from helmholtz to vaping hipsters, the dynamics of vortex filaments, i.e. fluids with vorticity concentrated along a smooth curve, has been a topic of significant interest in fluid dynamics. the global well-posedness of vortex filaments with small circulation follows from the theory of mild solutions of the 3d navier-stokes equations at critical regularity. however, for filaments with large circulation these results no longer apply. in this talk we discuss a proof of well-posedness (in a suitable sense) for vortex filaments of arbitrary circulation. besides their physical interest, these results are the first to give well-posedness in a neighborhood of large self-similar solutions of the 3d navier-stokes without additional symmetry assumptions. this is joint work with jacob bedrossian and pierre germain.