#and maybe needs to include a few less literal executions

[ajastor]

😮

Callum Sedar — 2017, London

There is an undeniable urge to slam his head against the boardroom desk.

It's apparently frowned upon (according to Cal) for an executive to actively bang his skull on any surface midway through the marketing presentation. But AJ's so slouched in his chair, he's almost under the table. Scratch that, maybe he'll fall asleep instead.

Lionel Harrow, chair of the audit and risk committee, is the most boring bloody man on the planet. Astor usually doesn't play a part in the legal things, but it's supposedly good faith to have an Astor in the room. All he's fully up to speed about is that he's going to kill Cal for this. He's sat across the table from him, Kaven Smith notetaking on his right, Ygritte Emeroy, NED, on AJ's left. Percy Shitstorm at the back of the room; head of the table, who is acting managerial lead for all AG operations when an Astor isn't present. Well AJ's there, and he doesn't want to be.

Titan could have been here in his place (he might have even gave a shit); they don't need AJ to listen to the statutory whatever. Lionel's only slide four, and he's been talking for forty minutes.

'Interim measures include guidance for employees documenting partner offers. A smoother transition from pilots and AG staff when conducting and processing legal documentation for onboard products—'

AJ is going to take a knife and conduct something with Harrow's goddamn spleen.

Callum's stifling laughter; AJ can see it clear on his face. Pursed pink lips made into a thin line, where he's trapping the air from escaping his mouth. Do it, Sedar, I dare you. He's the marketing guy, he puts the signs up, and blasts AG across the damn telly; keeps the price of gold at a reasonable level, and boasts specific Astor-borne qualities as top of the European market. All AJ ever sees him do, is tap a few keys on his damn laptop and he's taking home 200k a year. Pocket change, considering AJ does even less with a NET worth exceeding eight figures.

Cal can only keep his tongue in check for all of three minutes once he notices AJ's shit smirk, and devilish eyes. He perks his head up, and stops pretending to be doing anything with that blank piece of paper or that MacBook.

Cal dares: "Mr. Astor, are you listening?"

"Yeah, he's talking about jacking off to the pilot—"

"Mr. Astor." Ygritte sighs, like it'd been expected to have to say something; defusing a bomb already set to detonate. "I don't think this is appropriate—"

"Nah, Ygritte, sweetheart, you misheard. he said: nobody asked you." It's Callum who suddenly feeds the narrative. And it's AJ's turn to chuckle about the marketer's cocksure bullshit. It's incredibly fast how quick the boardroom becomes a playground. And voices bark at each other like they've all got a little tension they need to work through.

' Come on darl, we know you're banging Harrow, is he as boring in the bedroom as he is in here? ' ' Why is the marketing guy even in here? This is an executive meeting. ' ' Fucking cunt, least I haven't gotta sleep with someone to get my job, can't say the same about you, shithead. ' ' You arrogant little — ' ' I could literally wipe you off the map by tomorrow, just make the presentation have a little spunk, you irrelevant sod. '

AJ is about to roll his eyes if Cal brings up the Iraqi sniper line again as an obvious means of life ruining. He knows there are a hundred other ways Astor's deal with problems. Callum just enjoys making them — as much as the man is peak entertainment in any situation. Astor suddenly doesn't mind being in this boardroom, whilst the viper snaps at the mice.

"What do we reckon, meeting adjourned?" AJ cuts in because he's in his own position of trying not to laugh at the other stick-up-their-arse faces. There's a solid reason why AJ endures more than he usually disrupts, and he knows that if anyone's about to chime in and remind him, with a cold, sharpened knife. It'll be Shitstorm Percy.

"Levinon will enjoy hearing about this."

There it is. AJ's quick to dismiss it: "Blow me, Perce."

Callum stops his amusing little back and forth, to whip his head around to Percy. AJ's got looks that can kill, but he's never been able to do it as well as ol' Cal can. Must be the terrifying weight of his blue eyes —

Or the fact that he's in a Coven that'll kill for him. Maybe.

There's a long, death-laced silence before Callum closes his laptop, gathers his unwritten pages and makes his way to the door. "AJ, we can go." Nice timing, Cal. Milder tempered (somehow) than an Astor. "Percy can suck my dick too."

So close.

So close to being out the door. AJ turns, shaking his head as he watches his mate get to the doorway. He thinks Percy might actually go tattling to his father, and it won't be seen nearly as funny as it is to them. The thing that Cal's also phenomenal at is reading a room when the situation demands. He knows AJ's move on the chessboard before he's even exited the boardroom.

He's locked the door. And AJ's shuttering the blinds, obscuring the view of the Eye, Thames and Shard. Levi isn't gonna hear about shit, if there's no minutes taken. What audit meeting? I was at a charity event at the TATE modern.

The boardroom is suddenly cloaked in dark, and rivers of light peer through the blinds, eyes flecked gold spark in the shadows. Callum's like a snake, weaving through to his prey; there's a crash, then an outcry. But there's a growled hush from Astor, warning them from making any sudden movements. Who doesn't know the Astor rumours in the building? Besides, they only need to deal with Percy, really. And Sedar's already got him in a headlock by the time AJ's muttering something in two languages, and pouring an alchemical mixture down Percy's throat.

Cal's a demon of a man, goading beside the managerial lead's ear: "What was that, mate? Can you say it for me again?" he pretends to listen, "Didn't think so—"

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-11-25

Getting Colder

Listening: I have been listening to a lot of Perennial for some reason.

Extremely yelling music. I like it when a musician sounds like they're on the verge of breaking out in tears which happens sometimes with Perennial.

Reading: Catching up on my enormous RSS backlog, which includes a very interesting aggregated feed run by Blackle Mori, Sortition. This is a website where, if you produce an RSS feed somewhere, you can add it, and at random your recent posts will be put into One Big Feed that anyone can subscribe to. It's a nice way to get a broad mix of people Doing Real Blogging On The Web into your feedreader.

I know a lot of the people in here from other places, fediverse, tumblr, twitter, IRC, even a few Weaguers, and it's a nice vertical slice of a particular corner of the blogosphere. Lots of furries.

Watching: Watched What We Do In The Shadows for the first time. Pointing at the screen going "I know that gif!"

It's a great comedy and it strikes me that comedy movies do seem to have quietly died, maybe because they now put a little comedy in all the mainstream movies? Unclear.

Playing: World of Goo 2 which I continue to do a little at a time. It's a really cute game. It feels floppier than I remember, but that might just be because it launches in at a much higher base difficulty than the original game, I think? It certainly feels that way, the efficient solutions feel much more marginal here, and they're challenging you with much taller, much more awkward structures much earlier in the game.

Also some Forza 5 which is because the Track Day event is on and I wanted some of the porsches. This week's Trial is ruinous, because it's a bunch of really technical twisty circuits with the "Super GT" class of vehicles, which are all big long high speed rear-wheel drive coupes, and if you try to mod your way out of this you tend to drop your top speed too much without gaining enough handling to make up for it. It doesn't help that with less-skilled team drivers they're very likely to cause terrible pileups in corners.

Making: Spent a while printing and pricing out upgrades for my printer and came to the conclusion that a much better refurb printer would cost less, and also that because of the absurd deal I got on my printer literally just the motors are worth more than upgrading it.

I am gradually getting Pissed Off at my big PC speakers which are really annoying and boomy and too loud and I fell down the rabbit hole of the Speaker Builder types and it's unfortunately exactly my shit. I love obsessing over frequency dynamics. There are some really weird little speaker drivers out there in the world and 3D printing allows you to fabricate incredibly complicated enclosures for them, so I am doing the legwork of figuring out how to model some of these.

Tools and Equipment: OpenSUSE AutoYasT is a system for automatically setting up and even changing the configuration of existing OpenSUSE and SLE systems. I'm doing a bunch of orchestration stuff at work and I needed a way to quickly set up a bunch of servers without doing it manually, and this is a handy way to approach it. You can even execute ERB templating rules within the rules file to do specific-to-device config.

You can deliver the instructions in a lot of ways, but I just patched them into the install CD with mksusecd. I'll talk about Distrobox next week.

[ophelianated]

have i ever talked about how much i looooove working in customer service (contact centre agent, to be exact)

to all the entitled bitches out there who treat us like servants at best and dirt on their shoe at worst on a daily basis, please for the LOVE OF GOD:

take five minutes, just five minutes out of your life to do some research by yourself before bothering us. we're not fucking google, and being treated as such gets real tiring real fast. we should be your last resort

we're not therapists either. i repeat, We. Are. Not. Therapists. we understand that you're frustrated, but our job description doesn't include emotional labour. we're here to help you, not listen to you vent. if you need a minute, hour, day to get yourself together enough to shift your focus back on problem solving, you can just contact again later. don't take your anger and desperation out on us. all telling us how you'll have to tell your children now that they can't see their favourite team play because you can't afford to pay a fee will accomplish is make us upset too because we're not allowed to make exceptions - "gesture of goodwill" is not a concept all companies support. all yelling and cursing at us will do is earn you an abusive customer badge and make us feel like shit. one would think that this would be a no brainer, yet here we are. here we FUCKING ARE

nor are we complaint forms. take your spiel where it belongs so it can arrive in the hands of someone in the correct department specialized to deal with more complex issues, like ones that require an official investigation for instance. believe it or not, we have a complaint form for a reason. describe your problem as concisely as you can and don't waste our time, especially because some of us are micromanaged down to how much time we spend with each customer, and we WILL get in trouble if we go over a certain limit

exercise some patience and understand that Rome wasn't built in a day. some processes take time, and no, in most cases we have no way of expediting them, especially if we're escalating something to another department. adding "urgent" at the end only serves to piss people off

if we say we can't do/don't know something because we physically don't have the method or authority to execute what you want us to/access the information you seek, believe us. unless you're being particularly rude, i promise we're not trying to pass you off, we genuinely have no way of helping you

on that note: if we say that our company policy forbids us from doing shit, believe us. and ask yourself if YOU would risk YOUR job for a random stranger before demanding that we do it anyway and getting mad when we say no

if we say that our supervisors can't do anything about your problem either, BELIEVE US. so many of you mfs think that supervisors are above company policy for some reason. i'm telling you, they have waaaaaaay less authority than you think, and if they actually gave us the go ahead to kiss your asses to high heaven and do whatever you ask, them and us would be fired at the exact same speed

if we tell you where you can find the information you seek and more, don't be a lazy piece of shit and actually check it out. if we spell an entire process out for you so it's clear what you have to do and how, don't ask if we can do it instead. you're adults. exercise some goddamn self-reliance. i've had customers asking me to cherry pick and send them via chat only the relevant contents of the page i literally had just sent them the link to a few seconds prior because they didn't want to click on said link and spend TWO MINUTES skimming the page to find what info they needed and within what article. why don't i chew your fucking food for you as well while i'm at it. tie your shoelaces. wipe your ass maybe. this also gets old real fucking fast

if we're communicating via email or chat, read what we send you. yes, even if it's a wall of text. so many conversations could take half the time if you people just fucking read shit*

don't waste your breath. threatening to sue the company will not intimidate us into doing what you want. we get threats like that every day and (unfortunately) they never go anywhere

understand. process it on a cognitive level. make it a part of you carnally if necessary. but i'm begging you please find a way to get it through that thiccc skull: we don't know every single one of our fellow employees personally. neither do we have access to the complete list of people working for the company. i have no fucking clue who the blond guy who was rude to your mother yesterday three countries away is, nor do i have the power to get him fired (refer back to the point about complaints on how to proceed in this situation)

if YOU are the one who fucked up royally and the situation is beyond saving, THAT'S ON YOU. entirely on YOU. don't blame us for not having a solution to any and all mistakes you bitches make. we clean up your messes more than enough as is, because some of you apparently can't even spell your honest to god child's name right. given of course that you don't just forget about them entirely (both true stories)

read the terms and conditions. i don't care if it's long and dry and tedious. it's also sneaky and elusive and contains a shitton of info companies don't shove in your face, which is why you should study that shit like it's holy scripture before you do anything

no, you can't get a refund for everything. life doesn't work that way. deal or die

understand that we don't make the policies of the company we work for. yes, we're aware that some (or even most) of them suck, but we gotta eat somehow. we're not the company, and we're not the enemy. i repeat, we are not the company, and we are not the enemy

on the same vein: make peace with the fact that most of us are not malicious. we don't sit around rubbing our hands, coming up with different ways to fuck up your day and steal your money. we're trying to make the best of what we're working with. if you don't like the answer we give you, chances are we don't either, but there's nothing we can do and we feel horrible about it. i know it's easy to feel like we don't help you because we don't want to when you're being told no over and over, but resist the temptation to make us the big bad in your head. i promise most of us would love to help you, and it feels incredibly shitty if we can't, especially since helping people out is the whole purpose of our job

our training can't prepare us for each and every scenario we face on the job. it's just not possible. be reasonable and patient if yours happens to be an extremely tricky case that even our most experienced colleagues haven't encountered. we are people, and we are doing our best

*actual conversation i had with a customer (kept vague for security purposes):

me: We can't do x because the other people with you don't have the necessary thing y. We in the contact centre will have to give them y by [insert explanation about the process].

customer: But they don't have y.

me: Yes, that's the problem. They will need it before we can proceed.

customer. Oh. How can I get them y?

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

If I do end up writing Batfam fics at some point, I really want to do one where Damian shows up at the manor determined to be the perfect heir to Batman, except he’s met with all these competent vigilantes/disaster humans that his father loves and comes to the conclusion that to be the perfect heir to his father, he too has to care for these dumpster fire train wrecks of human beings.

[qqueenofhades]

Hey, i just wanna say thank you for your political posts because this is the first time in literal years that i've felt any sort of understanding of the american political system and why shit is as bad as it is. Honestly I've even come out of reading a lot of then with optimism as weird as that may sound, because it seems like things CAN be made better and thats something i really needed to know.

