#but it is also incredibly hot. sorry

[yesokayiknow]

[emry-stars-art]

I’ll continue to wonder why the Trojans make me want a modern/snapchat au so badly lol but I loveeeeee them so much, it’s almost one of the first things I drew for them 😂

I’m imagining they’re on some trip in wintertime and none of them are built for it but Jean, like me, is reluctant to give some things up

More versions under the cut

[ceilidho]

PLEASEEE TAKING SOAP HOME FROM THE PUB AND THE NEXT MORNING HE’S MAKING YOU BREAKFAST JUST SAYIN SHIT LIKE “got a big family so wedding is gonna be HUGE- but I think I can get everythin scheduled and we could be married by the end of the year”

mr. "i dinnae wear condoms, sweetie, that's not in the bible!" im going to squash his head -

[musette22]

Aahh I've had such a great weekend, guys!! Lots of great food and fun, lots of cool cultural stuff, including an amazing play a friend surprised me as a belated birthday present (starring a songer/actor I used to be obsessed with when I was 15 lmao). And then last night, I went to a brilliant classical concert for another friend's birthday and got to dress up all fancy and drink champagne and all that, which was grrreat 💫

BUT most importantly, while I was enjoying this concert I couldn't help but notice the conductor was seriously hot (like look at this guy 👇🏼 what the hell?) and he also gave off major Steve vibes, so when he shared a really intense hug with the solo cellist at some point I was like hmmm..... 💡 And of course I immediately started thinking about a potential enemies to lovers fic with gifted young conductor Steve Rogers and virtuoso violinist Bucky Barnes who start off on the wrong foot when they start working together, each of them thinking the other is arrogant and cold (even though they do admire each other professionally). But then they get to know each other better and they start to realize that their first impressions may have been wrong, and they slowly but surely warm to each other and have lots of deliciously tense moments during practice with intense eye contact and emotional revelations fuelled by dramatic music and all that 👀 And of course the whole thing would culminate in a spectacular end of season concert in which their chemistry blows everyone away and they realize they've fallen in love with each other and then kiss on stage and live happily ever after 💘

Although I do feel like this fic probably already exists? Which actually would also be amazing, so if anyone happens to know of a fic like this, do let me know!! 🙏🏻

Anyway, I'll stop rambling now! I'll hopefully be able to reply to some messages later before I have to work again tonight! Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend, mwah!! 🥰💗

[heybiji]

hi!!! i just wanted to say i really love all of your MASKS stuff. i'm something of a newbie when it comes to the TTRPG community, but MASKS seems to be not very well-known and i think that's a real shame. i'm a huge fan of old-school superhero-adjacent stuff, especially the silver- and bronze-age ones!

by the way, i was wondering if you'd be willing to share some tips for a first-time GM? you don't have to if you'd rather not! i just figured i'd try asking since i was planning on GMing a MASKS campaign for some of my friends later, but despite my decade's worth of roleplaying experience i've never been in a TTRPG campaign nor a GM (or similar) role before

Thank you so much!! I was just lamenting about how I felt bad for the MASKS tag because it is now flooded with all my npc nonsense hahah so this is really nice to hear.

It's awesome you're planning on running a MASKS game for your friends!! There is an indispensable post on twitter I saw that has a LOT of great tips for running MASKS that I recommend checking out. But for my own personal tips that are just me things, here's what I got. Sorry it's gonna be extremely long-winded, it may take a few months to read through it.

(Note: I am also hugely into RP and probably put more into it than what is necessary, especially with MASKS which is meant to be able to be played out of the box. It was definitely not played out of the box in our case because I require a lot out of myself and everyone else to feel good about running something. if anyone else wants to continue seeing me as a normal human being please don't click the Keep Reading)

Since you're running it, make the world interesting to you. If the world runs around themes you're personally interested in then you'll have a much easier time coming up with answers on the fly. For me, themes I'm interested in that lend themselves well to a superhero world: money, power, family, celebrity, media, the 24 hour news cycle and the desensitization of violence. Because I'm interested in this stuff anyway, wrapping a world around them makes it much simpler for me to figure out how the world ticks and thus how the characters fit into it and how the world reacts to them, and I am DESPERATE to find out how the characters react to all the questions and expectations the world is imposing upon them.

Make sure your players have a good grasp of the tone of story so they can make characters that gel well within it. For me the tone is a lil more adult because I'm not personally into younger morality tale stories in tone, it's pretty grounded, and I think comedy and tragedy work hand in hand so I lean into them.

Talk. A lot. Talk about the characters, talk about the world. MASKS is fun because it's a LOT of talking and figuring out the narrative together. It's not a lot of crunchy mechanics, it's all around seeing how the characters react to the world narratively, all hurt and comfort and emotions which (for me) requires people to have a good grasp on their characters and the world. I like to give my players "homework" where I ask them a question involving their characters in some way like "what hero did your character look up to as a child?" so they get to come up with past heroes, or "How does your character feel about _____?" etc etc. The only fans are gonna be your table and fans love to talk so be the biggest fans of the PCs!!

Figure out your framing. I know in MASKS they suggest framing it like a comic book, and basically talking about the frames on screen. For me, because I'm more into movies and tv than comics, I frame it like that. So I have an active "camera" in play during sessions and will ask things like "would anyone like to grab the camera?" to encourage the players to put the character into a scene or "what does the audience see as the camera focuses in on your character in this emotional moment?" There is a LOT of playing up to the camera and framing the sessions as episodes of a show, so it's like, okay, you have several options but what is going to be interesting for the audience to see? I find this encourages the players to have their characters take bigger swings and feel comfortable letting us into how their character is feeling because it all looks GREAT on camera. The camera loves it. The PCs are the story after all.

