#at this point I don't think there will be any cosplay events for me in 2020

[dr-rarepair-week-blog]

Welcome to Danganronpa Rarepair Week 2024!

This event begins on June 16th and ends on June 22nd!

Day One (June 16th): dreaming/soulmates

Day Two (June 17th): summer outing/school dance

Day Three (June 18th): self care/caring for the other

Day Four (June 19th): killing game life/mastermind au

Day Five (June 20th): gift giving/peace

Day Six (June 21st): found footage/local mystery

Day Seven (June 22nd): fashion/decorations

More information on the event under the cut!

The rules are the same as they usually are, but I'll reiterate them!

1. For organization, use the tag [#danganronpa rarepair week 2024] and [#dr rarepair week 2024]! Tagging me is optional, but it's the best chance of me seeing your content. Please also tag the characters involved in the ship and a ship name!

2. All forms of media are allowed! This includes digital/traditional art, stories, edits, and cosplays! However, using others' content is prohibited, and I will block you.

3. Incest and Warrior of Hope ships are prohibited, as well as anything involving Haji Towa. This is mostly for personal comfort. Any entries of these sorts will not be interacted with.

4. NSFW (heavy gore and/or pornography) is allowed, but it will not be reblogged here. Mild gore/implied NSFW will be reblogged. And please tag these things appropriately!

5. Please keep in mind that this is for rarepair content! Don't get me wrong, many mainstream ships are great, but I think that many rare ships also deserve a week to shine. And instead of making tons of individual weeks, I made one collective week for them.

And remember to have fun!!! I'm glad that so many people enjoyed the event, and I can't wait to see what people come up with!

6. There is no deadline for this ship week! Please feel free to do the prompts even if you miss the days!

QNA:

Are cross-game ships allowed? Yes!

What counts as a popular/disallowed ship? I made a list, which can be found here and will also be reblogged at some point as a reminder.

Do I have to stick to one ship for the whole week? No! You can if you want to, or you can submit multiple ships, as long as they're rarepairs.

Is implied NSFW/a fade to black scene okay? Yes! As long it's not explicit, you're good.

Are any characters besides the WoH/Haji Towa banned? No! The main game characters and manga/anime exclusive characters are welcome.

#danganronpa rarepair week 2024 #dr rarepair week 2024 #danganronpa rarepair #dr rarepair #danganronpa #trigger happy havoc #goodbye despair #killing harmony #danganronpa summer camp #my post

[shinjisdone]

Female!MC and Friends - Malleus Draconia

[What's it like to be friends with Malleus and be dragged to his Events as a female]

(Very much and I mean very much and I mean super duper, incredibly unbelievably, HUMONGUSLY AND GIGANTICALLY based on my oc's reaction)

Hooh boy. Malleus Draconia. Crown Prince of Briar Valley. Powerful Dragon-Fae (or something like that), super old and feared so much that no one dares to invite him to anything.

Well, to you though, he is Tsunotarou-kun.

Like, you're not stupid. After the shenanigans with Crowley, Grim, Ace and Heartslabyul, you quickly learned that NRC is much different than your home.

And even though you did not know who he was, you could still tell this tall, dark and mysterious person was probably very important (or caused as much trouble as the others).

ALSO HE JUST LAUGHED LIKE A VILLAIN WHEN YOU SAID YOU DIDN'T KNOW WHO HE WAS

AND HE CALLS YOU CHILD OF MAN???

YE HE'S WEIRD, BRO YOU WERE JUST TELLING THE TRUTH

At Helloween...

Oh? You walk out of your door and everything is all different? Where did all these decorations come from?

There he is, Malleus, dressed in eastern clothing and seemingly cosplaying as himself - a dragon.

He explains his intentions to use your dorm as Diasomnia's Helloween place and you're fine with it. While he certainly was cryptic at the beginning, Malleus quickly proved himself to be calm and collected - and especially kind. He respected your decisions, listened to your words with great curiousity and does not cause any trouble. You were able to quickly call him a friend, which is probably why he trusts you, too.

It's not like you got any money or dormmates to pull of the same thing as Diasomnia and you trust Malleus as well. He eagerly tells you of his newly-found knowledge of eastern dragons.

Yet as the night continues on and guests become more and more...demanding...Malleus' patience is waning. First, the assaults to the Ramshakle dorm and now one of them has the audacity to casually touch him. Malleus himself was surprised at his own impatience and he truly was ready to spit out some fire...

But then, the harassment went from the dorm, from him, to you...

A few first pointing out how your outfit does not fit with the rest of the aesthetic and then one noticed how you were that one magicless student, who failed to trick them when she couldn't perform any spells! And wait, you're a girl?! Haha, isn't NRC supposed to be an all-boys-academy?

Some are saying how funny this is, how cute you are or how you don't fit into here at all.

Some are getting too close.

And quickly, your vision is blocked by a giant, long, black dragon tail and deep, vibrating laughter. Malleus is finding a certain glee in their arrogance that turned into fear oh so quickly.

And when their little selfie-sticks caught green fire, his glee turned into schadenfreude as they ran off, swinging their devices in hopes the damaged will cease.

"You do not play with a dragon's treasures...come and fear me if you dare!"

He's getting wayyy too much into this and Lillia is thankfully here to stop this.

You thank him (and even though his sudden 180° was really uuuhhh scary) and catch your breath. This was really...something.

"Hah, thanks, Tsunotarou-kun. But, uh, I don't think we'd better do that...or we'll burn the entire dorm down..."

As much as Malleus has to begrudgingly agree, your little 'Tsunotarou-kun' cheered him up a bit. It's like honey.

Kinda feels guilty for going so full 180° afterwards though. He did not mean to ruin anyone's Helloween (aside from the annoying guests). He hopes you still enjoyed this? Your first Helloween in Twisted Wonderland with him?

Once you reassure him that you did, he'll be okay :)

Ask him for a trick-or-treat round! Or maybe don't, cuz he is Malleus Draconia, feared crown prince of Briar Valley and very much showing his dragon fangs, tail and fire. He isn't gonna get any treats :,)

Just...try to spook him! There is a chance of him laughing in your face and telling you that you need more than a simple 'booh!' to startle him...but good try, Child of Man.

Oooor, he actually plays along but instead of pretending to be spooked, he just chuckles before giving you a treat. It is the custom, no?

Uh, thanks????

Still feels kinda bad for snapping there (though he'd set people on fire again in a heartbeat for being this obnoxious and bothering you) so he tries to be a bit more considering. Will tell you that you are indeed not funny or out of place here. Your custome may not fit his but it is still a good one. (Thx tsunotarou...)

Shows you around the entire decorated dorm. Look how nice Ramshakle looks! (For once)

Haunted house tour? How intruiging. And you're inviting him to join you? How INTRUIGING! (Happy Malleus noises)

Will not end up being impressed by any of the 'spooky spells'. He can do better if you ask him.

Please do not, he will not hold back to make the earth rumble and the sky tremble just to get a shriek out of everyone. They're gonna end up running straight towards the exit.

Not scared at all. Either unimpressed or chortling out of politeness.

Malleus more or less is only here to spend time with you and if you have a good time, then he does as well.

If you do get scared, he's first gonna be surprised. Seriously? These cheap, baby-like, first-grader spells? They're more like special effects if anything.

Well, Malleus shall not make fun of you and instead promises to protect you when these 'horrors shake you to the bones'. Do not fear, the mighty dragon will keep you safe and sound.

If you're scared, he will find it funny, however. Technically Malleus is the scariest thing here in the entire NRC. Everyone does not dare to speak his name in fear yet here you are hiding behind him ('Just checking if your costume is intact' you say. Sure you do) acting as if Malleus Draconia is the most harmless fly in all of Twisted Wonderland. You truly humor him, Child of Man.

Watching the fireworks with him...

Oh? He is getting invited? (Malleus said calmly but the huge grin on his face betrays his composure)

Will do his utmost to learn from Kalim's home country, especially when he was so kind to him.

And look at that, his favorite Child of Man is here too. Couldn't get any better!

There is a certain relaxing atmosphere here that he cannot help but indulge in...Malleus is sure to drag you to a few places. He is just very happy to have such a long time to spend with you and not the usual nightly walks you two have.

Very happy to try these new outfits ESPECIALLY because they are not his style. Turquiouse silk adorning his horns...so intruiging, so nice!

Despite everyone wearing matching outfits, Malleus is very happy to have you two match. You may not have the exact same style but it makes him a bit giddy to know you're matching in colors and flowers. Perhaps he should introduce you to Diasomnia's wear so you can match again?

It's interesting to see you in different clothes in general...but he gets extra happy that you match. Try as he might, no spell can cast that smile off his face.

You look quite lovely. He'd let that slip off his lips.

The markets are so colorful. Will show each thing he finds interesting (it's everything).

And when you shop with that matching fit and flowers, many clerks will ask if you are a couple and offer couple things to you.

"Oh, what a lovely partner you have there!"

"Oh, yes she is." Malleus would answer casually, like it's nothing outstanding.

"Wouldn't you like to gift your girlfriend something nice and fitting?"