So yeah uh, thanks. I guess.

Aha, you're welcome. I do try. There is so much toxic and illiterate political misinformation out there, from both right and left, that I am not always sure how much good it does, but at least I'm saying it, so, yeah. Ever since I started posting more regularly about politics, my block list has grown exponentially and looking at my notes is often an.... interesting.... experience, but there you have it.

The last six years have been unprecedented in American history, and even if we've grown more or less numb to the constant cavalcade of disasters, we shouldn't normalize them. Nor should we think that everything is totally fucked and beyond any kind of fixing. That sort of "nothing matters so just either give up or put all your hopes in a fantasy revolution to fix everything!" thinking is never going to do any good for anyone, and it's not even reflective of what's really going on. It's hard to tell among all the GOP screaming and extremism and threats, but 2022 is (at least thus far) representing the first sustained move away from Trumpism that we've seen since Trump first got elected. Things are getting better, and if there's a good result for Democrats in November, they have a chance to continue doing so. Even the professional liberal handwringers and concern trolls extraordinaire at MSNBC just ran this graphic:

Yes, the Republicans are so dangerous that they can't be allowed to get anywhere near power again, and I worry that too much of the country doesn't see that (and will be helped out by Democratic voter apathy, but we did just have that barn-busting result in deep red Kansas, so... yeah, I think Team Blue is paying attention). Yes, the Supreme Court will kill us all if it doesn't get fixed, and soon. But people who are acting like "oh it doesn't matter that the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, nothing is going to happen" like... what? The reason the Republicans are screaming about how it has never happened before is because it has never happened before. Because while we have had shitty terrible crime-adjacent ex-presidents before, none of them have been as bad as Trump. We don't know what yet, but this means something. I have been as skeptical of Garland as anybody, and I'm still waiting to see what comes when the J6 committee finishes its hearings. But this increases the public pressure for accountability, and the FBI followed up the raid by seizing cellphones belonging to Trumpy members of Congress (including coup-supporting GOP PA Rep. Scott Perry). The recovered documents are reportedly so sensitive that the FBI had no choice but to send in the gang to execute a search warrant, signed by a Trump-appointed federal judge and a Trump-appointed FBI director. Welp.

Anyway, the point is: boy, do I also struggle with the "things are terrible and there's nothing to be done" mindset. But it isn't true, the people who are telling you that have a vested interest in your disempowerment, and for all its flaws and failings, there's absolutely no reason we have to abandon our venerable old democracy to the absolute worst of what America has to offer. People voted en masse in Kansas and defeated Republican extremism -- IN KANSAS! There are some great progressive Democrats running for Senate, and getting just a few more will rid us of having to kowtow to God Emperor Joe Manchin and Grand Vizier Kyrsten Sinema every single time we want a bill passed. And we got that whole above list of accomplishments done in the worst possible political circumstances, so, uh. Maybe the Democrats actually do know what they're doing, just a little. (Also, I will personally pay ten dollars to anyone who can actually, thoroughly, and satisfactorily explain to me how the Democrats "are really a right wing party!!!" Just saying).

So yes. Things can get better. Things ARE getting better. Things can continue to get better if we continue to act in a way that makes that possible. Etc etc my favorite quote about how to engage with a flawed and frustrating reality: "you are not obliged to complete the work, but nor are you free to abandon it." Because. Indeed.

[dodo-begone]

It's the Cat's Life for Me

Pairing: Ranboo x Reader, Tommy x Reader, Tubbo x Reader, Purpled x Reader

Request: Can I have your take on the yandere boys (purpled, ranboo, tommy, and tubbo) with a cat hybrid reader? Don't overwork yourself and remember self care! <3

Word count: 1.6k words

A/n: This all platonic, nothing romantic. Also oops i didn't make it yandere- misread it.

Ranboo

He’d definitely be excited to meet you, especially since you’re a hybrid. He’s an enderman hybrid and you are? Oh a cat hybrid! That’s really cool! You two should hang out a few times- it’ll be great.

When he realizes and puts the pieces together, he gets ultra excited. Most cats don’t like water, right? So does that mean you don’t like water or- oh you definitely don’t like water! Or water in that way. Maybe water period- you know what he shouldn’t and won’t try that again.

Now you two playfully threaten each other with water. You, at least, would have a squirt bottle at the reader for whenever the moment is right. Ranboo does the same. Think old wild west style shoot off. That’s what happens.

There has to be loads of cuddle sessions with purring. Specifically to calm one of you down. Or both of you. Doesn’t matter, works all the same.

I don’t care what Mojang said; endermen can and will be fluffy.>:( They have to be. So you just pet each other to help calm down. Either be pet or pet, that is the question. Honestly it’s a “whatever you think works best for you bud” thing.

So I already mentioned how you helped with his anxiety. But I want to go slightly more in depth with it. Anytime he seems like he’s panicking, and you get his permission, you just flop on him and purr up a storm. The combination of weight, sound, heat and feeling is very comforting to him. You’re like a living weighted blanket!

Also you totally nap on him during this time, making it impossible for him to stand up and do anything. Just designated chill time.

When this man enderwalks, it’s a whole cute show. Just an enderman hybrid, slightly hunched and walking around the server, muttering stuff in a different language. Then you got that cat hybrid that’s following him and occasionally rubbing against him. Especially if they think he’s about to get into trouble.

Sometime he’ll just pick you up and carry you around with him. It’s the equivalent of a child picking up the family cat and walking around with it. He isn’t properly holding you so you do that cat slinky thing where they just elongate like a slinky. You aren’t pleased but you can’t get out of his grasp.

Tommy

Okay kinda following the headcannon that Tommy has wings here. But when he finds out you’re a cat hybrid? Oh man this is so cool! What cat things can you do? Do you know? Want to find out? Want to commit science with him?

He will drop you from great heights and free fall with you. It’s a fun activity only the two of you can enjoy together.

Before you hit the ground, he’ll do his best to grab you and land. Other times aren’t that fortunate so you just land on the ground yourself. Mostly on your feet but there were a few times Tommy messed you your angle. He’ll always make sure you’re okay by the end.

Like any bird, he will love to annoy you. There is no safe place. Look away or don’t pay attention when he’s talking? Grab and gentle yoink the tail. Loves to just attack your tail when you’re relaxed or least expect it.

Once he realizes what effect catnip has on you, it’s game over. He can get you to do whatever he wants! After you play, rub, eat and sniff the catnip. And if he can get and keep your attention. Maybe this was a mistake…

Will absolutely get you cat toys. You don’t enjoy them, yet you do. It’s Tommy’s way of patronizing you but they’re also so fun. Man what a conundrum....

His favorite toy to get you is a laser pointer. Easy entertainment for everyone! Plus it’s his secret weapon. Admittedly his newest. It was something he should’ve realized ages ago. But now? Oh it’s his new best friend- besides you of course.

Losing an argument? Pull out the laser pointer? Wanting you to do something because he’s too lazy? Point that little red dot at a point where you pouncing on it gets his job done.

Play fighting is a very common occurrence between the two of you. Happens right out of the blue. You two could literally be chilling on a hill and then you two are wrestling aggressively on the ground.

Tommy also tries to spook you. Is it effective? Sometimes. Usually not. But when he’s able to get you to jump and just bolt away screaming? Man those are the best reactions! You jump so high too!

Tubbo

Aw man, here comes another fuzzy duo!! You two can easily chill out with each other. It’s incredible. You both calm down together. And just chit chat so much. Emotional support friend? Sure.

You’re so good with Micheal too. Micheal just wants to pet you so much. Big cat? But also human? Good friend? Cool friend? Soft and fuzzy friend!! You’re like a giant talking cat to him, for lack of a better description. You can do human stuff. You just got some animal features.

Another duo that will just cuddle. Bring in Ranboo and Micheal while you’re at it. Make it a family cuddle session!! The little group will see two people cuddling and go “I must join”.

I feel he has an area to grow plants in Snowchester. He just has to. So you know what that means? He’ll grow you stuff! Load of cat grass and some catnip along with other greenery that you like to much on. He makes sure they aren’t poisonous to cats- wait how much of that will apply to you? Do you know?

Okay so you two play fight, but much less aggressively than you and Tommy would. You two also include Micheal. Very gentle play fighting then. Like ultra.

You two fight with what your instincts are telling you. Mostly acting out on the funny animal behaviors that’ll make Micheal laugh or just to have fun with it.

He will get you so many soft things. Just so much. Soft blankets, fluffy pillows and so much else man. Especially trying to get the squishy and soft stuff so you can knead it. Honestly a very endearing sight. You purr so heavily doing it.

Now you two will do gentle headbutts of affection. Very gentle, mind you. You two are very wary of the horns that peak through Tubbo’s fluffy hair. Sometimes the two of you won’t gently butt heads, but butt your heads against other body parts like the upper arm or shoulder. To grab attention and show affection.

Purpled

Now this relationship is going to be mildly different from the get go. There won’t be an innate sense of “what’s right” or how hybrids function as a being/person. See, Purpled is a human. You are a cat hybrid. Two very different species. The backgrounds and some of the body language is different, but you two manage quite well.

So he’ll treat you differently than the other hybrids. Well, only a wee bit. He’lll treat you like the others but in a different way, with a different tone to his actions. It’s very sweet, but you tell him it’s not necessary. He still does it.

One of the cat-like things he found out was that you don’t like water. People usually like water and some cats like water, yet you’re like a majority of cats. You despise getting wet. Attempts at smacking anything that’s getting you wet was what clued him in on this. Specifically when he accidentally did it. Oops.

You two can’t swim together. Napping is really out of the question because he has work and sleeping doesn’t seem like the most interesting activity. Although relaxing, it isn’t too productive.

Activities are hard to come by; stuff you’d want to do with Purpled is stuff he definitely doesn’t want to do and vise versa. After a standstill on what to do, you two started to get creative with the ideas.

Building super tall buildings? Although not safe for Purpled, you can easily take the fall. Along with that, Purpled is more than happy to build tall things. You can’t tell me otherwise because this man built a whole ufo.

Sometimes he’ll even bring you on his mercenary missions. It’s a cool way to hang out and have some more one-on-one time and you two get to work together. A very pog situation.

He tries to give you a part of the money; 50-50 for you guys. But you deny. It was his job, you just came around. Although not too happy about it, because you two worked together on this, he’ll concede. After all, he can just slowly slip the money into your house.

On these trips you not only provide companionship but you also are more than ready to work. Maybe playing coy and cute for a patron at a bar to lure them out and away from the public eye to be executed by Purpled. Or it could be a simple distraction of someone running by. Maybe you’re able to pickpocket the target and get what’s needed. You’re a cute and fuzzy swiss army knife

He loves to get on higher surfaces than you and try to pick you up. Even if it’s only enough to just get your feet on the ground. You do the little cat extension thingy and he thinks that’s super cool and funny. So he’ll do it often. Though you try to object, claiming to not enjoy the process at all. Yet that smile and giggles say otherwise.

[witchynyx]

Disabled Witchery

So for reference: I'm autistic, have ADHD/depression/anxiety/insomnia, and have mobility issues, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and fibromyalgia.

My witchcraft is more recent than all of these (about 3yrs now), so I've not really adapted a practice to my limitations, but I've created my own practice which thus works around them. It's hard to know what qualifies as a 'hack' when you've never really known anything different, but I'm going to see what I come up with.

Timing is Flexible

I guess one of the things that makes the biggest difference for me is being flexible about time. Wanna do a full moon ritual but you just don't have the capacity to do so in the hour closest to its peak illumination? Anywhere within a few days is cool - I know considering 3 days as full (ie the night closest to 100% and the night either side, but some also consider 5 days (at which it's still 98%+ illumination), or even 7 (still over 95%)!

Likewise with your seasonal celebrations, it doesn't have to be on *the* date! Nature doesn't flick sudden switches between seasons, so the energy of a certain celebration or event doesn't suddenly appear and then disappear after 24 hours. There's often up to a week between the traditional and astronomical dates of the sabbats, and honestly, I'll do whatever I'm planning within up to a week either side of that. If there's a few things I want to do, they they don't all need to be done on the same day, either. You don't need to do everything at once, and you don't need to do them at the exact time/day.

You don't have to do All The Things!

I especially see the stress of this from younger and newer witches, but you really don't have to do everything. Sure, it might be nice to do an elaborate ritual every new moon, full moon, and sabbat, but that's a LOT! And that's even a lot for someone young, in good health, with lots of energy and minimal external commitments! Maybe you still want to observe all these, but all you can manage is 5min meditating near your window or lighting a candle to acknowledge these - that's rad, and totally counts!

Magic + Self Care = Win

Honestly there are so many books on how to inject magic into your self-care routine*, but witchcraft has literally been the best thing for my self-care game. Learning to connect with myself and the natural world around me has been the best thing I've ever done for my mental health. Plus it's an easy way to implement the things you're learning! I incorporate colour magic into my clothes/makeup selection, medical and magical herbalism both inform my tea selections, perfume and bath salt blends, and charm my food/drinks.

* My fave book on the topic so far is Light Magic for Dark Times by Lisa Marie Basile (she's also chronically ill).

Nature is Everywhere

I literally live in the very centre of my city - I can't drive, how much I can walk is pretty limited, and even spending much time on public transport wipes me out - but nature is still EVERYWHERE! Even excluding the herbs growing in pots on my balcony and and the pothos in my bookshelves, an urban space still has nature. Without leaving my apartment I can still see a few pigeons/crows/etc flying past occasionally, and a few paperbark trees, plus the roses and crepe myrtle in the garden of the old building across the road.

If you don't have 4 different species of street trees growing on your block or any parks/gardens nearby, what plants grow in abandoned spaces, or force their way through cracks in the concrete? What birds are around? Is anyone nearby growing plants in window boxes or balconies? Even on a terrible day, walking past the paperbark tree across the road when it's covered in flowers brings me a moment of joy.

