I Ramble - Blog Posts

you ever look back at old photos of yourself and realize you’ve had such a glow up and how absolutely fucking embarrassing you were… then to realize that was only a YEAR AGO — when did time start moving so fast yet so slow? I swear 2020 was yesterday and 15 years ago.

Lola

Age: 19

Birthday: July 29th at 6 am

Likes: Quiet, peacefulness, flowers, feeling peoples different skin textures, playing the kalimba, Shgaraki

Dislikes: People talking about her father, loud noises,, violence, bullies, her old school, abusers, Endeavor, herself

Bilingual in Spanish, English, and Japanese

Quirk: Corpse flower

Her hair is almost as long as rapunzel’s and anyone that touches her by the hair with their bare skin will almost immediately have a heart attack or seizure, and die. She is also able to disintegrate anything her hair touches, almost exactly like Shiggy’s quirk.

The rose on top of her head is actually a part of her body and every time she kills someone or loses control of her emotions, it emits a rotting flesh smell just like a real corpse flower. It also symbolizes what she feels

When she’s sick or unwell, the rose starts to wilt. 🥀

Rotting flesh= angry/sad

Lavender= scared, or trying to relax or calm down

Fresh Roses= Happy

Breaks down in tears when someone is killed from her quirk.

Sometimes when she has mental breakdowns, the hair has a mind of it’s own and extends and/or unravels itself to destroy or disintegrate everything around her. The LOV made a special room for her to lock herself in so she doesn’t kill everyone at the base.

She snuck into the sports festival, and after hearin what Endeavor shouted at his son when he used his fire, she knew almost instantly what must be going on behind the scenes… after all… her father was almost no different.

Her father and mother were both pro heroes. But once Lola’s quirk manifested, she accidentally killed her mother, and her father abandoned her. After years of being bounced around and abused in the foster system, she saw how the people in the LOV almost took out Endeavor with the nomu, she wanted to join… thinking people are oh so great when really they’re nothing but wolves in sheeps clothing (or I guess in this case; Villains Wearing A Hero’s Cape) don’t deserve the fame and glory they get, when they themselves do villainous deeds that most of the time produce what society labels as “Villains”

That, and… she doesn’t think there’s anything else for her to do with the kind of quirk she’s burdened with.

Everyone at the LOV was surprised when this young girl presented herself as a person who wants to join the most wanted terrorist group in Japan. The boys even placed bets on how long it would take her to leave.

Shigaraki refused at first, thinking someone as sensitive, weak, and fragile as her, would last a day in the LOV

Twice and Toga thought that she was cute, and wanted her to stay.

Shigaraki saw way too much of himself in Lola and after 48 hours of not being able to get her out of his head; he finally let her join.

📦 Ask Box is now Opened 📦

So, you all know about that “my friend Lisa” story? If not… then, stop what you’re doing and go look it up online or on YouTube! Anyways… other than Lisa, the three characters are mine. This is a drawing from a little girl named Lelu. Her real name is Lisa Lucy Hailey, but her sister Autumn called her Lelu and now she doesn’t want to be called anything but. Autumn is 19 and takes care of her sister all by herself, because of her parents will, and she’s not scared of her little sister like many other people are. Lelu is a medium, meaning she can see ghosts and talk to dead people. But Lelu is only 4 and hasn’t been introduced to life and death yet. Lisa and She (yes her name is She) don’t want Lelu to be anything other than her happy cheerful self, so they tell her that the people they had killed, are just sleeping and to leave them alone because it’s rude to disturb people while they sleep. Autumn knows that Lisa killed her father, but she’s fine with that because her father was abusive and cruel to her, her sister, and her mother. And yes… you heard me correctly, that shadow lady with 4 arms is named She. She was Lelu’s monster in her closet or under her bed. She mostly just sat there and watched Lelu while Lelu would just babble away with her at night. She didn’t talk much, but when Lisa went away for a while, She got stuck with babysitting Lelu. Lelu gave her some chocolate pudding and she started to get attached to her.

I love these four so much! Especially Lelu, she’s that little cinnamon roll as my classmates call her. So please send those ask in and Lelu and the others will answer!

Ask’ em anything!

Random lil thing but I changed my username if anyone cares.

So from "fearlessrebelgirl", I am now "an-abyssal-odyssey"

So yeah, that's all.

