more chilchuck and da kids

anything 4 my queen

Alive, alive, alive.

Throwback to when I took painkillers and woke up with Photoshop open on my computer to this image I had made

"common refrain, where's waldo? where is waldo? in times of war, where's waldo? people are dying in the streets, where the fuck is waldo? i'll tell you where he is. hiding on the goddamn beach somewhere. i can't find him. what kind of ally is that?"

- demi adejuyigbe, 2024

please be patient with me im from the 1900s

“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

Dungeon Meshi - Half-foots

source 1 | source 2

I made a couple of flow charts for the ace and aro spectrums! Not meant to be taken 100% factual- you know yourself better than a basic flowchart. They’re mainly just for fun, though they can also be a good start for anyone questioning!

(Free to use as long as you keep my url on them and aren’t making money off it!)

i love you taskmaster editors

Something I think actual play is uniquely good at showing is, for lack of a better way to put it, narrative choice. You see the story that people decide to play out; you see the threads that people wanted to follow. You also can, if the GM shares their concepts, get an idea of some of the other possible paths not taken and stories not told, but ultimately they are untold. And finally, ironically enough for a medium with a random element, it makes creator intent unavoidably clear.

We see it all the time in Critical Role. There probably was a really fascinating story to be told with Vox Machina working with The Clasp following the fall of Emon. The party chose not to do it; we don't know what would have happened. I like many am intrigued by the Augen Trust path Matt had planned for the Mighty Nein; they didn't take it. We can't judge the story on what might have been, even if we find it interesting; we can only judge it on what was. And we don't follow the Clasp nor the Augen Trust as a result, because it's not where the PCs are; at most we might see the effects their actions taken without the aid of the PCs had on the world when their paths cross again. The camera, in D&D, always follows the PCs. You see what they see.

Essek was redeemed because the Mighty Nein wanted him to be redeemed. In actual play especially there's a weird tendency to switch to the passive voice to describe things one dislikes, but this choice was anything but passive. The party learned Essek had been lying to them and made their choice to remain his friends, and the story continues from that presumption, and while I am the first to reject the "but the cast liked it" argument, the fact is, one can't reject this redemption without rejecting the party's choice, and the party is controlled by the cast.

It's great to discuss paths not taken, and it's even true that you might believe those paths to be a better story. But you cannot rely on the camera - or the audience's interest and sympathy - to abandon the PCs desires and decisions just to suit yours. You can't do this as a GM, as another player, or as a viewer. Nor can you expect people to judge based on potential once it is no longer potential; a strong concept that is never followed doesn't count as the story; at best it counts as the GM or player's creative intent.

Actual Play forces people to take a story for what it is. I think the fandom can be so fraught because many people do not understand quite how it's limited in scope nor what is under GM control and what is not and so they act like choices are inevitable and inevitabilities are choices.

Glee fandom in the early 10s was magical because it was popular and had active subfandoms and juggernaut-level ships among all 3 of the shipping categories — slash, femslash and het — as well as a ton of non-shipping-focused fans, and every single one of those corners was full of the most insane, gas-leak discourse and drama. We had shipping morality fights before that became a thing in every fandom, we had people overly fixated on the actors’ personal lives and harassing their irl romantic partners, we had TJLC-level conspiracy theories. The works. It was the dark origin story for so many longtime fandom villains on this site like birdlawyer. It’s so much fun to reminisce about it with someone who was in a different corner of the fandom you were in (like I do with @quinnmorgendorffer who was primarily in the M/M corner while I was in the F/F one) and you can compare notes and learn about new levels of fandom insanity that you could never have imagined, and share your own war stories if you have ‘em. It truly was a formative experience. If any of my followers are also former Gleeks feel free to reblog this with your own wild tales of this terrible show that ate so many brains

I think the reason so many LOTR ripoffs fail is because they make their Aragorn analogue the main character, when the entire point of Aragorn is that he’s “the person the villains think is the main character, but is Not.”

Aragorn seems like a traditional King Arthur style hero— he has huge Main Character Energy because he’s supported by destiny, by bloodline, by all these magic artifacts and prophecies, and etc etc. Frodo and Sam are Just Some Guys. Aragorn recognizes that Sauron understandably thinks he’s the main hero of this story ….and he pretends to believe it too, spending the entire series using himself as a diversion to prevent Sauron from seeing Frodo and Sam.

Aragorn’s whole thing is that knows he seems like the Main Hero of this legend to people who don’t know better —- but he also knows that he isn’t, and that his role is just to keep Sauron’s eye on him in order to protect the people around him.

And it works! Sauron is so fixated on defeating his Legendary Destined Archenemy with Extreme Main Character Energy that he completely overlooks the two ordinary little guys who were the real threat to him all along.

My one friend group can't stop saying, "See you in hell!" in a cheerful voice instead of, "Talk to you later!" and my other friend group can't stop calling things "penis" instead of "cool" or "good", so I just unironically uttered the phrase, "Sounds penis, see you in hell," as I got off the phone.

i love the 😌 and 😔 emojis so much because they convey such specific emotions, but also those emotions are absolutely not "relieved" and "pensive"

a while back i saw a picture @mllekurtz took in the gardens of Villa Taranto and really wanted to do a little study of it. then inserting everyone's favorite wizards into the potential picture was suggested, so naturally i no longer had any other choice but to go through with it. it truly looked like a dreamy garden somewhere in Exandria and the wizards fit in too well 🤌

tip jar!

RETURN OF THE BOOK

Welp I did say in the original posts on this blog that life might get in the way of this project and BOY HOWDY did life get in the way. I can't even remember the last post I made on this blog.

But I'm coming back with some excellent news. The edited text of Sansukh is now complete! That's right, I've finished spell checking, formatting, footnoting, and arranging Sansukh into three books. And these files are available for anyone, for free! What can you do with these files? Whatever you want! Download them onto your e-reader, print them in your school's computer lab, or send them away to be printed as physical books. The choice is yours!

What you will find in the linked folder below is both pdfs and word documents of the original text of Sansukh split into three books. Each book contains a glossary of terms and a notes section at the end. There is also a separate document for the appendix stories Tasâlalkhud and A New Coat. I would add these to the end of the third book document, but I left them as their own document for anyone who doesn't wish to include them.

Thanks to everyone who followed along on this journey. It was a lot of work, but it was very rewarding and I am thrilled to have a final product to share. Life is continuing to be A Lot, but if I ever get a break, I will come back to this blog and document my work on getting these documents professionally printed for my own collection. I'd also love to see any physical copies y'all come up with! I hope you all enjoy this labor of love and are inspired to work on similar projects for your own favorite fics.

-Farewell for now, your faithful editor Em