#I will say I have seen less of campaign three than campaign one so my analysis doesn’t have all the information
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Thinking about how at their core both Ashton and Percy are emotionally stunted adults who need to be the only adult in the room because they never got a chance to properly grow up due to childhood trauma. Especially the way they are so different in so many ways but that one core detail dictates so much of their actions and leads to a lot of their failures. It’s just fantastic character building, I love how deeply flawed both of these characters are.
I swear no matter how many times Taliesin gives one of his characters that trait it gets me every time
#I will say I have seen less of campaign three than campaign one so my analysis doesn’t have all the information#critical role#bells hells#vox machina#ashton greymoore#percy de rolo
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Radiance (Kep1er Chaehyun)
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Thank you to @capslocked for beta reading/input.
I swear I didn't purposefully delay till Christmas. Enjoy!
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“So, how do I look?”
No words are enough to describe how divine she looked—how her body and dress couldn't complement each other more.
To say she was perfect would be an understatement. She was beyond perfection.
Your attention is drawn away from the phone in your hand, in the middle of taking pictures of the dolled up idol like you’re her model photographer, and her beauty shines more radiantly with the naked eye compared to the camera lens. She’s examining herself in front of the mirror, sizing herself up from head to toe. A risque outfit by industry standards, her long white dress, along with the little jewelry to adorn her, is intricately designed to attract every eye on her when she comes face to face with the bright lights of the red carpet—cameras, fans, everyone.
By most accounts, this was a risk—one that was large for a rookie group and idol to take.
“That’s the look of a winner,” you comment, clicking another photo of the gorgeous idol—your girlfriend—right in front of you.
“Please,” Chaehyun spins around, has this sarcastic edge in her voice, like your words are nothing but flattery—which they are. She looks down at her chest, adjusting her cleavage to hide those prized assets of hers, but they can’t help but stick out in a sea of perfection. “You know well that’s not true.”
“What?” You lift an eyebrow, confused. “That you’re gorgeous? Of course you are!”
“No, no, silly.” Chaehyun approaches you, each step of her high heels clicking on the marble floor, then she playfully slaps you on the shoulder. “You know damn well we’re not going to win anything tonight, stop puffing me up.”
Admittedly, you knew deep down there was a less than zero percent chance of her group winning any competitive award, especially amongst other rookies. By all statistical accounts, their peers have surpassed them in every category—digitals, sales, views. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that they’ve had a successful debut campaign, and are deserving to be recognized up there with their contemporaries.
“No, I believe in you guys,” you say, shaking your head. “I’m sure you will have at least one win tonight.”
“Stop joking around. This isn’t funny at all,” grumbles Chaehyun, showing slight contempt with her stern glare. It’s disheartening to hear such defeatism from her, especially with how positive and optimistic she has been throughout the year. Not once have you seen her look dispirited, until now. Nothing breaks your heart as much as seeing her radiant face fade with dejection.
In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have gone out of your way to spend thousands to glam her up and the rest of her members. She could have saved herself all the trouble; feign sickness, stay in this hotel to cuddle with you, and everything would have turned out fine. After all they’ve been through this year, no one would blame her or the group for taking a day—hell, even a week—off. Of course, you didn’t really need to step in for their styling department, but with the way their management has handled their outfits throughout award season, you knew it was time for an intervention.
“I’m sorry, Chae,” you whisper in her ear. “I don’t know, maybe there’s still a chance—”
“Forget about it,” she mumbles, interrupting. “I look so good not to act out like this. I’ll go out there, perform my heart out, and have fun regardless of what happens.” Afterward, she gives you a soft, comforting kiss on the cheek, easing your concerns about her.
You look her right in the eyes, still conflicted, but ultimately resign your doubts and return her little smile back. The setting may be different, but it’s just another day in the idol life for Chaehyun, one she’s already used to in her short career. “Atta girl.”
Look down at your watch to find that it’s already three in the afternoon. That’s how early the red carpet starts, and they’re expected to be among the first in a long line of star appearances. If it were up to you, you’d take her there yourself, but instead, you’re forced to sit there, alone in your hotel room, while she disappears until around midnight.
“You have to go now,” you call to her, while she’s back in front of the mirror, placing additional makeup on her face. You want to hold her in your room a few minutes more—maybe two hours more—keep that beautiful presence in front of your eyes a bit longer, withhold this secret from the rest of the world if you can, but you can’t, and you’ll have to share her with everyone else.
After putting on her tiny diamond earrings, she returns to you with a wider, casual smile; her transformation to idol form is now complete. She adjusts the bowtie on your suit, tightening it a bit too much to leave you in a temporary chokehold—as if her cuteness and beauty wasn’t already suffocating.
“You know you’re not coming along, right?” she remarks, giggling and blushing with embarrassment. No one else is around, but she acts like you’ll be watching her over the shoulder, like you’re the voice in her head or her inner subconscious. Her other members are nestled on different floors, intentionally booked by you to avoid letting them see how extra of a person you are. They have zero idea of you two as a couple; you’re like an urban legend to them—a mysterious benefactor who’s secretly helping them from the shadows, when really, you’re only in it for Chaehyun. “Gosh, can you imagine if we stepped out together like this? My career would be over, and you wouldn’t like that, would you?”
“Of course not,” you reply, suppressing a chuckle. Truly, you would break the rules in an instant if there weren’t any dire consequences. “I’m getting you in the mood, you know?”
“Mood, huh?” She gives you a glint of want with her gaze; she knows how you’ve purposefully dressed her in such a provocative way. Planting a kiss on your nose, she adds, “Then how about this: If our group wins, I get to have my way with you tonight.”
“Of course you will win tonight!”
The lie is completely unconvincing and doesn’t affect her in the slightest.
She leads your palm toward her chest, cupping one of her breasts, slowly melting her perfect form into something malleable, something yours. “Only if we don’t win anything tonight.”
“You will win something tonight, believe me!” you say, panicked and sweating. Your eyes slow to lengthy blinks, relishing the soft sensation of her mounds in your grasp.
“How can you say that when you don’t believe it yourself?” Chaehyun leaves your hand on her tit, giving you a fiery look that almost breaks you. If it were up to you, you’d tear that piece of fabric off and rip through her expensive dress like paper in an instant, but you’re in no position to do so—at least not yet.
Forcefully removing your hand from her body, she twirls around, then walks away. Opening the door, she looks over her shoulder and says, “See you later tonight, babe.”
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It's late into the night when the gentle creak of the door snaps you from your drowsy state. You’ve comfortably melted into the couch while you aimlessly scroll through fansite pictures and thousands of tweets about your beautiful idol girlfriend, liking every post on your secret fan account. They can’t stop raving about her dress, how exposed her cleavage is, and how bold it is by their standards. Safe to say the risk paid off in the end.
A gold trophy lands on the coffee table in front of you. At first, you thought it was a hallucination, so you rub your eyes, but the cup remains there at the center, glimmering in the near-dark room. Look around to find Chaehyun standing beside you, still in her internet-breaking red carpet dress, but with her hair frazzled from performing. Had it been anyone else, you would have cried out ghost, but instead, an angel appeared right before you.
“Guess what?” she says, smirking. You both already know the answer and what it entails.
“I said I believed that you would win,” you mutter, sarcastically, somewhat annoyed.
“No you didn’t, silly.” Chaehyun leans down, beaming a wider, smug grin. “You liar. Remember the promise we made earlier?”
“I didn’t promise you anything,” you reply, almost shouting in protest, but without any intention to fight. Even if it was a joke, the way she called you a liar stings. You really didn’t, but there was no escaping her demand, no matter how much you contend, especially after a win like tonight’s.
“Oh, don’t play with me. You know what’s about to happen next.”
Chaehyun’s figure is now directly at center view, her cleavage right up in your face before she forcefully smothers you between her chest for a closer look. Your skittish hands latch on to her thick waist as she suffocates you with her boobs—a punishment for your lack of faith, but ultimately a satisfying reward. Now freed of the cameras, and with all the time in the world, the dress that has drawn everyone to her needs to go.
She realizes how much of a hindrance it is, too. So she pulls on the sleeved part of the outfit, exposing her shoulder and one of her breasts as it falls down her perfect, goddess shaped figure. Cradling your head while you strain yourself gathering oxygen between her bosoms, her jaw slacks, and she releases a deep, lewd moan. Her tight hold on you denies you any opportunity to do the undressing—or proper breathing. Nevertheless, you indulge in her creamy flesh, kissing and suckling up her mound and her freed nipple in your mouth.
“Oh God—fuck, that feels so good—” Chaehyun’s lolling, drooling uncontrollably, and her eyes are fluttering, already consumed by her voracious lust, and you haven’t inserted any part of you inside her, at least not yet. You knew how sensitive she was, especially around her chest, and you took advantage of it. Slow and steady wasn’t how she preferred you partook of her; she always wanted you to drink her up, to take her in full, to ravage her. Without the cameras on her, she could finally loosen up and release her pent-up needs.
You continue to consume her tit, leave wet marks all around and over her taut bud, make her flesh as red as the sun. She’s too engrossed in the quick surge of bliss; now she’s clinging to you for support. A string of moans pass through your ear, mixed with the occasional profanity, and it’s a better song than her group’s discography. The sensory pleasures begin to drown you further along, too; you’re close to passing out in her arms and waking up to them. You’re so engaged with her breasts that you ignore that she’s still mostly draped in expensive clothing, slowly piercing through the fabric with hungry, needy nails, and leaving sharp red trails on her skin.
“Wait, wait, wait—” Suddenly snapping from her daze, she suddenly shoves you off her, realizes the tear in her clothes, and how much of an obstruction it is. She grabs her exposed tit, then begins to shed the rest of the dress, letting it free fall down her body. Kicking the useless garment aside with her heels, she stands in front of you in all her naked glory, and you swear your heart is wildly beating through your chest.
“My God, Chae,” The expression on your face makes it look like you’ve seen something unbelievable, which you have. You’ve seen her bare before, but something about tonight feels so different, feels so special. “You’re so—fuck—”
She doesn’t allow you to finish; instead she puts you back where you belong—between her chest, indulging in her mouthwatering tits. Your fingers dig and squeeze her thick mounds in your clasp. Fuck, if they aren’t the most soft and perfect material you’ve ever held, as if they were only meant for you. Between soft kisses and hungry licks of her rigid bud, you’re worshiping at the altar of her divine figure, and she returns your offering with moans in kind, tugging you as close as she possibly can.
“That’s it, that’s it. You like my tits? You saw all those pics of me in that dress?”
“Fuck—fuck yes I did—” you mumble. Staring up to her pleasure-ridden face, you gasp and take a deep breath, briefly escaping her suffocating hold after your reply. Admittedly, a strange sight when she’s usually the shorter one. “Everyone was talking about you online. You wore it so perfectly.”
Cupping your cheeks, she flashes a gummy smile, a tender one in the midst of the expanding heat. “I have to thank you for it. Too bad it’s ruined now. I really liked it.”
“I was gonna ruin it either way,” you say, rather bluntly. Your cheeks are burning up—likely more from asphyxiation than love. “That dress was gonna end up in ruins, one way or another.”
“Then let me ruin yours then,” she replies, smirking, pushing you against the couch, and her thick, shapely thighs pressed against yours, making it impossible to move. “I wanna ruin you tonight.”
Planting a kiss on your lips, you work together to strip your clothes, one by one. Bowtie, coat, shirt, pants, and boxers make a growing heap on the ground while Chaehyun passionately makes out with you, palming your cheeks with deep conviction, as if unwilling to let you go after being away from her for so long. Eight hours isn’t an eternity, but to her, it was. Your fingers slip between her luscious locks of hair as you slide your tongue into her mouth, motivated by desire just as much as she is.
Her creamy trunks create agonizing friction against your hardening shaft, makes you wet, creates a slick puddle between her legs. Aroused, her thighs acclimate and rub in slow motions against your dick, closing whatever gap remains between you two. Resting her head against yours, she sings streams of moans into your ear; she’s so honey sounding, yet so adorable as you both comfortably sink further into the sofa.