Wearing a Texas t-shirt that I bought at a Bucee's in Houston and eating stuffed crust Hawaiian pizza with extra pineapple: this one's for you, Doug Eiffel <3

I Will Follow - Chris Tomlin

Wonderhole Edition

Shoutout to Long Face by the Vampire Lestat for being an actual real song that actually made it onto my top 100 songs this year btw. Do you think Lestat will make one of those little "thank you fans" videos to thank all of us who streamed his music?

Shoutout to my Monkees mutuals for reminding me about the Monkees and their music; now I'm thinking about how She is such a season 2 Damon talking about Katherine song.

Meanwhile, 1864 Damon is of course firmly Vampire Girl by the Misfits (he would die for her, and he did).

When I think about it, I think one of my favorite things about the Curse of DarKastle lore is how it presents an almost comical inversion of the classic Beauty and the Beast story. Instead of being rude to and angering a witch who curses him to be trapped in a beastly form until true love can break his curse, Prince Ludwig gets startled by a witch and howls, to which she responds by bestowing werewolf powers upon him--I don't think the ride specifies, but it seems like he can turn at will? Or it may have been more emotionally linked. But in any case, it's not presented as a curse (in spite of the ride's name -- I think that comes later when everyone gets trapped as ghosts, at least in my interpretation) but rather as a gift in service of his "dark destiny". She prophetically tells him that he's going to become the "wicked ruler of a corrupt kingdom" and then turns into a wolf herself and actively guides him in overthrowing his parents and ruling the kingdom with an iron fist. It's like the same setup as the witch in Beauty and the Beast, only instead of trying to teach him a moral lesson, the witch in Curse of DarKastle looked at this awful little prince and went "I can make him worse" and then enabled and encouraged his many subsequent murders. It's such a wild story setup for a ride and I kind of love how bonkers it is.

I watched 2x14 of the Originals tonight and when Klaus told all the assembled werewolves at Hayley's wedding that Hope was still alive after killing his own father just for finding out the very same thing a mere handful of episodes ago, it made me think of this moment in this Studio C sketch -- "she knew, so naturally, she had to be taken care of! Of course, I didn't realize I'd be revealing that secret myself just a few hours later, but at the time it seemed very important to keep her quiet." Like. I guess I get his reasoning and can sort of see why it changed. But for a guy who killed the biological father he'd been so curious about just a few days ago to keep his secret, he sure did just announce that same dang secret to a roomful of strangers. If I was his biodad hanging out on the Other Side (or wait I think maybe that's gone by now? But if it was still there) I'd be trying my darndest to slap that idiot upside the head for that.

I was thinking about how a lot of people who are into the Vampire Diaries are also into Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and how there are some obvious parallels between the shows and between the relationships of Angel & Buffy and Stefan & Elena and then Spike & Buffy and Damon & Elena, but obviously they aren't exactly the same ships or characters, and it's made me curious. Fans of both, is there a correlation in what you ship?

It's wild because I have exactly one episode of Vampire Diaries left and I've been saving it since *checks blog* a little over a week ago (versus the six episodes a night I was watching back in season 1) and I keep telling myself I have to watch the ending if only so I know what I'm working with in fic but also I do want to see the return of Elena (and Katherine) but also I don't want to see Stefan die (or Damon and Elena in a flashforward apparently? How will they have time for all this, honestly?) but I do want to see how they manage to break the curse with Bonnie still alive (but maybe it wouldn't be so bad to write my fic without knowing) but I don't know. I'm notorious for not watching the last few episodes of shows I love (White Collar, Psych, Once Upon a Time, although that last I ragequit over many minor grievances with multiple seasons left so it's not really the same thing) but I keep telling myself that if you don't watch the end of a thing then you just have less of the thing that you love but like I turned the TV on to watch it just now and I'm actually so nervous? I both do and don't want to watch it so intensely, so I had to open up tumblr and blog about it. I could save it another week but I want to watch it before the intensity of my obsession starts to fade but I know this is going to hurt me, emotionally and profoundly. Maybe I can stretch it out to two episodes by stopping in the middle or something idk. But aaaaaaaaa I don't know I'm not ready but I feel like I have to watch it. Help me I don't know. I need some of you internet people to come over and watch this with me or something lol I don't know. I'm so nervous I'm not prepared but I don't want to put this off forever either. And once it's done I could start rewatching. But like, aaaaaaaaa!!