Would ponder about the offer while you explain, haha NO you two ARENT a couple!!!111!

Malleus would brush the comment off and simply say he'd rather prefer that exotic fruit over there. You and he can share :)

So you do.

And when nighttime arrives and the fireworks start? Malleus admires them (while secretly thinking HE could more magnificient ones with pure magic but he bites his tongue. No need to be rude after everything everyone here has done for him).

Especially since they invited him :)

Will enjoy the beginning of the fireworks with everyone before inviting you privately on a boat ride. He wanted to since the beginning and this is an opportune time, no?

Enjoys the rocking of the boat and the lit sky above. It feels like only you two can see the fireworks, like they are meant for you two only, even when you are surrounded by awing people :)

Still, Malleus' arrogance shines a tad bit through and he takes your hand and has your attention on his magic. Why don't we add a smaller firework display right here before our very own eyes? As the sky sparkles in all kinds of colors, your own show would sparkle in green :)

PLEASE DONT ACTUALLY Malleus says 'small' but underestamates his own power. WHAT IS SMALL TO HIM IS VERY CATASTRPHICAL FOR NORMAL PEOPLE

When you dance at a masquerade...

My 👏 man👏 looks so damn good. And he knows it.

Like, you cannot convince me that he did NOT go all the way out BECAUSE HE GOT INVITED BY ANOTHER SCHOOL

TO A MASQUERADE? OH MY, BETTER PRETTY UP

LOOK;;; AT HIS MAKE UP

HIS SLEEVES

THE HAT AND THE HAIR

THE HEELS!!!!111!111

100% expects you to compliment him. He, Malleus Draconia, is a bit of an arrogant guy and will totally indulge in your compliments while acting humbly and accepting them with grace.

(He knows he looks great)

Nevertheless, he will get a HUGE grin on his face ("W-Waka-sama??? Are you okay, you're grinning like a...a kid in a candy store...) when you call him...anything really! Anything that comes from you is worth a treasure.

Oh, Malleus? Handsome? Oh my, stoooop (actually dont).

You tell him that he does look like a handsome prince from a fairytale book, ready to steal the show with a bold wink - and he just...laughs. Laughs and laughs like villain from a fairytale rather. Oh, Child of Man...you truly know no fear.

Feels quite confident even when he slightly expects people to fear him. He doesnt want to make a bad impression.

Will definitely compliment your outfit as well, no matter what it is. It could be as fancy as his or something simple but Malleus will be sure to let you know that you look great as well tonight :) he wants you to feel confident, too.

Malleus will also absolutely ask you to dance! No matter what, he truly wants to have fun tonight and that includes dancing with you. He'll assure you if you feel nervous about dancing. He had dance lessons ever since he was a wee egg child so just follow his lead.

Might, uh, really boast about his skills by dancing like a real 'fairytale Prince' as you called him. He leads and swings and dips you as if he was born to do this. Does this to actually boast but to also impress you. See? He wasn't lying when he said you can rely on him.

He forgets the rest of the world as he does this. A smile graces his masked features as his eyes crinkle, looking at you.

While Deuce was a red mess as he touched your body, Malleus has no problem taking your hand while resting the other on your waist. He has no problem getting bolder either as he snakes his arm entirely around your back.

And as the dance ends and he bows to you, Malleus sees you snap out of the trance and quickly, clumsily bow back. He jokingly asks how it was, rather as a way to jest with you.

Yet you truthfully tell him that it took you off-guard and that it felt magical - even if he did not use an ounce of it. You weren't joking when you said he was like Prince Charming in these moments as you danced.

It startles him to have you see him in such a positive light...in such a romanticised, captivating light. Not as a dragon-fae or as a future ruler...but as Tsunotarou.

It brings a smile on his face and a faint feeling in his heart congregates for the rest of the night.

HELP IVE BEEN LISTENING TO ONCE UPON A DREAM IN BOTH ENGLISH AND JAPANESE AND....MALLEUS MAN HE CAN SING AND HE LOOKS SO PRETTY NOOOO

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #malleus draconia #twst malleus #malleus x reader #f!mc #twst x f!reader #brainrot brainrot brainrot #i just...have too much ugh

[hoeratius]

okay, asking this question is maybe the dumbest i've ever felt bc it feels like there should be a straightforward, obvious answer here, but every time i've tried to look it up, i've found nothing but pages upon pages of what feels like people talking in circles and only serving to make me more confused in the end. since you're the most knowledgable person i follow when it comes to the Classics, i figured this might be a good place to ask and maybe get an actual answer? (that being said, it's fine if you don't want to/don't have the time to answer this! obviously!!)

where can i read about the older greek myths? as in pre-trojan war. mostly, i'm interested in theseus but also just pre-trojan war stories in general. i know not everything got the iliad/odyssey treatment and there's probably not any surviving text to point at in a lot of cases, but there must've been something. every time i try to look up where to read about the history of theseus, i'm being directed to a bunch of modern retellings, but google has gotten so bad as a search engine, i literally cannot find anything about the origins of this thing everybody's retelling

from what i understand, theseus was sort of everywhere sticking his nose in everything at all times, so i'm not asking for a comprehensive timeline of his whackass life and everything he ever appeared in or anything, but if you could point me in the direction of anything about him--actual plays or academic texts, anything like that--that's more credible than, like, a self-published, self-described "bold new reimagining" with a stock image of a dude in party city roman cosplay as the cover, it would be MUCH appreciated 😭

(again, sorry about how... basic this question is i guess lol? i'm very new to classics in general and still pretty ignorant about everything, so it's EXTREMELY likely that this is a very dumb question with a very obvious answer, but thank you regardless!)

Hello! What an exciting ask (and apologies for my excited and maybe incoherent answer)!

Since you seem to be most interested in Theseus, I’ll use him as an example but much of this can be applied to other Greek heroes/myths/stories more generally.

As you noted, few get the Iliad/Odyssey treatment. In fact, even Achilles and Odysseus don’t, considering the Iliad spans only 7 weeks or so, and the Odyssey misses out on Odysseus’s actions before and during the Trojan War, and after he came home – and he did a lot after he came home. So where to go to find all the other stories that happened?

Some things to keep in mind:

Writers assumed their audience was familiar with the hero’s greatest deeds already

The big boys – Achilles, Odysseus, Theseus, Perseus, Heracles, Oedipus – had their stories shared in many formats. Think of the Parthenon metopes, which show Theseus’s key deeds in sculpture, or vases, hymns, public performances, bedtime stories, etc. People would encounter these often enough that the outlines of these heroes’ stories were known to them from a young age.

One of the Metopes of the Parthenon, showing (probably) Athena and Theseus.

As a result, ancient texts never show the entire story; they select the moment they want to tell and focus in on that. Hence the Iliad focuses on Achilles’s wrath, the Odyssey emphasises his homecoming, and the Argonautica tells the story of the Golden Fleece. Similarly, tragedies will choose a meaningful moment: not all of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra’s struggles, but his return home in the Agamemnon, or the events that lead directly to Pentheus’s dismemberment in the Bakchai.

So finding one text that will give you a useful overview will be hard!

These heroes are often also connected to so many other famous characters, that sometimes they show up as a side character in their stories, so it depends on which stories capture your interest most.

Pre-Homeric texts are few and far between

But this is not to say there aren’t pre-Trojan-War myths!

There are loads! Anything with Heracles or Theseus is pre-Iliadic, and others, like the house of Pelops, link more to the Trojan War but are also separate from it. Plus, there is Hesiod’s Theogony (roughly contemporary with Homer), which tells of the births of the gods and goes all the way back to the start of the universe.

The Ovid situation

Many Greek texts are lost, and we’ve only got allusions to this or that part of the myth in the existing fragments, etc. etc. So how do we still know so much about so many of these stories?

Enter my fave: Ovid.

Far later than Homer (1st century versus 8th century BC), but with access to all the Greek texts and them some, he wrote a lot of fairly comprehensive stories. These include the Heroides, letters written from the perspective of female characters trying to connect to their male lovers, with letter 10 coming from Ariadne to Theseus, and Metamorphoses 8 with parts of Theseus’s story.

If you’re looking for a high-level overview of what was what in ancient myth, starting with the Metamorphoses will give you all the big boys and many of the smaller ones.

Theseus specifically:

I must admit that Theseus is not my strong suit, but sources I’m familiar with that I would recommend:

Hippolytus, by Euripides and Phaedra by Seneca: these both tell of Theseus’s second wife Phaedra falling for his son Hippolytus and causing his death

Catullus 64: A lament from Ariadne after Theseus has abandoned her on Naxos

Metamorphoses 8, 12, by Ovid: Snippets of Theseus’s life, incl the Minotaur

Ones I’m not as familiar with but might be up your street:

Life of Theseus, Plutarch: a historian/scholar’s biography. He had them in pairs, where he compared the two; Theseus is linked to Romulus

The Argonautica, Apollonius Rhodus: Follows Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece; Theseus is one of his heroes

Oedipus at Colonnus, Sophocles: apparently Theseus is a major side character here but I don’t remember!

