Yeah sex is great, but have you ever heard of:

gg buddy am I right (ethubs doodle that I don't know what to do with)

my TWO FAVORITE THINGS IN THE WORLD, VAMPIRES N COWBOYS... deacon keller is SUCH a fun character, hes charming and funny but ALSO formidable and STRONG when he feels he needsta be. i hope him and arthur can get a chance to talk more and be better friends. l ike really good friend s. . like. like really good f. hangon i gotta go i think i hauve rabies.

ooh, how do you think molly would grift essek?

Alright. Let’s grift Essek.

First I need to note that any objection along the line of ‘Essek is too intelligent to fall for grifts’ is unnecessary, because whatever you think of Essek’s specific characterisation, assuming you are to intelligent to fall for a grift is one of the major ways people fall for them, in a ‘renowned high pressure social group researcher proclaiming on twitter that Sissy Porn is real and dangerous’ kinda way (look it up it’s some hysterical terf bs).

Gonna use that joke as a sidenote that if I am conflating grifts and high pressure social groups in this, it’s ‘cause as far as I care the difference is how self-aware the people running the show are. Watch any MLM-Doku (and I think we can all agree MLMs are grifts) and you’ll inevitably get to the part about weird aspiration culture bs and group pressure. It’s all one soup.

With that out of the way, let’s establish a baseline: What’s Molly’s reason for grifting Essek? Probably money and also the fun of it/being bored. Considering Kingsley abandoned his perfectly fine shipping company job to run off to be pirate king, I don’t think ‘Molly keeps grifting long after the M9 have become financially stable for shits and giggles and because Jester enjoys it’ is too outlandish a projection. Additionally, I don’t think Molly is great with impulse control nor this whole thing where current actions cause future consequences.

Now; why would Essek fall for a grift. Grifting relies on the dupe wanting something more than having good sense about it. Most people want money, so most girfts are structured around greed, but we know money is no object to Essek (though this does make him a juicy target – what he would barely miss might make a good haul for any grifter). We do know he is primarily motivated by knowledge instead, as well as a desire to be recognized as intelligent and exceptional. Additionally, we know he needs (in the character development sense) The Power of Friendship. Lastly, I think it’s fair to say he subconsciously longs for excitement (happy, fulfilled bureaucrats don’t become heretic spies; nor do they befriend a gang of mercenaries; implicitly, Essek is happier living the life of a wayward refugee-adventurer wizard than that of an Evil Gay Vizier Court Wizard or whatever papers a Shadowhand stamps nine-to-five.).

Being a paranoid bastard makes him a harder target, though the fact that we know he has fallen for someone’s bs before (I’m counting the spectacularly bad decision that is him allying with the Assembly as falling for a grift here. That’s a stupid decision to make!) makes him an easier target. Being so socially isolated makes him an easier victim, too, though his general rejection of people and clear discomfort with social interactions makes him an unlikely target for something like a romance scam. Essek’s relationship to tolerating bullshit is a weird one; on the one hand, he does put up with Jester’s (and the rest of the Nein’s) shenanigans, on the other he clearly knows how to and dares to tell someone to fuck off, and there’s that time he just ditches everyone via teleport (hilarious). So boundaries-wise, he could go either way. Lastly, I’d argue he’s at least somewhat impulsive or at least not risk averse. Always remember we are looking at an NPC next to Sword’n’Sorcery Adventurers – Essek might look cautious next to ruin-trawling wizards, but compare him to Gundula, 55, who works in Insurance and just clicked on a phishing link to claim her Totally Real Oilve Garden Gift Card, and you’ll see what I mean – most people are too risk-averse and unimpulsive to, again, commit treason via international conspiracy and then run off without a moment’s notice to dig around a cursed-ass ruin to save the world from a Cronenbergian nightmare.

Conclusion: He’s rich, he’s bored, he loves pretending to be a spy or grand discoverer, he wants to buy your dodgy foreign papers and incredible discoveries about the Luxon so, so badly and he has absolutely no one left in his life who’ll tell him it’s a bad idea.

So, for example, Molly could Voynich him. All he needs is a battered notebook and some writing supplies, whatever knowledge of what wizards’ and alchemists’ and spies’ scribbles look like he can easily pick up from traveling with the Nein and an opportunity to ask Essek to have a look at this encoded notebook he’s been lugging around all over the continent with him, why, he was at this party in Zadash and everyone else was some boring old pompous wizard (such a bore!) so he pickpocketed one of them, just for the fun of it, but, well, turns out neither Caleb nor Beau can make head nor tails of the weird sign code it’s written in (how tragic, if only someone happened to be so much cleverer than both of them!) and if Essek wants to have a look Molly would be more than happy to lighten his pack. For a small pittance, of course.

What’s small change to Essek is probably pretty nice to have for Molly, even by that level and especially if we’re mostly doing this for the fun of it. Essek gets to fall face first into his desire to show up Caleb, Beau and potentially an unknown Assembly member with his clearly superior decoding, espionage and wizardly skills and gain Secret Knowledge, maybe even Assembly Secrets on top of that.