Meditation Isn't That Hard...

... But it still kinda is. Literally the main purpose most folks are using meditation for is to train their focus. All that needs to be is picking a focal point (the breath is a common one, because it's always available) and focusing on it - your brain will absolutely wander from that, that's just when you gently nudge it back to your focal point. That's literally it! Over time, your brain will wander less often, and return back where you want it more easily. It's not supposed to be easy straight-up, otherwise there wouldn't be any benefit to it - it's a skill you practice to get better at, like any skill.

You don't need to sit any particular way - if you have pain/fatigue, you can lie down (just ideally somewhere you're not at risk of falling asleep), if you have ADHD or are otherwise hyperactive/easily bored, you can combine it with movement (stretching, walking, running, you can honestly meditate while smashing out your cardio at the gym). There's lots of ways you can adapt the basic premise, and it's totally fine to use guided meditations if you get caught up in your own mind and need external reminders to prompt you back to your focus.

ADHD Note: Meditation is literally THE most effective non-medication way to improve our focus! The down-side is that our brains are dopamine-deprived/seeking and meditation doesn't tend to give us that dopamine hit it wants, which can make the executive dysfunction a massive block to actually doing the thing. I'm pretty stuck here myself, particularly with my physical health stuff ruling out anything particularly physical/active.. I might need to see if I can find something high-dopamine to do afterwards as a bribe?

It's Okay to do Your Own Thing

Throw out any idea of what your practice "should" look like or include and just roll with what works. If you're physically disabled and struggle to leave the house, feeling like you need to do you rituals in a remote forest is probably going to mean you don't get to do many and then feel crap about yourself - craft a ritual you can do sitting in bed! If you're asthmatic, perhaps using candles, sprays, or bells would work better to cleanse your space than burning incense or herbs. If you have poor fine motor control or impaired vision, maybe you find it easier to record your journey digitally! Doing something "differently" and being able to do it is far better than doing something "properly" and just.. literally never being able to do it.

You're Not Alone

There are honestly SO many disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, and mentally ill witches out there. We're really often drawn to witchcraft, and there are some folks putting out some great resources on how they adapt their practice - like @heatherwitch's "Bedridden Witchcraft" series. Quite a few popular witchy authors are chronically ill as well, like Lisa Marie Basile, Juliet Diaz, and Arin Murphy-Hiscock. Don't let anyone tell you that your can't practice witchcraft unless you're physically and mentally well, it's bullshit, and we're all living proof.

[adobe-outdesign]

Reviews of All Scrapped Spaceword Betas

Exactly what it says in the title. This is also for my reference, as I might redesign some of these later for funsies. 

I’m only including Pokemon that were 100% scrapped (we’re not here to argue what might have become what) and aren’t evos/pre-evos of existing Pokemon. Also, I’m using the English fan-translations for the names because I don’t speak Japanese.

Flambear/Volbear/Dynabear

Our original fire starter, and yeah, I can see why this was scrapped. For starters (heh), it looks more like a rodent that evolves into a lion than anything resembling a bear. And secondly... it doesn’t really have a clear focus, nor a memorable design. It’s just kind of a rodent-bear thing with flames tacked onto it. 

The best Pokes usually have a "catch” to them, and these guys lack that. For example, this got replaced by Cyndaquil, which has the concept of flaming spikes that form out of its back. That’s memorable. This, well, isn’t.

Possible reason for being scrapped: Lack of focus/interesting design

Pokes to fill the void: Teddiursa and Ursaring are probably the closest in terms of being bears. Something about it also reminds me of Growlithe/Arcanine, probably because it’s a fluffy fire thing that evolves into a bigger fluffy fire thing with a mane and black markings.

Cruz/Aqua/Aquaria

This has the same problem as the Flambear line, just less extreme. It’s okay, being a little plesiosaur that evolves into a bigger plesiosaur, but it also lacks an interesting catch to it. The pearls are maybe something, but they’re not really emphasized, just kind of tacked on. Plus Dragonair kind of has the crystal neck ornaments on lock. And the horn. And the underbelly. And the water theme...

Whoops.

I definitely wouldn’t be opposed to a plesiosaur water starter in the future, but it would probably have to be completely redesigned.

Possible reason for being scrapped: Lack of focus/interesting design; too similar to Dragonair

Pokes to fill the void: Dragonair, as mentioned above. If you want a plesiosaur, Lapras is always a thing.

Putting the rest under the cut for length.

Sunmola1/Anchorage/Grotess

This is one of the most chaotic beta evolutions out there, aside from beta Girafarig. I can see the resemblance between Sunmola1 and Anchorage to some extent--counter-shaded blue fish with two fins and a short body--but the anchor part of the evolution comes out of nowhere. Then it sporadically turns into a gulper eel, which has nothing to do with the previous two evolutions at all.

I’ve heard some people suggest that Sunmola1 basically gets dragged into the depths and turns into a deep-sea creature due to its anchor, which is a fantastic idea. However, if that’s what they were going for here it’s not really clear, and I think it could be executed much better.

Individually, Sumola1 is a little plain. Not terrible, but I think they could do something more interesting with the little head thing. Anchorage is memorable, but there’s something very un-Pokemonish about it. I think it’s just the fact that it’s basically cut in half--I keep expecting the backsprite to show its organs or something. Grotess is also a bit too plain.

It’s also worth noting that at some point, this was the evolutionary line, which is more consistent but much less interesting (save for the middle evo’s eyes, which are pretty great).

Possible reason for being scrapped: Lack of evolutionary consistency; some designs plain or not very fitting for Pokemon

Pokes to fill the void: Alomomola is a sunfish Pokemon. Sharpedo is a shark crossed with an object, and Grotess almost certainly became Huntail and Gorebyss.

Rinring/Bellboyant

These two... are pretty good. They have a simple catch--black cats with bells--and the designs are nicely executed and memorable.

If I had one complaint, it’s that they maybe seems a tad unfocused in the backend of things. They’re dark types, but have a bunch of “cutesy” moves, and it’s not clear why’d they be dark apart from being black cats. They seem to have a magical girl vibe (Bellboyant looks a bit like Luna from Sailor Moon, which is probably not a coincidence), which also has nothing to do with the bells or the dark theme. I do think that the designs themselves are fine though, and that if you just focused on the sound concept a hair more you’d have a pretty great Pokemon.

Possible reason for being scrapped: Not entirely sure, these definitely would’ve been popular. Might’ve just been a balancing thing, or it lost the dev popularity contest. 

Pokes to fill the void: Skitty kind of has the same vibe as Rinring. They also remind me a bit of the Meowth line, being cat Pokemon with metal attached to them. The Purrloin line takes over the “dark-type cat” aspect.

Bomseel

I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, it’s a very plain looking Pokemon. The idea of it balancing a fireball/bomb on its nose instead of a ball is clever and memorable enough... except that it’s dependent on it being on that pose. It can’t balance that 24/7, and once it stops all you’re left with is a plain sea lion with dark points.

However, it’s fire/water. The only fire/water we have right now is a legendary, so it would be sweet to have one that’s just a regular poke. So it’s not that the concept itself is bad, using a water-based animal and adding a fire type; it’s just more that the execution is lackluster. Give this guy a hook not related to the fireball and make the seal itself more interesting and I think you’d have something here.

Possible reason for being scrapped: Lack of interesting design

Pokes to fill the void: Volcanion is our only fire/water Pokemon for now. In terms of seals/sea lions with a circus theme, Popplio is a decent enough match.

Tigrette/Electiger

Someone at Gamefreak hates tigerballs, because this line was planned for Gen 1, scrapped, then planned for Gen 2 and scrapped again. Which is strange, because while it’s not the best design it’s not bad either. It’s very very cute, and could definitely find an audience.

However, I’m not really sure what the premise is here. If it’s based on tiger clay bells, then it doesn’t really play into the bell theme much at all. And if it’s not... why is it so round? It’s not that the roundness is bad, but it would usually form the hook for this Pokemon, like it collects static electricity in its fur that makes it puff out or something. Maybe some dex descriptions would’ve made this clearer, who knows.

Also, Electiger is literally the exact same design as Tigrette, just bigger. It would either need a completely new final evolution or would need to show up as a single evo. 

While that sounds harsh, I do really like this design. Fix the evo, figure out/build on the hook of it being round or bell like, and maybe refine the markings a touch and it would be pretty perfect.

Possible reason for being scrapped: Not sure. Might’ve been too similar to Pikachu (both being yellow round electric type Pokemon with zig-zag tails, and og fat Pikachu was also very round). The need to rework the evolution also might’ve turned GameFreak off of it.

Pokes to fill the void: Spheal and Rowlet are both pleasantly round. Pikachu is cute and electric themed in a similar way. In terms of tigers, Raikou is also electric-type. The exact way the stripes are done here is also very similar to Litten.

Kurstraw/Pangshi

GameFreak. GameFreak, you are telling me that we almost had a voodoo-doll Pokemon based off of Ushi-no-Toki-Mairi that evolves into a fucking jiangshi panda?? You are killing me here.

A few interesting things to note here:

Kurstraw evolves at level 1. How? Why? No idea. It could just be a placeholder, but...

The fact that Kurstraw was set to have Curse as its signature move (then called “nail”) and that it only learned this move at level 100 makes it evolving at level 1 seem intentional.

To make things more confusing, it almost seems like (and this is speculation on my part) GameFreak’s intention was to encourage players to not evolve this thing. Stats are comparable, Kurstraw only gets its signature move if you level it up to where it can’t evolve, and Kurstraw has the better moveset (getting frigging destiny bond at lv. 16, while Pangshi gets... splash (which. makes more sense when you consider it’s called “hop” in Japan but it’s still useless). If that was what they were aiming for, then that’s a really unique mechanic that would really make this poke stand out.

Design wise, Kurstraw is... well, it’s a doll with a nail rammed through it. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not very Pokemon-ish. Meanwhile, Pangshi is maybe a little too much like a Jianshi rather than being reminiscent of one, right down to the little hat. The pose, fangs, and panda colors (which resemble Jiangshi mandarin robes) are more than enough to get the hook across.

What I really love about these two are the expressions. They are just like, so dissonantly happy. Kurstraw is literally like

and Pangshi has the dead-eyed thousand-yard stare of Espurr, except unlike Espurr it looks completely and utter deranged. It looks like if this Pokemon ended up in Mystery Dungeon, it would respond to every question with “my favorite color is blood”. Amazing.

Possible reason for being scrapped: I think these two might’ve been scrapped just because they were too scary. I mean, it’s a voodoo doll impaled on a giant nail that evolves into a literal actual corpse. The implied violence was probably just a bit much for GameFreak.

The reason I think this is, beside the fact that they have fairly solid designs, good hooks, and all of their stats and moves in place, most beta Pokemon have had their premises revisited at some point. But we’ve really never gotten a voodoo doll Pokemon since this, and we definitely haven’t gotten any jiangshi Pokemon either, which suggests the problem lied in the very concept rather than the execution.

Pokes to fill the void: People say that Kurstraw was reworked into Banette, but if anyone Pokemon resembles it to be, it would actually be Mimikyu. They both have cloth bodies with drawn-on smiley faces that resemble something cuter than them and they both want to curse you for existing.

For Pangshi... well, there’s Pancham if you’re looking for tiny pandas. If you’re after a jiangshi though, you’re out of luck.

Wolfman/Warwolf

This Pokemon has a great hook. I mean, a Pokemon that wears a pelt that transforms it into a werewolf? Hell yeah. Not to mention it might be a reference to an obscure Nordic tale about people donning wolf pelts to turn into wolves for ten days.

Design wise, it... well, Wolfman looks almost exactly like Venonat. I’m not the only one who sees this, right?

That aside, I think the idea could be played up a little more. Wolfman is fine, save for its Venonat-ishness, but Warwolf doesn’t do much for me, basically just being a larger version with claws and fangs. If the idea is that it turns into a werewolf by wearing the pelt, what if its evolution looked somewhat like a wolf? Or better yet, the actually body of the thing changes to fill the wolf skin more, so it looks like its a part of it? That would really elevate this Pokemon to a new level.

Possible reason for being scrapped: I’d guess that it’s the same problem as Kurstraw and Pangshi--too scary. I mean, that is a dead pelt of some kind, which means that it killed and skinned some kind of Pokemon, and that’s not getting into questions of what Pokemon they got that from.

It’s also worth noting that when we did finally get a werewolf Pokemon via Lycanroc, it was minus the pelt concept.

Pokes to fill the void: Lycanroc as our werewolf Pokemon. In terms of design, Venonat is very similar as noted above. And something about it really reminds me of Snorunt, being little critters with glowing eyes that wear a cloak of some kind and live in the cold (this line was ice-type).

[musings-from-mars]

The Chess Motif and Salem’s Forces

So I got to thinking about the chess imagery we often see associated with Salem and her faction, and I came upon this theory that her underlings each represent a different chess piece, each with their own uses, advantages and limitations.

With my middling knowledge about chess and chess tactics and my analysis of each of Salem’s current faction members, here’s who I think each of them represent.

The King: Salem

This one’s pretty easy to pick out. The King is the most important piece in chess; the whole object of the game is to capture your opponent’s King to win. The King itself isn’t a very agile piece at all, as it only moves one space at a time in any unobstructed direction. Therefore, the King surrounds itself with several other more capable pieces which are used to defend it and attack the opposing side.

Salem fits this role to a T. She never once has gotten directly involved in engaging the enemy, but her defenses are so well executed, the opposing side is nowhere close to “capturing” her.

But of course, if the King is captured, it’s all over. Hence why the heroes’ ultimate goal is to stop her.

The Pawns: Emerald, and to a lesser extent, Neo

The Pawn is the least valuable piece in chess. It only moves forward one space at a time (with exceptions), and are generally expendable. Pawns will often be sacrificed if it means gaining an advantage. However, the fewer Pawns one has left, the less likely they are to sacrifice them.