There is also The King must Die by Mary Renault, a modern retelling from the ‘80s that blew me away. The only book set in ancient Greece I’ve ever read that doesn’t shy away from how alien their culture and values are to us today and doesn’t try to sugarcoat things.

And if you’re looking for more heroes: Wikipedia is your friend!

The Classics-related pages are pretty reliable, and they often mention the main sources per character.  

I hope this gets you started but please do hit me up with more questions, I always love diving into these things!

#tagamemnon #classics #asks #theseus

[pumpkinfreak]

Watching Hannibal for the first time S2E9-E10

Let's take a moment to assess what in the Kentucky fried hell is going on in this story. So Far.

Hannibal knows that Will knows he's the Ripper. Will is trying to play the player by allowing Hannibal to manipulate him. Under the guise of Will accepting the fact that he and Hannibal are the same kind of monster. Everything Hannibal does to Will at this point in the story is to test him and get him to accept his true nature, so they can be friends. In reality, Will and Jack are working togother to catch Hannibal, so everything Will is doing is just an act. Hopefully.

I need a nice no-think palate cleanser after this. I better now have to use any brain cells when I watch Yellowjackets, or I'm coming after everyone who voted in the poll and backing them into a pie, I will then feed to their families. Just one giant people pie. I'll break hearts and world records.

Back on track episode 9

Long story short, someone takes their Freddie Fazbear cosplay too far. Makes a suit out of prehistoric cave bear bones, and goes postal on some random people. Hannibal then directs this person, who was a former patient of his to attack Will. Will beats the holy hell out of this guy and brings his dead body to Hannibal. Stating that now they're even after having both sent people to kill the other.

This episode opens with Jack and Hannibal having dinner togother. I feel like we need to acknowledge that Jack and Will are knowingly eating Human meat and organs. I would be so pissed if I was Jack's wife. I'm laying in a bed dying of cancer, and my man is out eating gourmet human meals with a serial killer. You are out of Will I'm leaving everything to my cat.

Margot and Will also meet in this episode. Margot is quick on the uptake and is just like "Wow our therapist is a psycho!" and Will is like, "Sister you do not know the half of it."

One of Will's dogs escapes in this episode and his little sausage body barely clears the snow he had to run through. It was much much-needed moment of levity.

Ep10

Pookie is going a little bit off the rails. He is devolving, and Hanni is super into it. I'm not, I want my sweet baby boy back, but I don't think he can hear me over the sound of his own psychotic breakdown. Will admits that he felt more alive than ever when he killed the bear suit guy, and Hannibal says that he should honor the bear suit guy. So Will mutilates the body and merges it with a cave bear skeleton in a museum. It...it's something...

Then Will is of course called in by Jack to analyze the crime scene Will Made. Will has a hallucination that the bear suit guy thanks him and that this event is a part of their becoming.

Also, I hate that there's more, Margot's bother, Mason, shows her his pig pit. Where he attends to feed living people to pigs, and he fully attends to feed her to said pigs, if she doesn't get in line.

Hannibal's right. Mason needs to die. Like yesterday. Unfortunately, Magot cannot just kill Mason, because all their family's wealth would go to the Southern Baptist Convention. So Hannibal tells her to go get pregnant then. Who does she pick to be the daddy, Will of Course?

What proceeds is the weirdest sex scene. David Lynch would be proud. Will knows this is Hannibal's doing because Margot already told him she's gay. This scene is intercut with Hannibal and Alana having sex and Will imagining Alana and Hannibal having sex. Except Will sees Hannibal as the goopy deer man. I'm really glad this show was produced for NBC and not HBO.

Some poor bastard had to put on a mask of Mads Mikkelsen's face. Plus other makeup and had to simulate sex on some other poor bastard. Imagine having to lay in a flesh-toned body suit, or worse be actually nude, and staring up at this lifeless replica of your coworker's face. Now add like twenty other people on set watching it happen. People left work that day changed forever and for the worse.

One more thing, one more. Freddie is getting suspicious of Hannibal. So she goes to Will's house. Goes to his shed, because she has more hair than brain, and finds a bunch of body parts in a freezer. Will shows up, and this encounter does not go well. We cut to Jack telling Will that Freddie is missing, and then Will and Hannibal go home and eat Long Pig.

I'll probably post again later. Stay safe, and don't sleep with goopy dear men. Do not investigate sheds, ever. You have a fifty/fifty shot of it being lawn care equipment or something from the pits of Hell.

#hannibal #will graham #hugh dancy #mads mikkelsen #first time watch #horror

[dervampireprince]

ASMR | Elisabeth das Musical - Der Tod x Listener SFW Death Becomes Entranced And Seduces A Lonely Prince

[M4M/GF4M] [Prince! Listener] [Seduction] [Manipulation] [Kissing - no character death, lore here is Death's kisses can kill if it's 'your time' but if it's not they don't but they're still cold and cause temporary frostbite-like symptoms] [TW implies the listener is depressed and has been experiencing suicidal ideation, Death at points advises the listener to kiss him which would kill them, please skip this audio if you think these issues could affect or trigger you and if you are affected by these issues please seek help and contact hotlines in your country. This audio is fictional, Death's attempts to be a voice of suicidal ideation should not be taken seriously nor applied to real life.] 

I've been wanting to make this audio for so long. While I've left it ambiguous enough to be enjoyed as an original audio, this character is actually from my favourite musical 'Elisabeth das Musical'. It's a German-language dark queer historical romance where Death (Der Tod) is drawn to those who think about him, in particular it follows the life of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, and her son Rudolf. The musical does deal with serious mental health topics and some historical events from that time including the rise of fascism so please know that going in, but if you think you can handle such topics then I couldn't recommend the musical enough. 

The original 1992 Vienna production is on Youtube with English subtitles, that is my favourite production and means a lot to me as Uwe Kroger as Death is just... perfection to me, very much gender envy and has been a big influence on me and helped me with accepting myself and my gender expression, and his characterisation of Death as this genderfluid, pansexual otherworldly being is just beautiful. And if you enjoy then I'd also recommend the 2005 Vienna production which is also on Youtube with English subtitles mostly for the few extra added song and Serkan Kaya's performance as Lucheni.

For those of you in my Patreon Discord server, I streamed this musical last Sunday in there for you guys and it finally felt like the perfect time to bring this audio to life. And if Kronprinz is still around, I know you were requesting a Der Tod audio for a long time and I hope you're happy with this one. The listener in this audio series takes the place of Rudolf, but you don't need to know anything about the musical to understand these audios. I chose to present them more like my original royalty series audios as Elisabeth das Musical is not very well known outside of mainland Europe and Japan, so I hoped by framing it this way with a photograph of myself cosplaying Death from a couple years ago would entice more people who aren't familiar with the musical. 

I love this musical so much, European musicals in general are my biggest interest and if you go searching for them it wont be long until you find my sfw account @emptymasks posting too much about them. If you're interested in learning more I have some masterlists and info posts pinned on my emptymasks Tumblr, but also as part of my subathon rewards I am doing a stream on my Twitch explaining about infodumping about European musicals and I've been working on some video essays for years that I hope to get finished this year that will be up on my emptymasks Youtube channel. I also run @europeanmusicals . If any mutuals or followers from my main or side blogs finds this... well hello there, I find myself nervous to drop this in the euro musical tags, as if people are going to find this format of fanwork weird but well... I had fun, I hope you guys are nice about this (nice doesn't mean you have to like it, but please don't be mean about it if you just don't enjoy asmr or audio content).

Something something if I had a nickel for every time Prince voiced a personification of Death from different fandoms I'd have three nickels.

.

Old public spicy audios on sound gasm (link in pinned post). 2 Exclusive spicy audios on Patreon every month. I also stream on Twitch every week @ dervampireprince . [minors + ageless blogs dni. this blog is for 18+ only.] [do not repost/reupload/edit any of my content]

#elisabeth das musical #todolf #der tod #european musicals #der tod x rudolf #death x rudolf #der tod x reader #der tod x listener #the vampire whispers #royalty kink #Youtube

[nighttime-tea-party]

since you say youve been in the kuro fandom even before BoC aired, could you tell me about how it was back then? :D ive always been interested in learning how internet culture used to be, how things eventually changed, how they improved/declined etc, more so when the current community is pretty much dead. was there an experience that marked you, what do you remember most fondly? was there an event that excited the fandom more than any other (like the release of a chapter or smth)? which blogs were the most popular? Its okay if you dont want to tho, i understand!

Super interesting question! I hope I can provide some equally interesting information in return.

Before the fandom had reached Tumblr, much of it centred around a forum, or at least much of what I knew. It wasn't originally a Kuroshitsuji forum but a sub-forum of a Bleach forum, actually. I think it was called Bleach Asylum? And I don't know exactly how it came to be but I think that Bleach forum had lots of sub forums for then-popular anime and manga but Kuroshitsuji gained so much popularity and the fandom happened to gather there, so that sub forum really took off and it ended up being an anchor point for the fandom. I used to always look for the most recent scanlations there, back before we were able to buy them legally.