I must say, it's pretty poetic that I've gotten to season 6 of Vampire Diaries right before another solar eclipse happens in America. I certainly didn't plan it, but it does feel like my timing is very appropriate with this one. I do have questions about the accuracy of the eclipse portrayal in the show, though. I mean, a solar eclipse did in fact happen on May 10, 1994, and it was visible across much of the country, so that much is accurate. But I don't think Mystic Falls would've had quite as good of a view as they show it having. For reference, here's a map of the May 1994 eclipse path (credit: timeanddate.com):

And, if you'll remember, Mystic Falls is like two hours from my old hometown just a stone's throw north of Lynchburg, Virginia, as seen on the locator spell map (this one's all over tumblr, forgive me for not remembering what blog I grabbed it from):

So if you zoom in on the timeanddate map and pick somewhere closeish to there:

It looks like Mystic Falls would be getting a little over 77% coverage or so. It's also worth noting that the '94 eclipse was an annular eclipse, not a total eclipse like tomorrow's eclipse. That still means that the moon went directly in front of the sun, but it does mean that it was small enough/far enough from earth that you didn't quite get full coverage of the sun (thanks to weather.gov for the nifty graphic):

So, I'm not positive whether it would've looked quite as dark as was shown in the show:

Although, I must admit, in this video I found on youtube of the '94 eclipse, (part of me is shocked to find footage from then but I know I shouldn't be like yes they had cameras in the 90s) it actually looks more similar than I expected it to look, but I imagine it was most likely filmed within the path of totality:

But also, when Kai takes Bonnie to Portland, don't they see the eclipse again there? I couldn't find that clip on youtube just now, but Portland barely had any eclipse--only 42-43% coverage, so it would've been way milder of a visual effect, barely any dimming in the sky noticeable without eclipse glasses.

The funny thing is, the area where I live is going to be sitting right around 80% coverage tomorrow. I was lucky enough to get to travel to Missouri for the 2017 eclipse to get into the path of totality, but I'm afraid that it hasn't worked out for me to do so this year, which is immensely disappointing to me as an astronomy enjoyer, but I do still plan to go to an eclipse party and I'm going to start saving to try and get to Spain for the next total eclipse in 2026, which is going to be right around my 30th birthday (screaming). Anyways, it isn't great, but here's my best picture from the '17 eclipse:

I didn't even have a smartphone yet then, because despite it being 2017, I was somewhat of a luddite, so I had the purple flip phone I so stubbornly clung to and a point-and-click Nikon, but I still think this picture is pretty cool for what it is. Here's the zoom in so you can really see that ring of fire (and my shaking hands doubling the image):

Obviously you can find thousands of better eclipse pictures online, but that one's still special to me because it's mine. Anyways, I'll report back with smart phone pictures from whatever I see of the 80% total eclipse tomorrow to compare and contrast with Mystic Falls's 70% annular eclipse of the 90s, because from what I've heard it's going to be much less impressive than full totality was, but I've yet to watch a partial solar eclipse, so I'll just have to find out. Also, if you happen to have any vampiric loved ones trapped in a magical prison dimension who you need help freeing during the eclipse tomorrow, let me know and I'll see what I can do! ;) Hahaha. Anyways, happy eclipse everyone, and may we all possess sufficient self restraint to avoid eye damage (says the woman who has looked at the sun unprotected so many times and is probably going to go blind because of it some day. I know what I've done lol. Don't be me.)

I'll tell you one thing about the British though is they've got me saying "advert". We were flipping channels and came to the one with the Superb Owl and I was like "oh we could check out the adverts". It just came out, but to their credit, it does sound better than ads I think. For one thing I mean at least it isn't like completely indistinguishable from abs. I dunno, there's just a flow to it; it has a nice inflection. Advert. I knew I was reading too much Doctor Who fanfic the other day, lol. I've got to be the first person to call them the super bowl adverts.

Currently watching this very cliche (but still decently enjoyable) Christmas movie and it has this horse girl subplot where the older sister is falling in love with horses, but there are these long, lingering shots where she's looking at this female farmhand working with the horses, and she keeps talking about how great and cool that farmhand is, and I can't decide whether it's actually a burgeoning lesbian subplot or just a heavy accidental implication, but it really does feel soooo close to overtly romantic.

Anyways my hot new ship is these two. Time to build it from the ground up ;)

The other night I had a dream that there was a hot new parody of the song Lump by Presidents of the United States of America. Tragically, I don't remember any of the parody lyrics beyond the chorus of "she's Lump, she's Lump, she's Lump" being replaced with "he's Trump, he's Trump, he's Trump".

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! 

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.