In the same way, Salem does not view Emerald or Neo as highly valuable, but still useful. In the right time and place, a pawn can be used offensively, or as effective defense.

However, the main reason I see them both as pawns is because they’re both young women, possible candidates for maiden powers. The biggest strength associated with Pawns is if they’re moved far enough across the board, they can be promoted to a higher piece, usually a Queen. More about that in a bit...

The Bishop: Watts

Bishops are crafty pieces, able to move in any diagonal unobstructed direction. However, they aren’t very powerful on their own.

Watts is a perfect fit for this role. He’s a capable fighter and can hold his own, but he’s not the strongest when alone. He does his best work in conjunction with others, which is why he often is accompanied by Tyrian.

However, since the Bishop can’t do much on its own, its more likely to be sacrificed to opposing capture for an advantage (captured quite literally at the moment, in fact).

Lastly, in an endgame situation, if the only pieces a side has remaining is their King and a Bishop, (unless the opponent bungles so badly that they box themself in among their own pieces somehow?), it is impossible for these two pieces to achieve a checkmate. A King with a Rook or Queen can, but a King and Bishop on their own is not a winning combination.

The Knights: Tyrian, and to a lesser extent, Mercury

Knights are very agile and useful pieces. They’re the only pieces which can jump over others, and therefore don’t need an unobstructed path to move. They also move in an odd two-by-one L-shaped path that is difficult to predict or defend against.

Tyrian seems like a Knight because of a Knight’s ability to move past other pieces to get behind the opponent’s defenses. A few well strung-together moves with a Knight can decimate an opponent because there’s no way to block their path. Tyrian is unusually agile, unpredictable, and difficult to defend against, and his specialty is infiltrating and causing chaos, as we’ve seen in Mantle. Knights are also very useful for defending the King from attack for these reasons, hence Tyrian’s loyalty to Salem.

I struggled with which piece Mercury fit the best, but I settled on Knight for him as well for of much of the same reasons as Tyrian. His fighting style often throws his opponents off because it’s so different, and his role in orchestrating the Fall of Beacon by subtly learning Pyrrha’s semblance and goading Yang into attacking him out of turn at the tournament show how useful he is in assisting an attack.

But much like the Bishop, a lone King and Knight cannot win on their own.

The Rook: Hazel

Since he’s built like a stone tower, this one wasn’t very difficult to choose. The Rook is the most powerful non-Queen piece on the board. It can move forward, backward, and sideways along any unobstructed path. Unless a proper defense is in place, the Rook can steamroll anything in its path, and is among the most useful pieces in an endgame situation.

A lone Rook and the King can win on their own. Rooks are very rarely sacrificed for an advantage, so losing a Rook is an especially hard hit to take...

The Queen: Cinder

And now the most powerful piece on the board. The Queen can move in any unobstructed diagonal, forward, backward, or sideways direction. It essentially has the combined abilities of the Rook and Bishop.

The Queen is almost never sacrificed under any circumstances, unless immediate victory is otherwise conceivable.

It’s no wonder Cinder identifies with the Queen piece. She is the most powerful member of Salem’s faction and is the most capable of effectively attacking the enemy. Losing the Queen is perhaps the worst thing that could happen short of losing the game altogether.

At the start of every game of chess, the Queen is always right by the King’s side, symbolizing the Queen’s role of being the King’s most important piece of offense and defense. Moreover, I do think Cinder represents the Queen, but more specifically, she represents a former Pawn who has been promoted to a Queen because the King pushed her so far across the board in the pursuit of further power.

One more thing about Queens. In most chess sets (at least the one I have and the competition sets we used on the school chess team), two Queens per color are included in the set, just in case a Pawn is promoted while another Queen is still present on the board. This makes a total of four possible Queens, much like how there are four Maidens. At the moment, there is one Queen to Salem’s side, and one Queen to Ozpin’s (Penny, also a former Pawn), while Raven and the Summer Maiden are essentially off the board for now.

(It is possible to have more Queens than that if more Pawns are promoted, but that’s a pretty rare occurrence).

I might consider doing an analysis like this for Ozpin’s side, but I feel assigning roles in that case would be more difficult. But I might, maybe ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

So there you have it! I honestly had lots of fun nerding out about chess despite not seriously playing it in years. I enjoy the aesthetic and I appreciate the fact that CRWBY does too.

[jiminrings]

BALLOON ANIMAL ARTIST JK I JUST FEEL LIKE HE WOULD BE REALLY GOOD AT IT AND MAKE YOU A FLOWER THEN ASK YOU ON A DATE

baby i love u and your big sexy brain <3 welcome to waikiki meets hospital playlist dynamic ft. balloon artist!jk

“who’s a good baby? is it you? iS IT YOU????”

you’d be the first one to admit that you had an exhausting horrible night

being a nurse sUCKS the life out of you and as much as it’s fulfilling, you almost always feel the urge to admit yourself to the ER for being extremely fatigued

it’s all worth it!! it should be

after all, paying for a mansion in an exclusive village and sharing it with your friends doeS warrant some elbow grease

seokjin works in wall street and sometimes he comes home crying but it’s okay because you do have an expensive fridge that everyone worked overtime for <3

hoseok’s a veterinary assistant and is your trusty friend who always sends in pictures of the animals that come in to cheer you up while at work

namjoon’s a painter by passion and accountant by profession!! he does only come out with a few pieces at a time but mAN does it rake in the money

jimin’s a flight attendant and does everyone the pleasure of securing either free or discounted tickets, and bringing home unused airline towels to dry off the dishes!!

lastly, taehyung’s someone you can call a former trustfund baby or somewhat :O the last big chunk of money he spent from his fund was the downpayment and security deposit for this mansion!!!

it’s a long story and he’s currently all over the place but he’s finding regular jobs!! his latest gig was working at a high-end ice cream place but he immediately quit once he learned that he needed to put his back into it and not just scoop up ice cream like he did in his dreams :((

most importantly, taehyung has a baby :-)

he’s a dad!! a single one at that

it’s truly a LONG story but the bottomline is that he has nabi, his cutest little dumpling!! and he has all of you, his friends who didn’t hesitate to step up as nabi’s parents in a way too even if he didn’t ask any of you

you all love the chunky monkey so much that you’ve all taken the liberty to call him your baby at times and tae doesn’t even mind!! nabi’s so lucky (he hopes) to have him as a dad and his friends as his cool uncles and aunt

nevertheless, you indeed had a bad night working the night shift and came home to nabi’s birthday party just in time!! :D

he turned two years old at midnight and even if you weren’t physically present at the mansion like the guys were (they requested their leaves two months earlier) because of being understaffed, you were able to see him and tae blow out multiple cakes that each one bought him

seeing him giggle at your arms just by doing the bare minimum makes you full already <3

all your exhaustion is melted away because it’s your favorite toddler’s birthday party!! the party that you all insisted on shelling out for that made tae almost cry bc of how much you all love his son

“jimin i am not sewing your forehead up when you end up falling in the wrong angle,” you roll your eyes at him who’s currently doing backflips in the bouncy house that managed to fit in the mansion

“hoseok can!!” he yells back and backflips twice in a row, much to the actual children’s amusement and your worry

“i will NOT stitch you up! the thread i have is for the pregnant dogs only!!!”

everyone’s entertaining guests left and right, including taehyung who’s the dad of the little man of the hour :D

he keeps pointing at nabi who’s currently in your arms every ten seconds and it’s now your job to make him giggle every single time to wave at the people

“what do you want, monkey? do you want some ice cream? i won’t tell your dad,” you eagerly ask the wide-eyed baby in your arms, pointing at the ice cream cart that namjoon probably ordered

“no thank you!” nabi cutely aND politely declines, his head shaking no and his speech and pronunciation getting clearer day by day

most of the time though he says it like tHANK YEWWWW and you would immediately grin every time because it’s the cutest thing ever

“hmm, look at that!! face painting!! do you want some butterflies?”

you point at yet another station that you guess seokjin arranged, knowing that at some point into this party, he’d all drag you in here to get matching marks or something lol

nabi once again declines, his eyes searching around that makes you do the same on what you could do to entertain him

he has the same habit down like taehyung and loudly gASPS, pointing his finger and almost shrieking in excitement

“bawoo — balloon!!! balloon!!!”

:O

it is now your life purpose to walk as fast as you could to this balloon station with nabi bouncing up and down your arm in excitement

jungkook’s having the time of his life here :D

normally he’s mostly called in the holiday season and occasionally at big birthday parties (the one where like two sides of the family share every baby’s first birthday party lmao) throughout the year!!

but he’s never had a client who requested him for a singular birthday party!! let alone at a hOUSE

ok maybe that was an understatement

he means a mansion

if he’s being quite honest, the mr. park jimin he spoke to on the phone sounded too kind that he just mistakened him for a party planner or something

he immediately said yes because he had no on-site bookings for that day, or even the week perhaps, and expected to stroll into a carnival in the middle of an executive village

aha :D jungkook is wrong :D

jimin met him by the front door wherein a lot of people are already crossing paths such as catering and not to mention the bouncy house you cAN’T miss, and just briefly touched in on the situation

“oh no, i’m not the dad, man — but thanks!! i’m his uncle. nabi’s dad is my friend, taehyung. and me and my friends, including taehyung, all live here. we’re all like family, basically.”

jungkook saw the other stations invited and he expected that his would have less children y’know?? bouncy house, ice cream station, facepainting, hotdog cart aND magic show???? yeah <3

but god is he wrong

the children are in a single-file line for hIM and his balloon artistry!!! the requests range from pretzels to pirate hats to chandeliers with the bulbs as smiley faces!!!

he’s managed to do all of them so far and he’s now made a decent dent on the line of children waiting for him

jungkook is a happy and content balloon artist :D

“EXCUSE ME! BIRTHDAY BOY COMING THROUGH!!”

oh my god what was that

you’re walking at full-speed and holler out, making sure to emphasize birthday boy because nuh-uh you and nabi will nOT line up for his own party <3 thank you very much

the children coo and the older kids coax the other ones to make way for the both of you to the front of the line, immediately plopping to a mini chair in front of the guy

“hiiii!!”

nabi drawls politely and waves his hand, making you do the same

“what a cute little thing,” the guy in front of you coos and it’s his voice that perhaps makes you melt a little, just seeing the top of his hair for now because he’s crouching down to be eye-level with nabi, “what can i do for you, little buddy?”

he toothily grins and straightens his posture, raising his eyes to look at who’s holding nabi in place and-

???????????????????

jungkook literally stops breathing for a second

“h-hi!! what can i do for you today?” jungkook squeaks, his eyes even more wide and curious to look at the prettiest girl he’s ever seen in his life

you’re sure that you were gonna stammer once you open your mouth so you don’t at all, instead focusing on nabi who’s on your lap

“what do you want, monkey?”

“nabi please! i want nABI!!! nabi nabi nabiiiiiiiiii-“

“yes. he wants nabi, please.”

jungkook nods fervently, his hands about to pluck ballons from his kit before he realizes to ask

“does he want his face? or like, his name? what colors do you want, bud?”

he’s not the least bit bothered at the choices in his head because you’re widening your eyes on what could this guy dO with just balloons, knowing to yourself that even pumping one is difficult work already

“oh! he wants nabi,” you clarify and jungkook tilts his head, mouth slightly agape at to what you’re trying to get at, “butterfly, i mean. nabi knows that his name means butterfly and he likes them a lot! don’t you, monkey?”

nabi nods so hard that it almost gives him a headache and jungkook wants to facepalm himself to the grave

“r-right! why didn’t i think of that?? because nabi means.... nabi....... right!! sorry, oh my god. o-oh! i meant oh my gosh. i uhm-...”

he’s a mess and he knows it, letting his hands take over and grab the same theme colors of blue and lavender from his bag to start on his work

kook tries not to lift his head up ever so often because you’d find him out instantly that he’s looking at you

so what he does instead is peer and coo at nabi every few seconds and tHEN look up at you because you also giggle whenever he giggles

he’s probably feeling pressure with the way your eyes are set on him too and what he’s doing that he pOPS a balloon right with his hands

“sorry, sorry! did i spook you?”

jungkook’s worried because he heard a collective gasp from the kids around him but his main priority is the birthday boy AND you

nabi’s shoulders rose and that’s about it

he shakes his head to himself, looking at you who’s carrying a curious gaze on your face that looks amused

“sorry. i-it’s just you’re so pretty and-“

he’s embarrassed himself in front of a pretty girl and her son and-

wait a second

the color just dRAINS from his face and he’s about to quit at the second

“oh my god i am so sorry. y-you must be nabi’s mother. you’re mr. taehyung’s-“

“friend!! i’m y/n, i’m just taehyung’s friend,” you interject quickly because you cannot believe that pretty boy called you pretty, and at the next breath thought you were taehyung’s wife, “and nabi’s my nephew. we’re all just friends who live together!! i have no boyfriend, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

...

....

yeah maybe you embarrassed yourself this time

you may have said too much information to the balloon artist but jungkook’s just staring at you fondly

and nabi’s switching his gaze between the two of you and claps his hands to snap the two of you out of it lmao

kook chuckles to himself and he cannot stop smiling, even when he’s tying the last balloon to nabi’s butterfly

“there you go, cutie. happy birthday!!” he hands nabi the hUGE butterfly he just made but the sheer difference of how big it is makes the toddler even more happy, hugging it to his chest

jungkook watches you pepper kisses on nabi’s cheeks and that launches him into quickly pulling out balloons while your eyes are deviated from him, hands twisting and turning like his wHOLE LIFE depended on it

“my name’s jungkook, by the way,” he calls you when you’re just about to stand up, smiling giddily at you, “thought you should know.”

cute :-)

before you could thank him, he extends his arm and your mind recognizes the familiar shape which makes you smile instantly

jungkook made you a flower balloon <3

“i think i’ll remember you, jungkook.”

you laugh as the only thing you can smell from it is latex, the huge flower staring at you right in the face

jungkook sheepishly blushes, pursing his lips in happiness

“i’m free whenever you’re free — f-for a date, y’know? just so you could remember me more.”