I didn't actively participate in that forum but I lurked occasionally. It was full of wild discussions, one of which was the "two Ciel(s) theory"/"2CT" as it was called back then. It had a strong following on the website back then already. I sadly don't remember any of the other theories that were making rounds back then...

I didn't really participate in much fandom stuff back then, limited my art posts to deviantArt and my personal facebook... but eventually, I made a tumblr specifically to interact with the fandom.

As for blogs, I don't really like doing any name dropping, especially because it would go into some people who used to ship sebaciel and turned anti, and other stuff I'd rather not talk about. I do feel like back in the day, there were a couple of gigantic Kuroshitsuji blogs with massive followings that got a LOT of asks every day (to the point where it seemed like a full time job to keep up with them). Discussion around sebaciel was very different, there have always been people who disliked it but unfounded rumours like "did you know that Kuroshitsuji was supposed to be a yaoi" made rounds without people questioning it. That always annoyed me a little tbh haha.

There was one fan artist on deviantArt whose name I sadly don't remember but I think they were THE kuro artist in Western fandom back then because their style looked very similar to the anime style. I still see their art sometimes.

And fun fact on the side, I grew up in German fandom spaces and we had a big website called Animexx (I think it's still around) that was dedicated specifically to all things manga, anime, and related stuff. They had really convenient ways of browsing on-site fanart, fanfic, doujinshi, cosplay, and other fan creations, as well as forums and ways to host your own fan events. Until the early 2010s, I hung out there a lot so until then, my perspective is distorted by that German lens. I used to post my early Kuroshitsuji fanart there too.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask! I feel like I could go on tangents for much longer but idk how interesting that would be.

[cinemaocd]

This week in Rylanceland: wordy addendum

So Yesterday I posted an all pictorial Rylanceland but I miss giving you all the WORDS about Mark, and boy are there a lot....

Top story is of course that Wolf Hall has begun filming again in Bristol. I am throwing this out there as a plea to tumblr: if you live in the Bristol area and would you be willing to be a correspondent to this esteemed organ, please let me know!

This season or series of Wolf Hall will cover the events of Mirror and the Light. I've been trying to work out WHY they are filming in Bristol, since I don't remember them using any locations there from the last season, but of course it could be something like Mark having a commitment at Bristol's Young Vic, where he has written, produced and acted in plays; and has a position on the board.

The series is due to be released at the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025. I am trying to tell myself it will be 2025 and then be pleasantly surprised if we get it earlier. It will have been a decade since the last season so that is ONE HELL of a hiatus.

Since the beginning of MATL picks up exactly where Bring up the Bodies left off (after the execution of Anne Boleyn, but with a substantial flash back to the day of her execution), I am of great hopes that Claire Foy will return for at least a few new scenes..

Also Mark was spotted with a heavily bookmarked copy of The Mirror and the Light on set. I believe he could be seen studying Wolf Hall in a similar manner in behind the scenes photos from Wolf Hall IIRC.

Mark was also wearing a wig with bangs, which he did not have in the last season (reason being it was a freaking DECADE ago and the man has aged) so I assume for continuity's sake the scenes that are being filmed now are not being done chronologically. Also the presence of Jonathan Pryce on set means we are either getting another flashback to Wolsey service days or another Wolsey's ghost scene.

It was raining on the first day of filming, so Mark wore a "pack a mac" over his cloak for some of the scenes (maybe closeups) and I am now going to call on @teadrunktailor to revive their brilliant Tom Crom cosplay with the addition of a pack a mac...because that would be amazing...

Thomas Brodie Sangster who plays Ralph was also on set, in more lordly attire than we have previously seen him, another clue that they are not working chronologically. I think Ralph Sadler would have styled himself similar to Cromwell through the events of MaTL since by that time he was Crom's man in the Privy Chamber. Ralph is a key character in the third book and I look forward to seeing more of his life and back story than we got in the first series.

Still no IMDB page for Series Two/Mirror and the Light but I am checking daily, lads.

Well that's about it Wolf Hall News, but I have a few other bits and bobs. Gonna save them for next week, since they are old enough at this point, they can wait a bit longer...

Bonus High Res pic of the week: This lovely portrait from 2012

#Mark Rylance #Wolf Hall #Claire Foy #The Mirror and the Light #Hilary Mantel #Jonathan Pryce #thomas brodie sangster

[purecalcium66]

this game is extremly fanartable for some reason??? (please don't ask me about the background i cannot explain it either, Im not a good backgrounder)

by accident i finished Infinite sooner than i expected, so here under the cut is my opinion/rant about this game, as someone who knows next to nothing about politics, racist stereotypes and all the problematic stuff the game tired to show. Just a really casual opinion, i just needed to write somewhere. Don't take it seriously if you want to read it please.

in advance: sorry for any mistakes, english is not my native language and im writing this straight from my heart so im not thinking about grammar rn

first thing: I reeeeally enjoyed this game, which after reading so many negative comments i did not expect. It has its flaws, but everything has flaws. Of course it isn't better than the first and second Bioshock, but i dont really consider it as a continuation of the first two games? Rather like a stand alone title. It's soooo entirely different, and as much as I prefer Rapture, Columbia is incredibely pretty and i had to stop every 10 seconds to take a screenshot.

Even though the story was... uh.... well, some plot holes were so wide i could fit my whole fist through them, but nevertheless it was overall, enjoyable. Im pretty sure, that even the creators got lost in that lore at some point, and im still cannot tell what exactly happend at the end...? I went crazy when i attempted to make a timeline of events. But the idea of tears and all that dimension travel was pretty interesting i think. Anyway. Plot twist was forced, and that Rapture cameo at the end was too, as much as i dont want to admit it (even though i almost pissed my pants from excitement when i saw my favourite city in its full glory again). Burial at Sea might add something to the story i guess, but from what i heard, it only adds existential dread to the fans of the series. I will see about that soon. Even if its really that bad, at least I will have a loooong snappies taking session with those georgous graphics hehe.

Also im really dissapointed in how both Comstock and Fitzroy get disappear forever 5 seconds after they appear in person, like come on, i hoped to see more of them than just some rambling over the radio (the voice acting was amazing though, as usual in Bioshock).

oh and also the boys of silence appeared for only one location? Their design is so cool! After watching the trailer I expected much more! The design was inspiring as hell.

oh also Skylines were the best thing that happened to this game imo. Amazing feeling.

and last but not least: characters! This time i did not really get attached to the characters as much as in the previous games. I liked Elizabeth and Booker, they are pretty solid, i think, and i would totally cosplay as any of them if i had someone to cosplay the other one with me. And the other characters? The Twins were really fun, Songbid was badass, and Daisy was cool too, before she appeared in person for 5 seconds. They all were not nearly as fun as the characters from the first game.

Whoever read this whole, I love you, but please do something better with your time. Stay safe guys, and remember to slap a bald head from time to time (it helps keeping your mental state well)

#bioshock infinite #elizabeth comstock #im losing my grip on reality with every post #booker dewitt #sorry #too late tho #bioshock #calcite art #2k word rant lmao

[incarnateirony]

What's very quaint, really, is the antis still scratching for hope.

You REALIZE why Jensen talked to Kripke no later than (it was reported in, possibly weeks prior) June 2020 about a spinoff, right? He'd been down about the show since 2019 but something triggered him by Early May-June 2020 to discuss with Kripke.

This is, coincidentally, about a few weeks after he crumbled on the floor with A New Take In The Next Setup, Cas disappeared, and all the scripts were suddenly getting aggressively rewritten.

Jensen didn't secure any kind of licensing until October, and still didn't have the shape of the product, but since end of like april that man was eaten alive and you're still pretending you can't figure out the catalysts, the motivations, anything. It's getting outright pathetic guys.

That was a few weeks after Jensen curled on the floor crying "me too" reflexively offscript in poor quality. It's the exact period he was made to go in to ADR the same point with the obnoxious sniffling. And then he went to talk to Kripke.

Guys, this genuinely isn't rocket science. Even if you aren't one of the people Jensen told his motivations to direct, as some of us or those we know are, there's literally like. Time and events that happened that are relevant to this discussion, and you're not going to be able to troll it away.

Your inability to accept this, your refusal to understand the storyline, your refusal to understand that you're literally nobody but an anon opinion formed on your own biases, that's your shit. Stop trying to make it everyone else's shit.

It is what it is. Welcome to Heller Jensen.

But I am absolutely sure Jensen and Danneel know their intention about than this show better more than a bunch of conservative homophobes in liberal cosplay spewing nonsense on tumblr. And I'm absolutely sure nobody in a paid venue has been told these motivations. (I know of *one* incident where he got real close in a wink wink nudge grin fanart return, but that's not really the same as expounding on his mental and emotional state.)

like, shit, I'll say it. The reason I've known what I known as long as I know was I got passed this shit Dec 2020 second degree from jensen in a private discussion, yall. Like within a month of him locking the licensing so he was comfortable enough to dream and talk about it to friends. How the fuck you think i knew so much. Then the followup data, from the same and other sources. It's jensen, y'all. I don't care what you fucking think. What matters is what Jensen thinks. And lo tho the fandom may bulk project their nonsense at him, he has his own perspective that has been recorded and has driven all of his actions to date so far.

y'all basically been arguing with jensen for 2 years. Remember when I said, the show would be about putting Dean to rest, letting go, moving on? Then the usual spinsters like 2po started crowing because he's actually a wincel and insisted Jensen Loved The Finale It's Not About That At All, before the promo a week later was like LET GO, MOVE ON?