A moodboard for my Killjoy OC Fruit Snack! She is half African American and half Hopi; I'm still working on developing the full details of her character, but putting together this moodboard has helped me work towards getting to know her better. Her name arose out of this post (blagueofchaos is my sideblog) and I’ve basically run with it from there, trying to work out what a Killjoy who named herself Fruit Snack would be like. I do plan on doing a full OC intro post once I have a decent summary of her worked out and written, so I’ll try to refrain from making this post super long with details and mostly let the moodboard speak for itself. 

I was motivated to make this moodboard by the Killjoys of Color Project run by @andromeda-flash and @code-red-against-mike-milligram. This is for Day 3: City Born OCs. Thank you for the inspiration to actually make this! 

For full photo sources and credits, plus an expanded section of thoughts on my moodboard process that I moved for brevity’s sake, see below the cut. 

I was also thinking about putting something to more specifically represent her Hopi heritage in this moodboard, and I’ve been reading up on Kachina dolls, but I didn’t want to just stick one in my moodboard without understanding the full context of them and whether it would be appropriate. I think it’s fairly likely that BLI, as an organization that tries to strip people of any individuality, would attempt to prevent the passing on of such traditions, but I’m also sure that her mother would have passed some knowledge of her heritage on to her in secret before she left the city, so I was thinking maybe a Kachina doll could be like the one physical aspect of her culture she has to hold onto. I may at some point make a revised or an additional moodboard with one in it, but for now I decided I should wait to be sure that I understand what I’m doing with those. 

Image Sources: 

1. Dreamstime; I edited the hair pink in Pixlr (which is a great free picture editing software by the way, if you’re looking for one).

2. Etsy

3. Background: Phototrekker; Quote from D. Antoinette Foy found via pinterest; my edit made in Pixlr.

4. My own work; I looked around my room and thought “what in here makes me think of Fruit Snack?”. My light up floral cat ear headband, my multicolor metal fidget spinner, two starbursts, and a rose pin. 

5. Background: Wikipedia; my text edit made in Pixlr.

6. My own work; I painted some water guns to be Killjoy rayguns and I do plan to make a separate post about them soon on this blog! Also, they glow in the dark. 

7. Background: Phototrekker; Quote from the 12th Doctor; my edit made in Pixlr. 

8. I forget what site but I bookmarked the picture link here.

9. Background: TripSavvy; Model: WiseGeek; I edited the pink hair in Pixlr.

This reminds me, just the other day I was thinking about which MCR album would correspond to which house! I feel like Danger Days has pretty obvious Gryffindor energy, what with the whole Killjoy storyline being all about impulsive bravery and a fight for ideals. Then, I decided I’d put Black Parade with Ravenclaw, since it’s a very contemplative and philosophical album, reflecting on and exploring death as it does. Also, it’s theatrical as heck, and you know Ravenclaw has plenty of theatre nerds (including me, and several other theater people I know). 

The last two I had a harder time with, because I feel like a good case could be made for both Bullets and Revenge for being associated with either Hufflepuff or Slytherin. Bullets has that close-knit family-feel of the “van days”, and there’s something hardworking and loyal and bristling with Hufflepuff energy about the band just starting out, that whole “us vs the world” mentality they had. (I know this is based less on the album and more on the era than the first two, thought I feel it’s also somewhat reflected in the songs- you’re not in this alone...). At the same time, though, early MCR were certainly ambitious, and there’s perhaps somewhat of an edge of dark cunning in some of the songs, too. 

Revenge, on the other hand, is also underlaid by loyalty, albeit a darker, murderous loyalty, that of one Demolition Lover to another. The quest for 1,000 souls and the ideals of vengeance could perhaps be construed as Slytherin ambitiousness, but at the same time, if we’re going by the narrative of the Demolition Lovers, then a desperate, tragic love is really the driving source more so than personal ambition; but then again, the pair only got themselves separated in the first place because of their criminal ambitions. 

My gut says that Bullets is more Hufflepuff and Revenge is more Slytherin, but it could easily be the other way around. 

Hogwarts Houses represented by Gerard Way

~GRYFFINDOR~

~SLYTHERIN~

~HUFFLEPUFF~

~RAVENCLAW~

Oh yay I got tagged in a tag game!!

Oh no I am horrible at decisions!

(I cheated and used italics for ones I felt less strongly about, and I also used numbered asterisks to add third options and commentary. I also chose both options more than once because I am incorrigibly indecisive.)

ancient or modern • bitter or sweet • chocolate or vanilla • coffee or tea • create or destroy • day or night*1 • early bird or night owl •  freckles or dimples • gold or silver •  greek mythology or egyptian mythology*2 •  macarons or eclairs • hot or cold • thunder or lightning*3 • typewritten or handwritten • secret garden or secret library*4 •  spicy or mild •  dark magic or light magic  • ocean or desert*5 •  mermaids or sirens • known or unknown*6 •  rough or smooth •  moon or stars  •  rain or snow

*1. What about like... evening, like from golden hour into sunset into twilight?

