Latest Posts by alfhildr-the-word-weaver - Page 2

Finishing off the year with an idea I've wanted to paint for a while, a cat in the clouds ☁️

The real People’s Princess is Willa. Always has been

I lowkey want one of those "live laugh love" type house signs that says "come freely, go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring" for the entryway of my house someday. I think it'd be hilarious, but it's also lowkey a nice greeting in its own way, if perhaps mildly ominous... What a nice way to set a welcoming vibe! ;)

Wait a minute, they used Na Na Na in Renfield, a vampire movie... Which presumably means that they paid My Chemical Romance for use of that song... Which means....

They finally did it. MCR got their vampire money!

So I started watching Wandavision tonight, and I do already know some spoilers just from being around on tumblr when it first came out, but we just got through episode 3 and it's hitting me. Basically, this is Storybrooke and Wanda is Regina.

Except instead of taking away everyone else's happy endings, she's just trying to give herself her own. But really, that was what Regina was trying to do too, and it's definitely seeming like Wanda has also taken away the happy endings of others, intentionally or not. So in its essence, this is like Once Upon a Time for comic book characters (but without everyone turning up being related somehow ;) lol).

I was finding a lot of Moocow text posts in the Puppy Bowl tag but not enough pictures/videos of Moocow so I went to youtube and --

https://youtu.be/JB9LMjTaSlI

Teeny tiny Moocow!!

Happy New Year 2023!!

I bought a fancy paper hat at the grocery store (because I'm a sucker for shiny purple paper fedoras* with clocks on them apparently), consumed a little wine+, and knelt on the office floor and kissed my boy cat on his fluffy little head at like 12:04am because I was trying to finish my annual blogspot post**, do a Duolingo lesson, and find whatever TV channel has the ball drop all at once and I sort of missed it. But here we are nonetheless!

*Actually I think it might be kind of like a short top hat? I could post a picture later if anyone is particularly interested. It’s blatantly cheap and kitschy but I also think it’s really pretty actually. Also, as you can maybe tell, I’m still in pajamas; did not leave the house today.

+Technically I got strawberry daiquiri wine (it’s a cheap brand, Mom laughed when I showed it to her because it’s something they used to joke about in like high school or something), coconut creme liqueur rum (easily the strongest of the batch but still pleasantly sweet), and Bailey’s irish creme (definitely the most expensive but also probably the tastiest). I was just going to buy one but I don’t drink very often at all and I was curious to try something new and also I’m chronically indecisive so, here we are. I think I did pretty well picking sweet things actually though. Goodness gracious am I sleepy now though. I swear alcohol pretty much only ever seems to make me sleepy. Barely made it to midnight. Although I guess it’s almost one now. I have been rambling here for a while somehow. 

**link maaaybe available on request? I haven't fully decided whether I'm willing to own up to my blogspot on here just yet. I started it in 2011 so. I’ve been through a lot of phases with it you could say. Actually it was a school blog initially, but it’s spiralled out from that. 

Anyways here’s my mildly incoherent, slightly alcohol-soaked, new year’s post! I mostly wanted to show off my cute little boy cat’s reaction to our new year’s kiss. I love the way he looks at me, like, “I don’t know what’s going on but I love you <3″ is just written in his eyes. 

Okay so it turns out youtube music saw us being jealous of the spotify users and I too now have a wrapped! Or a "recap", but whatever. Check it out:

So that's neat! I don't know if I have a top 100 playlist for all those ask games; I'll have to poke around a bit and see. *Some time later* Okay I have poked around and I do have one! Ask games here I come! (Probably on blagueofchaos though, in the interest of keeping this one tidy.)

I must say I don't remember listening to a remix of Naked, just the normal one with the music video*; I'm not sure if this is a youtube vs. youtube music thing -- most of the time I listen on just plain youtube so it's possible this is only accounting for the slice of my data where I'm using my phone*? I'm not positive, but it's nice to have statistics, or ones that actually seem to reflect my listening habits.