Yeah see. That's because Jensen couldn't sleep. He couldn't let go, he couldn't move on, and Dean's story wasn't done. He was sorry, and they tried to give it (dean, cas, etc) to us.

Like. Fucking verbatim guys. It's time to start coping, because it is, in fact, his motivation that has sculpted the entire show premise, while people who denied that premise have since buried their denials to find new things to try to warp.

[quietbluejay]

Ahriman: Exile Reread 1

So, I decided not to include my thoughts on the samples I read in between Buried Dagger and this the TLDR: Betrayer: I'm definitely intrigued but it felt like it was being unfair to Magnus :/ Angel Exterminatus: McNeill has really upped his game! The Path of Heaven: slaps roof of warhammer this franchise can fit so much chronic pain into it The Crimson King: this is what got me interested in Lucius originally

And now, the main event: Ahriman: Exile was the second ever WH40k book I ever read (first being Know No Fear), and it was basically the make or break between me staying and me leaving.

story begins with a space wolf pov and man i gotta read a space wolf book at some point, i found out there's a book where a space wolf and a thousand son end up sharing a body and then apparently they become besties so like this is a book written just for me future bluejay note: i read the sample at a later point and the book is on the list now

this guy however in the ahriman novels was as i recall my introduction to warhammer cannibalism And at this point I feel like I should maybe put a content warning. Cannibalism mentions ahead, if you've read the book it's fine, I'm not screenshotting those bits and I'm being even less descriptive

haakon (the pov guy) undergoes an experience that sounds a LOT like he has the butchers nails haakon dude r u ok

you know if i had a nickel every time in this book a dude got stripped and hung from a wall in chains and scribbled on with ink pens by one specific sorcerer i'd have two nickels which is not a lot but man, amon, you need better hobbies note from future bluejay: I misremembered oh i also forgot this bit

im sixteen pages in and we are on our SECOND cannibalism this is really gross i shouldn't have read this right after eating i was going to describe a bit and thought better of it even behind spoiler rip haakon you were alive only for the prologue chapter though wait i feel like he showed up again in a later book??? maybe it was a different gross space wolf

carmenta my beloved blorbo no, self, you have enough cosplays planned her child, for context, is the spaceship she's a rogue techpriest and she's connected to the ship

and here he is the specialest boy the sad wet beast of an evil sorcerer, the platonic ideal of a poor little meow meow

ahriman is uh, not doing very well how the mighty have fallen literally kneeling for an unsanitary blood covered dude who collects evil sorcerers like jewels

viva la vida plays in the background this is, to be honest, an uncomfortable scene, but it really works for setting the mood of the book

meanwhile ahriman is just sitting there like "his main sorcerer is going to betray him i could probably do something but what is the point of doing anything i don't know if all my powers still even work" "it was as if a portion of his soul had shrunken to a wasted shell" and meanwhile gzrel is calling him "a whipped dog among wolves" rip wolf reference ahriman doesn't actually react to that at all khayon would but ahriman basically attempts to repress all his trauma and Does Not Think about it he does that about a lot of things so yay ahriman got chosen to lead the attack on the Titan Child, he's being set up to die ahriman: ok and now over to astraeos who is also blorbo there's a lot of great characters in these books

ok so he's part of the remains of a renegade space marine chapter imperium turned on them without saying why we don't find out about this til a lot later and we find out why waaaay later and it's normally a plot i hate but it was kind of okay here because it fits the story thematically somehow he became the leader of what remains but he has no clue what to say also they're guarding carmenta

Gee I wonder why your powers don’t work any more Do I really need to know about the bloody mucus, French?

the overwhelming message im getting from this is "chaos space marines are gross and unsanitary"

ok i don't remember this either something possessed the dude next to ahriman and now there's frost everywhere it's speaking to ahriman and also everyone else is frosen in time "i am your fate come round at last" spooky note from future bluejay: arc words! arc words!

carmenta: ah my death is here i will be free at last but oops astraeos rescued her ahhh okay so she found him and his brothers floating lost in space and she rescued them and thats why they swore to protect her

ahriman 🤝 carmenta hearing ominous voices behind their thoughts ahriman 🤝 carmenta "you know what just let me die here"

oops ahriman's repression failed traumatic flashbacks to his brother's death time oh yikes rip astraeos he's a prisoner and they took one of his eyes and he's being hung from the ceiling with HOOKS IN HIS SKIN euerrrrgh rusty hooks man french is really going out of his way to emphasize the whats the right term the physical elements and the horrible reality of what it would be like, it's very visceral but also lmao trying to earn the mature rating for the book as if it didn't with the cannibalism

i don't think it's overshooting the horror im just trying to make a joke to lighten my mood because this book gets dark i actually had to take breaks when i was reading it originally because I was in a pretty bad mental place at the time oh yeah ding we have a third character held prisoner naked and hanging from the ceiling though tbh astraeos' situation is worse than haakon's or than future ahrimans will be note from future bluejay: you misremembered, there are 3 times characters are imprisoned and vulnerable and hanging from the ceiling but in only two cases were they naked and cannibalized, no one ate ahriman and he got to keep his tunic. To be fair to past bluejay, it is a weird thing to pop up multiple times in the first place

both of them they were both betrayed by the imperium that created them and outcast by it

astraeos is unsettling ahriman oh this is why he adopts astraeos isn't it

it's because he reminds him of himself and then he shapes astraeos into himself including his own mistakes…. third cannibalism at least it happened offscreen ahriman feel supernatural fear French does a good job at conveying the creeping feeling of something wrong at your back ;-; ahriman kept all the physical things he could from his time in the TS

forget bad mental health day ahriman is having a bad mental health millenium

I can't help but hear this as a riff on the "we should improve society somewhat" meme

so i am STILL not sure if it's the voice of something else in his head or not maybe this time when i finish the trilogy i will have clarity the end got really confusing

oh hey time for him to meet carmenta

and then he warns her to be careful oh gross not the human tallow candles again this was I think my first encounter with them, but sadly not my last of course they didn't do a good job rendering you think these guys know how to properly render anything it explicitly smells like meat

the visitors are thousand sons ahriman basically has a panic attack

oh ahriman is happy :D visitor is someone he knows and actually liked him

ahriman: i'm not alone :D :D :D meanwhile he keeps having visions oops "the vision slipped into his mind like a razor" i love french's similes tolbek threatens gzrel a bit and then ahriman and him talk via telepathy tolbek: you must come with me ahriman: sorry no tolbek surprise attacks it's super effective

annnnd ahriman awakens his power again

after centuries of depression, local man finally feels something and it's joy that he's going to kill someone he knew rip and then ahriman turns into a killing machine rip everyone in the room you're all dead also things get trippy with visions

oh, honey sometimes, having hope is bad because this is wh40k

but this is where it starts he's at his lowest point but he's going to start to climb oh welp he didn't kill one dude just broke his mind

ahriman: i almost feel bad for him then he remembers that this is the guy that ate astraeos' eye and tortured him ahriman: nvm and then for some reason (vision he had) he doesn't kill Maroth seriously at this point i have to think it was something making him not do it the first thing ahriman does is go to free astraeos

the thing he does not want to do is he frees astraeos anyways so now astraeos feels obligated because his honour and obligation are all he has left time for carmenta to be a badass

elmo emoji

anyways the prose is definitely holding up the weird stuff feels weirder, somehow

thinking about how fast ahriman gets attached to carmenta and astraeos but doesn't really admit it to himself which is a repeating pattern in his life thought I had last night: he has the wisdom and critical thinking skills that God gave a slug

let me amend it, that's mean to slugs ahriman does not have the wisdom and sense that God gave a slug i had some thoughts about ahriman and astraeos and some of the themes of this book but they aren't entirely coherent but basically about ahriman being at his kindest when he's at his lowest point mentally and physically and also tbh at his wisest and as he gets in better shape he loses that to his all consuming focus

ahriman is basically the manifestation of that diane di prima poem all he has is a collection of means

#bluejay reads warhammer #warhammer 40k #the real question is who between ahriman and mortarion has the lower WIS stat

[trainsinanime]

For the ask game: Do you think RL railway enthusiasts are comparable to internet fandom?

Yeah absolutely. Now, it's not identical to say an anime or French TV show fandom, it has its own expressions and experiences and industry behind it; it's comparable to internet fandom in the same way that sports or car enthusiasts are comparable to internet fandom. Very different, and yet very much the same.

Railway enthusiasts have their own unofficial fan lingo. If I talk about a shed, a Ludmilla, a Quietschie (squeaky), a Hamster, Taurus, Ferkeltaxi (piglet cab), Swiss crocodile, or similar, those are all trains and many rail fans will know exactly which ones I mean (I have all of those on my model railroad, except for a "shed" because those are just ugly).

