jacquelinemerritt

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before i told myself and all the people i love that i was a woman, i had already overcome insurmountable odds and decided the fate of a decaying world in the body of one. i’d broken myself out of an asylum meant to contain people like me, fought through hordes of monstrous entities that wanted nothing more than the sight of me dead, and chosen to break the cycle of life and death kept in limbo by the burning of an eternal flame.

i am, of course, talking about the original dark souls.

it’s no secret that these games have a special significance within the trans community — it seems especially trans women are drawn to the spiritual journey and tough challenges inherent in their design. since that first experience slashing through lordran with a stolen black knight’s greatsword, i have walked under the gaze of a world that sees me as a liability at best and a danger to the decided order at worst. i have collected the umbilical cords of a great one. i’ve taken hormones that have altered my body into a vessel fit for my soul, and i have bested a rotting and golden-armed warrior who has never known defeat. three times.

if i can dodge waterfowl dance, i can survive being trans in america.

if i can slay darkeater midir, i can survive being trans in america.

if i can learn lady maria’s parry timing, i can survive being trans in america. and look super hot doing so.

these games are everything to me, and i often find myself using my character’s journey and pitfalls and triumphs as a sort of sigil for my own life. the parallels between the souls games and transness run deep, and my connection to them is furthered by the musical structure and rhythm of their combat and exploration. defeating isshin the sword saint without hesitation can’t be that different from learning the right hand pattern to neon by john mayer on guitar, or navigating an ever-more-hostile healthcare system after all.

whenever times get tough and i feel as if i would be better suited cutting my time in this reality short and sweet, i remind myself of the lessons these games taught me: hesitation is defeat. react not from fear but from primal rhythmic understanding. dodge into the attack and not away. never give up, no matter what.

the only line that runs through those of us that survive and thrive in this world is the quality of persistence. that is to say, anyone doing something that you too want to accomplish only has one thing in common: they kept going and didn’t give up, no matter what.

the souls games (especially elden ring) teach you to approach adversity in an abstract and nonlinear fashion. something is kicking your ass? go kill a few beasts. find a cool new weapon and upgrade it. pillage a larval tear from an underground temple and respec your entire skill set. you can do this.

us trans folk are thrown into the world with no plan or blueprint for how to navigate it, much like the chosen undead is plucked from the asylum by a giant crow and dropped into lordran with a vague pair of instructions: ring two bells, one above and one below. you’ll figure it out, although you’ll die quite a bit doing so.

i’ve died so many times throughout my multiple lives in these worlds that i couldn’t even begin to guess the number. i plan on making it all the way through this one to the very end, and hold firm in my ability to learn the dodge or parry timing to any challenge that comes my way. if you are trans and reading this today, know that you inherently and skillfully are capable of the same.

happy trans day of visibility my friend <3 may you never go hollow!

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we as trans women need to have real solidarity, not the kind you post abt then turn around and let every other tranny you've pushed out of your life end up destitute, i really feel like i'm the only one actually trying so hard

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The Trans Agenda is to Keep My F*cking Friends Alive — sol rios

published as part of the Citizen Trans* {Project} by New Words Press

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Look. You just gotta sit that pretransition trans girl down and make it absolutely clear to her that there is no essential, fundamental barrier that separates her from the hot girls she's envying. She can do that. They were exactly like her, often less than three years ago. It is fully possible.

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There's this tweet going around that says "they should add a porn section to the criterion collection" and it's truly making the biggest shitheaded jackasses of the world SO mad

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the edit itself

this edit is getting taken down from tiktok every time someone reuploads it, its straight up censorship at this point

Im not even american but im having a great time with this

DONT LET THIS DIE

credit to miraculousgastropod for the original

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The ceasefire agreement was reached and joy is floating among the Palestinian people

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Decemberween 2024 — My Players

You know who you are, if you’re reading this.

I am a big fan and advocate for 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons, for the simple and objectively true reason that it is the best version of Dungeons & Dragons that exists. It is the version of this iconic game that enables new players, tactical play, and a consistent, even player power level that still lets players do cool things they want to do. Based on this, it is the game I think that you should always start with if you want to introduce a new player to the most generic platform for tabletop games.

Anyway, I haven’t run 4th edition D&D in about a year. My play group hasn’t been happening.