To be completely honest, I did technically have a spotify wrapped too, but the only things I listened to on there were the official Riot Fest playlist and some of Jon Walker's stuff because he did specifically ask people to stream it on there and I was like, alright, fine, but only for you Jon. Lol. But because of the Riot Fest playlist, I didn't even recognize most of the songs on my wrapped, and the top song was one I listened to twice, so like I said, these stats are definitely much more reflective of what I actually listen to.

Although, I will say, it's curious that it tells me my % ranking for MCR but not for TAI when they were my top artist this year? Idk, struck me as odd I guess. But yeah it's a decent % I suppose, although I guess I'm not even competing with most of the people on here since it seems like most people on here use spotify. I also can't help wondering whether I truly listened to Same Blood exactly 100 times or if it rounded the number for me. If I genuinely did that just by like instinct or whatever, that's amazing, but I can't help being a bit suspicious there.

*Interesting update -- when I look in my top 100 playlist, it is indeed the standard music video version of Naked, so I'm not sure where the part about it being a remix came from. Based on the full playlist, though, I do think youtube is accounting for things I listened to on the website on my laptop as well as in the app, so this is indeed a pretty solid reflection of my listening habits I'd say.

Also, youtube made me top 50 playlists from Fall, Summer, and Spring, so if you want to ask about a song from any of those lists, you can too! Also there is a 2021 top 100 on there! Not positive how I missed that last year or if I just forgot, but it's interesting to see. I hadn't found TAI yet then so it's a pretty different list, haha. This will probably be my most TAI-heavy year ever, come to think of it, because goodness knows I binge things most when they're new to me... Funny to watch the trends in my own taste.

But yeah, this was fun :) I might add some more of the other cards about my listening personality on a reblog on blagueofchaos too. Happy spotify wrapped and a merry youtube recap to all! ;)

The show I’m currently in with my theatre company opens tonight (I almost missed making my customary opening night eve post, but I think it still counts as long as I do it day of!), but since it’s an original work written by our director, I couldn’t just search up the show on here like I usually do. So, since the show explores themes of home and what it means to be home, to go home, to have a home, and what makes a home, I decided to search up pictures that remind me of the place I still think of as home--the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

I haven’t lived amidst them for nearly a decade now, but there’s still something in me that only settles when I feel the arms of the mountains wrapped around me. I still felt it immediately last summer when we were driving out through Ohio--there’s a point in the state when it passes from flat lands to hills to the edge of the mountains proper, and the embrace of the mountains always feels like a homecoming to me. When we moved while I was in high school, I was sure I’d move back to Virginia as soon as I became an adult, but now I’m 26 and I still live in the Midwest. Most of the people I know back home have moved away; all my closest friends from the street I used to live on are now off in New York or California or Oklahoma seeking their own life dreams, and though I still love the place, it’s harder to return when I no longer know the people. The things that made up my home have been scattered, divided and strewn across the country, leaving me to choose between the places and the people I’ve thought of as home--and often, I choose the easiest thing, staying where I was planted. Home is a difficult thing to find. I don’t mean to get too philosophical and sad; where I am has its own charms, among them the theatre family that sparked this whole post, and there are things I’d miss about here too. 

But when I think of home and what it means to me, I can’t help seeing images like this in my mind’s eye--softly rolling mountains bathed radiant violet in the setting sun’s light, fading to misty periwinkle in the distance beneath pink clouds. If I could stick my face through the screen and breathe that crisp mountain air, take a sniff of those pretty flowers (phlox I think?)--well, my nose would already be deep in the screen, haha. When I mutter wistfully to myself “I miss home”, this is what I’m picturing. I love this gorgeous photo :)

Anyways, we open tonight, and two people dropped out of the show last minute so I’m going to be doing a quick change to a scene that I have only rehearsed with the other actress twice now, so... wish me luck and broken limbs! 

I am in the pit for Badflower!!! I am so hyped!!