Rail fans also have fan art, most famously in the form of model railroads which can be anything from fun toys to intricate pieces of artistic expression, but also drawings, paintings, classical music (thanks Arthur Honegger) and so on. Train photography is also a huge field. I used to do lots of that.

And these subcultures intersect, but aren't identical. There are plenty of model railroaders who don't care about actual railroads at all, and vice versa. In model railroading, it's also divided by which scale or scales you have. I use N gauge, the smallest practical one (Z heads you know I'm right), and someone who models European 0 gauge - I really have almost no point of contact with them. Let alone American O gauge (yes, one's the number, the other is the letter), with their Lionel and third rail, that's a part of the hobby that is a complete mystery to me.

You also absolutely get big fan events. I sat out the ones in Friedrichshafen and Leipzig, but I was at the one in Göppingen this year, which was simultaneously massive and one of the smaller ones I've seen. It's not the same as a "fandom con", there is nobody there cosplaying a Czech freight car (well, except for me), and there are no autograph sessions for famous creators (except for Hagen von Ortloff sometimes), but you do see (invited) clubs bring their model railroads. There are also a lot of shops around for model railroad stuff and railroad memorabilia. My personal favorite: The bin at the Lemke stand. I got some really fun stuff there, including e.g. the Quietschie.

Compared to internet fandoms, the whole thing tends to skew older; the median rail fan is a retired white man. There are also more classic infrastructures, like official clubs with official meeting hours and so on. Not really my style, to be honest, but it exists. It's also a field where classic printed publications still hold a lot of sway, some aimed at fans of the real thing, some aimed at model railroaders, some at both, some at specific sections of any of these groups.

That being said, there is also a huge internet component. I'm not really active there, because e.g. the Drehscheibe-Online forum is incredibly interesting but also every other thread devolves into a flame war immediately. But it is a huge thing.

Rail fan culture doesn't necessarily look like the thing that came out of Star Trek fanzines to bulletin boards to eventually Tumblr pipeline, it has its own distinct history and expressions. But at the end of the day it is the same thing: We narrativise the things we're interested in, and we identify with them, and we seek others who we can share that with. And that sparks creativity, and it sparks people who try to make money off of it, and it absolutely sparks flame wars and people identifying with certain teams and so on. It's fun!

#trains #railroads #fandom #rail fan #does this answer the question? I feel like I've just been rambling #no current plans to buy a shed but if Kato re-releases theirs in the red crossrail livery I might start to wonder

[theliteraryluggage]

I think your ed cosplay pictures are really great!!!

I've been to anime con events before, but i didn't have the confidence to cosplay. But i wanna try it, nothing big at first just with clothes i already have. So uh do you have any advice for a beginner cosplayer?:)

Oh, oh that is so sweet, thank you! I feel flattered that you would approach me about this! I'm not a super experienced cosplayer myself, but I'm gonna do my best to give you some pointers.

Start small--it seems you already got that one lined up! That's exactly how I started too, just using clothes from my closet and maybe a bought item here or there to make the character more recognisable. It's a good strategy because a) you get to try it out and see if you enjoy cosplaying before you put huge amounts of money into it and b) these are your clothes so chances are you already feel comfortable in them and they are familiar, might help you feel more at home.

Now this one is probably a bit dependent on each person's temperament but in the selection of your first cosplays, you can go one of two routes: either you start with a character that is already kind of similar to you/who wears fairly innocuous, everyday clothing. That might help you ease into it, might help make you feel less nervous outside on your way to the con or on public transport, because it'll draw less attention from passersby. It also gives you a slow transition into the habit of cosplaying: you'll see that people's reactions are positive and maybe it's not that scary after all, and then you can gradually go for more elaborate/attention-grabbing cosplays. This is the route I've personally taken bc I also struggled with anxiety and nerves when I first started. The second way is the complete opposite: choose a character that is very different from you/is more attention-grabbing and dive right in--wearing a character and sort of getting into their mindset can really help boost your confidence and create a firm divide between cosplay and non-cosplay that might allow you to leave behind your nerves along with your everyday clothes. That’s something I’m definitely noticing since I started cosplaying Ed—I feel so much more confident as him, I joke around more, even with strangers which I usually would never do. It’s a bit like wearing an armour (ironically), protecting you and letting less anxiety and self-doubt seep through. (This method of course is a bit restricted by point one, but you can still go for a very different style and presence without buying or making a whole elaborate fantastic cosplay)

A more practical thing: I would recommend doing cosplays where you can use your natural hair for the first few times. Wigs can be expensive, they’re a hassle, especially long ones, they take a lot of time and effort to style and maintain, they aren’t super comfortable and when you’re wearing one you’ll be constantly aware of it at first, worried about messing it up (that’s what it was like for me anyway). That’s something I would only tackle once you’ve gathered a bit of experience.

This might be obvious, but it’s one I feel strongly about: Choose a character you love. If you are passionate about the character you’re wearing, if you’re enthusiastic about the source material, that love will show when you’re cosplaying, and people will take notice. Because aren’t we doing this whole thing for the love of the characters in the end? Don't be pressured by fandom trends or what's popular right now. You want to cosplay from an obscure 90's anime that only a few people know anymore? Do it!!! The people who do know it and recognise it will be so excited.

Lastly: Always remember that cosplay is supposed to be fun! I know it’s gotten to be really intense in the last few years, with competitions everywhere and cosplayers outdoing each other with bigger, more expensive, more elaborate, more accurate, more cosplays, but unless you’re aiming to become a big-time cosplay influencer, I wouldn’t worry about that. You don’t need to have a new cosplay for each con. You don’t have to get every detail right. You don’t have to pull all nighters and exhaust yourself to finish a cosplay just because people say con crunch is a part of the “real” cosplayer experience. Just enjoy yourself, and if there’s a part of the cosplay experience you’re not enjoying, drop it. You hate wearing wigs? Then don’t. You can’t wear contacts? Leave them. Just wear your glasses if you need them. Your con experience won’t be fun if you can’t see a thing the entire time. You can’t sew and don’t have the resources to learn? Unless you’re aiming to take part in cosplay contests, bought cosplays aren’t worth any less. (Even then there are starting to be cosplay contests these days that are more about character portrayal where you can enter with bought cosplays as well). There are no hard and fast rules. There’s no wrong way to cosplay. Have fun!

There, I hope this helped you a little bit! These are all just things I can draw from my own experience of course, as someone who’s been around cons and fandom for a long time but only really started cosplaying fairly recently (2019). I’m sure other people would give you other advice, but these are the points I think are helpful.

If there are any specific questions you still have, feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer them. I hope your first cosplay experiences will be fantastic! 💕

#ask #anonymous #cosplay #cosplay advice #nihi does cosplay

[uncivilcivilservice]

Louis or Daniel for the character ask prompt :)

Have both! First up is Louis

Sexuality Headcanon: So I know as far as canon is concerned, Louis is as bi as the rest of them, but honestly both mortal and vampire Louis give me gay asexual vibes. I don't think sex/equivalent blood drinking intimacy really occurs to him on a regular basis, but that's not to say he can't enjoy it when the occasion arises. I also just don't see him as particularly attracted to women (I know canon practically refutes this with Babette et al but still)

Gender Headcanon: Soft dusty gentleman. He's a man who is also a beleaguered wife and mother

A ship I have with said character: Armand/Louis is probably my main Louis ship? We deserved more elaboration on their time together, both in the past and present, in canon, and I will happily eat up any content that fills in the gaps there because their dynamic is interesting in terms of what it reveals about them

A BROTP I have with said character: Louis and Daniel. Something drew them together the night of that interview, and I love drawing parallels between them and just in general it feels like they either match really closely with some of their traits, or they contrast really starkly, and I think that can be interesting to play with. I also think Daniel is one of the other more human of the vampires. My Trinity Gate Book Club Boys.

A NOTP I have with said character: I would say Claudia but I've read some great fic that explored that uncomfortable relationship so idk if that counts

A random headcanon: He doesn't know what happened to some of the vampire cosplay items he was wearing during the interview, and he secretly worries they might turn up at some point because Daniel would make his life a living hell with them if he got the chance 🧛‍♂️

General Opinion over said character: He's soggy and dusty, he's the most beautiful thing most vampires have ever seen, he's the Finances Spouse, he doesn't know his times tables, he's catatonic, he's committing arson. Nobody is doing it like him

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then my boy Daniel 🩵

Sexuality Headcanon: Again, canon wise I suppose he's bi, and I mostly agree with that, but I think he leans heavily towards romantic and sexual attraction to men. I don't think he ever really saw himself settling down with a woman and having kids and leading a normal heterosexual life

Gender Headcanon: Pretty much a cis guy, though he finds it fun on occasion to experiment with different presentations and fashions, especially for events and themed clubs etc. And I have a headcanon of him and Bianca going clubbing together while cross-dressing

A ship I have with said character: Armand/Daniel obviously, but also Marius/Daniel because goddammit my boy deserves all the devoted, ancient sugar daddies he can get okay

A BROTP I have with said character: Oh god so many, but since I already mentioned them, Daniel and Bianca! And I can make it angsty, as I headcanon that they got to know each other best while Daniel was still living with Marius, and Armand is happy to see them get along but feels weird about not having been there to see it develop

A NOTP I have with said character: Does 'whatever is happening in that show' count as a NOTP? 😅

A random headcanon: Oh god I have so many, I guess one would be that I view him as having been born in Ireland and his family having immigrated to the US when he was young, and his earliest memories are of the boat journey over

General Opinion over said character: He's my son, and my brain worms love the taste of his flesh, next question.