*2. Norwegian mythology is my real favorite.

*3. I mean... how do you separate the two? A thunderstorm is meant to be seen, heard, and felt, deep in your core. And smelt, too. Have I mentioned how much I love thunderstorms?

*4. Consider: a secret library inside a secret garden!

*5. Except in the case of the Killjoys, of course.

*6. This depends so much on context...

I’ll tag...  @saturnrx  , @ravenfal , @mellone-collie​ (or @frankiemustlive ), and anyone else who wants to do the thing :)  

Thank you @itsjacobperalta and @billiejs for tagging me!

rules: choose between two words and make the chosen word bold.

ancient or modern · bitter or sweet · chocolate or vanilla · coffee or tea · create or destroy · day or night · early bird or night owl · freckles or dimples · gold or silver · greek mythology or egyptian mythology · macarons or eclairs · hot or cold · thunder or lightning · typewritten or handwritten · secret garden or secret library · spicy or mild · dark magic or light magic · ocean or desert · mermaids or sirens · known or unknown  · rough or smooth · moon or stars · rain or snow

I’m tagging @fandom-phaser @bi-bowen @crossedties and anyone else who wants to do it!

Anyways, I’m just having some nostalgia(tm) this morning and I was just thinking about all the ways fandom has affected my musical experiences of late since I joined the MCR fandom and how much Tumblr has had to do with that. 

And then I was like, what would it have been like if I had grown up with fandom around the music I was listening to in my youth (I say like an old person)? And anyways I’m looking through pictures of Tom Petty on Tumblr now as I continue to contemplate Tumblr fandoms and my musical tastes. I picked this one to share because I hadn’t seen it before and his hair looks particularly lovely here. 

(I did make a post with some of my favorite Tom Petty pics a while back, though I was basically just talking about how I thought Lemony Snicket ought to look like Tom Petty.) 

Also, I believe I’ve found references to Tom Petty made by 3 of 4 MCR members in various interviews and things (I think Mikey is the only one I haven’t heard mention him) and I do love the excitement of finding the people behind one of your obsessions mentioning another (just like whenever Gerard mentions a fondness for Doctor Who). Let me know if you want sources and I’ll track those back down :) 

Tom Petty, especially sassy, by Michael Zagaris

Okay, so, today on deeply nerdy things I'm working on (and also looking for advice on; vote at the end of the post!)...

So I've been working on coloring Worm's page from the quarantine coloring book (this is what I have so far), and I decided that I needed to put a name on the side of the boat. Because this stream was the first thing I watched with Gerard and Worm, I decided that “Daydream Believer” would be a good name for the boat (fair warning, it’s a pretty violent game they’re playing in that stream, but to summarize, the part I’m referencing is from Gerard’s turn as the murderer when he starts playing Daydream Believer by the Monkees to creep out Worm and the other dude they’re playing with, which is the moment I linked to.)

But then I thought, this is an alien creature’s magical space-boat. I can’t just title it Daydream Believer in English. So I whipped out my D&D player’s handbook (5e) and went to the Elvish alphabet.

But then I thought, I can’t just write Daydream Believer in English with Elvish letters. I need to translate it into proper Elvish first. Which, of course, the only correct Elvish languages to use are Tolkien’s--Sindarin and Quenya. (In any case, I don’t believe that there is a complete D&D Elvish language.) 

So, I brought up a few Sindarin and Quenya online dictionaries and translators, and I came up with a few different translations for “Daydream Believer”, and I wrote them out and transcribed my favorites to try and see which ones looked best in the D&D Elvish alphabet (I know Tengwar is technically the correct Tolkien-based Elvish script to be writing in, but I was already rolling with the D&D Elvish transcriptions, and I think I like the look of them for an alien space boat better, so I stuck with the D&D Elvish). But now I’m kind of stuck between three, and I thought, why not ask tumblr?

The two on the left with the blue highlights are Sindarin translations, and the one on the right with the green highlight is Quenya; I know there are differences in use between the two languages but I figured there’s no particular reason an alien couldn’t speak either of them. The first of the two Sindarin translations is “celain ely thenid pen”. ‘Celain’ means daylight, ‘ely’ means dream, and since I couldn’t find the word ‘believe’ in Sindarin anywhere I looked, I used ‘thenid’ which means ‘faithful’ and ‘pen’ as a pronoun meaning ‘one’. So, the first translation is really “daylightdream faithfulone”, which is fairly close. But I chose that translation mostly for aesthetics, and I worried I had strayed from the truest translation of the words, so I did another. 

