#MY PROCTOR SAW THESE

[jay-starss]

when you finish an exam early and then you

[ballpitwitch]

Keanu Reeves Me and Will (1999)

[klanced]

I see where you're coming from, but also blorbo is different to everyone and we all had different experiences. I was in voltron but pidge was my blorbo, not lance, so I rarely saw him. And then I saw Yuuri everywhere whether I wanted to or not. Also, polls are not about accuracy, as much as we might think they should be. Life is a popularity contest. 🩵💙🩵💙🩵

my blorbo rankings contain multitudes. however, i am cognizant enough to recognize two things:

while lance is not my specific blorboest blorbo, i still rank him to be a more iconic blorbo than yuri. and so my vote for lance is still valid.

this poll is about most iconic blorbo. i like keith and allura more than i like lance, but i firmly believe that lance is voltron's most iconic character. i define "iconic" based on the following criteria: a) canon material; b) fandom experience and reaction; and c) impact on outsiders (the "did i see this character everywhere" standard). i heavily value points in the (b) category over points for (a) and (c).

lance's canon material sucks ass. however, the fandom's ability to 1) go crazy over lance anyway, and then 2) ability to extrapolate so heavily, insist on digging so deeply, and create so genuinely is impressive to me. and also incredibly hilarious. this is why i made the toxic iconity argument: i deeply respect the daily battles lance stans fought, both between themselves/the wider voltron fandom, and the constant enduring sisyphus-level uphill battle against the quality of the canon material. lance stans were able to create everything out of veritable nothingness, and i believe that deserves to be commemorated.

[nydescynt]

"you can still watch Immoral Media just make sure you're critical about it uwu" sucks and is bad

Critical analysis of media is an internal process, that usually doesn't result in different social media output than an uncritical watcher. So "oh you can enjoy x as long as you're critical of it" functionally means you need to either:

Performatively self-flagellate for watching/reading The Immoral Media (which has the added benefit in this framework of cementing its Immoral status to unfamiliar followers), or

Not engage with it at all.

This line of thinking is still just a way to reinforce moral policing on media.

Other greatest hits off this album include:

If someone you know or like is engaging with Immoral Media you also enjoy, they're doing it critically so it's fine

If someone you don't know or like is engaging with Immoral Media, they're clearly uncritically supporting the most objectionable parts of that content

The line between "media you can consume critically" and "media so immoral no one should watch it" is inconsistent nonsense

Whether you're perceived as critical is 110% tied to sexuality. Being horny for a character + Immoral Media = you are incapable of critical thought

When you see a post claiming someone is "uncritically watching" media, ask yourself "How the fuck would they know?" and keep scrolling

[riosnecktattoo]

Saw The Crucible at the Gielgud and it was Giel-very-gud

[angrypedestrian]

I'm probably not the first person to say this, but, The Interrupters are ska for people who clap on the 1s and 3s.

And I don't know if I've ever seen a band encourage so many clap alongs while simultaneously having a crowd that just fundamentally cannot keep the beat on tempo.

[maiteo]

every time I see y’all rbing from that gooner that barred me I feel like snitching

[mesimees]

Look drinking stuff out of jam jars instead of cups and mugs is absolutely decadent and it gives me a tiny bit of joy in These Times but HOOO boi does it make me appreciate the fact that mugs have handles bc ouch coffee hot

[ihophashbrowns]

im back from the exam :3

[comradecowplant]

The sims 4 is 100% a comfort game, but only after I've been able to calm down somewhat beforehand, because oh sweet lord the way those pixel people DO NOT LISTENNNNGJFJDHEGGE will push you over the edge some days if your equilibrium is not already equalized 🙏

[wolfstarwarrior]

randomly saw your blog in the notifs of something was about to block you for the url alone but then i read your description i respect the grind have a good day

Can’t say I would’ve blamed you, but I’m glad the description is doing it’s job.

[everlastingrandom]

reading vague posts about some unhinged discourse occurring far from my realm of exposure is like the platonic opposite of "I saw Goody Proctor at the Devil's Sacrament" like damn clearly i was not at the sacrament what the fuck

[funeralgreys]

what no one is asking is why were these people on their merch store in the first place

[rodentchild]

Y'all I think Kipperlilly planned to kill Buddy regardless of whether Kristin saw her or not

We can all agree that Buddy is a fucking stooge. He's being used by Kipperlilly (who seems to be the leader of the RG and has everyone doing what she says when she says (Ruben's dream and Oisin with Plane Shift))

He may be a stooge and a pawn but he's still a cleric and one that still believes in what he's doing. There's no way that if he saw the Proctor die not from the Bad Kids or any monsters that he'd stand there and do absolutely nothing.