.

.

.

bonus: dilf taehyung has his own drabble!!

bonus bonus: bestie anon brought my attention to these tiktoks below and gAWD i’m so happy <3

first, second

[captainkurosolaire]

~ Mass Update ~

Mainly going into future plans and intents alongside ideas below cut.

Ton's of things I've in store this will prove difficult to vent it all out. But here we go... First off rehashing and appropriately learning to tag and organize things better on my blog. Each category will have their own corresponding content, I seek to bring or share. [Tales of Goldbrand] -- I intend this to carry a Compendium of all my writes soon that'll have everything neatly in-order including a glossary, so it'll have highlights of stories that even matter or the best stuff. I've written here for a very, long time, there's been many shifts. I want to make it more accessible. While coloring what matters for people who want to learn Captain or his Crew with less chapters. While also giving choice to find it all easily. This is essentially a step-above master-lists. I'll be doing that after the Saga I have going on, right now is done. [Captain] -- Will provide you strictly with Captain screenshots, gifs, photo-sets. This is still his blog despite the Crew thing's will sort of make this a scuffed Multi-Muse blog. I've few more things to edit and tag fix to get all his stuff though. [The Wild Crew] -- Afterwards this story is done Immortal Age Saga, It's something that I mainly wrote as a passion project within three days to get my warm-up process fixed. It's to allow me to get a feel for all his Crewmates and casts, in combat, in-general, to feel their presences. While also giving a bit of their backstories. At any point, I can go back and polish or tweak things in. They're NPC's but... not entirely. All will have their own 'Dreams' and their own 'Disapproval's' they have their own missions even. These things will factor eventually, they might set seeds, to betray or disagree with something, but that's all angst and more stories to be created, but overall, they'll probably always be Crew, eventually. -- I plan on making character-profile sheets of them and putting them in this Tab, it'll have their screenshots, their likes/dislikes. Some RP partners or people can also be shipped with them, but they'll all be monogamous and originally start off probably Pan. This allows them to figure out what they like on their own stories. I've always been someone who likes organic-flow. Although this one story contain all 16 characters or more, the rest will probably be shortened to a Squad of 4 and dispersed when on adventuring missions. Until I do a War Arc, that's my main goal to build too. [Roster] -- Will contain this Crew in just screen-sets dedicated to them, I'll probably randomly produce those. I've PC players among this Crew too. I may not be done either adding more, but this Crew is mainly built around Quality. Most pirate crew's mainly, have hundreds, thousands. Even Fleets. This Crew has personalities, monsters, people who are living life's that exist with piracy. He's an particular leader that had PC players the same way, he's had split-personality serial killers aboard, tribal chieftains, succubus, all sorts of various people once on a Crew. It's often an outcast style, pirates default are chaotic in nature, so this really isn't any different, it's a Fantasy version of it. There's humanization characters aboard too though, so this cast is really decked, everything and person is vital, they matter because they remind or covet something that others can draw upon. If ever played (Three Houses or Mass Effect / Dragon Age Origins) A lot of things like that are relatable too this structure and format. Which, Is something I want to be able to give when RPing. I want a genuine feel of this new world someone else's muse will be the main-character too. Depending on what's interacting everything they'll be scale appropriately to follow the genre they're in and environment even. [Aesthetics] -- Already explainable what you'll find here. [Asks] -- Same thing. [Prompts] -- Trivial things I was tagged too, I plan on compiling later. [Writing] -- Another alternatively to randomly go-down and it works right now. [Logs] -- Will have more individualistic master-lists and posts there, my poems from Sheik Sphere the Bard, etc.

Things of that nature, I'll probably add still. It's where a lot of my creative writing is summed. [Gems of Hydaelyn] -- My main #tag for other characters and artists, creationist. Lot of amazing people easily to find their zones or follow them optionally if you like. Ton's I intend to support and bolster, be a lot less unspoken. I'm never the type who's been strictly inclusive. But I'll do that when I've time to even explore the dash, I'm always still planning ahead with things and projects. [CKS] My original character-sheet it's outdated on something's but not too terrible. I'll give him polishing someday, I swear? [21+F-List] -- Just purely degenerate stuff of Captain. I'm a pirate blog. I will represent that with openness and furthermore. I'm never projecting you some false-image. I started off a smut-writer by stripping that, I no-longer represent the same aura and identity. But those are strictly his stuff and kinks, I'm effective in executing them but they're not all relatable to me OOC. This blog will always be 18+ containing crude or dark material sometimes, romantic things, this Captain is blunt, will literally put his cock on the table in conversations. Swearing and being censored would be too uncommon and displace most of him, but there's more about him then all this. [Other] -- I pay homage to a lot of characters, I originally am a Concept Designer. Which mean's I make characters and ideas like my addiction. Bad characters / villains or other little things I like to share in designs, I'll put there. Some villains might get little photo-sets, even if they died. Just cause I like their design, or maybe I'll give them an AU, where they won. When I've wrapped up things. [Collabs + Ships] -- Is a new project idea. This isn't going to be something limited too romantic only ships. It'll contain, platonic, romantic, friendships, rivals, frenemies, family, PC Crew, all ships. I am desperately working on improving my gif, screenshot, posing game so I can supply 'Screen Stories' this is not only a way to RP that's accessible with even people who are upon time-crunches from work, It gives visual-representation. To impactful stories shared with others and establish bonds. That are all-valid and impactful matter. Lot of people take a lot of their characters attributes into them and are them dialed up, I work with that and bit more, differently. I'm disconnected from my characters and they'll get hurt and injured and killed by me, that's my duty as their Author to give them conflicts and struggles. I'm their major antagonist, but that doesn't mean at-all, it's always SET that way. The characters I like to make have their own life, they live in this setting and are abide by it, they're often nothing, nobodies, and by the interacting with others, they slowly gradually building, more... Through emotional impacts, they alter, these are REAL people by all their beliefs. Each person they come in-contact with are legitimate and treated like that too. They've always impacted or given them insights to grow, or represent more. Otherwise it'd be criminally disrespectful if I allowed any emotional I felt OOC be the grudge to something IC. Captain in-particular is set on defying me. I cannot have that. ...But I can't stop him. He's met and encountered so many people and lived so many scenarios based on the actions of others, he's giving a chance right now to actually do things a lot further than impossible. The more people he meets and encounters, experiences, the more I lose. These stories are emotionally interactive where everything is a factor and adds to the dice, where the other people are the one who get to roll the dice for him, not me. That's something I want to color in. People range in emotions, they have their down's, ups, their own wholesome-grounding people, spending time with your favorite people, there's nothing more cherishing than that, being in your own comfort-zone or 'safe-space' these are all treasures that we live under, today. Contrary if what people assume of me, I'm not another 'blogger' that's came

before, who's wanting to force a harem, then constantly is bewildered when that falls to pieces cause of selfishness or a lack of communication, or the skeletons they have in their closets and beliefs they hid behind and swindled fooled everyone. I'm not looking to be popular or anything really, I just create stories and want to share in those, and I want to also boost others included, upward with me, especially those who make me. There's no ego in anything I do, this is purely love. I've never cared about being replicated or duplicated, I've had stalkers, I've gone through more then anyone would imagine, I've been used OOC and abused, just for my writing and cold-harshly told, i'd never amount to anything other then that or vice-versa. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Passion. That's all I got and am anymore. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Passion is the hardest thing to keep. It's something that can be stolen, quite effortlessly. Few words of discouragement, a bad negative representation, a lack of confidence, or small amount of time, there's many thing's that can put that flame out. Once you lose it. The difficulty to reattain is hundred-times harder than climbing any mountain for real. I've watched the greatest creators crumble from under the pressure, from beaten down by others. I watched many of them do it to themselves because they put a grand vision of needing validation of another and once lost, felt uncompelling to press onward. But passion also can be given BACK and drawn. It can be shown and encourage others, with a soft-triggering, that pushes them. That motivates, that constantly sticks to it. There are many that fuel me. If I ever quit, I let them down, I spit in the faces of people who're better than me in every-way. Or people who've came and given me their precious Time. That have given their character's or dedication to the abundant stories and community-driven things I've done. There's ONLY things you can do, create, give and provide. It cannot ever come to life without YOU. This is a fact. ...I swear, If you let your creativity soar, you'll be amazed by the heights you get. Constantly polish and learn and hone the best you, challenge yourself day after painstaking day, to draw better improvement on something, no matter how trivial or unfamiliar you are. You'll find a confidence only you can give yourself. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Future Plans --------------------------------------------------------------------- For me, I've got so much more stories to give and also explore, I might be taking up soon some other artists and more skilled people from community and hire them for some of my future writes, to up my game or cause something thing's can't be done in-game cause no background carries it. I also got a lot of-set up things and more angst stuff I want to practice, plus I'm adamantly on that grind to produce screen-sets with the intent's to some sort of improving daily. Additionally more people I'll be reaching out too soon for these collab's ideas and things. I look forward to shaking your hands, giving some hugs, show you my respect and admiration, then creating some enchanting stories and giving plots light. Feel free to reach out to me, I get scattered-brain but I'm working on getting better about it. Eventually will get to you though, my goals, if uninterested just say so when I poke, no bites, unless you kinky. Anyways, cheers hearties.

[chalkrevelations]

SO. Back to the beginning, Episode 1 of Word of Honor. This is likely to be a little bit different experience than the prior posts, when I was watching the eps as they aired, compared to now approaching the show as whole and complete. May be rummaging around for things I missed the first time through, stuff that takes on new meaning set in additional context – we’ll see how it goes.

With that in mind, spoilers for not just this ep but possibly for the entire series. Get out of the car now and come back later, if you haven’t seen all 36.5 eps and want to watch it unspoiled.

First thing to strike me, right up front: You know, I think we tend to lose sight in later parts of the show – when we’re getting Laopo!Zhou Zishu pouting so he doesn’t have to cook dinner - how terrifying ZZS is in his own right (and by “we,” I actually mean the show, too). One of the things the first few episodes gets right, I think, is the sense of eerie inevitability and dread created by both the falling lanterns of Tian Chuang and the blowing paper figures of the Ghost Valley, and how similar they are. I think it’s easy to lose that - when the lanterns and the paper figures are gone and our charming and adorable couple are busy being charming and adorable at each other, in between varying rounds of being wracked by guilt and PTSD – easy to lose that this is there too, part of them – both of them - under the skin. I think it’s particularly easy to lose that for ZZS, when he’s already done a lot of work, off-screen, pre-Episode 1, during the 18 months he was putting in those first six Nails, to come to some kind of equilibrium, and meanwhile we watch Wen Kexing’s entire torturous process play out on-screen. Wen Kexing’s story is one of reaching an equilibrium, but Zhou Zishu’s story is one of maintaining it, which I think may be less showy, but is equally valuable, just as I value the Four Seasons Manor arc, especially, for giving us a vibe of two adults comfortable in an already intimate relationship, as opposed to the veritable sea of will-they-won’t-they tug-of-war coming-together-for-the-first-time-as-emotional-AND-plot climax relationships that we’re usually awash in.

Anyway, straight up we’re introduced to an assassin who, we discover, doesn’t like to get blood on himself. It looks like metaphorical blood is fine, just not actual blood, but then we discover, well, maybe he’s not as OK with metaphorical blood as he schools himself to look. Also that conversation with Li Jingan about her dad having to die because he’s a traitor to the country – I now wonder how much of that particular conversation Zhou Zishu mentally brings to the table in later conversations about his own father being executed for the same reason. Also, wait wait wait. Zhou Zishu tells Jingan that he took Jiuxiao’s body back to Four Seasons Manor and buried him next to their shifu, but I don’t remember seeing another grave there, other than Qin Huaizhang’s and his wife’s. Script inconsistency, or are you supposed to be lying, ZZS? I mean, would you be so downcast at the state of Four Seasons Manor when you arrive with your husband and son for your honeymoon, if you’d actually been there only a couple of years before? It didn’t fall to pieces overnight. Also, HAIRPIN FORESHADOWING ALERT. Our first sign of how important the hairpin is, the way ZZS’s impassive face cracks wide open when he sees the hairpin that Jiuxiao made and realizes he must have given it to Jingan. Clearly important!

Mmm. Here’s a point for the “Prince Jin is a f’kn asshole” list – Prince Jin wants ZZS to deal with Bi Changfeng personally when Bi Changfeng requests to leave Tian Chuang. And OK, ZZS is the leader of Tian Chuang. But you’re never going to convince me Prince Jin wants ZZS to deal with it personally because Prince Jin is actually so very furious that Bi Changfeng made a mistake. You will never convince me this isn’t a … it’s not even a test of loyalty, at this point, because Prince Jin has no reason to think yet that ZZS is anything other than the faithful hunting dog on a leash that he’s been, lo, these many years. Putting ZZS in a position where not only is he losing the last of the direct disciples of Four Seasons Manor, but he’s being asked to (as good as) kill him with his own hands - it’s just cruelty for the proof of your power and influence over someone. Also, given Prince Jin’s later diatribe about how everyone leaves him OMG (have you considered it’s your personality?) (But also Beiyuan! I know who you are now, and yeah, I would have let Wu Xi bride-kidnap me away from this jerk, too), I have to wonder if Prince Jin isn’t trying to make ZZS feel exactly as isolated as he, himself, feels, as part of his overall desire to make sure that ZZS has no one other than Prince Jin so that their positions are parallel – only having each other in the whole world. I also have to wonder if he’s not hoping for precisely the reaction ZZS has to Bi Changfeng – you’d rather be dead than be with me? Because that hurts, you can see it on ZZS’s face (thanks already, Zhang Zhehan), and I rather suspect Prince Jin wants it to hurt. I notice we get an echo of this later in the ep, with Prince Jin saying pretty much the same thing when ZZS asks for the final Nail. GOOD. I hope it hurts you just as much. I wonder if ZZS realizes this while he’s kneeling there in the throne room. It’s probably too late for him to get any satisfaction out of it.