The second Sindarin translation I did was “eraid ely esteliad pen”. ‘Eraid’ is just ‘day’ instead of ‘daylight’, and ‘esteliad’ is ‘trusting’, which seemed closer to the meaning of a daydream believer as one who is trusting in their daydreams rather than one who is faithful to their daydreams, although that could lead to a whole debate on the meaning of the original song, which--let’s be honest I’m way overthinking this already. I’m just trying to find pretty letters to write on the side of this boat, lol :) But nerdy linguistic overanalysis for a random obscure reference that pretty much no one is going to get is what I’m here for, haha. 

So, the third and final of my top three translations is the Quenya one, “árë maur savindo”. Quenya actually seemed to translate the phrase more easily, if only because there’s a word for “believer”. ‘Árë’ is day, ‘maur’ is dream or vision (which, I like the idea that the daydream believer’s daydreams are visions of a sort--oh no I’m analyzing the song again, I said I wouldn’t do that, I’ll stop, haha. I actually have thought about the meaning of the song quite a lot), and ‘savindo’ is believer. The Quenya translator that gave me ‘savindo’ warned that it was fan-created, but ‘sav-’ is in fact the Quenya verb for believe, and there was a whole section in the Quenya-English dictionary I looked at for “one who ___” verbs and they all ended in ‘indo’, so I think it’s a correctly derived translation. 

Tl;dr--those are the three best translations I came up with, and I highlighted where I wrote each of them out in Elvish in the image above. So, now I’m asking you to vote: which Elvish translation of Daydream Believer should I write on the boat on my coloring page? “Celain ely thenid pen”, “eraid ely esteliad pen”, or “árë maur savindo”? Vote in the replies or reblog with your vote! :) 

Postscript: If anyone wants to see my full Elvish translation scribblings which led to this, here’s what my process in my sketchbook looked like:

(There was a reflection from an old art class in the top left so that’s what I roughly photoshopped out if you were wondering.)

It’s always fun to have an excuse to mess around with translations and practice writing things in Elvish script :) 

If you get this and would like - answer with 3 random facts about yourself and send it to the last 7 blogs in your notifications, anonymously or not! Let’s get to know the person behind the blog!

1. Not to copy the person I got this ask from, but I also have two cats! Their names are Maple and Willa :) They were abandoned as kittens so we actually bottle fed them and raised them from when they were only a few weeks old, and now they’re super clingy because my mom and I are collectively their mom cats <3 Also, Willa is actually my blog icon. So, in fairness, I suppose I should post a picture of boy cat (as we often call Maple):

Here he is helping me do yoga. 

Also here’s another picture of Willa because she’s beautiful and adorable.

2. I sometimes suspect I might be tone deaf. I’ve been trying to tune my guitar but I have a terrible time telling if the notes on the guitar are higher or lower than the notes on the tuner. I used to have a tuner that just made a buzzing sound and I really couldn’t make heads nor tails of that since the sound it made was nothing like the one my guitar makes; I don’t get how people can do things like that, where they can get a pitch from one sounding thing and make it match up with a completely different sounding thing. It’s like when people take a note from a piano and sing it. Seriously, if it’s not the same sound then how do you tell if you’re at the same pitch as it? But anyways, I found this online guitar tuner that actually makes guitar sounds and I’ve been getting closer to being able to tune my guitar. I still had to ask my mom a couple of times whether I was higher or lower than the note on the tuner, but eventually I got it fiddled in and I think the first three strings on my guitar are actually pretty much in tune now. They certainly sound better than before, at least. (I can generally tell “good” or “not good”, more or less, even if I can’t always tell whether the “not good” is higher or lower.) I was going to try and tune the other three strings but Willa, speaking of whom, decided that she was more important than my musical endeavors and climbed up on my chest to demand attention. Fortunately, the first three strings are all I need to play Ode to Joy, which is the only piece I can play from memory. Despite the fact that I first took guitar lessons in 6th grade, I am still very much a beginner.