Digging into the soft texture of her curves, your fingers dig into her flesh, all while you slowly thrust between her forelegs, brushing the entrance of her lower lips. What started as a promise to ruin you, the opposite is happening instead. She’s in your arms, with complete freedom to break character after all of the night’s activities, solely dependent on you for relief, which you are more than happy to provide.
When you try to get off the couch with her in tow, her weight presses you down, seemingly aware of your subtle motions. Her teeth gently nibble on your sensitive neck, and she whimpers, breaking the near silence. “No, baby. Let’s do it here on the couch.”
It was worth a try, but there really was no way out of there and straight to the bedroom. She was exhausted and the neediness in her voice couldn’t be any more obvious—she needed you right away.
Laboriously gasping and grunting into her ear, you continue to cuddle Chaehyun in your clutch, slowly but certainly building more tension in your loins—and your cock. Leaving your climax at the suffocating mercy of her legs, your vision goes dark, gradually closing as the pleasure sinks you deeper. If not for the constant grinding of your wanton bodies against each other, you’d be fast asleep with her by now. It’s tense how her thighs buckle with each passing second and thrust between them, and you’re silently praying for that sweet, satisfying release.
Her fingers caress the back of your skull, an endless loop playing between her lips as she sighs sweetly. You’re stuck in this state for so long, it might as well be a lifetime. The conflict of quickening the pace between her legs challenges your patience; your loins are practically screaming at you to finally give in, but she feels so good, so wet, it turns your brain and thought processes into mush.
Sneaking your hand past her ass, you slip a finger between her bottom lips. Eliciting a deep moan, you insert a second one, drawing out a second whine. Stimulating her sensitive spot like it’s second nature for you, the heat between her legs builds up rapidly, presenting how desperate and wet she is for you. Her thighs rattle as they grind against your shaft, quickening your impending orgasm ahead of hers.
“Mmm God—” she quietly whines, pinching her hands on your shoulders. As if she couldn’t be any weaker for you, you push all the familiar buttons, hit all the right spots in her clit. It shouldn’t take long before she joins you, knowing how delicate she is.
Your climaxes come one after another in a quiet but hard hitting fashion. Gripping onto each other’s clasp, Chaehyun writhes violently as you spill thick, hot seed between her legs. Even while you hit your peak, you continue to pump between her thighs as your digits undo her. She breathes into your ear, still quivering in near silence as you fondle her with tender, utmost care, kissing her ear softly.
“Cum for me, baby. Cum for me.”
Perfect timing. Chaehyun gushes like you’ve got her brainwashed. A muffled, wispy moan follows her climax, liberally coating your fingers with wet juices and staining what was clean, quality made fabric with uncleansable slick. The space between your groins is soaked, and though the weight in your loins is fading, the load on you has never been heavier.
Until it wasn’t.
Chaehyun mutters wordless babbles into your shoulder, then she slowly perks up, lifts that weight off your lap, then drops to her knees. For a second, you’d believe she was acting drunk, but she’s wired with pleasure. Her fingers reach between her thick, drenched legs, gathering up the cum you’ve blasted them with. It’s a hot, hypnotizing and arousing sight, watching the usually spry and clean idol play and sheen her body with flecks of your semen.
If not for your own fatigue, you’d be stroking yourself back to hardness at the lewd scene playing out before you, but she saves you the effort. She grabs your cock by its length, pumping you to another erection with a particularly sultry gaze. One second and she's transformed into a completely different person.
Your eyes pop wide at the sight—not because she looks sexy (that’s one thing, she always is), but at the tighter, even more asphyxiating sensation of your cock sandwiched between her big bosoms. “My God, Chaehyun—” Your voice cracks, and the immediate burst of pleasure scatters your thoughts and the rest of your sentence.
Staring up at your bliss-filled face with glazed eyes, she hums delightfully as you grow weak for her. Pressing your dick between her breasts, the combination of your cum mixed with her sweat eases the movement of your shaft in them.
One stroke up and down and that was all you needed to see. Submitting to her control—for real this time—you slump back on the couch, resting your eyes and spreading your legs wide as Chaehyun pumps your cock between her chest with minimal effort. Each stroke is hot and emphatic, makes your body shudder wildly, better than your dick could do inside her cunt.
As if you weren’t already drowning in her heat, she darts her tongue out to lick the tip of your shaft, and it shatters whatever parts of you that still remain.
“Oh fuck, Chae—” you rasp and clench your teeth, overwhelmed by a powerful ripple of bliss that you’ve never felt before.
Another taste in her mouth, with an audible slurp of your cock imprinted on her lips. Unknowingly, you’re drooling—and groaning.
“You like that?” asks Chaehyun, and it’s swooning. “You like how my body feels on your cock?”
“Of course, I do,” you manage between breaths, moaning loudly after she slides her tits again. “So goddamn good, you feel so good, my God—”
“Just relax. Shhh.” She kisses your tip, makes your whole body quiver with heightened excitement. “I promised that I would ruin you tonight. Now let me ruin you tonight.”
Even when she said she’ll ruin you, you know you’ll feel way better coming out of this. So you let yourself go, and allow her to have her way with you. Comfortably settled into the sofa, you gasp and whine, cursing and praising Chaehyun’s name with your lips while she continues to deliver an unbelievable tit job. Brushing her tousled locks aside, her nails dig deep into the skin of your legs, coating your shaft and her breasts with her saliva and kisses.
It didn’t matter how late into the night it was—you were practically humming her name out loud without care for the poor souls who had the unfortunate luck of occupying the rooms around yours. If anything, what was being ruined was their sleep. The warmth around your groin burns hotter as the puddle around her chest grows. Not too fast, nor too slow, she pumps her busts between your cock at the perfect pace to maximize the pleasure surging through every nerve and muscle in your body.
“So good, so good—” What began as a stream of moans and profanities turns into a continuous string of two words, each delivered with the same level of intensity. “So good, Chae, fuck—”
Meanwhile, Chaehyun quietly watches on, drowning your throbbing cock in a pool of semen, sweat, saliva, and flesh. “Gonna cum again, right? I can feel that you’re close.”
Shaking your head, you deny, knowing that the burning sensation in your loins is close to exploding a second time. A pointless show of resistance, as it takes only a few more pumps to bring you to another collapse.
With your tip peeking out on a particularly deep stroke, you erupt—considerably weaker than the first, but enough to fill her chin and her chest with a deluge of white, hot seed. Tilting your head upward, your jaw slackens while you groan deeply, nails digging into the tattered fabric. When you finish cumming on her, labored breaths follow, making you look more exhausted than she ever was, despite her having the busier schedule.
At the end of the day, she fulfilled what she promised to do—she ruined you.
“Told ya,” teases Chaehyun, tone playful, giggling at the laughable sight of you completely in shambles. Holding you by the wrist, she leads your hand to wrap around her waist.
When you regain your senses, your eyes take in the sight of Chaehyun standing in front of you, one finger dipped on her cum-stained chest, hypnotized by the fresh coat of paint on her. Even in her filthy state, she still looks so divine.
Noticing your freshly opened eyes, she follows, “Bed?”
Still recovering from the high, you merely nod, weakly.
“I was thinking, how about we make another bet?” she adds, resting a finger on her chin. You lift a weak eyebrow, intrigued, incapable of formulating a single word. She looks all around the room, searching for a flash of inspiration, until it hits her right in the eye—and her eyes perk up like a lightbulb has appeared above her head.
“I bet if my members don’t call tonight, I’ll let you cum inside me.” From the award on the table, she returns her gaze to you, smirking. “What do you think?”
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Maybe if you moan loud enough, then the bet is off.
Much later into the night, early into the next day, the ringing of a phone is mostly ignored by the echo of collective moans, bed creaking, and the sound of wet flesh slapping flesh. You’re both in bed, but not much has changed. Chaehyun remains atop you in full control, riding you vigorously with your hands glued to her hips, distracting you from the deep soreness in your cock with her swaying, glossy breasts.
“I’m gonna pretend I don’t hear anything,” says Chaehyun, half-teasing and half-seductively, between moans and rocked hips, looking over her shoulder, completely aware of the loud impediment. “I’m gonna make sure the rest of your seed ends up inside my wet pussy, until your balls are completely dried up—or when the sun rises.”
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(A/N: Yep, you know I had to do one after seeing those pics, but I got beat to the punch real fast, so I mostly left this on limbo for a couple of weeks. It's been a bit difficult to write and move in general lately, my mind state isn't in the best shape after finals and a string of bad decisions and bad luck, but hey, we're most likely past that now. Make sure you spend your holidays with the ones you cherish the most. Thank you for reading!)
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This is my flash exchange gift for @venulus
Character: Mitsuhide (& most of the Azuchi warlords)
Prompt: Cold Hands/Warm Touches
Title: Snow Daze
Word Count: 700
Warnings: None
Even in winter, it rarely snows in Azuchi. Too warm. Too dry. So when an unseasonable cold spell married the gales of Lake Biwa and they birthed a knee-high accumulation of snow, everyone went a little crazy.
Is it a surprise that a suggestion of a snowball fight was met with cheers?
Is it a surprise that Hideyoshi forbade that dangerous activity?
Is it a surprise that his edict was ignored?
Finally, is it a surprise that this minor rebellion was instigated by Mitsuhide? True, nobody could prove he’d fired the first snowball, the one that hit Ranmaru. Had Mitsuhide realized that Ranmaru would immediately seek revenge? Even if he couldn’t predict what would happen next (and let’s be honest… he knew), he must have been aware that there would be snowballs lobbed in retaliation.
The next one hit Keiji.
He’d whooped in appreciation and pitched a Keiji-sized snowball at Masamune…
By the end of the first day of what would go down in history as the Great Fluff Campaign of ’83, everyone in Azuchi had been walloped at least once. Some more often than that. Some (Hideyoshi), after changing clothes three times in one afternoon, gave up on the idea of dryness entirely.
In this midst of these sneak attacks, Mitsuhide mysteriously avoided becoming a victim. It was almost unnatural, a maid remarked to Mai on Day Three of the siege, how he strode through the corridors, hair completely dry, crisp haori fluttering behind him, while everyone else (even Nobunaga) had telltale damp splotches on their clothes. “He must be a yokai! He shapeshifts out of the way as soon as he senses danger. I wonder if he shapeshifts other times, too?”
That… was something that Mai was also curious about, but it was further down on the list after, “can he really read minds?” “why does he tease me so much?” and “what would it be like to kiss-.” Never mind.
By the fifth day, when the storm showed no sign of stopping, she speculated that Mitsuhide was not only a yokai, but also one who could control the weather. What else would explain the fact that no matter how often the snow was trampled into the ground or hurled through the air, it always magically replenished itself overnight?
She might not have confronted him, had it not been for the fact that they lost Mitsunari in the snow for a day (Mitsunari was none the worse for his adventure, and hadn’t realized he was lost, but even Ieyasu had been worried). Determined to put a stop to the madness, she wrapped herself in her warmest cloak, marched over to Mitsuhide’s manor and pounded on the door.
Though she had practiced many speeches on her way over, Mai lost her train of thought when he opened the door, then stood smirking down at her. “Dear me, Mouse. To what do I owe the honor?”
She’d never seen him in his informal kimono before, and the sight of that deep v neck hovering open over his sculpted abs was … don’t go there. When she finally regained her voice, it was only to say, “Stop it.”
“I’m afraid you’ll need to be substantially less cryptic.” He stood aside as she stomped into his manor.
Mai waved her hand in the air. “The snow. Make it stop.”
“I’m flattered that you think it, but I cannot control the weather. Had I that ability, Nobunaga would have already unified Japan twice over.” He set a kettle on the irori. “Tea?”
She felt a bit silly as she watched him prepare tea like a perfectly normal human. Then he handed her a cup, his fingers touching hers. “Wait! Your hand is cold.” She sandwiched his fingers between hers. “You’ve been inside, just made tea, and your hands are cold.”
“My dear if you want to hold my hands, you only need to ask.” He picked up her other hand, and pressed both against his chest. “I am often cold. Would you be interested in warming me with your touch?”
She… was interested.
…
…
…
Later that afternoon, the snow turned to rain.
Everyone complained about the mud.