Putting on "The End" and wiping off my makeup in the sharp white light of the hotel room mirror as Gerard sings for me to do so. Thinking about them towelling the bloody bullet hole off of their forehead somewhere, either in a nicer hotel room than this or perhaps on the bus. Picturing all the makeup coming off all the faces of all the fans, rinsing down a thousand drains as adrenaline fades to weariness and the concert high fades to a vague, aching yearning for more. There is a mournfulness at the end of the celebration, but there is yet a celebration in the mourning, a togetherness even still. And after all, is that not what this band is about? The twinned emotions of mourning and rejoicing and the times when the two are inextricable?

Putting on eyeliner this morning for the My Chemical Romance concert and thinking about how many other fans might also be doing this at the same time; thinking about how many fans have done their eyeliner for a show over the years in the past. Thinking about Gerard doing his own eyeliner. Achieving spiritual union with the MCR fandom through slightly messy eyeliner.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa

Desert Song

My Chemical Romance

It happened <3

Putting on eyeliner this morning for the My Chemical Romance concert and thinking about how many other fans might also be doing this at the same time; thinking about how many fans have done their eyeliner for a show over the years in the past. Thinking about Gerard doing his own eyeliner. Achieving spiritual union with the MCR fandom through slightly messy eyeliner.

So I’ve been thinking I’ll probably do sharpie tatts again for my MCR show next week, and it’s a little soon yet to be drawing the ones I’ll actually have on for the show, but it’s gotten me yearning to draw on myself again, and with all the excitement about Badflower tonight (or last night now I’m posting it, but they open again tonight too), I thought, what if I just... gave myself a Badflower sharpie tattoo. For funsies?

So if you’re unfamiliar with their band logo, it looks like this:

So I started by attempting to draw their signature flower on my wrist. I decided to do it in blue rather than black just because I prefer to have some color in my sharpie tatts, even if they’re monochrome. It didn’t exactly turn out super accurately, but, well... the band’s not called Goodflower now are they? Lol. Then it just worked out that I put their name underneath rather than attempting to go on top of the flower, which would’ve required more planning and less coloring in the center. So then it looked like this:

but I wanted to do a little bit more, and incorporate some lyrics into it too. I started looking through some of the lyrics of my favorite Badflower songs, at which point I remembered, oh yeah, a lot of these are really quite grim, lol; I did come up with a few potential selections, but none of them were Vibing just right. But then I was looking at 30 and I saw “so raise up your glasses to going out of fashion!” and it just clicked into place. I mean, one of the great things about doing sharpie tatts instead of real permanent tattoos is that the things one draws on don’t have to be your only all-time favorite absolute best picks from all possible options; I considered going through more options after that, but I felt good about that line, so I went ahead and added it in. 

It felt energizing and defiant, full of weird-and-proud energy; it also seemed a bit appropriate after the night’s twitter dramas. Of course, I have trouble planning spacing and I’m just freehanding this (all the more reason I’m glad this isn’t a ‘real’ tattoo), so the “to going out of fashion” part wound up on two lines, and my script is kind of funky and hard to read in places, but you know, it’s probably not going to last a full week, and I like it. Actually I fell asleep while writing this earlier and I just woke up at like 5:30 and looked at my arm and went “what the-- oh yeah I did do that,” but this is another good thing about sharpie tattoos, that it’s okay when they just sort of appear on your arm in the morning, lol. The text in a circle around the roughly circular logo also reminds me of the Red Hot Chili Peppers logo, come to think of it, but that’s not a bad thing I suppose. Anyways, I am really quite fond of it, so I wanted to go ahead and show off my pics while it’s fresh. “Raise up your glasses to going out of fashion” indeed! I love Badflower, I love their music, it’s 6am now and I want to get back to sleep and this post is probably messy and in need of editing, but I’m going to go ahead and post about my funky little Badflower tattoo now because it’s weird and I like it. 

(via blagueofchaos, fuckyeahbillbeckett-blog)

So I decided to try stripping the blue tones out to see what this would look like with more natural coloring. It still looks weirdly off because I think there wasn't that much color left underneath the blue, so even boosting the saturation didn't really make it quite normal-looking, but here's my best try with what I can do on my phone:

Then I messed around with it a little more on my laptop and boosted the contrast and messed with the tones a little more, though it’s still flatter than I’d like, especially in the background.