And even if he did, he'd still revive the Proctor at the end of The Last Stand along with everyone else who died.

But Kipperlilly outright wanted to kill the Bad Kids so he can't resurrect them in her perfect plan, which is why she stole his diamonds as well. He also can't use Plane Shift to get them out of there if he's dead so any survivors would've been stuck.

I guess my idea of Kipperlilly's plan was the following: make sure they take The Last Stand where surely they'll die, make sure the Proctor dies so he can't call the Final Wave of Monsters, make sure Buddy dies so they can't be revived at the end, and just wait for the Bad Kids to run out of spell slots and hit points and they'll just die. And if for some fucking reason some of them survive then they can't resurrect their friends, just like they didn't/couldn't resurrect Lucy

[icaruspendragon]

My favorite thing about the Nov 5 insult is the implication that the person trying to insult you also therefore has to have some awareness of what happened on Nov 5. The call is coming from inside the house.

😡: “i saw goody proctor at the devil’s sacrament”

🤨: “what were you doing at the devil’s sacrament??”

[pb-dot]

This latest Adventuring Party really drove home my favorite aspect of Brennan's DMing style. He genuinely loves seeing his players succeed, even against odds he considered to be nigh insurmountable.

Let's take the Last Stand as an example. Now, Brennan made no secret out of the Last Stand encounter being very hard, and for people who do not play D&D it may even seem like he overhyped it, but from a mechanics standpoint, the CR, functionally the difficulty rating of this battle royale was sky-high. Yeah, none of the Bad Kids went down, but that is entirely thanks to a combination of excellent strategic play from the Intrepid Heroes and some choice luck.

To mention some of the game changer moves, the Scatter spell really re-defined the battlefield more favorably for the Bad Kids, the disguise self was a value proposition because it split the flying monsters, which was the greatest threat to the proctor by far, in two, functionally halving the threat to the squishy normie, not to mention dealing with the mega-mosquitos in combo with Spirit Guardians. Those little flying bastards would have been such a pain in the ass if Fig didn't bug zapper them to kingdom come. And the bless. Dear god, the Bless saved so many asses in this encounter.

This isn't to say magic was the only thing that defined the battlefield. The single-target damage dealers did some truly astounding numbers and managed their attention and abilities shockingly well. Yeah, Gorgug crit like a madman, but he also tanked like three or four non-barb PCs worth of effective HP damage without going down even once. If he had failed his saves and gotten eaten by the Purple Worm things would have gotten nasty for him, but again, the touch of luck (and bless) saw him through.

So, this is all to say that this was an encounter meant to kick the players' ass. Not an unwinnable one, evidently, but this was supposed to be a considerably worse experience even without getting into the non dice-roll exam questions. And how does Brennan react when the Intrepid Heroes put their game face all the way on, get really smart with their level 1 spell slots, and dismantle the whole thing? He's overjoyed, he's cheering for his strange adventure children, and we're cheering with him because frankly it's rad as hell.

This illustrates one nuance I feel sometimes gets glossed over about the DM-player relationship. A lot of people have talked about how Junior Year is the "Revenge of Brennan" or what have you, and I feel that kind of misses the central appeal of DMing and Brennan's style in D20 in particular. Yes, Mr Mulligan enjoys playing the heel on occasion. It's good fun to play the personification of everything going wrong and the inherent shittiness of the world, but like the wrestler heels, all that wicked charisma is meant to do one thing, and that is build up the faces, or the players in this case.

Now, the ghost of Gary Gygax may come after me for this, but I firmly believe it's not the DMs job to kill the player characters, or even to inconvenience or torment them. A good DM's job is to make it seem like they're going to kill the player characters, as to provide an environment for the players to succeed, a challenge for them to overcome. It's all one big improv exercise (or kink scene if you prefer to view it that way), where the DM derives their (near)absolute authority over the world the PCs inhabit from the shared understanding that they're going to show the players a spectacular, if not on occasion harrowing, time.

This is Brennan's biggest strength as a DM I think. He genuinely wants to make a spectacular time for his friends, and he understands that to do that he must on occasion be the monster they oppose, and on occasion he must be their breathless cheerleader. On occasion, one imagines, he must also be both.