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On the double standards of Taylor’s love life and Swifties’ role in Taylor’s reputation
{Fair warning: this is kind of long and I actually originally wrote it during the Ratty stuff but it’s relevant now and this post from @9w1ft (specifically the tweet) made me think that maybe this needed to be really laid out there. }
Disclaimer: I am in no way claiming to know what Taylor’s sexuality is definitively, nor am I suggesting that every relationship she’s had with a man was fake, or that she is a lesbian. I myself have experienced enough bi erasure and biphobia to know better, but I had to put this out there explicitly so hetlors don’t have that as a “gotcha”.
Swifties have the lowest possible standards for whom they consider to be a boyfriend of Taylor’s.
Their standards are a) the media has to stir something up b) they have to interact distantly in some public capacity before they c) walk around together (holding hands or not).
I can give you the names so many women with whom Taylor acted like that, often for longer periods of time and with more interaction than a couple dinners and pap walks or whatever she’s done with those men. And that’s without time to go do research which would doubtlessly turn up more names.
To name some examples:
Karlie Kloss, Diana Agron, Selena Gomez, Gigi Hadid, Blake Lively, Cara Delevingne, Martha Hunt, Sophie Turner, Lorde, all three Haim sisters, Zoe Kravitz, Emma Stone, Camila Cabello, Lily Aldridge, Lily Donaldson.
(To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Taylor dated all or most of those women.)
Now, I have no doubt that if most swifties looked up photos of Taylor with a lot of those women they’d go “they aren’t even doing anything in that picture” or “they’re just walking side by side” or whatever else.
THAT’S THE POINT
I’m 1000% sure that if you photoshopped a man into basically any of those pics people would assume they’re dating because they’re walking together.
Almost all of Taylor’s supposed boyfriends have had significantly less interaction with her than those women, but people don’t hesitate to say she’s dating the men. Her team can and will deny it, but swifties will add a name to their list anyway, and that creates a whole other problem.
The sl*t shaming:
In my opinion, the sl*t shaming that Taylor has experienced for about the last 15 years has been, at least in part, because of swifties who jump to conclusions about men she’s seen with. When her own fans believe she’s dated however many guys, it’s that much easier for the media to repeat that and twist it to be negative.
If you wouldn’t look at a random guy and girl standing within a few feet of each other or walking together and come to the conclusion that they must be dating, why do you assume that about Taylor? Or, for that matter, does every person of the opposite gender that you associate with have to be your SO?
[And yes that can easily be turned around on Gaylors, but the whole point is that we aren’t solely using proximity to link potential exes or lovers to Taylor. We actually do the analysis of the lyrics, we break down the connections, we do the research.]
My point is that swifties have contributed on a large scale to Taylor’s sl*t shaming in a way that should make them think twice about who they claim she’s dating. Unfortunately as we’ve seen with this M*tty situation {and now the football guy}, they don’t seem to have the self awareness to realize how they’ve aided such a disgusting campaign of hate.
One more thing: you can say that no one will say those things now anyway because Taylor is on top of the world and they wouldn’t dare sl*t shame the Queen of Pop or “The Music Industry”. You might even be right. But if you do this and feel no guilt or shame over how your actions may have played a part in the several intense periods of sl*t shaming that Taylor has gone through previously, you need to think about why that is.
Taylor said it best in her speech at the Grammy museum in September 2015. She was introducing Blank Space and talking about the situation that made her write the song.
“In the last couple of years the media have had a really wonderful fixation on kind of painting me as like the psycho serial dater girl… It got pretty out of control there for a couple of years because… every article would be like, Taylor Swift Standing Near Some Guy. Watch Out Guy!”
That sounds insane, and it was definitely worse then than it is now, but the fact that it’s happening right now at all is ridiculous. Swifties need to stop helping the media tie Taylor’s name to men as if that makes her relevant. She’s a highly awarded singer, songwriter, and performer who has set and broken records (and then broken the ones she’s set) countless times. Swifties need to stop pretending that dating someone is what makes her interesting or we’re no better than the people who think she only writes breakup songs.
#sorry that this is so long#I’m sure I left stuff out though so definitely feel free to add#okay i’ll shut up now#kaylor#gaylor#gaylor swift#lgbetty#friends of dorothea
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wishlist for Junior year
Since Junior year is happening in January I thought I'd make a quick list of a few things I personally want to happen next season. You're free to tell me what you think, disagree, agree, hell add more if you're interested.
I want the maps back- I completely understand why they did the show like they did for their live show, but I miss the Rick Perry maps that were so cool. Also Brennan has a lot of epic battles that are kind of hard for me to visualize because I have adhd and missing one thing he says can confuse me for the whole battle. Seeing mini's really helps me keep things straight
less NPC interactions- the NPC's are not bad, by any means, I love the hirelings and the romance partners, but I feel like including them on the adventure lessened the interactions between the Bad Kids. Like Tracker and Kristen for a large part of the adventure were attatched at the hip, and other places, Gorgug spent a lot of his time trying to patch up his relationship with Zelda, Ayda gets a lot of interactions with Fig and Adaine, but there isn't a lot of time for the three of them just one on one leaving the other out more. Just me personally I would like if the season focused more on the party and their relationships
(I want to be clear, I don't want no interactions with our beloved NPC's just less them being part of the adventure and more them being NPC's that help and exist but aren't the DM's Player Characters)
I hope they stay in Elmville or at the very least Solace- I loved Sophomore Year, but a lot of the charm of the first season of Fantasy High was the unique setting they were in. An urban fantasy world where a large part of the population were adventurers. It felt more unique compared to Sophomore year's more high fantasy, but with people who know modern technology. Even if they leave Elmville, I wouldn't mind them exploring Solace as a whole to see what their country is like outside of their small town. (I want to more campaigns exploring Spyre too, but even with the Seven they leave Solace by ep 3 and spend most of their time in other countries in Spyre, I want to see what a modern urban fantasy setting is like)
Adaine using the Sword of Sight, wizard or not, as a high elf she's proficient in swords and with her boosted strength and her desire to punch/hit people it's perfect. I know cantrips will still be the better option, but when has Adaine, I punch my sister in the face, Abernant done the more efficient option. Adaine is my favorite character so I'd just like to see her being the terrible chaos gremlin that I know she's capable of being.
Hallariel- I'd like to see her in battle if only once. I know I said I would like the NPC presence lessened, but I still want to see what Fabian's hot mom can do in a real fight. We've only seen her talked about as the best swordswoman in the world by Bill who himself is fearsome with a blade, but we only see her train/threaten her son. Even if it's a possession or mind control situation I'd like to see her in battle, even if it's against the Bad Kids.
For some reason I want a battle at a Fig and the Sig Figs concert- I don't really know why I want this, but I really liked the Broadway brawl ep of Unsleeping city, it made for some cool rules and the like and I would like, a less stressful, but still fight in the crowd of people while Fig and Gorgug are on stage.
Consequences for the Bad Kids and their friends/family- I don't really know where I'm going with this, but I just feel like the Bad Kids get away with a lot of stuff because that's how Elmville works, but I kind of liked how they suffered consequences near the end of Freshman year, even if I think months in Jail was a lazy way for Brennan to do a time skip until the finale battle. (I love the guy, but I believe what I believe). But specifically about YES! the god Kristen created and abandoned, creating a god and orphaning it should have more consequences than throwing out a sweater that you don't like any more. Are Adaine and Aelwyn treated differently given that their parents started a war over Aelwyn and wars have consequences, people died and have people to mourn them who probably aren't too keen on the two abernants in their country after that.
I'd like cameos by the Seven, not just Zelda.- again, I know I said less NPC presence, but still, they don't necessarily have to be NPC's just saying if someone wanted to drop by and play for an episode or 2. The Seven is probably my favorite D20 season and I would love to see what my girls are up to.
There's more that I might add, but this is it for now
#fantasy high#dimension 20#fantasy high spoilers#fantasy high junior year#adaine abernant#adaine o'shaughnessey#fig faeth#fabian seacaster#gorgug thistlespring#kristen applebees#riz gukgak
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Summary: Her crime is justice. How long would it take for a-Zhan’s boy to fall to the same judge? Deep in the throes of the Sunshot Campaign, Lan Zhan begs his mother for help.
Warning: Rated M for Implied/Referenced Rape of Madam Lan.
“Mother, please.”
A-Zhan is her son and that scares them. They insist his posture remain perfect, his conduct flawless, and his adherence to the rules absolute. She and Lan Qiren have an understanding, so she knows it is an act of love. If Lan Qiren can raise a-Zhan right, he will not be put in the hands of others, who might forbid her from seeing her sons altogether. For all his own faults, Lan Qiren has raised a-Zhan well. She doesn’t begrudge him this – Lan Qiren has never wanted to be a sect leader or father and his brother has forced him to become both.
No, she judges Lan Qiren for a hundred other things, a thousand sometimes, when she is feeling particularly vicious. Those days turned rarer as her sons grew older and she saw them raised to be kind. A-Huan listens when most refuse, even to her plight, against her wishes and expectations. No boy should learn what monster he’s forced to call father, but neither she nor Lan Qiren could spare him this.
His death was a relief.
It takes a-Zhan longer to realize because they’ve learned what mistakes not to make with a-Huan and because a-Zhan struggles to imagine cruelty as anything but absence. He brings her injured animals to heal and learns traveling songs to remind her of the road.
Her children are both kind, but a-Zhan is hers in the way a-Huan isn’t.
A-Zhan would taste blood for love.
It would coat his teeth the same as hers as she consented to having a-Zhan in exchange for seeing a-Huan. Had the birth not nearly killed her, she likely would’ve struck a bargain again, bloodied teeth, nails digging into the wood, carving runes. Two decades of imprisonment, and all she has to show for it are papers beneath hidden floorboards, enough anger to break the barrier holding her.
Nothing more, nothing less.
The Lan know how to keep someone quiet and isolated better than anyone else.
Even now, when they are in the middle of rebuilding and fighting, her sons bleeding on the battlefield, she is kept here instead of sent out to fight, mind the children, or cook meals. It isn’t a-Huan’s decision to keep her, but his word isn’t setting her free either.
It is a-Zhan, too thin, crying as he did upon his first return to Cloud Recesses, finding her alive.
“Wei Ying,” he says, “Wei Ying, his cultivation is harming him.”
Wei Ying, Wei Wuxian, the adventurous boy keeping her son away from her for three months, the clever boy who gave her the fish he’d caught after being dismissed from the classroom, the dear boy her son loves and cannot keep.
“What is he doing?” she asks unnecessarily, already aware of what they call him.
She is not a soldier in this war, but she knows the Wen army is twice the size of theirs and heard of the man drowning in resentment, commanding what she prophesized years ago.
‘Energy is energy!’ laughed the unfamiliar boy openly when the same crime had seen her imprisoned.
Well, not the suggestions. They accused her of lying when she’d been entirely truthful: she had come to the Cloud Recesses to study. Haunted by a girl suffering under a man’s hands that her spirit could not be suppressed anymore, wouldn’t it be more righteous to let her vent her anger at the target? When she came to the Lan, she thought their cultivation might give her ideas; instead, she found an injustice no one would take action against.
Her crime is justice. How long would it take for a-Zhan’s boy to fall to the same judge?
“He has corpses fight for him, he commands them by song or whistle, clapping if he can do neither. He walks the unorthodox path and I cannot help him. Mother, please. I need your aid. If he won’t listen to me, won’t take back the sword—”
Mother, can you protect my love?
All her theories are hidden beneath the floorboards and she knows a-Zhan hasn’t seen them. “Who told you, a-Zhan?”
Her son avoids her gaze, which is as good a confession as any. No one told him; he’s either concluded why her cottage is warded so heavily against resentment or caught sight of whatever documents remain of her hushed-up trial.
“A-Zhan,” she says and brushes the tears off her son’s cheek. “I theorized, but the furthest I’ve ever come to using resentment was summoning a singular spirit to my bidding.”
And her bidding had been the spirit’s will. Who summoned who in that forest, twenty years ago?
But her son is desperate and she loves him. There is nothing she wouldn’t do for him, has remained here for a-Huan and him.
“Talk to him, please. You soothe my mind when you speak to me. Perhaps you’ll figure out how to ease his temper. No one understands what he does, only that it is unnatural.”