I have instead been running Blades in the Dark now for about four months for a group that includes at least one player who’s never played TTRPGs before.

If you’re not familiar with Blades in the Dark, oh there’s my link to my review of I’ve written about it, oh and things that are built off it that I also like and even contributed to, oh and here’s me comparing another game to it as a failure, never mind. I think it’s reasonably clear that this is one of my favourite TTRPG systems, for entirely personal reasons. I mean one of the things I love about this game is that the book is nice to hold in the hand, which I could use as the underpinnings of a 2,000 word academic article about interface design or I could just be as honest and say it satisfies me to hold it.

Blades in the Dark struck me as the place to start because it meant that I could hande the pdf to my players and know that they had 100% of the information they needed to play the game and we were all working off the same, public information. This occurred to me as a nice way to ease the experience since I knew I was dealing with more than one neurodivergent player. Blades in the Dark is also very flexible; when players engage with the game, I can reassure them that there’s a lot of power in their hands, that they get to make choices and demands and my job is to adjudicate and illuminate around the, not to present their choices to them.

Blades in the Dark also parcels up player time in really handy chunks; there are scores, there are downtimes, and because the game splits things up like this, a player can drop in or drop out of it easily. That meant that if I set up a game using this system, players could drop in or drop out very easily, and the game would handle the presence or absence of characters, without needing excuses or reasons for why a character wouldn’t be present in the narrative.

Also, Fox, who is playing in the game, she made us a Virtual Tabletop. Now, when I read this to her she’s going to point out that hey, hey, she didn’t make it from scratch, there was already a thing that she built it from or she ‘just’ updated something to make it viable for us, which I appreciate but it’s also silly as hell because just because you bought the table from Ikea doesn’t mean you’re not the person who made it in our living room.

I used Discord for this. I made a Discord, set it to a community discord, and that gave me access to the forum tools. Then, I could set up the forums, where one set of forums were for the players. Each player could make a forum thread for their character, to keep notes, ask questions, put lore, images, that kind of thing. On my side of things I set up a forum of world stuff, where I could put districts, gangs, that kind of thing.

Okay, but this is just describing things around the Decemberween Thing. Right? Like this is a Decemberween article, I’m meant to be using this as an opportunity to tell you about stuff you can watch or listen to, right? Is this promoting an Actual Play or something?

Kinda.

Or rather, I’m trying to promote you, personally, starting your own TTRPG group, with any TTRPG you like, on discord, or whatever, and play with your friends, because that social experience rules. It is the highlight of my week, to show up with my friends, using a Google Spreadsheet to manage my locations and factions and all that, a dice roller program, and the joy of listening to and sharing with my friends. We even have our own strategy examples for doing great at this game, which is, you just roll sixes.

This is what I recommend. I think you should start this kind of thing up. I think you should, if you like TTRPGs, start a group. Ask some friends. You know how many friends you need to try out TTRPGs? One. You can just pick one friend, pick any of the free games, even the GMless ones, and see how you like telling stories together.

And…

I have world information.

I have world building for the setting I made to put this game in. I have this space which is a sort of alt-history, Victorian whalepunk, island country, modelled on Australia, the Phillippines and New Zealand. It has gangs and factions and it has a system for police districts. It has a world deepened by the players’ creations and their contacts and friends and it’s so cool and at least, right now, at least right here, I’m not writing about it, or sharing it with you. Not to be rude to you, not because I don’t trust you or don’t want to brag about how cool my players are!

But because not everything I make becomes part of this blog.

It’s a balancing act: On the one hand, I want to make sure you know that what I do is demystified. Nothing I do is hard, nothing I do is done because I am special and better and able to do things you can’t. On the other hand, these players aren’t here to be Media that I Produce for an Audience. Maybe we’ll all decide sometime in the future to make this as shareable content, maybe letters or missives from the world. Maybe I’ll put together a dossier about the world, its gangs and the lore, so you can use it to run a game yourself, if you like.

Here, though? Decemberween?

I want to highlight that my players are incredible.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

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banger article that really effectively unpacks the brainworms of the liberal psyche and how it manifests in some really, really boring sounding art

Family Thanksgiving this year getting you down? Sneak off to the bathroom and read my retrospective of the Twilight Zone reboot, a bizarre time capsule of liberal Important Issues from 2019... almost all of which the Democrats abandoned politically since!