OH, HEY. That’s HAN YING already, one of the two people accompanying ZZS to put down Bi Changfeng, looking super-pained like he knows what this is all costing his beloved. Han Ying, I really hope you got to tap that at least a few times before ZZS made his break for it. Is that one of the reasons Prince Jin seems to have such antipathy for you, or is it really just that he can’t stand the idea of someone whose loyalty to ZZS is greater than their loyalty to Prince Jin, himself? (Seriously, y’all, why is there not much much more Han Ying/ZZS fic?) Meanwhile Duan Pengju, omg, this asshole, is already looking smug and punchable. Really, he’s kind of enjoying the Seven Nails placement a little too much. Showing your hand pretty fast on the petty evil thing, show.

So, one thing I didn’t catch the first time around, is that ZZS isn’t just self-injuring to punish himself when he takes the knife to his chest – he re-opens wounds on all the places where the first six Nails have already been placed, so it will look like the placement is fresh. If you can’t tell he hasn’t just put them in, there’s no reason for anyone else (read: Prince Jin) to suspect he’s bought himself some time before he loses his senses. As far as anyone knows, he’s going to fall over with locked-in syndrome any day now. Which just makes the implications of Prince Jin vowing that he’s only letting him go for now EVEN ICKIER. For all Prince Jin knows, what he’s going to get back is a flesh doll that will just lie there, although I guess on the plus side, ZZS would never leave him again. Thanks, show, I need a shower, now.

ZZS says all the right things to argue his case to Prince Jin – he’s only good as a weapon, he has no skills nor utility for building and governing the country – and I think partly this is because he just knows the right things to say. I mean, you don’t become the Number Two guy in the country, with thousands under you and only one above you, if you can’t play imperial politics. But I also wonder if deep down he doesn’t actually believe it – he was successful at building Tian Chuang, but he couldn’t maintain Four Seasons Manor and even drove it to ruin. So, I’ll just be over here, clutching my chest, over my heart. Fortunately, Zhang Zhehan provides quick distraction from this pain, and I … Y’all. I can’t. I just. I CANNOT. When ZZS drops to his knees and starts stripping in the throne room. Just. Mmmmmrgh. THIS VISUAL. Although, you want to know what one of the hottest parts actually is? That pair of leather bracers hitting the floor on top of his belt, and ZZS isn’t even in the shot at that point. OK, fine, I am willing to read some dirtybadwrong fic with this whole scene premise at its heart, even if it does include Prince Jin. Zhang Zhehan, you are KILLING ME. I might have rewound this part. More than once. You can’t prove anything.

Aaaand then we get that gorgeous, painful shot of ZZS riding out into the snow that I know I’ve talked about before (including the way I get an odd echo of Lan Xichen off of it). There are several places in this ep where the cinematography is to die for, and this is one of them, the bleakness of the landscape and Zhang Zhehan (and his FACE) deep in that shadowing cloak against the stark snow as he rides out into freedom and the unknown. Then cut to somewhere green and forested. Interesting that the show starts with snow and ends with snow. That parallel with the imperial cage says some things about immortality that could stand to be unpacked – but later. Because ZZS is putting his face on – literally – and I am once again in pain, only it’s not the good kind of pain. It’s caused by that dreadful fake facial hair. There are some things that could be unpacked here, as well, about the fact that making ZZS supposedly unattractive involves a clearly fake goatee, a single aesthetically placed scar, and darkening his skin. I’m going to try to step carefully here, because this is kind of out of my lane, but it is … a noticeable thing. That probably ought to be noted.

So, ZZS takes just a moment to turn his (fake) face up to the sun and feel the warmth on it … and then with 10 minutes left, we’re on our way to Ghost Valley, where there’s some chaos and then Hanging Ghost gets got by a Mysterious Stranger To Be Revealed Later, who chokes him out (remember this). The Mysterious Master of Ghost Valley appears dramatically on his High Ledge to Make Some Pronouncements while playing with some walnuts omg (rolling two of them in one hand – remember this), and we see his eyes, which are partially obscured by chunky sidebangs, which are farther forward on his forehead than we’re going to see later, not only hiding some of his face but making it look more angular. The troops get berated, shit rolls downhill, and another dude gets choked (remember this) as Ghost Valley Master’s hair continues to artfully hide most of his face and he worries about his manicure post-kill (remember this). War is declared on Hanging Ghost for stealing the Glazed Armor, and more chaos is set into motion.

All of that takes literally two minutes, and then we cut to three months later, and no one realizes it yet, but the fam is getting together. ZZS is tits out in the gutter - only beginning his career of being a minx who flashes his collarbones an awful lot for someone who has Very Secret Scars He’s Hiding On His Chest - happily drinking himself to death in the sun (we really need to talk about this correlation of snow and immortality vs. sun and happiness …). Meanwhile, slo-mo shot of Wen Kexing looking precious and perfect, with delicate pink lips and dove-grey robes, as he checks out the rough trade in the gutter. Oh, the expectations this show is getting ready to smash. We cut from a shot of pristine precious WKX to ZZS holding up his hand, and we get a shot of the sun through ZZS’s fingers looking an awful lot like some shots of characters halo’d in light that we’ll get back to much much later in the show. Chengling appears out of nowhere to be Best Boy. A-Xiang is purple and smol and ready to brawl, and I already love her. I already love them all!  So much! Here are my delicate and precious feelings, show, go ahead and stomp all over them!

[themollyjay]

The Myths of Forced Diversity and Virtue Signaling.

In my novel Mail Order Bride, the three main characters are a lesbian and two agendered aliens.  In my novel Scatter, the main character is a lesbian, the love interest is a pansexual alien, and the major side characters include a half Cuban, half black Dominican lesbian, a Chinese Dragon, a New York born Jewish Dragon, and a Transgender Welsh Dragon.  In my novel The Master of Puppets, the Main Characters are a lesbian shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborg and a half black, half Japanese lesbian.  The major side characters include three gender fluid shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborgs, and a pansexual human.  In my novel Transistor, the main character is a Trans Lesbian, the love interest is a Half human/Half Angel non-observant Ethiopian Jew, and the major side characters include a Transgender Welsh Dragon (the same one from Scatter), a Transgender woman, a Latino Lesbian, an autistic man, three Middle Eastern Arch Angels, and a hive mind AI with literally hundreds of genders.  In my novel The Inevitable singularity, one of the main characters is a lesbian, another has a less clearly defined sexuality but she is definitely in love with the lesbian, and the third is functionally asexual due to a vow of chastity she takes very seriously.  The major side characters include a straight guy from a social class similar to the Dalit (commonly known as untouchables) in India, a bisexual woman, a man who is from a race of genetically modified human/frog hybrids, and a woman from a race of genetically modified humans who are bred and sold as indentured sex workers.

Why am I bringing all of this up?  Well, first, because it’s kind of cool to look at the list of different characters I’ve created, but mostly because it connects to what I want to talk about today, which should be obvious from the title of the essay.  The concepts of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’.

For those who aren’t familiar with these terms, they’re very closely related concepts.  ‘Forced Diversity’ is the idea that characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are only ever included in a story because of outside pressure from some group (usually called Social Justice Warriors, or The Woke Brigade or something similar) to meet some nebulous political agenda.  The caveat to this is, of course, that you can have a women/women present as long as they are hot, don’t make any major contributions to the resolution of the plot, and the hero/heroes get to fuck them before the end of the story. ‘Virtue Signaling’, according to Wikipedia, is a pejorative neologism for the expression of a disingenuous moral viewpoint with the intent of communicating good character.

The basic argument is that Forced Diversity is a form of virtue signaling.  That no one would ever write characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males because they want to.  They only do it to please the evil SJW’s who are somehow both so powerful that they force everybody to conform to their desires, yet so irrelevant that catering to them dooms any creative project to financial failure via the infamous ‘go woke, go broke’ rule.

What the people who push this idea of Forced Diversity tend to forget is that we exist at a point in time when creators actually have more creative freedom than are any other people in history.  Comic writers can throw up a website and publish their work as a webcomic without having to go through Marvel, DC or one of the other big names, or get a place in the dying realm of the news paper comics page.  Novelists can self-publish with fairly little upfront costs, musicians can use places like YouTube and Soundcloud to get their work out without having to worry about music publishers.  Artists can hock their work on twitter and tumblr and a dozen other places. Podcasts are relatively cheap to make, which has opened up a resurgence in audio dramas.  Even the barrier to entry for live action drama is ridiculously low.

So, in a world where creators have more freedom than ever before, why would they choose to people their stories with characters they don’t want there?  The answer, of course, is that they wouldn’t.  Authors, comic creators, indie film creators and so on aren’t putting diverse characters into their stories because they are being forced to. They’re putting diverse characters into their stories because they want to.  Creators want to tell stories about someone other than the generically handsome hypermasculine cisgendered heterosexual white males that have been the protagonists of so many stories over the years that we’ve choking on it. A lot of times, creators want to tell stories about people like themselves.  Black creators want to tell stories about the black experience. Queer creators want to tell stories about the queer experience.

I’m an autistic, mentally ill trans feminine abuse survivor.  Every day, I get up and I struggle with PTSD, with an eating disorder, with severe body dysmorphia, with anxiety and depression and just the reality of being autistic and transgender.  I deal with the fact that the religious community I grew up in views me as an abomination, and genuinely believes I’m going to spend eternity burning in hell.  I deal with the fact that people I’ve known for decades, even members of my own family, regularly vote for politician who publicly state that they want to strip me of my civil rights because I’m queer.  I’m part of a community that experiences a disproportionately high murder and suicide rate.  I’ve spent multiple years of my life deep in suicidal depression, and to this day, I still don’t trust myself around guns.

As a creator, I want to talk about those issues.  I want to deal with my life experiences.  I want to create characters that embody and express aspects of my lived experience and my day-to-day reality.  No one is forcing me to put diversity into my books.  I try to include Jewish characters as often as I can because there have been a number of important Jewish people in my life.  I include queer people because I’m queer and the vast majority of friends I interact with on a regular basis are queer.  I include people with mental illnesses and trauma because I am mentally ill and have trauma, and I know a lot of people with mental illnesses and trauma.  My work may be full of fantastical elements, aliens and dragons and angels and superheroes and magic and ultra-high technology and AI’s and talking cats and robot dogs and shape shifters and telepaths and all sorts of other things, but at the core of the stories is my own lived experience, and neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are vanishingly rare in that experience.

Now, I can hear the comments already.  The ‘okay, maybe that’s true for individual creators, but what about corporate artwork?’.   Maybe not in those exact words, but you get the idea.

The thought here is that corporations are bowing to social pressure to include characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males, and that is somehow bad. But here’s the thing. Corporations are going to chase the dollars.  They aren’t bowing to social pressure.  There’s no one holding a gun to some executive’s head saying, “You must have this many diversity tokens in every script.”  What is happening is that corporations are starting to clue into the fact that people who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males have money.  They are putting black characters in their shows and movies because black people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting queer people in shows and movies because queer people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting women in shows and movies because women watch shows and spend money on movies.

No one is forcing these companies to do this.  They are choosing to do it, the same way individual creators are choosing to do it.  In the companies’ cases the choices are made for different reasons.  It’s not because they are necessarily passionate about telling stories about a particular experience, but because they want to create art to be consumed by the largest audience possible, which means that they have to expand their audience beyond the neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white male by including characters from outside of that demographic.

And the reality is, the cries of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ almost always come from within that demographic.  Note the almost.  There are a scattering of individuals from outside that demographic which do subscribe to the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ myths, but that is a whole other essay.  However, within that demographic, lot of the people who cry about ‘forced diversity’ see media and content as a Zero-Sum game.  The more that’s created for other people, the less that is created for them.

In a way, they’re right. There are only so many slots for TV shows each week, there are only so many theaters, only so much space on comic bookshelves and so on.  But at the end of the day, its literally impossible for them to consume all the content that’s being produced anyway.  So, while there is, theoretically less content for them to consume, as a practical matter it’s a bit like someone who is a meat eater going to a buffet with two hundred items, and then throwing a tantrum because five of the items happen to be vegan.

The worst part is, if they could let go of how wound up they are about the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ they could probably enjoy the content that’s produced for people other than them.  I mean, I’m a pasty ass white girl, and I loved Black Panther.

So, to wrap out, creators, make what you want to make, and ignore anyone who cries about forced diversity or virtue signaling.  And to people who are complaining about forced diversity and virtue signaling, I want to go back to the buffet metaphor.  You need to relax.  Even if there are a few vegan options on the buffet, you can still get your medium rare steak, or your chicken teriyaki or whatever it is you want.  Or, maybe, just maybe, you could give the falafel a try. That shit is delicious.

