I know I always bitch about volunteering for dog events after we put on a big one but I'm going to bitch about volunteering for dog events.
Tldr: Treat your volunteers nicely or they'll quit.
Bitching under the cut.
There are certain people at our events who have strong opinions on how lure opping should be done and they are not shy about sharing criticisms. They're all the super hyper-competitive Whippet People. And like, I'm human. I mess up sometimes. If I don't stop the lure deep enough over the finish line that is 100% on me and I generally go "oh fuck" when it happens. I don't make that mistake often (like, once or twice a year), but it happens-- and it specifically happens because I really don't want to run the super fast dogs into the back wall, so I slow the lure early because judging distance is hard.
The non-Whippet People will let me know, I'll apologize, they'll say 'great!', and then we'll move on with our lives. The Whippet People will let me know, and then they'll ask their friends to let me know, and then every time they walk past me for the rest of the day they'll go "now remember that the dogs have to be going full speed over the finish line!" And they'll also bring it up the next day. Multiple times.
I asked a whippet person (lowercase letters) who lure ops for advice and she was like "yeah it happens" and gave some good advice and said I'm doing a good job. She said everyone messes up sometimes and shared a couple of her goofs.
So I don't need people to say thanks or give me accolades or anything. That's not why I'm volunteering. I volunteer because I enjoy dog sports, and dog sports run on volunteers, and if people stop volunteering then there will be no more dog sports and that will suck.
But I am not going to lie, when certain people, who do not lure op, only offer criticism, and bring that criticism up over and over and over, including when I am not making mistakes, and they never ever mention when I am doing a good job, which is the vast majority of the time, it makes me want to say "okay, you fucking do it" and walk to my car and drive home.
he says i hate everyone except you and that is addictive and that is kind of romantic and beautiful because you're young and you're kind of a sarcastic asshole too and you don't like bad boys, per say, but you don't really like good ones either. and you like that you were the exception, it felt like winning.
except life is not a romance book, and he was kind of being honest. he doesn't learn to be nice to your friends. he only tolerates your family. you have to beg him to come with you to birthday parties, he complains the whole time. you want to go on a date but - people are often there, wherever you're going. he's just so angry. about everything, is the thing. in the romance book, doesn't he eventually soften? can't you teach him, through your own sense of whimsy and comfort?
at first - you know introverts often need smaller friend groups, and honestly, you're fine staying at home too. you like the small, tidy life you occupy. you're not going to punish him for his personality type.
except: he really does hate everyone but you. which means he doesn't get along with his therapist. which means he has no one to talk to except for you. which means you take care of him constantly, since he otherwise has no one. which means you sometimes have to apologize for him. which means he keeps you home from seeing your friends because he hates them. you're the single exception.
about a decade from this experience, you'll type into google: how to know if a relationship is codependent.
he wraps an arm around you. i hate everyone except you. these days, you're learning what he's actually confessing is i have very little practice being kind.
i think the craziest part of ice ado cancellation to me is like. i remember checking the yoi tag last year and was disappointed by just. the absolute flood of "i lost my passion for this show my inner yoi fan is going into hibernation until ice ado comes out" type posts, but just kinda shrugged and went on because hey, i kinda moved on to different fandoms too.
but than the cancellation news dropped and i check the tag and yeah. there's a lot of people expressing their disappointment and anger with mappa, but there's also so much new art, new posts of people expressing their love for the show and what we were so fortunate to have been given despite everything and i just.
can we promise to keep this fandom alive? to survive just like we did back in 2017-2019 when there was nothing new but the occasional official promo art or a stage play or even skygem's retirement au? older fandoms than us have survived for longer with their newest canon content being decades ago, surely we can all have fun rediscovering and continuing our love for this wonderful story of rediscovering and reinventing what the word love means, whether on the ice or off it.
its prosecutor jiang wanyin!!!! oh fuck!!! / gifs + au rambling below the cut / follow for more mdzs x aa crossover stuff :3
all the gifs i made (poses traced off franziska):
hes so similar to franziska when you think about it. theyre both deeply insecure tsundere adoptive younger sibling of successful main characters. who carry whips. something something edgeworth choosing death and wwx actually dying also
his share code is HWFEFF if you wanna use him in a trial! you can't share backgrounds but heres the scenery from the donghua i used.