Her a-Zhan is five all over again, asking her about a world she hasn’t seen in years, confident that mother will righten it and lead him on the correct path.
She smiles at her son and brushes imaginary dust off her robes. She has a xiao, bought when she was a student and kept because the Lan did not know what she wanted to use it for. Absentmindedly, she wonders if Lan Qiren has seen Wei Ying and realized what the instrument was for. She hopes a-Huan won’t resent her for using an instrument he utilizes too, and only because of her.
“I’ll do my best, a-Zhan. Can you bring me to him?”
Breaking the ward will call attention to her escape, but before she has time to linger on the thought, a-Zhan simply deactivates it. She blinks, having forgotten momentarily that for a few terrible weeks, a-Zhan was the sect heir, a-Huan presumed missing or dead.
“We must hurry, mother.”
So serious, her dear boy. She laughs and accepts his hand, taking one step after another out of her prison. She is further from the building than ever when a-Zhan helps her step on his sword. What a picture they must make together, a-Zhan dressed for recovery and her for another day of solitary leisure, flying towards war.
She doesn’t cry or show relief yet, refuses to give her son any reason to feel guilty.
Tomorrow, she will see his Wei Ying and ask him if twenty years of theory measure up to three months of practice.
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600, or a musing on resilience and love
Hello all you wonderful figthusiasts! Today is the day that I hit 600 fan figs on my spreadsheet total (not all in hand, the vast majority are in some stage of production or transport), and I wanted to take a minute to stop and celebrate what is, by all accounts, an incredible number.
This is less about me (and my perhaps fiscally-questionable use of disposable cash) and more about the fact that more than 600 individual figures of Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan were produced and made solely by fans. That this many actually exist in the world. What this is about, above all other things, is about love, and resilience, and the awe-inspiring, unstoppable combination of both.
I don't normally talk about the current situation with Zhang Zhehan and Chinese entertainment, because this blog is meant to be a little island of happiness and fun for us that love this show, love these two actors, and love seeing cute renditions of them. But 600...well, 600 feels powerful. It feels like something worth talking about.
This fandom has had half of our vibrant, beautiful soul ripped from us in the nastiest, cruelest, most contemptible way possible. This is greed and evil in the most overt form I've seen in the world, and it was horrifying to watch it unfold that August.
As overseas fans, we at least can still see Zhang Zhehan's past works, post videos and photos of him, and freely say his name as much as we want. The Chinese fandom cannot. Zhang Zhehan has been so comprehensively erased from Chinese media that he cannot even use his own name. The fandom can't even search for his name online, his pictures and videos have been removed, and any of the shows or movies that feature him that remains still available has him (literally) scrubbed from the screen.
This is what I see when I search for Zhang Zhehan on Taobao, Weidian, and Xianyu:
The Chinese fans have taken matters into their own hands, and stood up and fought back and refused to forget him. The fig makers, the doll makers, the merch makers - all of these incredibly brave, loyal, and loving fans have gone out there and dedicated thousands and thousands of hours of their own time and their own money to keeping his memory fresh, his work front and center, and his light constantly burning.
They took him from the fans, but they can't make the fans let him go.
Luckily, the fandom still has the other half of it's soul, and continues to celebrate Gong Jun and his accomplishments, and his own fiercely loyal and great heart, and celebrates the love and affection and care these two souls have for each other. Zhehan promised Junjun forever on May 5th, 2021, and the fandom honors and helps keep his promise.
Think about it. Six-hundred-plus fan-created figurines of the two of them. I don't even own all the fan figs - there's absolutely more than this, I'd estimate closer to 700.
There's Wenzhou figs, of course, but random side character in a long ago TV show? Check. Main characters? Check. Appearance(s) on a variety show? Check. Ad campaigns? (Lots of) magazine shoots? Check check. Casual airport outfit? Workout pose? Douyin moment? any number of Weibo posts? Livestream? not just one, not just two, not just three, renditions of childhood photos? Check check check.
And the figs are still coming. I have a whole list of figs in sketch form sitting in my Weidian cart, waiting to be opened for deposits. One after another, fig makers dipping deep into their precious hoards of recorded shows and magazines and photos and videos of Zhehan, designing one fig after another. Every time Junjun wears some fancy new designer outfit, fans are hard at work pairing that look with a complementary one from Zhehan's archive, determined to keep these two front and center in a country where they can't even type Zhehan's name into a search engine without it being censored.
My respect for the Chinese fandom and the fan creators is immense. They have souls of steel. Every time I hold one of these figs in my hand, and marvel at the cleverness and creativity and all the fine little details, I feel the strength of that connection to them, that iron determination, the fierce will to persevere, that pride and joy, and the love that can't be stopped. 坚强 indeed.
Yeah, 600+ figs is a trauma response, no question. For the fan makers and the fan buyers. But it's a response, all right. Today I have 600 and more tiny (giant) shouts of, you can't stop us, we're going to keep loving and celebrating and remembering him no matter what happens.
It's incredible. I don't know why 600 is the number that really hits me - I had thought it would be 500, but I blew past 500 without blinking in a frenzy of late night and early morning fig drops, and then it was Gong Jun's birthday, and a tidal wave of love and figs, and now here I am. I was at 598 yesterday and already today I'm at 612. I'll be at 700 before I know it, with a lot of remainders starting to be released and the Spring Festival coming up.
I have less than 200 fan figs actually at home, and it's ... a lot. My husband asked me a while back, staring at my display shelves, so, what's the end game here? and I just looked at him, and said, I don't know.
I really don't. I have to believe this is totally unprecedented, but then again, what happened to him is totally unprecedented. The only thing I know that if the fans keep making them, I'm going to keep supporting them.
So here's to resistance, and resilience, and love. Here's to the fans staying strong, and here's to Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan. It's going to be a glorious sunrise on the mountaintop when it comes.
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Some of the resentment I've seen of FCG's coin feels like it stems from viewing FCG as less a character than a vehicle for Sam to do bits. They view the coin as Sam doing a bit that isn't landing and is taking up time and space that could go to the actual characters in the group that have stories instead of what they view as a bunch of disconnected jokes. I saw this with FCG going into the Grand Ring, too. People on Twitter saying that that was Sam trying to get the group killed for a laugh.
Truly I have to believe there is either one server or just like...a bunch of very stupid people who all follow each other and parrot each other's takes because the reaction to the Grand Disk especially is absolutely batshit fucking nuts:
If you give a heroic adventurer a weird noise, they are probably going to investigate it. If they investigate it, they are probably going to check it out. If FCG hadn't run in, someone else would have.
This show has been on for literally 8 years now and there has never been a main campaign TPK. Truly the Otohan fight is the only one where I take serious issue with the balance and signaling, and even then, so what, half the party died, they fixed it. Why is this fight different from all other fights?
On top of that this happened before we knew resurrection was broken, too, so like, the reaction during the episode truly makes no sense; the audience knowledge was that this party has THREE people who have revivify and two with Raise Dead and only one true glass cannon. They are arguably better positioned to take on threats than like, Bells Hells the regular party.
If a character dies the cast member will play another character and just based on the track record of past replacement characters the chances are high that they will be just as good if not better. If you don't want to watch a show in which permanent character death is an option then go do that.
I have, recently, actively tried to push back on the "bro do you even play TTRPGs" attitude people sometimes have regarding really stupid criticism, and to be fair this is narrative criticism too but like...unless a TPK is explicitly the goal or baked into the setting as a possibility (eg: Calamity; Neverafter; games designed for it like the Tomb of Horrors module or Call of Cthulhu or something) the GM absolutely does not want a TPK. Do you know how much fucking PAPERWORK is wasted in a TPK. If they had a TPK Matt would have had to look at an entire encounter and backstory regarding, say, Oltgar and Drixlitch, that he had lovingly designed, and go "well, guess that's fucked."
So anyway if you saw FCG go through the gates and your thought was not "ooh, combat" but rather "this will be a TPK" idk work on your breathing exercises or something because that's a wild leap.
Anyway the funniest thing in all of this is that the most recent episode made it clear that it's not just a bit. Also though it's like. Which "actual" characters? Chetney has been pretty decently served as a character, all things considered; the entire solstice plot revolves around Imogen so it's time for Laura to get a well-deserved break so Imogen can actually process and develop as a person rather than just be under constant nonstop stress; I love Fearne but this arc is just not really about her whole deal; and both FRIDA and Deanna have gotten plenty to do. Honestly while balance between characters is not really a thing in the sense that some people make D&D characters with tons of hooks and things to do and paths to take and some do not, and also the overall narrative of the party is important to consider*, the character balance of this particular arc has been the best of the whole campaign.
*most people get this intuitively UNLESS they are particularly stupid, or have either shipping or My Blorbo Is The Protagonist brainrot, to the point that you can diagnose these conditions when someone's previously decent understanding of story falls off a cliff
#answered#Anonymous#yes there is a passover joke in here#the more people insult the coin the more i will force them to look at religious references bc it's funny#cr tag
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Liza Monroy for Assigned Media:
Sasha Jane Lowerson, the only publicly known trans-woman competing in professional surfing, is the first trans-woman to win a female longboarding competition—which also means she has solely borne the brunt of online hatred from trolls who follow the surf world, as well as anti-trans industry figureheads like Bethany Hamilton.
Hamilton, the devout Christian champion surfer famed for losing her arm in a shark attack age 13, has been making anti-trans comments publicly since the World Surf League adopted a policy requiring trans-female athletes to maintain a testosterone level of less than five nmol/L for at least 12 months in order to compete in the women’s division. Most recently, Hamilton and swimmer Riley Gaines embarked on a tour to promote their agenda.
For a brief moment, a possibility of change flickered: international surf corporation Rip Curl, purveyor of wetsuits, apparel, and swimwear, released a documentary ad featuring Lowerson in the 2024 “Summer Looks Good on You” campaign, a long-running Rip Curl Womens series.
Rip Curl also sponsored Hamilton, at the time. “I didn’t want anything to do with a company that supported someone like that,” Lowerson says of when they first approached her. In thinking about it further, though, she reconsidered. The fact that they had approached her could mean “they’re distancing themselves from those attitudes and that stigma, from misinformation and the spread of hate. So I said yes.”
Lowerson has spent over thirty-five years in the industry as a longboarder, including as a sponsored surfer. Longboarding uses a board typically longer than 9 feet where the sport is more about style, flow, and grace and allows for more of a platform for the dance than the fast, highly maneuverable shortboards typically seen in pro-surfing. She’s currently an Ambassador for Athlete Ally, an organization working for LGBTQI+ inclusion in sport, and to end transphobia and homophobia.
In her video, the phenomenal longboarder discusses how surfing has influenced her life and the joy she finds in riding waves. “I believe it’s the only sport where we get to perform on a changing platform, a moving dance floor,” she says. The video, an artful mini-documentary focused on Lowerson’s love of her sport, appeared online on January 24th of this year.
On January 29th, Hamilton tweeted “Male-bodied athletes should not be competing in female sports,” targeting Lowerson.
Then, on January 31st, six days after Lowerson’s ad was posted, Rip Curl pulled the ad, appeasing the anti-trans side. They released this statement soon after their decision:
[...]
The head of the campaign, Lowerson says, “told me, ‘we’re removing the post for your safety, Sasha.’ And I turned around and said to him, ‘that’s bullshit, you’re doing this for brand protection.’ I’m not stupid; my safety’s not a consideration. I’m so disappointed for believing that a major corporation as big as Rip Curl would stick by this sort of campaign with someone of a diverse gender. It was stupid to think they cared. I feel so hurt from that.”
Rip Curl made a decision not to support and stand behind the athlete. Lowerson points out other situations that have included trans-women in previously only cis- woman spaces - the modeling industry in particular, she says, “Victoria’s Secret - they were the first to put trans women on the catwalk. Their response to backlash was after having one trans woman on the catwalk, the next time there were three and the time after that, five. There’s trans women on more catwalks than ever in fashion shows these days.”
The affair left Lowerson with unanswered questions. Why didn’t the surf industry respond more like the modeling industry? Why didn’t Rip Curl double down, start featuring more trans-surfers?