[kitkatopinions]

You know, it’s an interesting thing to see RWBY fans act like it’s a bad faith criticism when people don’t automatically assume that everything Ruby does is one hundred percent good and justified. In fact, ever since season six, it seems like people consider the only proper way of thinking to be A) assuming that anything bad that’s happening is entirely not Ruby’s fault. B) assuming that anything Ruby does in these situations is justified, needed, and good. And C) assuming that Ruby is going to fix anything bad that’s happening shortly.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that much of the so called ‘bad faith criticisms’ that mega fans and simps are concerned about are frequently just people not assuming that those three things are always true. Many fans have taken to filling in the blanks for CRWBY, which is something that’s generally expected in all media with a strong fan presence, but is taken to the extreme in RWBY where many fans are now deciding things and deeming them canon all in the name of making Ruby look as blameless and good as possible. That’s why there are fans insisting that Ironwood invaded Vale and has no combat experience, it’s completely untrue with no canon to support it, and yet is seen as the only definitive reading allowed by many fans, and that’s because it makes Ironwood look like he’s always been a horrible incompetent fool, so Ruby no longer looks bad by lying to him and then casting him aside. That’s why there are fans insisting that Ruby and co had to get across the border to Atlas quickly and couldn’t waste any time waiting, that’s why fans insist that Cordovin forced Ruby’s hand by not giving her a peaceful option despite the peaceful option she literally offered on screen. That’s why there are fans insisting that Ruby only stayed in the mansion in volume eight because she couldn’t leave Nora or because Ironwood would’ve arrested her and she was forced to prioritize her safety because she knows she’s imperative to the war. That’s why there are fans saying that no reading where any single person was left behind in the evacuation from Atlas to Vacuo is acceptable despite Qrow, Maria, and Pietro all being left behind, and the concept of ‘Ruby saved everyone’ being unequivocally false due to the soldiers that died facing Salem, the on-screen deaths of named characters including Penny, and anyone who Cinder knocked off the bridge.

These fans are ignoring canon things like that, canon things like there being a clear and peaceful solution to getting over the Atlas border, and Ruby spending episodes and I think around an in-show day despairing that she doesn’t know what to do and wants someone to come save her where characters are literally telling her she needs to leave the mansion and Ruby gives no solid reason why she shouldn’t except that they shouldn’t pick sides. They ignore any indication in canon that Ruby is just wrong or just faulty and construct a narrative where Ruby is one hundred percent right and sympathetic, and then they consider anything that didn’t automatically adhere to that rule to be ‘bad faith.’

“Why didn’t you just assume that Ruby was going to apologize to Ozpin next season? That’s a bad faith criticism, this is a story, so not everything is gonna be resolved super fast.” “Why didn’t you realize that Ruby was right to be upset with Ozpin and was justified because Ozpin lied to her about important things? Oz should be the one apologizing to her, that’s a bad faith criticism.” “Why didn’t you realize that Ruby only lied to Ironwood because she wasn’t sure she could trust him? Her situation with Oz is completely different, he isn’t learning his lesson and hasn’t apologized. Ruby is going to trust James later and prove she’s better than Oz.” “Why didn’t you realize that Ruby never would have trusted James because he’s always been shady and she knew that and she only worked with him in the first place because she had to in order to use his resources?” “Why didn’t you realize that James was the one not trusting Ruby and she was the one trusting and he broke that trust and Ruby was willing to work with him only he wasn’t willing to work with her?” “Why didn’t you realize that Ozpin was always bad and incompetent and Ruby is being gracious to allow him back in her group now that he apologized for not trusting her?”

What we have is a bunch of people deciding what’s going to happen (and quickly forgetting they said that if it doesn’t happen,) re-writing what did happen, ignoring the canon as it’s happening, and filling in any blank they get with whatever makes Ruby look as good as possible, and then they consider anything that doesn’t comply with that to be bad faith.

Ruby is a flawed protagonist. In fact, she’s way more flawed than what the show expects us to think. She’s naïve, she lacks foresight, she’s reckless, she overestimates her own abilities and her friend group, she’s stubborn and only listens when she wants to, she’s arrogant at times, she’s become unforgiving, she’s at least somewhat controlling with her friends, she only sees in black and white and alienates anyone who doesn’t fit her exact moral code, and she’s recently taken to mood swings, shutting down, and bouts of indecisiveness that freeze her up and prevent her from taking possible life saving actions, she’s more ‘ends justify the means’ than she admits, and she’s hypocritical.

Now, if you don’t read Ruby with all of that and think I’m being a bit too harsh, that’s fine. There are good things about Ruby too (though admittedly I’m seeing her amazing traits from the early seasons way less in the recent seasons,) and she does some good things. But she does have flaws and she does make mistakes, and what I’d really like to see is less people constantly making excuses for literally everything she does or says, and more people admitting when she makes mistakes. Maybe a “she really should’ve asked Penny before turning her into a human” instead of a “of course she asked her it was just off screen you loser!” Maybe a “she shouldn’t have decided to lie to Ironwood without talking to her team about it at least,” instead of a “the team trusts Ruby and she would’ve asked them if she’d been given a chance you stupid freak!” Maybe a “Ruby really froze up for a good portion of season eight, she made quite a few mistakes, I wonder how she’ll come back from it,” instead of “Ruby was forced away from the fight because Ironwood would’ve had her executed and she’s smart enough to know that!”

Main characters in stories are supposed to make mistakes and have flaws, it gives a personal growth that’s relatable to their victories and gives opportunity for growth in character dynamics, and goes towards making them feel more realistic and likable. Of course not everyone is going to like, say, a main character who is arrogant and over steps boundaries, but that character also can therefore grow and change and adjust, and that is very likable to most audiences. The best protagonists in media are deeply flawed characters that try hard to overcome not only the big problems they face, but the small conflicts that come from their own actions and the reactions they have to what other people do. Ruby should have flaws, she should make mistakes, and she does! One of the biggest problems with the show RWBY is their refusal to treat Ruby’s flaws as flaws and their inability to let her grow. And one of the biggest problems with the fandom is people’s inability to treat Ruby’s flaws as flaws and their insistence that everyone adhere to the rules of ‘Ruby is always justified, always right, and will always fix everything.’

[prettyboybarzal]

Dancing with Our Hands Tied (2)

Pairing: Pierre Luc Dubois x Reader

A/N: Hello, angels!!! Here is part two... As always, let me know what you think! Part three is almost done and will be out next Sunday at 8pm. 

Word Count: 2.9k

Warnings: Alcohol consumption

Previous Chapter // Masterlist // Next Chapter

“You’re practically jail bait for these men, do you understand?”

“I’m 21, not 18,” Sadie protested. It was 9 p.m. on a Friday night and you were standing outside Josh’s apartment dressed for a night out. You were reading her the riot act, knowing damn well that it was probably going in one ear and out the other.

“21 is young enough,” you argued. She rolled her eyes as you continued. “If you can’t find me while we’re out, look for Josh. Or Seth. Or Boone.”

“YN, everything’s gonna be fine.”

“I really hope so.”

The entire week leading up to Sadie’s arrival was stressful to say the least. You had to childproof your entire life just to have a problem free weekend with her, and that included childproofing the boys too.

Because Josh had met Sadie plenty of times before, he was more than happy to have everyone over his house for pre-drinks. It took a weight off your shoulders because being in an enclosed space with your closest friends meant it would be easier to keep tabs on how much alcohol she was consuming. And the more people she met before hitting the club meant there were more people keeping an eye out for her, and you need all eyes on her. 

Well, almost all of them. You could do without Pierre’s.

Josh’s apartment was already loud when you arrived, which came as no surprise considering about half the Blue Jackets were inside. When you entered, Sadie gazed around at his apartment like a kid in a candy story.

“This is where Josh lives?”

“This is what a cushy job gets you in Columbus.”

“Why didn’t Mom and Dad force us to become athletes?”

You ventured into the living room and were greeted by an assortment of hoots and hollers. Josh swept Sadie up in a big hug before introducing her to the rest of the boys and some girlfriends in a pretty general introduction. Seth slipped a beer into your hand with a knowing smile that screamed, “I got you. Stop stressing.”

Pierre wasn’t there and you were naive enough to think he might’ve passed on a night out, but then the front door swung open and he was sauntering in with a rack of beers in his hand. Sadie’s eyes cut to yours as he made his rounds to say hello.

When he reached her, he came up short. He narrowed his eyes as he studied the all too familiar facial features.

“You’re YN’s sister,” he spoke. “I’m assuming you already hate me.”

“More or less.”

“I’ll have fun trying to prove you wrong tonight then.”

He stepped away from her and said hello to the remaining few before completely ignoring you and slipping into the kitchen to put his beers in the fridge.

---

The executive decision was made to leave Josh’s apartment around 9:30 p.m., so while you ran off to the bathroom to get ready to go, Sadie flitted off to the kitchen for one final drink. Pierre did the same. When he entered, she was standing in front of the liquor, studying each bottle.

She didn’t even spare him a glance, having clocked him through her peripheral vision and deciding not to engage. He opened the fridge and reached in to receive a new bottle.

“You go to Ohio State, right?” he asked after popping the cap off.

She looked uncertain of him when he asked, but responded, “Yeah, I do.”

“You’re in the,” he paused, thinking for a moment about her class placement, “third year?”

“Yep.”

“How do you like it?” he asked, cocking his hip against the counter. He watched as Sadie poured herself another drink. She sipped it for taste, then added a little more Vodka. “I always got a little jealous of my friends who got to go to school.”

“It’s great,” she answered. “But I don’t think you’re missing out. If you make anything close to what Josh does, I should be jealous of you.” He chuckled softly, lifting the mouth of the bottle to his lips for a swig. She narrowed her eyes at him. “What did you do to my sister?”

He placed the bottle on the counter beside him, fingers swiping along the condensation settling against the label.

“I didn’t make the best first impression and she never gave me the chance to right that wrong,” he answered honestly. “It’s all good, though. I don’t need her to like me.”

Sadie caught the uneasy shift of his eyes from hers to the bottle beside him and decided that he had a shit poker face. 

“She’s a tough cookie sometimes,” she murmured. He nodded in agreement, eyebrows nearly raised to his hairline. 

“She’s determined, I’ll give her that,” he huffed, shaking his head to himself and taking another sip of beer. 

“I’m pretty sure she didn’t like me the first five years I was alive, so don’t worry, maybe you’ll win her over,” Sadie shrugged, giving Pierre a knowing look that he tried to ignore. If he was going to go around spilling secrets to anyone the last person he would choose was your little sister.

“Crazier things have happened, right?”

“Sure,” she said softly. Her eyes lingered on him for a moment like she was trying to decipher what he wasn’t saying. Pierre felt uncomfortable under her gaze, lifting his beer bottle to her and slipping out of the kitchen before she could make him sweat anymore than she already had. 

---

As soon as you walked into the club, you threw an arm over Sadie’s shoulder and led her to the bar. Josh and Pierre followed a few steps behind you as the rest of the group left to grab a table. Sadie’s eyes lit up as she studied every bit of the place you all frequented, overjoyed to finally be a part of your Columbus crew.

Sadie propped herself up onto one of the barstools at the bar and you stood beside her to wave down the bartender at the other end. Behind you, Josh and Pierre waited, deep in conversation about something to do with the team.

The bartender was quick to attend to your needs, dropping your drinks off swiftly before moving on to the next group of patrons.

You were busy surveying the land for potential suitors for the evening, not exactly sure if you wanted to end up in Charlie’s bed again or not. For some reason you were finding it hard to take interest in any of the men mingling around the bar with Pierre’s cologne overwhelming your senses as he stood just a few feet behind you. 

Sadie seemed to have no interest in the men that were hanging around the bar, which made you feel better at first. That is, until you realized she was eyeing up Pierre and then shifting her gaze back to you. She was up to something, that was never a good sign. 

“His name matches his face,” Sadie spoke after glancing at Pierre over your shoulder.

“What does that even mean?”

“He’s fucking hot!” she exclaimed. Her voice carried and while you choked on your drink in front of her, Pierre choked on his own in front of Josh.

“You heard that?” Josh asked him with an amused smile. He nodded slowly, desperately trying to push her words out of his mind. “YN’s blood is probably boiling.”

“I have a feeling I’m going to be castrated by the end of the night.”

“It was nice knowing you, buddy,” Josh teased. 

As you and Sadie stepped away from the bar, Josh grabbed your sister and pulled her into his side. Left in their wake, Pierre fell into step with you. 

“You talk about me to your little sister?”

“Only to tell her how insufferable you are,” you informed him. He grinned, like he always did, like he was one step ahead of you. “Whatever she said to you, don’t believe. She’s a liar.”

“So, she was lying when she said I’m fucking hot?”

You turned to face him, standing tall even though he was basically a foot taller than you. You raised your voice just enough to beat out the music, growling, “If you try anything with my sister, I will literally--” 

“Holy shit, I’m kidding,” he said gruffly, an exasperated sigh attached to the end of the sentence. He shook his head, mumbling as he brushed past you on the way back to the booth. “I don’t want your little sister, YN.”

---

Two hours later, Pierre was wandering the bar in search of someone new to occupy his time. He’d been with a group of co-eds for a bit, one of which he’d slept with once before, but they’d decided to leave for another bar. And though he’d been invited, he decided to stick with his real friends.

It had to be somewhere around midnight when he slipped past the bar and noticed Sadie at the end without any of her appointed babysitters and immediately felt worry bubbling up in his stomach. She was the youngest in the bar and seemed a little unsteady on her feet, and even though you told him to stay away, the creeps eyeing her down from the other side gave him bad vibes.

So, he stepped up beside her and leaned against the bar with a smile. 

“Bonjour!”

“Hey, Sadie,” he greeted her. She hiccuped. “You good?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she slurred. “I’m getting another Tequila shot.”

“Do you need one?” he asked. His tone of voice was teasing, but the concern was clear on his face. When she turned to look at him, he saw how strikingly similar she looked to you. It was probably the glare on her face that did it.

“I want one,” she repeated. “And you’re going to take one with me.”

“Well, okay.”

Pierre had seen this one too many times before. He knew this shot was going to be the end to her night, but it didn’t matter how hard he tried to stop her, it wasn’t going to work. The bartender brought the liquor over and after some convincing on Sadie’s part, he poured a shot for himself as well.

The tequila went down easy for the two men, but the look on Sadie’s face told Pierre that she also knew that shot was going to be her night’s death sentence.

“You look pale.”

“Let’s go sit,” she murmured, grabbing his wrist and pulling him with her towards the booth with the rest of the group. Seth caught Pierre’s frantic eyes as they approached.

“She’s going to be sick,” he whispered as soon as they were standing beside each other. They both looked up at Sadie who’d taken up residence at the end of the table, knuckles white from from clutching the top. “Where’s YN?”