the easiest way to put custom stuff into objection.lol is to send it in discord and then use the link from opening it in your browser :)
a whole lot of AU stuff
the art im making is for if mdzs was an ace attorney game, playing from WWX's POV to solve various mysteries/cases over the course of the plot. so this scene would be from turnabout goddess, which would loosely cover the dafan mountain mystery.
cases include:
Turnabout Revenge (Mo Manor, quick introductory first case)
Turnabout Goddess (Dafan mountain, the good times flashback)
Turnabout Saber (the man-eating castle (omg hiii nhs))
The Blind Turnabout (Yi City arc)
Turnabout Deviation (the Koi Tower conference, Empathy on NMJ ala turnabout memories or beginnings. opening cutscene is his qi deviation)
The Blood-Soaked Turnabout (second Burial Mounds siege, flashbacks: Xuanwu, Sunshot, YLLZ, Nightless City massacre)
Turnabout Lotus Seeds (testimony about JGY, tree scene, golden core reveal, bathtub scene. opening cutscene could be JGS' death but that would make it canon rather than ambiguous)
Turnabout Confession (Guanyin temple)
the problem with splitting novel!mdzs into turnabouts is that flashbacks are a huge chunk of the book but they don't have mysteries/ cases to solve so they've gotta be lumped together with present day stuff. imo? many of the flashbacks would likely have to be abridged so they could be retold ala DL-6, SL-9, or the fourth grade incident, where characters talk about it over some pieces of art. this is really difficult when theres a metric ton of unspoken, complex, and signifcant history between every character lmao
there's not as much of a problem with the cql timeline but i have not finished it. so.
the opening cutscenes in ace attorney always show the murder and/or the murderer plotting. the first cutscene of the game would be MXY summoning WWX, muttering about getting revenge on his family (it would also be good for him to mention the yllz being dead because that's how the novel starts.) cut to WWX's POV as he wakes up covered in blood and the investigation segment begins.
for investigations of monsters (goddess, saber, etc) the cutscene would be a scene of some poor throwaway cultivator getting their shit wrecked.
it would be cool to make a breakdown for JGY but again I need to review that scene cause I don't know who I'd base him on. maybe Vasquez or Dahlia.
tell me your thoughts!! i'm working off of a mdzs summary/ skimming the novel because i don't remember it too well so if i get anything wrong please yell at me
Jin Ling's sprites & Nie Huaisang's sprites / masterpost
tags: spy au, partners to lovers, banter, getting together, sexuaIIy charged wrestling, first kiss, protective henry, alex pov
“Did I say I wanted you to touch me? Maybe Vincent and Charles have a dead bedroom. Who wants to kiss a face like yours, anyway?” Patently false, considering Alex has wanted to do it forever. But he shelves that thought for a different day.
Henry raises an eyebrow as he smooths down the lines of his suit. “Hm. You think you'll get to kiss me with a smart mouth like that?”
“Okay, Foxy. Don’t expect my tongue anywhere near yours tonight if things get sticky.”
Henry smiles, soft and secretive. “Sure, Alex. No tongues, if you insist.”
xoxo roop
also tagging some folks who expressed interest in this pls don't mind me <3 ilysm xoxo
i often really do feel like an .. unwanted part of the fandom, i dont draw beautiful landscapes, i have unpopular but strong opinions im constantly annoying about and rarely change, dont like/dont draw the pretty young popular twinks and hot gurls to fanboi over nor do i turn characters into one, the opposite moreso, draw only one ship no ones heard of really, got little energy to interact with the few people that are nice to me and send me asks so it probably looks like im ignoring everyone and unfortunately but still rarely get so stressed i get overwhelmed and emotional about pehaps seemingly minor things and spiral almost into a breakdown feeling super embarrassed about it afterwards but the damage is already done and i look like a freak or agressive weirdo
life is a little bit better if you imagine Akemi quietly and with absolute focus tracing the scars on Mizu's stomach, legs, back, neck, up to the swell on her breast, and then kissing the scar at her jaw, just below her chin from where she cracked it on the ice, falling out of Fowler's fortress
Akemi who is robed in silk, smooth and slick like snow, her eyes dark, carnelian, her mouth crimson as murder; who is soft where Mizu is hard, and she touches puckered scarring at Mizu's shoulder like it’s some language she longs to read and Mizu doesn’t shutter beneath her gaze, pitiless and perfect though it is, she loses her breath and lets her gather her hair off her neck and kiss her very gently in the dark, dawn breaking blue and purple over them.
