Anime Expo 2008 cosplay contest

mind-bogglingly erotic

the fact that i’ve had mutuals on here for over like five and ten and even more years is actually wild like seeing each other grow up and change and start to heal and still be alive like. man look how far we’ve come. we did it guys

also like 80% of you transitioned which is beautiful

so embarrassing to get obsessed with your own oc but it doesn't fuel you creatively or motivate you at all you just sort of sit there. like yeah I've been thinking a lot about blorbo from my mind. no images of them exist in the world and they have maybe 3 personality traits so far. I would rather die than attempt to write about them. I've spent the last 48 hours rotating them in my brain though

I just think it's funny how fucking overpowered Shanks is

Like he lost his dominant arm at 27 years old

I don't even need to get into the chronic pain that comes with losing a limb, or the balancing problems, especially on a surface that's constantly moving or tilting (ship), especially for doing something physically demanding like fighting

He was already on par with the world's greatest swordsman at the time, and then he lost his arm, and then in less than 10 years he not only learned to use his non dominant hand for everything, he got good enough at it to be so strong and such a threat that he was named an Emperor of the Sea along with three other monsters who: a) all had devil's fruits; b) were all much more experienced; c) were all former members of the Rocks Pirates, a group so strong it took Garp AND Roger working together to take them down; and most importantly d) they didn't have the setback of losing an arm and having to train to fight all over again (assuming he wasn't ambidextrous, and even then considering he still wears his sword on his right side, despite that probably making it a bitch to draw quickly, it seems obvious he at least prefered his left hand).

He's also the only one of the original four Emperors left after all the chaos the Worst Generation brought to the New World.

No wonder Buggy has the king of all inferiority complexes, imagine growing up next to that

I know that the nitpicking over why the Fellowship didn’t just ride the eagles to fly directly to Mordor has been talked to death, there’s more than enough answers. The Doylist answer is that would stop the whole book from existing, or replace it with a wholly different book all about eagles. The Watsonian answer is that a) the eagles are a noble independent people not a taxi service, b) the quest is a stealth mission and huge massive giant eagles are not stealthy, c) Mordor has air supremacy and the eagles could only fly to Mount Doom after Sauron was defeated and the Nazguls all gone.

But just now, option d) occurred to me: do we really trust the eagles to withstand the ring? If it tempts Gandalf and Galadriel, surely it tempts Gwaihir the Windlord. Do we want to create the Dread Lord of the Skies? He would wear the Ring on his lovely sharp claw! He would fly higher and swifter than the winds of the world! He would build a magnificent nest from the broken timbers of Edoras! He would eat so many people! All elves and men would be forced underground!

me?? checking knitting books out both to support my library and to avoid paying per pattern??? it's More Likely Than You'd Think

update:

VOLUME ACQUIRED!! specifically for the YOU SHAWL NOT PASS pattern (pictured bottom left of the cover!!), but i'm VERY stoked to flip through the rest of this, too

ANOTHER UPDATE:

YARN ACQUIRED!!! as soon as i saw Mothy and the Squid's absolutely GORGEOUS "Inner Fire" yarn, i knew that was 100% what i needed for the Balrog-themed "You Shawl Not Pass," and after a Slight Snafu about Shades of Black, my Much More Appropriately Saturated OPAL arrived today!! i am LOCKED and LOADED and PREPARED FOR SHAWLDOM!!

(i will absolutely not be starting this right away, i've got a blanket in the works and need to do some Little Projects For The Dopamine Of It All, but it is HERE and i COULD and THAT'S WHAT MATTERS!!)

SO IT HAS BEGUN:

so the cast on for this one STARTS at 162 stitches, and then we come out swinging with some UNHINGED EARLY EDGE INCREASES, but so far so good!! we'll see how long it actually takes to Make This Thing Happen (it's a christmas present so....)

made it past "cast on and setup"!! honestly loving the big long stretch of garter in the middle, because it turns it into a Social Project (read: i can chatter instead of having to count all the way across lol). so far, so good! onward to chevrons!

okay so i shoved this to the bottom of the stack to work up a [REDACTED] real quick and then most of my mom's cowl, AND now it's nano, HOWEVER!: i picked this up again this afternoon, got to a stitch notation in the pattern, had exactly this mood:

, googled the vexing stitch, found a youtube link in my search history, and all of a sudden DID recall so. that's how this is going lmao

update!: have made it to the end of the section labeled "CHEVRONS" and now i am onto the section labeled "CONTINUE CHEVRONS" (in which she hits you with a "Read carefully through this section before beginning as multiple steps occur at the same time," which has been making me low-key nervous since the first time i read through the pattern, because it looked Convoluted and Tricky).

fortunately! her instructions for the multiple simultaneous steps are just written unhingedly! it's basically "keep working in the established pattern BUT make it bigger every 8 rows to account for the increases in said 8th row" lmao. i wrote myself out a handy cheat sheet so i have something to check off (because i've been putting check marks upon row completion but. ah. seventy-eight (78) more rows is. too many check marks, for the current printed pattern to withstand).

making good progress on the first ball of black yarn! theoretically i'll use a second one, too, and then switch to the FLAMES. i'm so glad i'm not speedrunning this all in december lmao

made it to the end of the first ball of yarn!! she is. Growing Up.

i could switch to a bigger cable to see her better but i don't wanna

anyway! just finished the fifth "CONTINUE CHEVRONS" repeat (what timing!!), so there's only four and a half left before the contrast color switch. very interested to see how much of the second ball of black yarn i need for this--i'm already going through a lot per row, but there's also only four and a half repeats of the pattern with the contrast color, and that allegedly will use one ball or less also. so! hoping to have some extra black at the end, but We Shall See.

now, onward, to Poorly Joining In The Second Ball!

behold, the fun part: COLOR!!!

finally made it to mothy and the squid's INNER FIRE yarn, and hot damn is it delightful fun!! it's way more interesting to work than the solid black, and it's gonna look cool? hot as hell when it's done!! less than four pattern repeats to go!