#this betrays just how willing I am to be like “I know canon says this buuuuuut” 😅 #I promise it's not intentional it's just hard to shake The Vibes sometimes #anyway thank you for the ask! this was fun! #louis #daniel #answered #vc

[cookinguptales]

I am so incredibly on deadline, but man. I cannot stop thinking about the way I cried so hard I made myself sick when DC announced the New 52 and the erasure of Oracle. She was the only one I had. The only goddamn one.

Comics had been important to me up until that point, and so had the fandom. I'd put in my time just like any other young nerd, and I loved those characters just like anyone else. And I'd put up with... god, I'd put up with a lot. The thinkpieces about how Oracle's sheer continued existence was sexist. (Because no one would let a male superhero stay "broken".) The fans telling me that a disabled superhero was outside the realm of believability, but I guess all the flying aliens were fine. The deep inaccessibility of the events themselves.

Like... I remember the first time I went to a comic book convention. It was NYCC -- a big one, though a lot less big than it's become. I was so excited to have Gail Simone sign my copy of Birds of Prey. I was even cosplaying Oracle in my wheelchair. And... she had to come out of the booth to sign it. The booth itself was completely inaccessible.

(Ah, yes, the double whammy of thick-ass carpeting and super-high tables. Tale as old as time. 🙃)

And then DC announced that Babs would no longer be disabled going forward. And when a Birds of Prey movie eventually came out, a thing that would have made me cry with happiness back when I was 10 years old and getting CT scans, 15 and going to physical therapy, 18 and just learning how to use my cane for the first time -- when that movie finally came out, Oracle, the disabled heroine who had started the team and been its leader for over a decade, had been completely excised from the plot.

Do you know what that feels like? To have the only person who looks like you removed from continuity -- and to have most people in the community you grew up in, the community you loved, act like that was a good thing? Do you know what that does to you, when you've already been internalizing messages your entire life about how no one wants to see disabled people, no one wants to hear us, no one wants to be around us, no one wants to love us?

Like... we're the possibility that keeps people up at night. But that's my life. That's always been my fucking life, and it always will be. It's not a scary what-if, it's a what-is, and I don't have the privilege to ignore the possibility of it just because it's sad and scary and unpleasant.

And people were telling me that people like me had no place in fun or in heroism or in the kind of fantasy escapism that everyone else gets every fucking day. I don't get to see people like me being strong in movies. I don't get to see people like me being protagonists. I certainly don't get to see people like me being loved. And like. God, that really fucks you up!

And then you have one fucking character, and they're not only taken away from you -- they're announced to be gone in a "phew, glad that's over!" kind of way. And everyone is so fucking glad that they get the "real" Barbara back. The strong one. The sexy one. The heroic one. The one who can walk.

Fuck the Barbara who can walk! She was strong and sexy and heroic when she used a wheelchair, and she meant everything to me because I didn't have anyone else. And when she was taken away from me, all I was left with was a fandom saying she was better this way. That no one wanted a broken cape anyway.

I'll tell you, I was right back in that booth that I couldn't enter because no one had considered that a real wheelchair user might want to be a part of things. I was right back to feeling like everyone would be happier if people like me just went away forever.

God, that fucking sucked.

I know that Barbara Gordon is more marketable when she's able-bodied. Media still doesn't really know what to do with a female character who isn't traditionally sexy. There's a reason why the only other famous wheelchair user in comics is an old-ass man. (Who gets up and walks all the time using his mind powers anyway.) And god knows that female wheelchair users rarely get to be thought of as traditionally sexy.

And like... I know. I know that no one's out here buying the doll in the wheelchair. No one's buying the action figure with wheels. I know people don't want characters like me.

Of course I know that.

But god. God, she was so important to me. Even if able-bodied people didn't get it, she was so fucking important to me. She made me feel like I could do anything. More importantly, she made me feel like it was okay when I couldn't do things. She made me feel like I could be important to people even when I couldn't do all the same things they could.

Fuck.

I do actually agree that The Killing Joke was sexist and that it never should have been canon. But I was 21 when Oracle was "fixed", and she'd been disabled since before I was born. Regardless of how it happened, it was an extremely established character trait. And there was no reason why they couldn't have just changed how she became disabled when they rebooted the universe. Why not just have her get hurt while she was saving someone? Or maybe give her some kind of congenital illness that didn't prevent her from wanting to save people?

But no! They took the worst of both worlds! They kept TKJ canon and they healed her! They just gave her PTSD over it. Fucking christ. Way to blow your cover. This was never about misogyny or the sexy victimization of female characters. This was about getting rid of the icky wheelchair and making a legacy character hot and marketable again.

Like I guess I never will be.

I still feel weird and unwanted whenever I think about it, honestly. Some of the conversations I had with other fans in that period will haunt me forever. Hell, some of the conversations I had with DC writers back then still kind of fuck me up.

When the Birds of Prey movie came out, they really talked up how diverse it was in interviews. And as a queer disabled woman, I really came to realize which diverse parts of me were still too fucking diverse. And when I read Harvey Guillén's statements about how important Blue Beetle will be, about how the script made him feel so seen, I'm happy for him. I'm happy for all the kids who will finally see faces and families and upbringings just like theirs when they watch that movie.

Because I know he's right. It's so important to see people like you. To see the possibility of a happy ending for someone like you because you've seen it modeled on the big screen in front of you.

I know he's right because I know how it felt when that was taken away, and fuck. It still hurts. I'm 32 now and it still fucking hurts. I'm shaking thinking about it, a little bit. That sounds dumb, but it's true.

When I think about how many years of my life I wasted feeling broken and useless and unlovable. When I think about how I felt ashamed to exist in public because I'd been told just how little people wanted to see me. When I think about how -- I mean, it's still a reflexive action in me. To make myself smaller, more invisible, to tell myself I can't expect people to slow down their lives to make room for a person like me. I actively work against it every day, but it's a thought process that never really goes away.

Because it didn't come from nowhere.

I don't know. I don't know. I probably am going to go see Blue Beetle. It'll be the first time I've given DC money in over ten years. But... I do want people to see people like themselves onscreen. I do want to encourage diversity. I do want to prevent anyone from feeling the way I did when they made Barbara Gordon get up and walk.

I just wish I could still feel the way I did when she didn't. Like there was the potential for something super in me, too.

Ugh. Fucking DC. I don't miss you! You still suck.

#cw: #dc #comics #disability #ableism

[fightabear]

anyway, re: convention. here's my debrief and i have three weeks until the next one. the grand total earned was about $1,300. which isn't terrible for a two day event! but i won't lie, it is less than i was hoping for. i didn't get as many commissions this year and that's a bummer because doing those is my favorite part. i would legit do them for free if i could but THAT'S NOT GOOD BUSINESS SENSE

my setup still needs tweaking - i think i need to learn harder into the commission portion of it. someone was suggesting maybe i do need two tables and i'm going to look into that next year.

more details under the cut because this got long.

but man oh man has it ever improved. i made less money this year than i did last year, but that was my own fault. i didn't advertise myself as well. plus a snowstorm hit. and my table helper kept just getting up to leave or getting deep into conversation instead of helping me watch for folks and left me very ?_? please notify me so i know i need to watch for clients.

i'm also going to add some more discount options since word of mouth is how this works best. i had some plans to lean into that but they fell through because i went really hard on the charms this go around.

i still ended up being the one greeting people & engaging them and that might... just be how it is! i'm a huge extrovert offline (and a shy introvert online) so any time i saw a cosplayer i recognized the hype kicked in. and i think as soon as i added my dungeons & discounts option (if you get a tabletop commission and tell me the story from the campaign you get $5 - this helps prevent awkward silences! i don't mind drawing in front of people but i find it a lot easier if they're engaging with me, it's like - less pressure? because then i can talk to them while i draw and it ignores my adhd to hyperfocus and work harder at capturing the essence of their character) that helped a ton because people would see a whole party of people at the table recounting the tales of epic adventures end up wanting to get in on that.

i might just need the help friend to be there to process sales and maintain the waitlist.

some highlights: there was a group of cosplayers that kept walking by my table and i recognized 2/3 of them and was excited about it, and as they were walking away i realized the third was a bigtop burger cosplayer and i like had to call them back to ask if that's what they were cosplaying. i think i made that person's day because they were so so so excited someone recognized them. i handed them some of my prototype sailor moon design stickers bc i forgot i even had them with me and they were so excited. i ended up giving out a lot of those just for the hell of it because people got so excited and also commented that the design is incredibly cool which means i need to get off my ass and do more of them.