3. I have been idly thinking about dyeing my hair something between red and purple since… probably around middle school, but I’ve never done so. I have had roughly the same length and color of hair all of my life, basically. I’ve been thinking about it much more seriously of late (partially thanks to my current MCR obsession, between Gerard and the Killjoys), and I was generally thinking that after the current play I’m in, (which is the Crucible, and being historic, discourages unnaturally bright hair colors,) I might finally dye it. The rub, though, is that our play, which was supposed to happen this very weekend, is postponed indefinitely, what with all this pandemic business. So, now I’m not sure how long I need to wait before I dye my hair. But anyways, I found this blog post and this woman’s hair is pretty much exactly what I’m wanting color-wise. 

Bonus fact, I am pretty much incapable of giving short, simple answers, haha. I’ve always been inclined to overexplain, I guess. 

Also, you may have thought you saw me accidentally answer this ask before I was ready, but that definitely didn’t happen. Pfffffft I have no clue what you’re talking about. I know how to tumblr. 

Heck yeah, I listened to this album literally like 8 times today!! I also took the garbage to town and I dressed in lowkey Killjoy fashion to celebrate going out among humans :) 

The current state of the world is making me appreciate post-apocalyptic concept albums even more & I pick my music carefully on the rare occasions when I need to drive my car

So I decided to give myself a sharpie tattoo tonight :) I’ve been vaguely imagining having a “God is Love” (1 John 4:8) tattoo for quite a long time, but I’m afraid of both needles and decisions and thus have not done so as yet. 

But I’ve been seeing these pictures of Gerard Way with sharpie tattoos and I was just like “there is no reason I should not give myself a sharpie tattoo right now” and so... I did. 

See beneath the cut for step by step pictures and general rambling :)

I put it in the spot where I would get a real tattoo if I ever get around to getting one; I have a big weird scar about halfway up the outside of my left calf and I figure if I were to get a proper tattoo, that’s kind of an ideal spot for a tattoo anyways and I might as well cover my scar with one. 

As with any good scar, there’s a long story to it, but (gross-out warning, mild medical violence warning) basically I had a spider bite that got infected and it swelled up into this big nasty boil-ish, welt-ish thing that lasted for an uncomfortably long time. When I went to the doctor with it, they pretty much just stabbed it twice to get it to drain and it left me with this. It’s hard to get it to show up very well but it’s basically two deep divots in a patch of pale, off-texture skin, a bit bigger around than a quarter. 

So I knelt on my bed with my leg at an awkward angle, whipped out my treasured 30 pack of rainbow sharpies (minus like 3, because sharpies like to run away), and went to work. It was kind of a weird angle to draw at not only because of how I had to bend my knee but also because everything I was drawing was sideways, but the heart turned out fairly nicely, if a bit lopsided. 

I didn’t make the heart quite big enough to fit “God is Love” inside of it so I wound up with the love bit underneath. I’m fairly pleased with how it looks, although you can definitely tell from the “e” that I was working sideways. 

I liked it well enough, but I wanted more color, and so I decided to add a butterfly wing to the left--or perhaps a flower. I have a tendency to draw those rather similarly so it’s basically both. One flower lead to another, then another, plus a couple of vines; I have progress pictures with each individual piece I added, but to prevent this post from going on for too long, I’ll just jump back to the final design. 

Also, side note, my knee was stiff as all heck after sitting like that for all the time I was drawing, and I had to limp around the house a bit to get my leg to straighten back out. In hindsight I would advise taking more breaks during the drawing process when sitting with one’s leg at such a weird angle.

The main picture at the top is from that stage as well, but then I went and googled “sharpie tattoo” because I remembered something about there being a way to make them last longer. I found this, which said to cover it in baby powder and spray it with hairspray. I don’t really use hair spray regularly, but I was pretty sure I had some around somewhere; the first stuff I found actually turned out to be a spray can of hair mousse, though, so I just patted it around on top of the baby powder. I didn’t quite get the whole thing covered because I was worried about smudging it if I rubbed it around. 

I was fairly certain I had some actual hairspray somewhere; eventually it occured to me to look in my old dance bag, because the last time I used hair spray was probably my 9th grade dance recital. I was correct, and upon locating said dance bag, I found both hairspray and an abundance of nostalgia. I reapplied baby powder and sprayed it on. Having not been used in nearly a decade, the hairspray came out in a confused trickle rather than a spray, and the whole area became very wet as I tried to pour out enough spray to cover the design in its entirety. The ink started to bleed and, while pretty, I was worried that rather than preserving my sharpie tattoo I was going to rinse it off prematurely in a flood of aged hairspray. 

I quickly dabbed at the flow with a bit of toilet paper, and in doing so accidentally made a rather lovely watercolor on the paper. 