WAY PAST MY BEDTIME TOO HYPED TO SLEEP BAD LIGHTING PICTURES LET'S GOOOO~~

HERE'S THE SCRUNGLYASS HERSELF, FRESH OFF THE NEEDLES, AND HER POT OF STEW (TRAGICALLY POTATOLESS):

it took me 88 minutes and 10 seconds (plus or minus maybe 2 min)(i had a stopwatch going but also Family Interruptions and my stopwatch game isn't hair-trigger accurate) to bind off all 646 stitches, but i DID IT and now she is BLOCKING and i am MOST PLEASED!! i'll post pinned pictures once i have daylight and then drape pictures once she's dry, but WOW what a DAY!!

*this point on your dash without witnessing THE COMPLETED SHAWL, is what he means by "you shawl shall not pass," here

hello again world!! guess what has been BLOCKED and PHOTOGRAPHED and WRAPPED!! BEHOLD!!

she's 65 inches at her widest and 17 inches from neckline to central point! she is VERY wrappable and wingspanny and cozy!! i'm so pleased with how she turned out! she took two skeins (a skein and a half really) of OPAL and most of the INNER FIRE, and the pattern can be found on ravelry here.

thanks for joining me on this treacherous quest--i'm glad most of our fellowship made it past the balrog. now, if you'll excuse me, i'm going to go collapse in a heap and pine after second breakfast.

“I’m having my son in 2 months and I’m jealous of how cute baby girl clothes are” you can put your newborn son in a little strawberry print romper, I swear. he won’t mind. he won’t develop a complex over it, I promise.

It’s so interesting how heavily gendered baby clothes are an extremely modern phenomenon like even in the midcentury period baby clothes were often the same cut and color for baby boys and baby girls but now you can’t put your son in a pink romper and you have to use baby glue to affix a flower to your daughter’s head so everyone knows she’s a little girl.

Return to androgynous baby. Nobody needs to know what that thing has going on except you.

Let the baby decide when they’re good and ready. Tbh.

"came back wrong" what about Came Back Afraid. You used to be brave. Too brave maybe, defying the odds at every turn, a fighter, cocky, playing with fire, first to throw yourself at the enemy. Until one day it all caught up to you. You came back, somehow, but now you know all too intimately how it feels to lose, to die, to be destroyed. Now you flinch and freeze and cower at the slightest provocation. Who even are you now if you can't be brave? The grave may have let you go, but the mortal fear still grips you tighter than ever.

new one

Going to merge with these two

I actually think it’s a tragedy for English literature that the inexorable march of time has erased all traces of the Lord of the Rings/Pride and Prejudice crossover fic that was written by the teenage Terry Pratchett.

Y’all haven’t heard about the time Terry Pratchett wrote Lord of the Rings/Pride and Prejudice crossover fic?

[Relevant section: “Before I’d even heard the word ‘fandom’ I was writing weird fan fiction. I wrote a crossover story setting Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in Middle-earth; the rest of the kids loved it, becaues a class of thirteen-year-old boys with volcanic acne and groinal longings is not best placed to appreciate Miss Austen’s fine prose. It was a really good bit when the orcs attacked the rectory…”]

He also talked about it in an interview!

Oh my god!!!

I actually think it’s a tragedy for English literature that the inexorable march of time has erased all traces of the Lord of the Rings/Pride and Prejudice crossover fic that was written by the teenage Terry Pratchett.

Y’all haven’t heard about the time Terry Pratchett wrote Lord of the Rings/Pride and Prejudice crossover fic?

[Relevant section: “Before I’d even heard the word ‘fandom’ I was writing weird fan fiction. I wrote a crossover story setting Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in Middle-earth; the rest of the kids loved it, becaues a class of thirteen-year-old boys with volcanic acne and groinal longings is not best placed to appreciate Miss Austen’s fine prose. It was a really good bit when the orcs attacked the rectory…”]

He also talked about it in an interview!

Oh my god!!!

Corn dogs are named for their traditional meat, the unicorn. As unicorns are now extinct, they can only be referred to properly as ‘Corn Dogs and not “Unicorn Dogs” as they were prior to 2009.

This is actually a common misconception! While the Unicorn Dog did exist and was discontinued following the extinction of unicorns in 2009, the Corn Dog is not a rebranding of the Unicorn Dog! The Corn Dog was created in 2003 by James H. Corn, though it remained a relatively unpopular Ohio treat until 2010 when Mr. Corn took the opportunity left by the Unicorn Dog’s exit from the market to take over the niche.

Pisses me off how good Shakespeare actually is. Like yeah he's actually that good. People hype him up like he's the best English writer ever, and yeah he's actually an S+ tier writer.

Insane that he did all that while naming his characters shit like Count Evilcount and Peter Penissex.

it remains insane that he wrote a love sonnet hinges on the idea "you will live forever because this sonnet, specifically, will be remembered for all time" and that sonnet, specifically, became so famous that it serves as a synecdoche for the very concept of poetry. world historic called shot.

aquarium advertisments say stuiff like discover the longtooth grouper this friday

I see that, and raise you my local aquarium's advertising.

Vancouver Aquarium has similar ads!

They also have some SERIOUSLY inventive ones:

(High and Low Tide ^)

the only type of advertising that should exist: "ooooohhhh you want to come look at the animal"