on the show and from canon. But I absolutely liked how the reader had this first impression JUST LIKE ME (btw, I totally did too on my first watched when Det Carisi was introduced. I kinda was like okay, he's not Amaro, he kinda bugs me but alright). Then the reader totally falling for him over time - yay! And he for her. Queue the happy ending complete with camel coat 👌.

Can I ask when writing thoughts behind the story? Like was it that 'whole judge a book by its cover' people sometimes have when meeting someone new? And what scene/part was your favorite to write if you had to choose?

Anyways going to stop my ramble and gushing. But i just need to reach out and appreciate your work because it should totally be. And I probably also should calm my 'sonny love' down lol 😆

Ahhh! I'm so happy you liked it!! ^.^

"I was reading it at the right time, listening to the right music." - This is a whole mood! Honestly, I often do this to read and to write. Music gives me so much insperation for things so it's not ridiculous at all!

When I went back to season 16 to watch those episodes for the first time (mostly because Sonny lol), I knew going in that I'd like him but my impression watching him in those early seasons was the same as yours in a sense. This guy who can be a little insensitive at times, is spunky, a bit mouthy and trying a little too hard. But I knew what he would become and so I was trying to see it from a person's perspective who didn't know him. Someone who walked into SVU with no prior knowledge and just met him at face value. Then, much like I did as I continued to watch, you start to notice the little things and that he really is a good person under it all. Hope that makes sense XD

I also kinda wanted to write about someone I can relate to personally. Similar goals and ambitions but especially morals. I connect with Sonny's love of family most and just wanted to write about a reader who got that and appreciated those same things.

My favorite part of the Changes fic itself was probably that goodbye scene at the precinct. I like writing angst with happy endings after :P Also, I got an AO3 comment about that scene where Sonny asks if he was missed and they said they could hear canon Sonny actually saying that...which was such a great thing to hear. So, in hindsight, I love that one too :3 Also, also, part 9 and 12 were some of my favorite fics to write for later in the series ;)

Thank you so much for your rambling! I have the biggest smile rn!

Also, also, also, it's been two years + for me and my "Sonny love" is still going strong ;D If you ever wanna gush about Sonny feel free to hit me up!