i kept trying to do a walk of the hall but i'd stop to just ooh and ahh over people's work. things got so busy during the day that i couldn't get up and go buy stuff so i'm hoping that they'll be at the next event too.

and man, i have like! regulars now! people who make a point to stop by my booth to get a comm. they were so excited when i remembered them and i was so giddy they remembered me. and man some folks just came by to chat! and i made friends? folks are local to me. being a WFH adult means that i don't get many opportunities to hang out with people and i feel like those skills atrophied over the last three years.

i got to catch up with my favorite professor from college who said she was genuinely impressed by the evolution of my art (its my 10 year graduation anniversary in may, christ) and was really really amazed by my setup. i told her i was promoting the hell out of the program all day. i got to see classmates i haven't seen in years and we're making plans to have a big week long anniversary party in the summer.

i also had another (former) professor (not mine - but he taught many many many of my friends who have all said he's notoriously difficult to please - great guy but holds things to a high standard) run behind my booth to check out how i had things set up. when he popped back out in front, he grinned and gave me a thumbs up and said it was "very impressive" and my friend turned to me like "are you on cloud nine or ten right now?" and i was like - wa - wait i know that who was that and he was like THAT WAS SANDY! HE NEVER COMPLIMENTS PEOPLE LIKE THAT.

i guess people were talking about my setup and how quickly i work. and the art guests for the convention - according to my friend at least - also think my work is impressive?

it's funny how much can change in the span of a year or two... i think i had quietly retired my dreams of ever doing something with my art because i knew what my strengths were but i had no idea how to correctly monetize them.

i do know this: i'm going to go ahead with the comic i've been planning. this is entirely original, not a fan comic. it's going to be a queer vampire x werewolf horror/slowburn romance set in atlantic canada. two main couples a wlw & a mlm ship with an extended cast of varying identities. there are themes i want to explore about the gentrification of the maritimes and greed leading to environmental destruction, with chapters from different character perspectives to show a different side of atlantic canadian life that are very much not mine to tell so i would want to get guest writers who have that lived experienced to tell it.

there's a few things that stuck with me, little lines i'm gonna remember forever. someone said they're surprised i don't have a comic - and then followed that up with saying my art is "a full meal" not just a "snack" even when it's just a sketch.

and my college friend's wife - who shares my first name - was like oh you're the one i've heard so many stories about! and i was like - stories??? what stories?? because in my head i'm the houseplant and the wallflower.

it is still very strange to feel seen and to realize you are perceived, especially when you tend to make yourself small because you feel awkward for how much space you tak eup. i think for years i've assumed i'm the person that's always just kind of... there in a situation, literally even if it's a party i'm throwing. or if i've found a cool thing to do and i'm inviting a friend, they're going along with it because they don't want to go alone and the experience of going there is the thing they want and not the experience of going together. the pandemic and the isolation definitely didn't do favors for me, and oh boy did it not when a lot of it was spent in a really toxic relationship.

this was a reminder that people are wonderful and want to be around me, and reaching out to engage with them is what i need to do. they want to hang out with me and get to know me, and if my 30s are going to be anything it's going to be letting them get the full me.

#con life

[ahiddenpath]

Otakon 2023

Lil ramblin' about the con beneath the cut! But above the cut, my spoils!

I haven't been to a con since NYC Comicon in 2015, so this was a ride!

Amazing Stuff:

-Meeting @citrus-cactus at the Digimon redubbed movies screening! It was so amazing to meet her after being in the same online community for... Like... God, who even knows, like ten years?!?!?! And she is so lovely!

-THE DIGIMON REDUBBED MOVIES SCREENING!!! More on that here!

-My haul above! A sweet lil Kou-chan figure and a Luna plush from the dealer's room and an artbook from Shouri and a Sonic keychain from the artist's alley!

Not my fave stuff and neutral observations:

For reference, I went to Otakon all three days from roughly age 14 straight through college?? Well, in college it would have been Sat/Sun only. After that, I guess I didn't go that often, but any comparisons I make are to that time period (roughly 2003-2011 ish).

The DC convention center as a venue:

-The convention center was easy to get to from the Metro!

-The building was much bigger and better able to handle the crowd than the Baltimore Convention Center.

-There was. NO SIGNAGE. WHATSOEVER. For ANYTHING. Absolutely horrendous. What there WERE were volunteers/employees who bellowed directly into your face to... Do the things you were already doing. Or to... Walk the other way around the pillar. Because the other side leads into the faerie realm or some shit, idek.

-The guide books used to have maps, schedules, opening and closure times, etc. There was a map in this guidebook, but the opening and closing times for different parts of the cons and the event schedule were not printed. Meaning I had to use my phone to know, for example, when and where the Digimon screening event was... And there was poor reception the dealer's room in the lowest level.

Although the event schedule site couldn't load, I was blessed that some of Citrus' discord messages were getting through. She alerted me that the screening room was filling up and told me the room number (bless!!!! Thank!!!).

The con compared to ones I remember:

-I was shocked that there was a digimon panel and two separate Digimon screenings in one day? And the Digimon movie redub screening event was full to capacity- I missed the first film because I was next in line at the shut door D: So, like, Digimon is alive, and I saw two Daisuke cosplays, a Ken cosplay, and someone with a Patamon plush attached to their baseball cap. Patahat! There wasn't much merch. Citrus spotted the main place offering digimerch and sent me there (I got the Kou figure there). She also saw the lone Digimon fanart in Artist's Alley, and we found someone who made baby stage plushes. Another dealer's room place had some vintage plushies of the digimon that looked... like they had been through... some stuff.

Basically, Digimon seems to still be very much alive in terms of audience interest, but not so much the merch and fan art. I don't know what to make of that.

-The con seemed a lot less lively than the ones I remember. I only saw a few interesting cosplays (like the kind where you go, how did they even do that?!). My husband pointed out that the hall is far larger, however, and that the cosplay folks have tons of photo studio rooms to go to. They were likely there.

-The extra space was deeply appreciated (compared to what I'm used to from the Baltimore days), but... Okay, so the Dealer's Room provided empty space. Every aisle had an end area to "pull over in," whether it's for a water or food break, a photo op, or to wait for your bud to make a purchase.

PEOPLE STILL STOPPED DEAD DIRECTLY IN THE MAIN THROUGHWAY. WHY. WOULD YOU DO THAT. PLEASE I AM BEGGING-

My husband says I'm dreaming if I think the provided empty space will stop people from doing that, lol!

-DEMON SLAYER. EVERYTHING IS DEMON SLAYER. THERE IS NOTHING BUT DEMON SLAYER. Look, I enjoy Demon Slayer too, but good gracious, it's clearly the Naruto of the 2020s in terms of popularity.

-I learned who Rem is. Good God there were a lot of Rem figures.

-Looking at my purchases, I bought for three "classic" IPs and supported an artist I've followed for a long time. No new stuff. And I'd say the merch overall was about half "vintage" stuff and half newer stuff. Lots of Sailor Moon, DBZ, Pokemon, etc.

General Con Hardships:

-So a friend suggested to me recently that I might have sensory issues. I balked, because jfc have you seen my list of issues, please don't suggest another, I beg, I am full up, can I have some less sir.

Uh basically she mentioned how much she used to love going to the movies and I said, "I don't go anymore, I can't understand the voice audio." And she was like- Okay so it's true that some movies don't mix sound properly and can't be understood well, but if it's all movies... Um, babe, I think that's an auditory processing issue.

She suggested I get ear plugs, and god DAMN I wish I had them at the con.

Riding in the metro in tunnels? The whoosing and clanking hurt. Volunteers absolutely bellowing in your face at the con? Look, I guess it's their job, but please I am going to cry if you scream in my face like that. People playing music at the loudest volume in the dealer's room and hallways? Why, why would you do that. Someone was walking around playing an ocarina on the way to the dealer's room, so I was stuck with her for about 10-15 min, and I genuinely wanted to lock the damn thing in her backpack on a timer somehow, lmao. Look, ocarinas are easy enough to get the correct note out of, but they are difficult to control tonally. That high-pitched, harsh PHWEEEE noise clawed at my ears.

Of course, you can't control other people. The best I can do is accommodate myself to suit the place I'm going, which means... The damned ear plugs.

Apparently sensory issues and anxiety go hand-in-hand, as of course people feel stressed if the signals around them aren't being processed in the "typical" way, causing strain.

So... The con was exhausting and just... Difficult. But! I'm really glad I went! And I'll just buy the gd earplugs, here's what was recommended to me.

Also, PS: I found a piece of rare digimon merch that was way out of my budget at a dealer's room stand. But when I came home and looked it up, I found it for 35% less (which, at this price point, was a lot). AND NOW I HAVE AN ABSOLUTE TREASURE ON THE WAY AND I CANNOT WAIT TO SHOW YOU! Also, honestly check the retail on stuff in the dealer's room before you buy, this must be why there's no reception down there-

I am ready to not attend a con until next year! But to also go next year! Maybe I'll meet more of my online pals!!!! :D

#hidden's life