“I have not had a financial sponsor in so many years,” Lowerson says.
Brennan of Surf Equity is concerned that the trend towards “prohibiting trans athletes from competition has been growing.” She senses “frustration across all these different sports that at some points things were moving in a more positive direction, and now it's just really awful. There's a lot of anger, frustration, and heartbreak, and people coming together on the question of what to do. Activists and lawyers who work in that space are just running into so many roadblocks. I tried to understand the psychology of why we are in this situation. There's a fear of getting involved in the politics of it because that can result in death, frankly. Pretty severe consequences to activists being public. There are just so many considerations.”
In the aftermath of the ad’s removal, Lowerson traveled to California and connected with surfboard shaper Mando, owner of Mando Surf Co in the Monterey Bay area, who is nonbinary. They’re launching two key collaborations: releasing a Sasha Jane signature model surfboard under the Mando label, and working on the soon-to-be nonprofit, GNDR Surf.
Trans female surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson was all set to do an ad for Rip Curl… only for it to be scuppered, thanks to anti-trans extremists such as Bethany Hamilton and Riley Gaines.
#Transgender Sports#Transgender#Rip Curl#Bethany Hamilton#Riley Gaines#Sasha Jane Lowerson#World Surf League#Surfboarding#LGBTQ+#Athlete Ally#Mando Surf Co#Mando#Surf Equity
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It’s kinda funny isn’t it? That they call it the butterfly effect? Because- y’know, bugs?
a bit of an experimental little comic here- had a lot of fun making it! This is a scene from early on in Worm, ‘ Insinuation 2.4 ‘. I always thought that Gladly turning away here was very influential to Taylors development into Skitter/Weaver- and really, ultimately Khepri. It’s a small moment, just another tiny betrayal in a sea of much larger more dramatic betrayals, but sometimes that’s the stuff that sticks with us.
At the end of Worm Lisa has a really great speech about how Taylor never really asks for help- she just forces people to help by putting them in situations where they can’t say no. It’s such a devastatingly accurate read of her character, and I just think it’s cool that you can really trace that attitude aalllll the way back here. Why ask for help when you know people will only walk away if it’s inconvenient for them- to Taylor it’s much easier to just skip the middle man and force them to do it.
I’ve seen some people say that they’re tired of seeing all the ‘bullying stuff’ harped on in fanfiction about Taylor, about how it’s boring and actually didn’t matter all that much to her- that she gets over it and doesn’t care about any of it after doing all that crazy shit with the Undersiders. I vehemently disagree- the harassment campaign against Taylor, and the inaction of the authority figures around it fundamentally alters her perception of the world in a way that can be felt in nearly every chapter. Thinking that Taylors ‘over it’ just because Taylor thinks she’s over it is somewhat naïve- Taylor is already known to be a somewhat unreliable narrator.
Anyway sorry for babbling! The quotes I took are down here if you actually want to read them. :->
“What does she use to wash her face? A Brillo pad?”
“She should! She’d look better!”
“Never talks to anybody. Maybe she knows she sounds like a retard and keeps her mouth shut.”
“No, she’s not that smart.”
No more than three feet behind Emma, I could see Mr. Gladly leaving his classroom. The tirade didn’t stop as I watched him tuck a stack of folders under one arm, find his keys and lock the door.
“If I were her, I’d kill myself,” one of the girls announced.
Mr. Gladly turned to look me in the eyes.
“So glad we don’t have gym with her. Can you imagine seeing her in the locker room? Gag me with a spoon.”
I don’t know what expression I had on my face, but I know I didn’t look happy. No less than five minutes ago, Mr. Gladly had been trying to convince me to go with him to the office and tell the principal about the bullying. I watched him as he gave me a sad look, shifted the file folders to his free hand and then walked away.
I was stunned. I just couldn’t wrap my head around how he could just ignore this. When he had been trying to help me, had he just been covering his own ass, doing what was required of him in the face of a situation he couldn’t ignore? Had he just given up on me? After trying to help, in his own completely ineffective way, after I turned his offer for help down twice, he just decided I just wasn’t worth the effort?
#ALSO YES I KNOW I FORGOT HER GLASSES#IM A FOOL AND A FAILURE#aaaaaa#worm#parahumans#taylor#taylor hebert#skitter#tw bullying#tw ableist language#let me know if I need to tag it as anything else#my art
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Thoughts on Dr. Robotnik's Ring racers and the current version of SRB2 Kart?
I never dug too super deep in to SRB2 Kart because I very rarely play online games with randos and I had no real consistent group to play with otherwise. Like, I tried to play the few times Tracker hosted a server, but he lives in the UK and I'm on wifi so it just didn't really work out.
So I was kind of waiting for the singleplayer campaign mode. I could see the potential in SRB2K. "The Mugen of Kart Racers" has been an idea in the back of my head for literal decades at this point. But I did not care about time trials because there were no items.
I streamed about four hours of Ring Racers (obviously) a couple days ago:
youtube
And I've also seen a lot of SRB2 Kart diehards lose their mind over some of the changes and problems in Ring Racers.
As someone who has never really put more than, say, two hours in to SRB2 Kart, Ring Racers is... fun? Yeah. It's fun. I'd say I enjoyed myself.
But it's also got problems. Broadly speaking, the entire game is way too complicated for its own good. It's nice that they really sat down and thought very deeply about kart racer mechanics and tried to elevate things to a new level, but it feels like they overthought a lot of it. And I mean beyond the fact this game opens with a very wordy, 30-60 minute tutorial. Don't get me wrong, it needs at least some of that, because it's a very mechanically dense game, but that's also sort of the problem.
Like I literally just bailed out of a Discord conversation about this because I wanted to write it over here, but let's take, for example, the spindash.
The spindash mechanic has three primary functions in Ring Racers:
You charge up a spindash at the right time during the starting line lobby segment to get a boost going into the first lap
You charge a spindash to get through one of the speed barriers for secret shortcuts
This game has Sonic-style physics and there are slopes where, if you aren't already going fast, they are too steep of an incline to drive up. So you have to stop and charge a spindash to clear them.
What value does this actually bring to the table? What's useful about it?
The starting line lobby segment is annoying because even CPU racers will bump you into a FAULT state, forcing you to start in last place. Lobby segments are also different sizes, different lengths, so as a newbie like myself, that already puts me at a disadvantage. Charging a spindash for a starting line boost does not add anything you could not already do with Mario Kart's more traditional starting line mechanic. So that means everything around it is just to make the game less friendly to newbies.
Unless you are an ultra-skilled sickos player who optimizes ring consumption to the max, or you're lucky enough to have a boost item, you are never going to be setup to crash through a speed barrier. I certainly never am. I only touch them by accident and they always make everything worse for me when I do. I would never stop and deliberately use a spindash to clear one of these, and places in the map where I get owned are never near one for it to act as a shortcut to get me back in the race faster.
The only time you need to use a spindash on a slope is if you get blasted by someone else's weapon, and there's always this deep dread to that where it's like, if I have to spindash to get up a slope, the race is already lost. Getting slammed by a weapon can already be very devastating on its own, but adding the extra step of having to come to a complete stop, wait 2-3 seconds to charge a spindash, and then crawl up the incline? It's insult to injury.
So, then, in practical terms: what value does the spindash bring to this game? The shortest summary is it's a recovery mechanic that adds an extra step to systems that are tuned to be very difficult and maybe don't even need to exist. You could remove the spindash (and all the systems that depend on the spindash) and I think it would be a better game.
And there's a few systems like this in the game, like the ring tether system, the air drop, and so on. It's nice to finally see someone trying to meaningfully evolve the kart racer into something with greater depth, but I also feel like people who liked SRB2 Kart liked it because it was a very good one of those. And it had extremely friendly mod support.
I get the desire for what's happening here. People were unfairly harsh about how "SRB2 Kart is a bad name" and the developers wanted to both establish a fresher identity and push things in a new direction. But they're also kind of reinventing a lot of wheels and adding all of these extra steps, which will and is hurting the pick-up-and-play element of "it's just a good kart racer." If you roll up on a friend group with Ring Racers and say "hold up, you gotta play the 40 minute tutorial first", that's a killer, and that's still considering they've already trimmed the tutorial length once since it launched only a few days ago.
A kart racer with the depth of a fighting game is definitely an interesting idea and like I said, I was having fun in the stream, but it's just one of those things where the more I think about what the ideal form of this game is trying to be, the more I wonder.
And that's not even considering that some things that worried me about SRB2 Kart are still here, like how many very narrow and winding tracks there are. Sometimes you get what is effectively a rally racing track but there's 8 other hyper-aggressive cars on the road with you and they're all armed to the teeth with projectile weapons. Even in SRB2 Kart's time trial mode, when I was the only one on the track, it could be hard enough to stay on the road. Now that I'm being knocked around by other racers at the same time? It can borderline on feeling impossible.
Again, I don't hate this. It's just that there's a lot of weird friction in places I feel like it does not benefit from or need.
#questions#Anonymous#srb2kart#dr. robotnik's ring racers#kart racer#mario kart#sega#sonic team#fangame
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DnD Night at the Harrington Mansion
Gareth is invited alongside the rest of Hellfire to play DnD at the Harrington mansion, something that is very odd. Throughout the night he meets a much nicer king Steve, who is playing house with their DM. He watches in confusion at their domesticity, wondering how that came about
On AO3.
Ships: Steve x Eddie
Warnings: brief smoking
~~~~~~~~~~
Gareth isn’t sure what happened over spring break. In fact, the whole thing is quite the mystery among the older members of Hellfire, save Eddie, because of course Eddie is at the middle of their conundrum.
Eddie, who got accused of murder. Eddie, who was in the hospital for a month. Eddie, who scrapped a part of his DnD campaign, because it was too gory. Eddie, who is even closer with the three Freshmen that joined this year. Eddie, who somehow managed to befriend Steve Harrington throughout the whole ordeal.
Honestly, if you had told Gareth in Sophomore year that he was going to get invited by Eddie to go to Steve’s house for anything other than committing a crime, he’d think you were insane. Yet here he is, ringing the bell to the Harrington mansion to play DnD.
He half expects Steve to laugh at him, before punching him when he opens the door in his full preppy glory, but instead the man smiles pleasantly and asks: “Gareth, right? Welcome!”
“Uh, yeah, yeah, that’s me,” he replies awkwardly, willing himself to disappear out of the sight of the jock.
Luckily Steve seems to pick up on his awkwardness, because he steps aside to let him in as he tells him: “Take your shoes off, please. The others are through there in the big dining room.”
“Yeah, okay, sure,” Gareth stumbles over his words as he gets in, Steve closing the door and disappearing in the direction he’d pointed to. The big dining room. Of fucking course the Harringtons had multiple dining rooms, Gareth mentally rolls his eyes.
However, when he finds it, he has to admit it’s pretty cool. The walls are a cream greenish-blue and there is a fire place on one side, above it an empty space where the oil painting that’s on the ground next to it, turned away from the viewer, used to hang. The floor has a giant soft Persian rug on it, that looks good on the dark hardwood floor.
The center piece, though, is the table. Made out of equally dark wood, it stands imposing, filling the whole room. It can seat a big group, probably twenty or something, because the DnD party gathered there far from fills it.
Gareth can see why Eddie would want to play here.
Eddie, who has taken over the table like a king at his court. He looks good. The most Eddie-like Gareth has seen him in months. He is seated at the head of the table, sprawled over a fancy chair, wearing a lazy grin as he watches Lucas and Dustin argue about a loophole Dustin thinks he has discovered.
When he spots Gareth, his grin widens and he opens his arms in a dramatic beckoning gesture as he booms: “Ah, Gareth the Great, welcome to our new, less than humble lair.”
“Yeah, man, this is crazy,” Gareth greets, relaxing a little in the big house with Eddie and the annoying kids there, while Steve is nowhere to be seen. “How did you even pull this?”
“I have my charms,” Eddie grins mysteriously as both Dustin and Mike pretend to gag, earning them a small cuff on the head from their DM.