“ It is early, ” Mizu bemoans, much to the apparent disregard of her lover whom places decadent kisses to her jaw, her throat. “ Early is all we have. Early is when you are mine, only, ” empress Akemi reminds her, as though she has forgotten how few moments they can steal for one another.
Long after she is gone, Akemi remembers how she had smiled, eyes lit from the retreating moon, like the glint of a blade held to her throat.
She doesn't see her for so long, she becomes erratic and furious, a cold, mean cruelty gnawing at her belly every time she has to sit across Lady Itoh, receiving guests, but she does not crack under the weight that is pressing down onto her shoulders like a burial shroud; does not tear her gaze away. She is a flame, made of dark honey, smooth and sweet, and terrible, a wildfire, felling everything in its furious path. She takes control of the world around her with a slow whiplash of her dark eyes, a gesture of her hand, languid, sinuous; and all the while remains as still as the centre of a hurricane, swallowing up every thing around her.
When Mizu comes back, she is in a room throbbing with life, surrounded by her ladies in waiting; she is resting an arm on a low, single-panel wooden screen as she gazes over the room, detached, aloof, ethereal, but all of her flawless public facade shatters the moment she sees her, standing there like something cut out of ice and stone, feral, mythical, and her hands become frantic on the silks of her kimono as their eyes meet across the room and she is swept under the currents of her desire, Mizu's eyes, like two furious waves, swallowing her and all of her fire up like a whirlpool, sucking her down into its dark depths.
Also, in response to the "testosterone making people angrier" myth, I've found that, personally, testosterone has given me the self-respect to recognize and call out when my boundaries are being overstepped in ways that I wouldn't have had the courage (or, frankly even liking of myself) to have done before. This is in addition to me working on my trauma responses, but testosterone was the spark that gave me the will to do this in the first place. When I see people sae that as anger and thus is a "bad thing," I wonder how much of that is just people being uncomfortable with us... having boundaries or enforcing them, and that the response to that overstepping is labeled as aggressive anger.
Frankly, I now actually respect myself enough to care when I am being mistreated. It seems that people sometimes take that as a personal failure on my end because I don't think I deserve mistreatment.
Caveat: Anger is a fine emotion, and it is a worthy thing to recognize and honour. I find that the accusation of trans men* and trans masc* people "being angry" on testosterone is a moot point simply because it is often a false accusation which uses anger as a punishment. My issue isn't that we're "angry," but that our perceived anger is used, often, as a transphobic bludgeon to punish those who either want to transition with testosterone or who currently are, and everything in-between.
the day am fans realise that miles/milex shippers are less problematic and harmful to the fandom than lv/her supporters will be one of the best days of my life
rant incoming because I'm going insane:
i will never ever understand why am fans have so much beef with milex shippers.
i have been in SO many fandoms throughout my life, I've been obsessed with SO many bands whose members are shipped to the point of insanity, and it was never a problem. sure, some people didn't like the ships, but why are so many am fans acting like this is something unique? bts, mcr, dan and phil, harry potter, I've seen fucking everything. every other fandom in the world are just this obsessed with their ships, trying to prove that two men are fucking, posting theories and so on. shipping was always a thing in fandoms and always will be, especially if we're talking about male celebrities and teenage girls.
having said this, the kind of fandom i have never been in is one where grown ass women bring this much toxicity to the community and behave like children. there are hundreds of celebrities whose girlfriends are not liked by the fans, but no girlfriend ever engaged this much with the haters, probably because they realised that it would only make things worse, and the fans would hate them even more.
we could've had some peaceful end of the tour content, but no, we have this instead. every few months something has to be done by a certain someone in order for people to pay attention to her, and so that in the end fans will forget the reason they're fans and engage in stupid shit like this, defeating the whole purpose of being a music fan.
all this drama is slowly making me not want to have anything to do with am or the fandom anymore. if not for miles and him being connected to am, i would've stopped giving a fuck about alex years ago (technically not through his fault, but then also because of him). this whole thing just makes me sad because miles does not deserve to be associated with these people and the fact that he will never be able to get rid of them is so not it.