“I have no clue,” Seth answered. “The bathroom maybe.”

Just as Pierre started to look around the bar, hoping to find you in the crowd, Sadie lurched slightly. 

“I need to get her out of here,” he said. “If she throws up here, YN would never want to come back and she loves this place.”

“Do you want me to just take her?”

It was a good question and Pierre stopped to think for a moment about the answer. Seth could take Sadie off his hands and he could go about his night normally, or he could prove to you that he wasn’t the asshole you painted him out to be. For whatever reason, he chose the latter.

“No, I got her,” he said. “Let YN know what’s going on, would you?”

---

You returned to the table not even fifteen minutes later, already pissed off because of how long the bathroom line was. Needless to say, Seth letting you know that Pierre had taken Sadie back to your place was not what you wanted to hear. 

“You let her leave this bar with Pierre?”

His fingers danced nervously along the beer bottle in his hand. The 6’ 4” defenseman was utterly terrified of your wrath, and had you not been so pissed off, you would’ve thrived in the feeling. “I know you hate him, but he was just trying to help out.”

“Help out?” you repeated. “You think Pierre would do something out of the kindness of his own heart for me, Jonesy?” He nodded a bit sheepishly. “You’re delusional.”

With that, you snatched your purse off the table and stormed out of the bar in pursuit of your apartment. The walk was only about ten minutes long and, quite frankly, you didn’t give a shit that you were walking through the city at night in a short little dress. You were a woman on a mission and anyone that crossed your path with the wrong intention was going to get your wrath, and it seemed that everyone knew that because you weren’t bothered once. 

You threw your door open once it was unlocked and the decorations on the wall rattled as the door hit the wall beside it. Pierre, who’d been standing outside the bathroom door, jumped out of his skin at the sound. He righted himself and stood tall as you entered the hallway unsure of what type of reaction he was going to receive from you. 

You hardly looked at him as you barked, “Where is she?”

“Puking.”

He leaned forward and pushed the bathroom door open a bit wider, revealing Sadie with her head on the toilet seat. You huffed as you entered and kicked the door closed in his face before slumping down beside her.

“Sadie, what the fuck?”

“I suck.”

“How much did you have to drink?” you asked, hand rubbing comforting circles on her back. 

“I was trying to keep up with your friends,” she murmured before gagging into the toilet again.

“You know that they’re all well above six feet and weigh like two hundred more pounds than you, right?” you stated. She nodded and groaned pathetically. “You should’ve known better.”

She didn’t offer a response to your chastising and instead sat up to look at you and said, “I thought I wasn’t going to like him.”

You raised your eyebrows at her.

“Pierre?”

“Yeah. He’s actually a really nice guy,” she grumbled, dropping her head back into her hand that was propped up on the toilet. “Held my hair back for me.”

With an eye roll and a grunt, you stood to leave her to fend for herself.

“Wait,” she called as soon as your hand was on the door knob. “Can you tell Pierre that I’m sorry I ruined his night?”

“Sure.”

“Be nice to him.”

“No promises,” you grunted, pulling the door open to kick the hockey player out of your house.

---

Pierre was uncomfortable in your apartment. Before you arrived, he was too worried about Sadie to even think about the fact that he was in the middle of your personal space. But now, as you sat with her in the other room and he stood in the living room lurking, he knew he didn’t belong.

There were books decorating your coffee table and plants hanging from the ceiling above him. The television stand was cluttered with picture frames of your family and friends from home. His eyes caught on a photo strip from a Blue Jackets event. Josh’s arm was slung over your shoulders, yours wrapped around his waist, both of you clearly hammered and smiling like two idiots who’d been sitting at the open bar all night. 

Although he couldn’t remember much of that night, thanks to the date he was entertaining, he did remember one thing. He remembered the dress you wore. 

It was this dark blue, almost navy dress, and there was a slit up your leg to your thigh that he kept finding himself gazing at. For the first time since he met you, he thought about what it would be like to feel your body against his, to slide his hand up and between your thighs in the middle of a team event just because he could. 

When he got home later that night after dropping his date at home, he jumped beneath a cold stream of water in the shower. He was desperate to clear his mind of every dirty thought that included you. In the end, the only thing that could clear it was release and he ended up jerking off in the shower despite himself.

“I could’ve used a text. I was worried sick.” 

You snuck up on him, leaving him with no time to pretend like he hadn’t been staring at you in each of your photos.

“I would’ve texted you but, in completely unsurprising news, I don’t have your number,” he said defensively. 

It wasn’t like he was expecting you to grovel at his feet for making sure your sister didn’t vomit in the middle of your favorite club, but he would’ve appreciated a little less attitude or a simple ‘thank you’. 

“Her phone was dead, too, and she started throwing up in a bush, so I was a little more concerned about holding her hair back than calling you right away.”

Your mouth snapped shut.

“Anyway, you’re welcome.”

Your mother would kill you if she saw you now. You didn’t even say thank you. 

But, before your mouth could catch up to the thanks at the tip of your tongue, Pierre was pulling the apartment door open and disappearing down the hall. Not even a parting glance was sent your way.

[therewithall]

Roswell, New Mexico custom Magic: The Gathering cards

For RNM D&D Weekend Warriors, I branched out to another tabletop format and made a handful of custom Magic: The Gathering cards based on the core cast of Roswell, NM. Here’s the break-down of how I chose each character’s color(s) and abilities as well as highlight some of the neat ways they interact. None of the cards have been playtested so there is still room for them to be further developed and balanced. For anyone who isn’t very familiar with Magic: The Gathering, every card fits into various types that can be played for the cost printed in the top right-hand corner. There are 5 colors of Mana- White, Blue, Black, Red, Green- I’ll be using the letters W, U (blue), B (black), R, and G to represent the mana colors in my discussion. Each card can also have different traits and abilities, and a set of numbers that represents how strong its attack and defense are (represented as attack/defense). There’s a lot of amazingly nerdy discussion of Magic Lore that delves into how the Mana colors relate to personality traits and behaviors of the characters on the cards-- more on that here- but just know that I’ll be discussing some of those qualities as I go into why I chose the attributes for each card/character.So here we go!

Max Evans, Smalltown Hero        2WR Legendary Creature – Human Alien Vigilance, Haste (This creature doesn’t tap to attack and may attack or use tap abilities the turn it enters the battlefield.) T, Sacrifice a nonland permanent: Another target creature gains indestructible until end of turn. Max is a deputy with the sheriff’s department and a natural leader who has kept his powers and identity a secret for years. 3/1

Max is kind hearted and wants to protect his community and friends. On the other hand, he’s impulsive and will make rash decisions without thinking about the consequences of his actions. These two beliefs place him firmly in red/white for Magic colors; a combination that often plays small aggressive creatures and engages in frequent combat. I gave Max vigilance to represent him being a defender as well as an aggressor in a lot of circumstances. His ability to sacrifice something to protect someone else exemplifies his ability to both heal and destroy. Lastly he has haste and a fragile body (1 toughness) making a game with Max play out with an early attack followed by him protecting someone else and only getting in when the coast is clear.

Michael Guerin, Tech Genius      1WU Legendary Creature – Human Alien Artificer When Michael Guerin, Tech Genius enters the battlefield, search your library and/or graveyard for a noncreature artifact or enchantment card and exile it with a research counter on it. If you searched your library this way, shuffle. X, T: Create a token that’s a copy of a card exiled with a research counter. X is that card’s mana value. 2/3

Michael cares about the team differently than Max does. He is often tinkering with things in order to heal or protect others if possible and is a genius when it comes to inventions involving alien technology. His intelligence and need for knowing more fits in blue (alongside a few other science oriented characters). Whereas Max is a straightforward attacker, I chose an ability that is much more complex to understand for Michael. He makes copies of trinkets after taking the time to examine them which lends itself to more combo and control oriented play patterns instead of just blindly turning stuff sideways. I didn’t capture Michael’s temper, but I didn’t want all aliens to be red. Maybe I’ll make another version some time that incorporates different facets of their personalities.

Isobel Evans, Influencer                UBR Legendary Creature – Human Alien Your opponents play with the top card of their library revealed. 3R, T: Gain control of target creature an opponent controls until end of turn. Untap that creature. It gains haste until end of turn. 6BB, T: You control target player’s next turn. Activate only once. 1/4

Isobel has fewer words than Michael, but oh my is she complex as well. If Max leans toward aggro and Michael is combo, Isobel is the control card of the siblings. Isobel is often guided by her emotions, but channels that into careful thought in how to execute a plan and always looks out for herself and her people. Her abilities represent her powers spread across the three colors: Blue – Reading your opponent’s mind, Red – Controlling someone’s impulses for a short period, Black – Forcing your opponent’s actions, once.

Liz Ortecho, Savvy Scientist          1UB Legendary Creature – Human Rebel Liz Ortecho, Savvy Scientist can’t be blocked as long as defending player controls an artifact. Whenever Liz Ortecho deals combat damage to a player, gain control of target artifact that player controls with mana value less than or equal to the damage dealt. 2/1

Liz is smart, cunning, and will protect her own. Her science background lends itself to Blue, but this card plays up some of her devious nature of stealing hospital equipment, doing illegal research, and general sneaking around, so there’s Black in her mana cost as well. She often draws on the abilities of those around her, which means that her connections make her stronger. Amusingly, she’s unblockable against some of our other characters including her own dad!

Alex Manes, Tech Specialist            1WUB Whenever you draw a card, target creature you control gains deathtouch (Any amount of damage it deals to a creature is enough to destroy it.), lifelink (Damage dealt by that creature also causes you to gain that much life.), or vigilance (Attacking doesn’t cause it to tap.) until end of turn. Whenever Alex Manes, Tech Specialist deals combat damage to a player, create a clue token. (It’s an artifact with “2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.”) Kyle: “What’s the worst thing we could find?“ Alex: “Literal skeletons.” 2/3

Alex also sneaks around, but I wanted to play up his investigation skills a little more. Instead of just drawing a card when he does damage, he makes a clue “token”. That clue token represents information (drawing a card) that can be held onto or acted on later. He’s a character who’s able to do plenty of damage in his own right, but his big advantage is being able to help other characters do their jobs and get combat abilities they wouldn’t otherwise have. He protects his friends.

Maria DeLuca, Entrepreneur       2RG Legendary Creature – Human Alien Haste (This creature may attack and use tap abilities the turn it enters the battlefield.) Each other creature you control enters the battlefield with an additional +1/+1 counter on it. “Maria DeLuca is her own savior.” 3/2

Maria cares about her friends and her business. Her ability helps everyone and represents your other creatures being able to stop in for a drink at the bar. She gets haste to show how hard she works and has aggressive stats so she can get her hands dirty in a fight. Like Michael, I could see another version playing into her psychic powers.

Dr. Kyle Valenti                 1WW Legendary Creature – Human Lifelink (Damage dealt by that creature also causes you to gain that much life.) When Dr. Kyle Valenti enters the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on each other creature you control. "In a hospital it doesn't matter what someone did before they came through the doors." 2/2

Kyle is a healer and instead of showing that with damage prevention, I chose a simpler buff to the whole team. Now you’re less worried about losing fights!

Rosa Ortecho, Troubled Artist                     1BR Legendary Creature – Human Alien At the beginning of your upkeep, choose one — • Draw a card and lose 2 life. • Exile the top card of your library. Until end of turn, you may play that card. Red is armor. 3/2

Rosa was a fun one to design. She is black red which is a color combo notoriously bad at impulse control. She has aggressive stats and an ability that makes the controller make a hard choice every turn. Do I take the guaranteed draw at the cost of a couple life or do I risk not being able to cast whatever I exile? Among other things, this represents her struggle with addiction-- taking the most directly expedient option comes with some harm to her life totals- but it’s the damage you know. The second option requires you to risk the unknown, but be able to participate in the fight without automatically being harmed-- it requires you to trust your deck and your support network...but be prepared for potential setbacks.

Arturo Ortecho                 GG Legendary Creature – Human Defender (This creature can’t attack.) Whenever a nontoken creature enters the battlefield under your control, create a Food token. (It’s an artifact with “{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this artifact: You gain 3 life.”) G, T, Sacrifice a Food: Target creature gets +2/+2 until end of turn. “I already have my miracle.” 2/4

Arturo cares about his community as do many of our characters, but if there’s any color that cares about bringing everyone in for dinner, it’s green. He delivers food whenever a new creature enters and can use them as buffs instead of just life gain! His kindness and compassion sustain everyone.

Deputy Jenna Cameron                 1RR Legendary Creature – Human First Strike (This creature deals combat damage before creatures without first strike.) Whenever Jenna blocks or becomes blocked by a creature, she deals 1 damage to that creature. “Who you callin’ a girl?” 2/3

In case you can’t tell, a lot of our characters act on impulse and emotion, which is a Red trait. Cam is tough (A 3/4 is needed to best her in combat!) and efficiently deals with enemies. The faster-than-first strike damage represents her sharp shooting skill. And because of her skills, anyone going up against her is going to feel it right away.

Sergeant Jesse Manes                   2BB Legendary Creature – Human Soldier Menace (This creature must be blocked by two or more creatures.) When Sergeant Jesse Manes enters the battlefield or attacks, exile the top card of each opponent’s library face down. You may cast noncreature cards exiled this way and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast that spell. Jesse's inhumane methods leave only pain in his wake. 3/2

Jesse is a character who has his own twisted view of how his actions will better society. His card here plays up how he tends to believe the ends justify any means-- for him, at least. He steals information and uses it against those he took it from, to represent his involvement in Project Shepherd and the threat he represents not just to the safety and security of the aliens, but to anyone helping them. I chose to exclude creatures in order to make the ability a little more efficient and make it feel more like controlling the chess board and less like mind control (Which a Noah card would someday probably do).

Whew! I hope you enjoyed reading these as much as I enjoyed making them!