The whole thing leaves Gareth a little confused, but before he can ask about it, he is distracted again by Eddie, who points to a kid Gareth hasn’t met yet. The kid looks vaguely familiar with his brown bowl cut and shier demeanor. Eddie introduces him: “This here, is Will the Wise. A cleric. He’s in town from Cali and will be joining us alongside baby Sinclair for the summer campaign.”
“Hi,” Will says softly, giving Gareth a soft wave.
He looks nice and Gareth knows what it’s like to be not that outgoing and in the middle of a group having to meet new people, so he puts on his kindest smile and waves back, with a: “Hi, nice to meet you.”
The rest of the group seems pleased at his greeting to Will, as if he passed some sort of test. Before they can fall into an awkward silence, however, Erica enters the room again with a drink. Gareth doesn’t know her well, having only played with her once before, but she was a riot then, so he just says hi and goes to sit at the table.
It’s a little awkward.
Not intentionally, of course. Eddie has a thing about making people feel included, he just also gets distracted easily. And the kids are really distracting, albeit in the best way.
They’re loud, yelling arguments to each other as they debate what will happen and discuss strategies for scenarios that might never be. They pester Eddie, who is notorious for never sharing anything, though his steady silence isn’t stopping them. Besides, Eddie looks like he finds the whole thing amusing, making vague comments when they seem to loose steam that send the kids back into a tizzy again.
The room is lively. Fun. It just also feels like the others are way closer with each other than Gareth, even Eddie, who has known for three years already. So, he just sits awkwardly at the fringes and wills Jeff and Chris to come soon.
Throughout the whole wait, he doesn’t see Steve again, almost wondering why the man had agreed to host if he seemingly wants to avoid everyone like they have the plague. Honestly, Gareth would have assumed Steve joined the hunt Eddie down crowd this spring, but apparently not if he was agreeing to let Eddie host his devil’s game here.
He only sees Steve again when the doorbell rings once more. A door to the dining room opens and Steve comes out, followed by the wafting smell of food, which confuses Gareth. Especially when Steve appears to be taking off an apron as he comes by.
“We could have gotten the door, Stevie,” Eddie sighs fondly when Steve rushes out of the kitchen, before anyone has gotten the chance to get up. The deep affection in his tone taking Gareth by surprise, wondering what happened to make his friend sound like that about Steve Harrington, the jock he used to scoff at, even if he would blush about how hot he is right after.
Steve surprises him again by smiling back at Eddie, equally fond, and saying: “But I like hosting and you have a game to play.”
“I set up ages ago,” Eddie protests, though he’s already relenting.
“So did I,” Steve says smugly, then disappears as Eddie rolls his eyes in the background.
Mike fake-gags again and pouts: “You two are terrible. Do you have to be so mushy all the time? I mean, you used to be cool, Eddie.”
“I’m still cool,” Eddie gasps dramatically, sounding incredibly offended at the implication that he isn’t as he brings a hand to his chest.
His actions makes everyone giggle, even Gareth finds himself cracking a smile at their fearless leader finally loosing his seeming coolness to the Freshmen. It’s enough to distract him from the strange interactions between Steve and Eddie.
Then Jeff and Chris finally enter, Steve disappearing back into the kitchen, and their evening can begin, just plain old DnD as they’ve always done.
It’s clear that Jeff and Chris are also a little intimidated and confused by their venue and host, so the three can share glances every once in a while when it hits them again. Or, more accurately, when Eddie hits them again. They already knew the kids adored Steve for some reason, but to see Eddie so comfortable in his house is strange.
It’s all little things that add up throughout the night. The way Eddie carelessly sits in his seat, the way he easily slips into the kitchen and get something to drink when he’s thirsty, the way he doesn’t get lost on his way to the bathroom like Gareth had. Just how comfortable he is. He looks so out of place in the fancy house, yet entirely at ease.
Safe to say that by the time it really gets weird, Gareth, Chris and Jeff are already curious. So, when the next oddity happens, they all notice. Starting with their host showing his face again for the first time since letting them in.
The door to the kitchen opens and there Steve stands, hands on his hips, dishtowel over his shoulder and apron tied around his waist. He looks closer to a housewife than the king of Hawkins High as he says: “Dinner is ready, go sit on the other side to eat, I’m not going to listen to your whining if you get pasta sauce on your character sheets.”
“But Steveeeee,” Dustin whines. “We’re in the middle of an important battle. We can’t just pause the game to eat.”
And Dustin is right that they’re in the middle of their campaign and Eddie hates anything interrupting their campaign at any other time besides the breaks he built into it himself. But it appears that Steve has cooked and none of the older members are gonna go against King Steve, especially not when he’s hosting them for some unknown reason.
However, with how comfortable he is, they all expect Eddie to have about the same reaction as Dustin just had. Naturally that means Eddie surprises them, by going: “No complaining, you heard your mother, Henderson.”
“He’s not my mom,” Dustin complains.
“Sure, whatever,” Eddie grins as the other boys all back Eddie up to make fun of Dustin, getting up to sit at the other half of the table, which is empty.
It’s out of character for Eddie, like so much has been this night and Gareth shares another one of their looks with Jeff and Chris. Eddie is a good guy, but one stubborn bastard, who would never fold or give up what he wants to do just because conforming sheep jock Steve Harrington asked.
Yet, there he is, backing Steve up and covering his notes, before getting up and popping his head in the kitchen and calling out: “You need help there, big boy?”
“Can you do the drinks?” they hear Steve reply, sounding almost apologetic as he comes out of the kitchen juggling a dish of lasagna and two coasters.
“Sure,” Eddie agrees easily, despite the fact that he hates most chores. “Kids, go fetch a drink,” he tells the others, who disappear into the kitchen alongside Steve, also comfortable at the house, as Eddie turns to the other three, still sitting uncomfortably at the table, and asks: “What do you wanna drink? Don’t worry, Stevie always buys everything, even Lucas’ weird New Coke.”
“Uhm, sprite?” Jeff is the first who speaks up.
“Just water,” Chris adds.
“Coke,” Gareth manages himself.
“Cool,” Eddie smiles, then pauses and asks: “Are you three okay? You seem quiet.”
And it’s so very Eddie to worry about them that it eases the tension that had unknowingly crept back up without the game to distract them. Eddie has always been the one, who gave the least fucks, who got between them and the world. He’s always been protective and more kind than people give him credit for.
Gareth gives him a smile and says: “Yeah, man, we’re good. Just fucking weird to be in the Harrington mansion of all places, you know.”
That startles a laugh out of Eddie, who grins: “Fuck, don’t I know it. I broke a vase my first time over, thought I was going to get arrested.”
They all laugh a little and it feels just like old times, even if there has been an inexpiable barrier between them and Eddie ever since spring break. Eddie is still Eddie in the end. Gareth kind of wants to ask him what the deal is between him and Steve, but doesn’t get the chance with the gremlins coming back in, chattering loudly.
The group is followed by Steve, who puts down another dish of lasagna on the empty coaster he brought last time. Telling the group still seated at the play area of the table to make themselves comfortable while he gets plates with a gentle smile.
He has lost the apron, but he is still… off? Domestic. Gareth can’t believe it, but there is no other way to describe this new Steve, who made them all lasagna, hosting their DnD night as he putters around doing the catering. As if he’s some housewife instead of a popular jock.
Though all of them had seen how he changed halfway through his Junior year. How he had left his old friends behind. How he lost his throne to Billy. How he stopped caring. How he become nicer to people.
It seems that went further than any of them could have realized while still walking the halls of Hawkins High with him.
But they can’t help but feel they stepped into an alternate reality as Steve sets the table for them and asks how their game is going, clumsy on the terminology and names, but obviously trying and looking very proud whenever he gets something right.
And it is also very weird how easily they talk to him as they get settled down, for some reason Eddie still at the head of the table, Steve on his right and Dustin on his left.
Steve fills everyone’s plate, telling them he hopes they like lasagna and all of them assuring that they do. It’s odd, Gareth thinks, how Steve’s expression makes one want to reassure him, even if he’s always been the most confident guy around.
However, Gareth also has to concede that this is a very different arena for the former king. So, maybe it’s not that weird to reassure him about the food he cooked for them. Because that is their life now. King Steve making them food for their DnD campaign. It is genuinely good too, another surprising fact that Gareth finds himself not minding in the slightest.
When they’re done with eating, Eddie offers: “Why don’t you go sit down, sweetheart. We can do the dishes.” The petname not registering as weird for any of them, because it’s Eddie, though Steve’s lack of reaction to it is noteworthy in Gareth’s opinion.
“Yeah, you already cooked,” Will pipes up.
“No,” Steve refuses, sounding like this is a common argument. “You have your little game to play and I have nothing better to do. Besides, I like doing the dishes and I am hosting. I’m not letting guests do the dishes.”
He looks almost offended at the thought of anyone implying he would force his guests to do that, which is slightly hilarious.
From across Steve, Dustin rolls his eyes and says: “You need to let that go at some point, Steve. We are over so much that we can hardly be counted as guests at this point.”
“Maybe another day,” Steve says in a way that alludes he doesn’t mean that at all, as he starts stacking dishes, everyone quickly jumping to help. “There are more guests than you shitheads here today anyway. It’s not polite to keep people waiting.”
“You’re not actually responsible for our upbringing, you know that right?” Mike rolls his eyes as he hands Steve a stack of plates and gets up to carry the empty dishes.
“I do,” Steve sniffs. “I just don’t need your bad behavior to reflect on me.”
“Whatever,” Mike says and they both disappear into the kitchen.
Eddie collects everything that couldn’t be carried and hurries after them, soon reemerging with a wet cloth to wipe down the table. Another show of how comfortable he’s gotten there that baffles the trio.
Unable to help himself, Jeff comments: “Who would have thought that Eddie Munson could function in a household.”
At the words, Eddie pauses, looking at his own hands as if he’s only just realizing what he’s doing, the utter domesticity of it all. Then the confused realization makes place for a dopey, dare he say, lovesick smile.
He quickly shakes it off and gives Jeff a crooked smirk and says: “You know me, always doing the least expected. I’m out housewiving the housewives,” which makes everyone at the table crack up, before they move back to their spots.
They quickly loose themselves into the game again, Steve easily put out of mind without his presence there.
The party doesn’t see him again until about an hour later when he comes to refill their drinks and ask if they’re hungry for a snack again. The kids all fall over themselves to tell Steve they’re starving, which is hard to believe with how much food they watched them pack away earlier, but Steve just smiles and nods.
Then he looks at the three not initiated into the weird thing that bonds the others. Gareth, like the others, never says no to snacks, seeing that he is a teen boy himself. However, he feels kind of awkward about it, so he pulls a face that he hopes conveys ‘if it’s not an inconvenience?’
Going off the way Steve smiles back, that message is conveyed.
When he entered, Eddie was just calculating the damage done, so he hasn’t replied by the time Steve checked with everyone else. A part of Gareth assumes that Steve will go ahead with everyone else’s approval, yet Steve does the unexpected again, which he should have seen coming.
He cards a quick hand through Eddie’s hair, another one of those intimate moments between them that Gareth feels like he should be questioning, but he doesn’t even know how to begin questioning them.
The whole group here feels closer than normal people should. They are all a tad too comfortable with each other and Steve and Eddie could very well be that. Still, it feels like more, though Gareth can’t grasp how. He knows Eddie is gay, but Steve? Steve is the straightest man to ever straight, so the only logical conclusion of their closeness can’t be right.
However, as he watches Steve murmur softly about snacks to Eddie, who pats his side absentmindedly and replies: “Sounds great, thanks, baby,” he can’t help but let his mind wonder to the possibility.
Again Steve leaves, returning a little later with more confusion surrounding him. Eddie hates it when their DnD stuff gets messy and has therefore banned many snacks at the table, which leave figurines or dice sticky or dirty.
And at this point, Gareth is proud to say, it doesn’t surprise him when Steve returns with only Eddie approved snacks.
Still, as has been the theme for this evening, Eddie stops mid narration, a think that has never happened in the history of Hellfire. He looks at Steve, who is putting down snacks, and frowns, before asking: “Are you okay, Stevie? You’re looking a little pale there, princess.”
Now that Gareth looks, Steve’s face does look a little pinched as he gives a reassuring smile: “I’m alright, just a bit of a headache starting.”