Arguably, this one does rely very heavily on the fact that it’s hard to prove a negative, or in this case, hard to prove a barely-literate conman’s scribbles are just that. Do keep in mind Essek doesn’t know Molly is a habitual conman, but even so, it’s not a fantastic con (Essek isn’t dumb and knows his arcana after all and Molly doesn’t, or at least not enough to make a proper Voynich).

You could make it a better Voynich by getting Caleb in on it, but instead let’s pep it and turn it into a proper Real Stradivari by changing the hints that this manuscript might be legit to being alchemy-related and adding in a shill. Let’s go with Jester, because she’s down to clown, can lie and has a way with Essek’s boundaries.

So this time around, we aren’t asking Essek outright to buy our bogus notes – instead Molly gives him the whole spiel, hands him the notebook, fucks off with as little time to actually look at it as possible before Jester enters the scene to ask what THAT is and go oh it’s about ALCHEMY well, that DOES look like the signs she saw around Yezza’s house, pretty suuuure, oh, do you think it might be Yezza’s? Do you think Yezza might want it? Do you think she should ask Molly to sell it to her so she can give it to Yezza as a present to be nice because she’s such a nice friend who does nice things?

Honestly, the money part is optional if this is wholly about making Essek look up to see if the ceiling does indeed say gullible (and if Jester is involved, it might well do so! Always better to check, with her!), but a proper Violin Drop concludes with the Grifter returning to take their worthless thing back only to be asked to sell by the victim, who thinks the grifter doesn’t know what worth he has. If it was real, offering to buy the notebook would mean Essek outsmarted a minimum of three people (Beau and Caleb can’t crack the code, Molly is too dumb and illiterate to know valuable research notes from the morning paper) and gets his hands on potentially unknown-to-him luxon-related secrets! Alas, it’s not real, as he will realize soon.

So these are two (related) ways to scam Essek. But there’s a third one I want to mention one that is a lot of cinematic fun and I didn’t know had a name until Wikipedia told me no one does it irl (boo! That’s no fun!). It takes a lot of prep, math, and a lot of people and combines Essek’s obsession with the Luxon’s secrets and Molly’s penchant for passing himself off as psychic.

Molly would need something people in Rosohna bet on, like some kind of sport, preferably one with only two results and places people do said betting on said sport in groups. I’m assuming this exists on account of gambling and sports being culturally pretty universal concepts that love to go together.

Anyway. Imagine you’re Essek Thelyss, and one day a bunch of weirdos show up in court with a piece of the god you’re atheistically-heretically obsessed with. A few weeks later, you, having your ears to the ground about new developments regarding said not-god-pieces, hear one of the weirdos has made a name for himself as a outright oracle, correctly predicting the outcome of Fantasy-Dodgeball (Rosohnas’ favourite sport) perfectly six weeks running. He swears it’s because proximity to the Luxon amplified his inborn and long-trained psychic powers to predict the future.

Now, this is obviously bullshit. Except if Essek, being regrettably acquainted with the weirdos, were to ask, Molly would certainly confirm that sure, he has mystic powers and certainly they were amplified by the Luxon and predicting sport results is a hobby of his wherever they go, does Essek want to see? and lead Essek to a bar where every regular can swear on whatever he likes that Molly has correctly predicted the results of Fantasy-Dodgeball since the first week of being in Rosohna, in fact since before he himself knew the rules or track-record of any of the teams. Not only that, but there’s a second bar full of people Molly can introduce him too. And if he wants, he can certainly come back for a drink in one of them again next week when Molly has done it once more. Just call on Molly, he’ll tell you the time and date to meet some true believers, not all of whom can possibly be his shills.

(And, incidentally, barely worth mentioning, really, since Molly’s psychic blessings from the Luxon are so accurate, he has Exciting Business Opportunities for anyone willing to place more than their weekly betting budget in his trust, and he’d love for Essek to take a look at his powers. For a small compensation of his time, of course.)

Of course Molly can’t predict the results of Fantasy-Dodgeball. Instead, the first week of downtime in Rosohna, he found out what people like to bet on in Rosohna and where, picked one or two places in each district, go there and make predictions with a fifty-fifty split, then eliminate each watering hole where he was wrong each week, slowly cutting his audience back to only people who are getting to know him as That Outlander Who Always Knows The Results of Fantasy-Dodgeball, all the while escalating the story from him being just some dude betting and drinking with the guys to the whole Chosen By The Luxon thing. Considering this is a double-scam involving a faith aspect, he might very well still cash in in places he’s been wrong once only since victims of faith-based scams are very likely to overlook inconsistencies in their scammer’s stories or promised results. By the time Essek gets involved Molly’d be down to one or two places of true believers coming to him for ‘always accurate’ tips and a bunch of other people all over Rosohna he might get some money off based on the faith-aspect. And now perhaps one intrigued high-ranking government official who’s more than willing to overlook the hereticism inherent to the whole thing and is instead very likely to fall in the academic glue-trap of trying to disprove something clearly bogus that you do kind of want to believe in because like.