So, this is where things are at now. The baby powder did leave quite a bit of texture on my leg. I imagine it will rinse off, but I think for tonight I’ll let things ‘set’ before I try and rinse it. Perhaps it would’ve been better if I’d left the initial design without putting any of this on it, but hopefully this will help it last longer. It’s just fun to have something bright, colorful, and meaningful on my leg. 

I’ve been really digging Killjoy aesthetics lately and I love the whole culture of being bright and colorful and unique that they have, and as I’ve been conceptualizing my Killjoy OC (cosplay to come, if I ever get around to it), I’ve found myself thinking about how I’d want to ideally design... well, myself, and so I guess this sharpie tattoo was really born from that. 

Along those same lines, I’ve also been revisiting the idea of dyeing my hair. It’s something I’ve contemplated since middle school but never done, but now I really think I would like to. Again I’m at least partly inspired by Gerard Way, both in the sense of the bold hair colors of the Killjoy universe and from seeing how many great hair styles and colors Gerard’s had over the years. I’m not fond of the idea of cutting my hair, but I like the thought of mixing it up by dyeing it. 

The wrench in my plans right now, though, is the way that everything is just on hold at the moment. Specifically, I’ve been in rehearsals for a play, but with this whole pandemic business, our rehearsals are suspended and our play is postponed for an unknown period of time. The play is the Crucible, and unfortunately, neon red violet hair would not fly in puritan Salem. My plan initially was to dye my hair as soon as the play was over in early April, but now, well... who knows how long it’ll be until the show happens and I’m in the clear to mess with my hair. So, stay tuned for that I guess. I don’t know if I’ll wait to do my Killjoy cosplay until I’m able to dye my hair; I would like to have both this sharpie tattoo and dyed hair at the time of said cosplay, but I’m not certain whether those time frames we’ll overlap. We’ll see. 

Anyways, if anyone’s still reading this, thanks for sticking with me through my rambling! I hope you have enjoyed this episode of Violet’s adventures in sharpie tattoos.

My gosh this is so beautiful! It does an excellent job of echoing the videos’ color palette while still creating its own vibe, and I just love how soft yet realistic the drawing style is.

I love how art can inspire other art. And man, those music videos were a ride. I wish they hadn’t killed off those characters after just two music videos; they were pretty compelling and it would’ve been cool to see more stories from them. But they sure can tell a story. 

Which, speaking of, it was interesting to see the elements that were reminiscent of Umbrella Academy in those storylines. I also watched a video about the struggles Gerard went through in the earlier days and I have a deeper appreciation for the connection he must have with Klaus. It’s fascinating to string all of this together. 

But yes I have many feelings for this gorgeous Party Poison <3

I’LL HOLD THEM BACK 🔫🧨💣

I may have also spent at least half of my weekend binging MCR music :) And music videos. And behind the scenes stuff. And interviews. 

I sometimes feel like a bit of a bandwagon fan since I first heard Welcome to the Black Parade in 2016 when I stumbled onto a Doctor Who fanvideo set to it (which you can find here btw; it’s still a fantastic video) and so I’m not one of those fans who’s been desperately waiting since 2013 for this reunion, but I’m still quite happy to hear they’re back together, and I guess I’ve been making up for lost time by obsessing, haha.

It’s kind of fun to get into a band that has a fandom attached, too. Like, I also really love Shinedown, but I’ve never found adorable art like this of chibi Brent Smith hanging out in teacups (although if anyone has any, do please let me know!!). Like how cute are these? And the color schemes, and the aesthetics... an excellent artistic tribute to an excellent band :) 

As much as I love the Doctor’s pacifism (which he sort of sticks to at least most of the time except when he later shoves cyanide in a dude’s face but ya know... he has bad days I guess), I also love how Jamie straight up stabs a Sontaran in the leg. Like yeah, you’re one of the most fearsome warrior species in the universe? Well I’m Scottish and Imma stab you. 

But yeah, I went back on another of my erratic sprees of Classic Who-watching tonight and I happened upon the Two Doctors. I’m starting to quite like Jamie as a companion. (Even though this is his last appearance as a companion in terms of episode order, it’s only the second full serial I’ve watched with him in it because my approach to watching Classic Who can be summed up as wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.)

This serial also very much made me think of that 12th Doctor quote, “hardly anything is evil, but most things are hungry”. Obviously the Sontarans are more about battle-glory than hunger, but that Androgen chef, on the other hand... 

“Sontaran might is invincible!”

The Two Doctors - season 22 - 1985