“If you’re admitting that, it must be bad,” Eddie replies with an achingly fond tone that alludes to how well he knows Steve and how much he cares about him. “Go lie down. I’ll man the hoard, you’ve been a great host tonight, doll.”
Steve puffs up for a moment, looking like he is going to protest, then deflates. He rubs his brow, then gives Gareth, Jeff and Chris an apologetic smile and says: “Sorry for dipping out early, enjoy your game.”
“Oh, uh, yeah, man, of course,” Gareth stumbles out, feeling Eddie’s eyes in the side of his skull daring him to say something bad to Steve right now. “Thanks for hosting us.”
Jeff and Chris quickly follow the sentiment and they see both Steve and Eddie relax for different reasons. Like they would be a dick to Steve, Gareth thinks. Tonight has been strange, but a good kind of strange.
And just as he thinks that, Steve does the strangest good thing he has done all night. He confirms the closeness between him and Eddie that Gareth had picked up on.
He wishes all the kids goodnight, promising to drive them to the arcade this weekend, even ruffling Dustin’s hair as he passes the kid, before pressing a kiss to Eddie’s cheek. The gesture is natural, thoughtless, done so effortlessly that it speaks of the many times he’s done so before. Gareth doesn’t know if Steve has forgotten they were there or if he doesn’t care as he says: “Don’t stay up too long, Eds. I’ll miss you and the kids have a curfew.”
None of the kids pretend to be grossed out by their mushiness, not even Mike. All looking away from the couple with fond eyes, happy they have each other.
Eddie lights up and cups Steve’s cheek, giving Steve a proper peck on the lips as he promises: “I’ll get them home on time, mother hen.”
“Like you’re not just as bad,” Steve teases, tone filled with love.
“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie agrees with a big smile on his face, the concession obviously not a hardship in the slightest. “Go take some pain meds and lie down, angel.”
“I will, love you,” Steve says, this time glances at them in a manner that tells Gareth he is aware of their presence, yet he apparently can’t leave without telling Eddie that, so he braves their potential reactions to say it.
The three of them fight to keep positive expressions on their face, none of them wanting Eddie or Steve to think they don’t agree with their relationship. Not the mention the kids, who are all eyeing them like Eddie was earlier, daring them to say something bad.
Eddie is the only one, who doesn’t seem to care, a big smile stretching over his face, the most genuine one Gareth has seen him wear in all their years of friendship. He replies: “I love you too, darling.”
With those words, Steve can tear himself away, giving one last wave, before disappearing into the dark bowels of the house.
None of them speak about what just happened, turning back to their game and ignoring the weirdness of the setting as they have done all evening.
In the end, the game lasts another two hours, before Eddie wraps it up. He assures everyone that he’ll clean up when he gets back, the corrals the kids into packing up their stuff and getting them into the van.
Jeff and Chris got there together and are the first to leave. Gareth doesn’t live too far, so he biked there.
He and Eddie are sharing a smoke as they wait for the kids to get done packing. After a moment of silence, Gareth says: “So, you and Steve.”
“Yeah,” Eddie concurs, seemingly unable to help the giddy smile at the mention of his boyfriend.
“I’m happy for you, man,” Gareth tells him. “You two look good together.”
“Thanks,” Eddie softly replies, looking a bit shy. They have always supported Eddie ever since he came out, but Gareth supposes actions to a reality are different than words to a hypothetical, so he tries not to take offense.
“Of course,” he smiles, then lets it morph into a grin as he jests: “As long as we don’t have to hear about his muscles again. I’ve heard enough during lunch period to last me a lifetime. I don’t need another rundown with more accurate information.”
Eddie lets out a bark of laughter and gives Gareth a light shove as he tells him to “Shut the fuck up, I’m not joking, Gareth.”
By then, the kids come piling out of the house and they both extinguish their cigarettes. Gareth claps Eddie on the back again and says: “See you around, Eddie. Don’t leave us hanging for too long with that cliffhanger. And ask Steve for his lasagna recipe. It was killer.”
“Will do,” Eddie grins brightly, before skipping over to his van, calling out the window: “Bike home safely!”
Gareth calls back: “Who’s the mother hen now?”
That gets him a “Fuck you!” and a middle finger as Eddie screeches out of the driveway and onto the road. Gareth just laughs at him, waiting until the danger that is Eddie behind the wheel is gone before getting on his bike.
After tonight, Gareth still isn’t sure what happened over spring break. In fact, Eddie has both semi-solved the mystery and made it worse by introducing this new relationship to Steve into the mix of weird shit he already does. The fucker probably likes being at the center of some weird plot.
Eddie, who got accused of loosing also being a mother hen. Eddie, who co-hosts from the Harrington mansion. Eddie, who now plays house, offering to do the dishes and cleaning up the table for Steve. Eddie, who is weirdly close with a group of kids. Eddie, who somehow managed to get into a relationship with Steve Harrington.
Honestly, if you had told Gareth anything of what happened tonight in Sophomore year, he would think you were insane. Yet here he is, biking home after playing DnD at the Harrington mansion, because their DM is dating Steve. What an odd world they live in, Gareth is pretty sure nothing in Hawkins could top this evening in weirdness.
~~
A/N:
That one scene is based of my grandma, who refuses to let us do the dishes in her house, no matter how many times we offer or try. Like, if you allude to the fact of doing it, she’ll get up earlier to do them, just in case. It’s sweet, but also oma, lemme help!!
Also, I love writing oblivious characters, people who don’t know. Outsider POVs are one of my favorite things out there :D
#rr writing#tw: smoking#stranger things fic#stranger things#gareth stranger things#jeff stranger things#steve x eddie#steve harrington#eddie lives au#steve harrington x eddie munson#eddie munson#st the party#the party stranger things#the party#outsiders pov#steddie
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I just watched Katharine Hepburn's 1936 "Mary of Scotland" and I was a bit surprised at how pro Mary it was? I barely know the basics of the Tudors and Stewarts, much less any particular knowledge about the historical figure of Mary herself. What do you think of Mary Queen of Scots? What's your opinion on Darnley and Bothwell? What about Moray?
Buckle your seat belt. Of course I have unreasonably strong opinions of this. And I haven’t seen the Katharine Hepburn movie though it’s all my favorite things and people (1930s historical dramas, KH, Tudors) in one place so I should.
I think a lot of popular culture is very sympathetic with Mary…There’s the play Mary Stuart which I Love very much but is very pro-Catholic in its approach (in response to the playwright’s problems with German Lutheranism rather than Anglo Protestantism). There’s the tv show Reign (?) and the recent movie with Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan which felt very pro-Mary as well. And I sort of get it…like she was executed, leaving behind a young son, and she had many spouses and a cinematic life. The contrasts between her and Elizabeth are appealing—a woman married three times disastrously compared to a woman who never married, Mary being younger and beautiful and fertile, the irony of James I becoming king of England later, etc Some of the way that Elizabeth is portrayed in these adaptions reek of the ca 2011 Taylor Swift “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women” brand of feminism. Which is…not how monarchy works lol.
My personal opinion of Mary is that you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. The more interesting parallel of Elizabeth and Mary to me is that they were both imprisoned at times when their religious affiliation and political position was dynamite. Elizabeth was imprisoned under her sister (also called) Mary, who was instituting an aggressive campaign of Protestant persecution, and Mary of Scots, under Elizabeth during a time of a lot of Catholic terrorism. Both were implicated in plotting to varying degrees of truthfulness and both were faced with a Queen who viewed them as existential threat because of their youth (and ability to have heirs), their sympathizers (including internationally, in Mary of Scots’ case), their claims to the throne. The difference is…Mary of Scots actually plotted to assassinate Elizabeth. The Babington letters and code are likely to be real. So. Like. There are consequences to that. I don’t know what to say. Elizabeth was extremely reluctant and cautious in handling Mary in the wake of her reign falling apart until she couldn’t be anymore. Elizabeth’s ruling style was very conservative…she didn’t make decisions quickly or lightly….which made her really, really effective but also could turn into indecisiveness and you see the benefits and detriments of that approach all over her handling of Mary. HOWEVER: You plot to kill someone, they’re probably going to kill you right back. So I’m not overly sympathetic with Mary in her political struggles tbh.
Her personal struggles on the other hand are different. Darnley was an asshole and killed her friend in front of her. This is wild. As to whether or not she had a hand in his death…like would we blame her necessarily. It is a 50/50 guess as to whether she was forced into marriage and sexual relations with Bothwell or not. Maybe she wasn’t but theres a solid chance that she was. These are horrible things and she was surrounded by horrible men who destabilized her position. That’s terrible and I’m sorry for it. I feel a lot of pathos for her personal life.
I don’t have a strong opinion of Moray, except that I think he was smart about some things and stupid about others. He was a Protestant with a Protestant agenda and opposed Mary’s marriage to Darnley but knew enough to remove himself during Darnley’s murder. I don’t think he would have brought peace to Scotland lol. He had a habit of just…burning stuff to the ground lol. Which is a great authoritarian tactic and not maybe great for reconciliation.
Tracy Borman wrote about the gender of Mary and Elizabeth in a way which is sort of fascinating. Elizabeth played into her sexuality and femininity in certain ways—her dramatic dress, her appearance, and her flirtations with marriage and symbol as the object of courtly love. But she existed in a politically androgynous state—she was often called “the female prince,” drew strong parallels between her and her father, referred to herself as a King. She dominated the men around her in interpersonal interactions. She did not marry (even men she probably loved like Robert Dudley) or have children. Mary’s performance of gender was much more traditional and a lot of her biggest political disasters, like her marriages, are described as being the result of her passions and being “weaker” than the male power players around her. Elizabeth’s refusal to have heirs prevented immediate instability while also causing a lot of uncertainty. Mary’s son provided a future in a way, but also was the result of terrible persona situations that contributed to her downfall. No woman can win lol. I think we see this gender contrast, in some ways, in how they’re treated in fiction.
anyway, thank you for indulging!
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Honestly, imodna would be a good ship if the shippers/stans weren’t so damn insufferable. I also hate how they act like they are already canon and you can’t ship Imogen or Laudna with anyone else in the group. People got so mad when the conversation in the dust storm happened with Ashton and Laudna because people thought they were flirting. Or when on the first episode of 4 sided dive Marisha asked Robbie if Dorian’s crush was on Imogen, people got so mad at that! I also hate that they call them lesbians when THEY HAVE BOTH EXPRESSED HAVING FEELINGS FOR BOYS! Why can’t they be bi? Or Pan? I also hate how people read into Laura’s micro expressions/ movements, like last episode with the whole leaning shit “oh what was that lean Laura?!! Imogen wanted to kiss Laudna because look at Laura’s lean!” I dread the day that Imogen or Laudna fall in love with someone that’s not each other(especially if that person is a man.) because Marisha and Laura will harassed and hated because they didn’t give the people what they wanted.
oof. that's some frustration you really needed to vent, nonnie, and honestly i get it. full disclosure—my mutuals who are into imo/dna are all lovely, and none of them engage in this behavior. if imo/dna becomes canon, i'll be happy for (and potentially even happy with) fans like that. but enough shippers are doing things like this that it's becoming more and more of a source of frustration and friction as the campaign goes on.
i think a lot of fandom—in general, not just cr—still doesn't want to acknowledge that at the end of the day, they are looking at things like shippers, with a particular kind of confirmation bias. it doesn't make them necessarily wrong or right, but as easy as it can be to get swept up in it, i think it's important to take a step back every once in awhile and re-evaluate.
now admittedly, generally speaking, it takes a lot for me to get really invested in a ship; i usually only have one or two per fandom, even fandoms with tons of characters. i'm generally pretty passive about most ships if it's not the otp; like, vax/leth and pike/lan, for example, didn't need to be romantic endgame for me to enjoy CR1 (and honestly might have been more interesting to me if they hadn't), but perc/ahlia absolutely made the show for me and i honestly think them being together actively strengthens the narrative as a whole.
i say all that to say that for the most part, i very much consider myself to be along for the ride with respect to most relationships in most fandoms. if such-and-such pairing happens, great; if they don't, okay. and with CR in particular, it's such a long-form medium that i know going in that any romance is going to take a while, and most of them probably won't just reach out and grab me.