Wouldn’t it be cool? If the Luxon had more awesome powers? And one of them happened to fall in Essek’s hands, with no oversight and no need to cooperate with someone like Trent or Ludinus? Would he not want it to be real?

Anyway. The real answer to this question is: Enlist Beau to send bogus stuffed bills to Essek’s secretary. Bureaucrat on bureaucrat violence, let’s go.

i keep thinking about this scene from twin peaks

jesus christ episode 5 of arcane was so fucking good

i have decided this year is His Year so i guess i have to learn to draw water and also finalise his outfit designs. smh. the things i do for love.

OC: shaide (he/him)

I am not looking forward to how Hollywood is going to respond to the success of this movie

They always learn the wrong things

And I feel like this movie did nothing right

Except animatronic and sets I guess

But it’s not like the movie did anything interesting with those things

@callisto-mt that's right!

(making this a separate post because i didn't want the other one to get too long lol)

before they reverted on their decision to make the rt podcast site-exclusive, their youtube channel was almost solely clips from the podcast for two-ish months straight. it's a disaster

the explanation as to why it was moved from yt makes sense at first, but with the knowledge that rt has already made distinct yt channels for some of their other podcasts like face jam and red web, it just makes me wonder why they didn't do it with the newer iteration of the rt podcast to begin with :P

i just finished iron blooded orphans and need to lay down for a bit

Sanji has adquired top sad wet cat status

i think that whole "never felt safe growing up and most of my life" thing did real damage to my psyche lmao

hope u guys don't mind me being a little queer sometimes and talking to myself in the tags, it helps clear my head since people can filter out rant posts easily

y'all, I feel like I've said this a lot, it is truly a joy to be a GM, but I am so fucking ready to get out of the chair and be a player again

I know everyone on here only knew her via my occasional posts about work (back when I worked at the clinic in ND), but I wanted to post a small something about Pam, in honour of her passing today.

Pam had been at the clinic longer than any of us. And she was truly one of those employees that helped keep things running. She knew each doctor (but the MDs in particular, always the pickier and more needy than the ODs) like the back of her hand, in both scheduling requirements and overall likes and hates and needs. At first, she scared the ever-loving fuck out of me. She could be gruff, and occasionally outright mean, though I will always be grateful to her for the kindness she showed me compared to other trainees. Some of that may have come at first because she knew/worked alongside my mum for a few years prior to my being hired, but in time I found out that she simply did like me. Appreciated that I wanted to work hard and be better at everything in my life. Understood that life hadn't necessarily been kind or fair to me or my family and understood that well, because it hadn't been to her either.

Occasionally she'd be gone from work due to her Crohn's, and other chronic issues, and that was only what she'd tell you about. The implication was that, while she overall was quite happy with how things had ended up, there had been a lot of rough shit in between that had toughened Pam up a lot. It made her seem impossible to get to know to some, but I can say it was worth the work. Underneath the shell she'd had to grow to get through, there was a very kind, understanding woman who genuinely wanted the best for those she saw as doing their best in a world that's not easy for anyone to live in, even in the best of times and circumstances.

I admit, we did all encourage less than ideal parts of each other. She smoke too much and drank too much (and during the time in my life when I drank, we overdid it on her favourite long island iced teas more than once during happy hour after work.) But it helped to deal with things as work at the clinic got harder and things changed, unfortunately for the worse both for staff and patients (but I digress on that. The place is still running with Pam and I and many others gone, like any other privately owned rural clinic. When they're one of the few places open for care, they always straggle on no matter what they do to anyone else.) None of the above mentioned changed how fucking hard she worked though, and how she'd put her own job on the line to help out coworkers and patients alike whenever the chance arose.

That said, we helped get each other through the rougher days, and she gave me fantastic life advice in the times in between. Advice that finally helped get me out of ND, in fact, when it became clear that living there was no longer safe. Some of her best bits that I've engraved into my head are: 'there's always another job out there, another place to live, another person to meet that might be a friend to you. Don't let despair override your chance at something better, kinder, or easier. Take the treats that you can in life, whether that's a good drink or a favourite food or outing (she enjoyed the casino herself.) Don't worry too much about overindulging, because the time here is too fucking short anyway for it to matter in the way you think it will. Live your life, and feel it all in full, because it'll go by you faster than you expect.'

So tonight, with Housemate, I'm going to try and take her advice. I'm going to let myself be sad and miss her. I'll let myself be sad that it happened the way it did (barely a few days in hospice, from a cancer that it seems she didn't know about until very near the end. I only hope they had good meds to help her not hurt so much and that they let her have a few drinks and cigarettes if she wanted them.) We'll eat a good dinner, with food and drink that we like, and we'll look to see what we can send for flowers to her funeral (her sisters and nephews, I'm told, are doing their best to set it all up, but aside from that and past coworkers, I don't know if there's much of anyone else left to go to it or send anything. The least I can do to thank her for treating me with kindness and care when others didn't is to send flowers, I think.)

And I'll have a little, non-alcoholic, toast to her life and memory. May her memory be a blessing, and may whatever there is after this life be kind to Pam. She deserves that and more.

still need to finish reveal mode tho