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okay I needed to bring this rarepair idea I had into existence cause like

Eshonai is butch af (and best girl) and Jasnah is femme af

so they have to kiss

anyway I wrote a drabble fic to bring Jashonai into the world please enjoy

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were you perpetually and exclusively praised for what you could one day become, instead of what you were, leading you to a lifetime of feeling like you were not only never good enough, but that the best thing about you was a future that would never come, that constantly felt like it was slipping away? Did you become so afraid of closing doors, of losing that one good thing, that potential, that you stagnated at the crossroads until your life began to rot around you and the asphalt ground to gravel and the roads grew ever rougher, the doors closing one by one even as you tried in vain to keep them open, instead of choosing a path and committing to a direction for your own progress? Did you watch the best thing about you, the one thing you were praised for, slowly collapse in your arms as you tried desperately and hopelessly to save it, finding yourself kneeling in the ruins of your unexplored promise, looking for a way out, and wondering if there was no where else to go? no way forward? When someone tells you they're proud of you, that they love you for who you are, that what you are is good enough, do you cry? do you struggle to believe them? do you have to try your damnedest just to make yourself hear the words? Do you wonder if, one day, you'll learn to be happy with who you are?

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Look, you *have* to love and care for that kind of weird trans girl you know. Even if she isn't conventionally feminine. Hell, especially so. If the world has told her that nobody could want her, and pushed her away from any source of love, will you be there for her?

I know I will. Because nobody else seems to care. I'll stay with the rejects and build a kingdom from the scraps and gems that have been thrown overboard. I love all of you. I'm sorry this world has convinced you that you aren't beautiful, because you are the prettiest thing in the sky. I'm sorry you've been made to feel unwanted, because you are the most valuable treasure of all. I'm sorry you've been driven away from friendships and love, because you are the best sort of companion.

I love you all, freaks and rejects and wonderful trans women. Stay alive and stay safe, please.

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Were you helping refugees at the border last week by donating to mutual aid groups or doing translation and outreach?

Were you calling for ceasefire and doing what you could to aid Palestinians last week? (Esims for gaza here)

Were you talking to your unhoused neighbors with respect and advocating for them and protesting encampment clearances last week? (There's no link just treat people like people and share cash if you can)

Last week were you participating in community meal shares and free stores?

Were you supporting bail funds and protesting the carceral state and trying to stop executions and humanizing incarcerated people last week? (How to write a letter to an incarcerated person)

Were you working to increase access to abortion medications and birth control and abortions in general last week?

Did you share information about DIY HRT and spend time paying attention to the books your school board was banning and make your lgbtqia friends welcome and included last week?

Were you aware of the groundwork being laid for a 2028 general strike and the ways that you could support one (contributing to strike funds, joining and supporting unions, attempting to unionize your workplace) last week?

Were you helping the people around you, were you caring for your friends, were you making information free, were you picking up trash, were you sharing a meal, were you tracking fascists, were you challenging the wrongs done by your government in the ways available to you last week?

Good. Keep doing that.

A better world is possible. Keep working toward it.

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so

i'm back on my kingdom hearts bullshit

but this time

instead of making video essays (i am still working on them script editing is just slow going)

i'm writing fanfic

and ngl i think it's pretty good

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Hey, go read Sarah's vidrev blog. It's very good!

WHAT IS VIDREV?

vidrev is a blog dedicated to reviewing and sharing video essays. originally started on cohost, the idea is to examine the interesting qualities and blindspots of essayists from across youtube while also shining a spotlight on underrated videos.

i'm a video essayist myself, so i invite readers to check my work and see if i really know what the hell i'm talking about. my main tumblr blog is here.

if you have an essay you think i might be interested in, no matter the age, viewcount, or length (and yes, including your own work!), i accept submissions here. just know that i make no commitment to reviewing/highlighting any submissions and that there's nothing personal about it, i'm only human.

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July Update

Published a status update on Patreon, it's free to read if you join as an unpaid member. In short though, working on the next three videos, The Summer of Kingdom Hearts, and other stuff will come out after that big project is done :)

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skibidi toilet rules actually