and as such, it absolutely baffles me to have seen shippers insisting, from the moment the characters first appeared in episode 1, that not only are imogen and laudna canon endgame, they're basically already together and just haven't admitted it yet. i feel this way about dor/ym and callow/moore as well—i saw a post making the rounds that claimed that all three of those ships are "not canon YET but let's be real" and like...why would you set yourself up for disappointment like that? because yeah! all three of those ships could be endgame! but they could also not be endgame. we're less than 40 episodes into a campaign that'll probably run well into the 100s.
i also fully agree with you re: the microexpressions and the cherrypicking, and i feel like a microcosm of this issue can be found in a conversation imogen has with orym early on—shippers latched onto the fact that imogen compares laudna's thoughts to music, something that finally brought her peace after the chaos of the world around her, and completely ignored the part immediately after where imogen says that the rest of the party also feels like that to her. i didn't even know that imogen said that about the whole party until i watched the episode, and to me it's an example of how shippers tend to warp canon interactions to suit a particular narrative in such a way that they become almost entirely divorced from their context.
and from the outside looking in, what confuses me about this sort of thing is like...didn't y'all already go through this? because if my understanding is correct, c2 ship discourse was full to the brim with beau/jes and wido/jest fans dissecting "laura's microexpressions" to prove that jester was for sure in love with our fave, really you guys we swear...and then not only was that not true, but jester also didn't even know about beau or caleb's feelings to acknowledge them at all, and from the actual words that came out of laura's mouth in various OOC moments like on TM, laura just...really really wanted to romance her husband's character in her dnd game and like, that's it. there was never going to be another romantic option for jester as long as fjord was on the table, and that was something that shippers always should have been taking into account.
laudna and imogen are canonically deeply important to each other. they love and appreciate each other very much. that love and appreciation could turn into a lovely romance with a great dynamic, and i certainly don't blame people for being invested in it. but it also could not be romantic endgame, and they remain friends or even get with other people. and as you said, fandom can and will turn nasty about their ships being sunk; we've already seen it happen. there's a certain smug, entitled undercurrent from that particular corner that i have very little patience with, and while i think there's something to be said for deciding to enjoy things in spite of the fandom and just be a cranky old curmudgeon shooing the wank out with a broom, i also understand the response of just "...aight, imma head out".
#the 'laura's microexpressions' thing is also why i really don't care for glasses!imogen#it's obviously not a bad thing in a vacuum but there's a tendency toward overriding specifically laura's choices and saying 'i know better'#such that even something as innocuous as glasses can be representative of a larger more frustrating problem#honestly i wonder if laura will even DO a romance this time around after two campaigns of her characters being reduced to:#a) the men in her life and then b) who she'll end up with#bc imogen has some strong vibes of like. arent u tired of being nice? don't u just wanna lose it?#like imogen reminds me very strongly of vex but specifically of the ways in which vex couldn't be unpleasant or unappealing#(mostly because vex puts up fronts to mask her flaws specifically from the party)#(while imogen is more trying to hide her actual powers and what they can do)#and i think some of that naturally comes from being a woman in geek culture on the internet as well as a woman in voice acting#but i feel like it might also come from her characters being constantly put under a microscope#and constantly told what they should and shouldn't do#and the second they make choices that make another better-liked character upset they're terrible people#like she's obviously a grown adult 40 year old woman but the constant scrutiny of your dnd choices has gotta wear on you a little bit#and yeah i didn't touch on this in the ask but. it has been 0 days since fandom did a bi-erasure#(the thing about having only 1 or 2 ships per fandom reminded me that out of all the dc comics ships i literally only care about dickkory)#(clois also has rights on account of dc can snort my taint and let two adults be happily married)#(i've had convos with friends who ship bbrae who are like 'but why would dickkory shippers dislike bbrae? they dont threaten you')#(idk man some of em just don't dig the vibe!)#cr discourse#cr wank#critical role#asks
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Kieue Caprie's List of Games Finished in 2023: Entry 11
#31: Pajama Sam: There's No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside
What Platform? - Steam
Finished When? - 6/8/23
I had this game installed for the longest time but never got around to playing any of them. So I decided to play through it after having seen Limes (That's Limealicious) play through Spy Fox. It was pretty fun although I felt like I was going in circles a few times. It was still fun, though.
#32: Quake II (Remaster)
What Platform? PC, Steam
Finished When? 11/8/23
#32-A: Quake II - Call of the Machine
What Platform? PC, Steam
Finished When? 15/8/23
So, I never actually played Quake II in full until they released the remake. I always thought it was not very good simply because there was something missing. Turns out that the missing thing was the music which the Steam version lacked for some godawful reason.
So when the remake came out, I decided to give it a whirl, I did need a reason to try out my gyro-enabled controllers more tbh. It was fun, although it felt very difficult in a lot of places, it got so hard in fact that it got to the point where I had to bind quick-save and quick-load to my controller's function buttons to save my sanity.
Nightdive did a great job on the remaster, although they did kinda mess up on a few points such as the Railgun dealing less damage in SP and the shockwaves produced by certain enemies being next-to-impossible to counterplay. But other than that, it was a very solid remaster.
The new campaign was also really nice too, it had this kind of feel to it where you lose all your items upon completion so you can feel free to use the items whenever instead of saving them up for the final boss and unloading on them like I did in the vanilla campaign. Without spoiling it too much, I was not expecting certain inclusions in there. You'll understand what I mean when you get to those points if you decide to give it a look.
#33: Cruelty Squad
What Platform? PC, Steam
Finished When? 16/8/23
Not the first time I finished Cruelty Squad, probably not the last, but I felt like I wanted to play Cruelty Squad again because all my progress was gone, just like the apes. Armed with a gyro-enabled controller, I managed to make my way all the way through the depressing cyberpunk dystopian hellscape to the end, stonks and all.
Does it still hold up? Yeah, I'd think so, its got that feel to it that's hard to describe tbh.
#34: Quake III Arena
What Platform? PC, Steam
Finished When? 19/8/23
Xaero turned himself into a statue. Funniest shit I've ever seen.
Quake III Arena was one of those games that just doesn't like my PC, forcing me to play a sourceport instead. It was kind of fun playing through the campaign, although it felt barebones compared to Unreal Tournament's. However, it does have one leg up on UT... it's still on Steam. (i'm still in pain from Epic removing Unreal and Unreal Tournament games from all online storefronts...)
#35: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
What Platform? PC, Steam
Finished When? 24/8/23
Where do I start with this game? Well, it's a great game with great vibes and a bumping soundtrack, what can I say? The movement is fluid, the boostpack is very helpful for platforming (...sometimes...), the characters are great, the art-style is amazing, and the story was about enough to hook me through it.
However, I have ONE big issue with the game: The combat. It's not entirely explained by the tutorial and it felt very floaty, inefficient, and the boss battles don't really give you a lot of feedback either, on top of them being complete bullshit sometimes (stunlocks anyone?). It's probably the weakest aspect of the game for me and it kind of drags everything down with it. Had the combat been more fleshed out or something and the bosses made more than just "find opening, hit three times, can't do anything else in the meantime", it would've been much better.
That said, I enjoyed my time with the game and I wanted to get it done before Armored Core 6 decides to throw everything into the backlog. Maybe now that I'm done, I can probably go back and fiddle with it from time to time, maybe try the custom graffiti modding dealie.
Also that one song where the singer yells ASS ASS ASS ASS in auto-tune is gonna haunt me for the rest of my ASS ASS ASS ASS life.
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By: Theo Merz
Published: Feb 26, 2015
“Some victims of domestic abuse are not identified as regularly,” reads a line several pages into a new report from a UK domestic violence charity. “Particular groups of victims may be less visible to services or be given less priority.”
Along with people from black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds, “male victims” form one of these neglected groups, according to the SafeLives study, which was published on Wednesday.
Perhaps this is unsurprising, given that the vast majority of SafeLives’ 35,000-strong database of survivors is female. When we think of domestic abuse it is generally as a women’s issue, while most high profile awareness drives, such as The White Ribbon Campaign, are aimed at reducing male violence against women.
But domestic violence against men is far from a niche concern. The most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that around 800,000 men – five per cent of the male population – had experienced domestic abuse in 2011-12, compared to 1.2 million women – or seven per cent of the female population. Since about 2005, around 40 per cent of domestic violence victims have been male.
And when these victims are not identified in time, the results can be disastrous. In this week’s SafeLives report, titled Getting It Right First Time, the charity claims: “The impact of domestic abuse on the victim and on children – even once they have achieved safety – is severe and long-lasting.”
'I didn't think of it as domestic violence'
Simon* is one man who understands the consequences of abuse better than most. For most of his 17-year marriage, this 47-year-old was subjected to domestic abuse from his wife, from having hot drinks poured over him to dinner plates smashed over his head.
While his wife was never physically violent towards their three children, she would often attack him in front of them.
“I didn’t think of it as domestic violence and I think that’s often true for male victims,” he says now. “You put it down to mood swings. There was also the pressure of thinking that if I walked away, I might get a raw deal when it came to custody of the children.
“One day, though, my youngest child replicated her behaviour. They came into the kitchen and smashed a plate over my head – I got really angry, shouted and I remember them looking so shocked. They didn’t realise it was wrong because this is what they had seen their parents doing. I wondered whether I was really protecting any of them.”
He reached breaking point one night after his wife threw him out of the house – something she had done several times before. Simon, who was then working for the church and had never talked to anyone about the abuse he had suffered, went to speak with a superior in the church hierarchy.
“They said, go back to your wife and nobody will be any the wiser, but I knew I could never do that.”
Since leaving the marriage, Simon has become involved with charities like the Mankind Initiative, which provides support for male survivors of domestic abuse.
“It’s a long battle to change people’s perception,” he says. “People are used to the idea of domestic violence being something men do to women, but when it happens the other way round, they can’t get their heads round it.
“Going for the authorities was never an option for me. I thought, who would believe me – a big, strapping bloke? I can look after myself in that sense.
“But as a boy, growing up, I was always told that boys don’t hit girls. That was the most important thing. It didn’t matter how I was provoked, I would just never do that. So I would let her anger burn out rather than ever retaliate.”
He says that men in similar situations should remember they are not alone and – if they feel unable to talk to anyone about the abuse – keep a journal and read it back, so they can get a more objective view of what is happening to them.
“Start thinking about ways out, too. You might hope that things will change but the reality is they never will.”
'Why would you, as a man, put up with that?'
Ian McNicholl, 52, is another male survivor of domestic abuse. He was subjected to a 14-month ordeal by his ex-partner which saw her pour boiling water over him, put out cigarette butts on his face and genitals and attack him with a hammer.
He still bears the physical and psychological scars from that relationship, and needed his septum replaced after his ex assaulted him with a metal bar. The police became involved after McNicholl confided in a neighbour that suicide was the only way he could see out of the relationship.
His girlfriend was found guilty of grievous bodily harm and assault, and was sentenced to seven years prison time, but is now out on licence.
“When I tell people about what happened, some of them still ask: why would you, as a man, put up with that? It’s because they don’t understand how manipulative some people’s behaviour can be – it takes all you have, until you’ve got nothing left.
“I don’t deny that more females are victims of domestic abuse, but it’s a crime that can affect anyone. The media need to give male victims more coverage and a more balanced view of what domestic abuse is.”
*name has been changed
==
Reminder: the idea that "more females are victims" is a cultural meme, not fact. Despite feminist propaganda, such as the Duluth Model, which uses feminist mythology rather than evidence to assert that only men perpetrate violence and women only act in self defence, actual statistics don't back this up at all.
Far and away the most common dynamic in intimate partner violence is bidirectional/symmetrical, while in the minority that are unidirectional or asymmetrical, the most common dynamic is actually female on male. What's termed "severe male on female" is the least common dynamic of all (~5%).
Yet, like the myth of white cops murdering scores of unarmed black men, the least common scenario is the only one anyone pays attention to, and the only one anyone is allowed to talk about.
#ManKind Initiative#domestic violence#domestic abuse#intimate partner violence#abusive relationship#abused men#violent women#violence is violence#religion is a mental illness
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