Well, it was a fun experiment at any rate, and it does look a touch more true to color! To get it really realistic, I think you’d have to color it section by section, almost like colorizing a black and white picture, but I don’t really feel like messing with Pixlr right now so I think I’m going to call this good enough. Enjoy! :) 

Weird girl solidarity is when I complimented the gal at the gas station checkout on her decorative owl and she immediately began demonstrating some very good owl calls for me, and I attempted to mimick her and hoot back, but what came out of my mouth was more of just a flat wooooo sound with no trill because apparently being unable to roll my r's has also sadly stunted my ability to make a proper owl call. Still, it was fun standing there making owl noises at one another for a bit :)

You know, I'm the kind of person with like 80+ ongoing projects at any given time, and I rarely ever post things on here about them because I'm always waiting until they're finished and trying to get things perfect first and then I wind up never posting them. But I have to remind myself there's no law against showing off WIPs, and in fact, that's actually like a normal thing to do on tumblr. So, I thought I'd show off my progress so far on my Danger Days phone case insert I've been working on!

[Image ID: a tall narrow painting roughly the shape of a smartphone. The background is a rainbow watercolor fading radially from one color into another, starting with red in the top left, orange in the top right, yellow down the right side, green in the bottom right, blue in the bottom left, then purple shading from blue violet to red violet heading back up the left side. The watercolor has been textured with a salt resist technique creating small floral shapes of lighter paint. On top of this background, “Look Alive Sunshine” is written in tall wavy block letters in an assortment of colors meant to contrast the background, such that the “L” is light green, the “A” is yellow, and the “S” is orange and so on. Some letters are fainter, written in sharpie that has faded into the paper, but others are brighter, having been gone over in acrylic paint. There is a ring of poked holes in the top left roughly where the phone’s camera sits and a bit of uncovered background space to the top and bottom of the text design, which covers the majority of the piece. End ID] (*If there’s anything you’d like clarified about this description feel free to ask, I found it tricky to describe clearly. )

I tried to copy the comics font here--wait, actually, I'm just going back through my reference images, and I think the text I copied from for this is actually from something by @tapefish that was itself based on the comics font. Yeah, this is based on a design that's on their redbubble actually, though I didn't trace it specifically, but that's what this is drawn from. In that design, both words in "look alive" are on the line above "sunshine", so because of the way I've done it here, "sunshine" wound up being twice as narrow, hence why letters are all really squished, but hopefully it'll still be more or less legible!

I went over the letters in sharpie initially, but they were really hard to see, so I'm gradually painting over them. I'm also probably going to put more pictures and/or text on here, like a Danger Days spider and/or an eye like the one on the mailbox, and possibly "keep running" and/or "art is the weapon" in the space at the top or bottom.

As for the color scheme, I just went "how can I make this as colorful as physically possible" and ran with that, lol :) Well, to be more precise, I did a rainbow ombre in the background and then tried to make each letter roughly the complementary color to the part of the background it was on, but I tried to still have a variety of colors in the foreground as well.

Mostly, I'm just happy I've finally gotten around to making some progress since I first did the watercolor for the background literally like 2 years ago in our first pandemic summer, and that's just the rate at which I work on things sometimes, lol.

Anyways, I could ramble about my design and my plans for this for a while yet, and I could definitely proofread and edit this post some more, but I'm trying to stop myself from spending all afternoon on this post now instead of actually continuing to work on my phone case insert. Feel free to ask me stuff about this, though I can't guarantee anything remotely resembling a quick response haha. But hopefully someday before another two years have passed, I'll be posting a finished version of this! For now, enjoy this rare glimpse into my artistic process, hahaha.

Okay, so I'm finally catching up on Dracula Daily (I got like a month behind somehow, which I know sort of defeats the "daily" of it, but I'm working on it) and anyways I'm just now reading Jonathan's June 29 entry, and--

"The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his hand to me"

Did Dracula just blow our boy Jonathan a kiss??

I suppose it's likely some other old-fashioned gesture that I'm not familiar with, but then again, it could well be the blowing-you-a-kiss gesture in a mocking way ("with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of." I do love that description.) I feel like there's something I might be missing here but right now I'm definitely picturing Dracula blowing Jonathan a wicked little kiss.

You guys they've started regularly playing Foundations of Decay on my local rock radio station (which I have never previously heard play MCR) and anyways it just came on the radio and I'm currently sitting in my car at our town's drive-in ice cream stand blasting it, which I know we've been having that conversation about not playing your music loudly in public but. This feels like my duty as an MCR fan. Lol. Anyways, I don't know how to handle this being a song I just hear on the radio at random now, I'm not prepared for this, lol.

Like when I was first listening to it, I did think to myself "this has a bit more of a mainstream rock sound to it. I wonder if the rock stations will play it" but like I'm still a little surprised that that actually happens now and I can just hear MCR unexpectedly outside of a Hot Topic.

(And I don't mean it as a bad thing one way or another that this is more mainstream rock sounding than the other stuff of course; it's just a difference I noticed. )

Anyways in other news I met another roller skater at the tennis courts tonight, making her the first fellow roller skater in my town I've met, and I friended her on facebook, so I officially have a roller skating friend!! So I'm having a pretty rad Friday night overall :)

Occasionally I check twitter, and occasionally there are interesting things there...

[Image ID: A screenshot of a tweet by Gabe Saporta reading "Pretty stoked about Riot Fest. Any special requests?". The first reply is by kal (bat emoji) @/DecaydanceBats and reads "Snakes on a plane with William. Do it for the gays Gabriel this is our last shot". Gabe Saporta replied "You know I would do anything for you, right?". The first tweet in the exchange is from 4:41 pm on 17 May 22 and the replies are marked 1 hour ago. End ID]

Oh I have a youtube notification wonder what it could be--

Oh My Chemical Romance -- they -- um -- oh -- new music. New music happened.

Um... It's good... It's really good... I'm...

*Explodes*

So, is the guy with whom Lucy wishes she could set Mina up the owner of the same insane asylum as the one across the street from the castle Jonathan found for our friend the Count, or are there just a lot of insane asylums around in 1890s London?

Honestly I learned most of what I know from youtube roller skate channels like Indy Jamma Jones and Queer Girl Straight Skates! They have a lot of really helpful videos for beginners. This video from Indy was like my very first starting point; she talks about focusing on shifting your weight with your feet in a V rather than just pushing off, and thinking about it that way really helped me start to move forward without falling over.

Also, PSA, one of the first things a friend on discord told me was to always wear your wrist guards because you're most likely to break your wrist trying to catch yourself if you fall skating. Knee pads are really good too and you can use them for emergency stopping when you're starting out as well. All pads and helmets are useful in their own ways, but even now when I'm pretty comfortable and I sometimes skate without a helmet or knee pads, I still always wear the wrist guards.

Best of luck and I hope you have a fun time! :)

https://youtu.be/P5h0Kv0IJMU

I want to start learning how to roller skate... anyone have any tips for beginners?

When Dracula was giving his big speech about all the battle triumphs of his family over the years and he mentioned "that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova," I lowkey read it as "Casanova" at first and I thought that Dracula was just throwing shade at his weird horny cousin who slept around a lot. I was like "oh I didn't know they were related" until I looked at the word closer, lol.

Jonathan looking through Dracula's library, listing books he has: "and—it somehow gladdened my heart to see it—the Law List."

Jonathan, you're such a nerd. I love you.

You know, I didn't get an email from my new friend Jonathan Harker today! He's been emailing me every day of his trip so far. Do you think I should be worried? I wonder if something strange is going on in that castle...

Nah, I'm being silly, he's probably just busy with legal documents and so forth. I'm sure everything is fine.

redesigned covers: the crucible

we are only what we always were, but naked now.

oh yeah by the way here’s some awful memes i made wen i was reading the crucible in class

Thank you this has been invaluable to me as an actress developing this character :)

contrary to popular belief, Mercy Lewis actually lives naked among the raccoons in the forest that surrounds Salem