Because I frame it a show, I also like to play individual ending songs over the "credits" at the end of each episode. So I asked my players to make playlists for their characters so if I feel an episode had a lot of emotional focus on one character in particular, I can play one of their songs at the end of the episode! I also made a general MASKS playlist with a bunch of songs from the era we set it in (2004) to pull from. It's a fun little addition that I really enjoy and that I hope makes it all feel more special.

The Dino Donut Effect: create landmarks in your world. (OK THIS IS GONNA BE LONG BUT WORK WITH ME HERE) They don't have to be locations, more solid landmarks of the story that the characters can refer back to and lean on to make the world feel more "real." I call it the Dino Donut Effect because in our world the thing that made everything click into place was talking out the backstory of one of the PC's figuring out they had the power negation ability. We were talking one night trying to figure it out; we wanted the character to fall out of a building and be caught by a flying superhero and accidentally turn off their powers, so they toss the kid to another flying supe whose powers also get turned off. But we were like... holy shit what is the height of a building needed that can handle this much action in the air without them hitting the ground in 3 seconds. So after a long night of talking about terminal velocity and looking at Splat Calculators we figured out the height of the building, and we needed them to crash into something that wouldn't fuckin kill them. The first suggestion was a truck full of bananas. Nah. We landed on a giant balloon that could take the impact. And the balloon became a giant T-Rex holding a donut that was the mascot of the city's beloved decades old donut shop Dino Donut. And so we decided that one of the two flying supes grabbed onto the kid and the other and flew into the giant balloon to try and keep them all alive, which destroyed the balloon, which was a city institution, and there was a crowd of children there that day that saw their friend Dino Donut die. Killed by a superhero. The balloon deflated loudly so it sounded like Dino Donut was screaming in agony. All the kids were traumatized (screaming crying throwing up), the city was furious because everyone loved Dino Donut, it was constantly in the news cycle, and it ruined the career of the supe that "killed Dino Donut." AND THEN THEY REPLACED THE DINO DONUT BALLOON WITH A LAME "UPDATED DESIGN" DINO DONUT STATUE which everyone hates and people consider to be a memorial to the old Dino Donut. ANYWAY, the Dino Donut effect is that now all the PCs have one single incident to refer back to that they all have feelings about. A couple of them were there that day and heard Dino Donut scream, one is now the protege of the disgraced superhero that killed Dino Donut so she feels uncomfortable talking about it, there's the kid that was saved that day but was sworn to secrecy by the supe so no one would find out about his power negation ability, and then there's the kid that wasn't there because she's an alien that just arrived to earth and now the kids have to explain the incident to her with all their varying opinions. Now the PCs' meeting spot is at a Dino Donut. Having this one solid incident that is both funny and kind of goes into the themes of the world has been an absolute treat. Creating "landmarks" like that in the world has done so much and now I'm like okay I'm gonna try to do this moving forward with any other thing I run.

anyway these are my extremely specific to me tips. my RP standards are kind of high which makes me a bit of a terror but also when the flowers bloom from it it feels GREAT. i'm not sure if this will help but hopefully there is something there that can be useful!

MASKS is fun and simple once you get the hang of it, though, so I'm sure whatever you do you and your players will have a lot of fun! especially if you're someone who is into RP which is the background I'm coming from too; MASKS is extremely narrative! i'll be looking in the tag for your game hehe

(The Day Dino Donut Died art by JD)

[shirozora-draws]

Listen.

I can explain. I saw a Tumblr post about shoulder kisses a month ago if the time stamp on my Discord messages are anything to go by. Then I saw a very evocative quote tweet about eroticism. And I, uh, I was feeling really spiteful. If you know, you know.

Anyway, I lost two days of writing and a lot of sleep to this. Rip my fucking sanity.

[spicyicymeloncat]

Idk if this is a hot take but why is it always “Kai slaved away and worked his ass off to raise his sister” and never the other way round or them working hard together?

Like, I know he’s older but in the show, does he really… act older? Like if you think about Kai and Nya’s dynamic yknow? Because from my understanding:

When Kai and Nya are introduced we see Kai fail at making a sword and Nya being the one to chide him for it. Kai makes an overconfident statement about wanting to be a better blacksmith than his father. This suggests that one, Kai is rather rash as well as inexperienced (something that lines up with the rest of his character arc in the pots and also generally), with Nya being the more mature figure in contrast

Also just a note but in the shorts: “I can handle it!” “No you can’t, stupid”

Kai frequently being very good at neglecting people or things: leaving Lloyd at an arcade whilst being focused on finding samurai x, not even knowing samurai x was Nya or that she only did it because she felt left out by him, completely abandoning both Nya and Lloyd in s3 (and Ik he was going through it at the time, but in line with the fandom’s characterisation of him)

Kai in season 5: “After I lost my dad, I lost my way. But I was lucky to have my sister watch over me”

Generally, their dynamic isn’t one where Kai really provides for Nya at all. In fact, judging by the fact that Nya can make entire mechs and Kai struggled to make a sword, Nya was probably busting her ass to provide for Kai. And judging by the s5 quote, that’s probably true. I’m not saying Nya raised Kai, it just rubs me the wrong way when she’s treated like a decorative flourish to a narrative that paints Kai as a burnt out child who was forced to grow up too soon especially since that is such a mischaracterisation of him in the first place.

[coquelicoq]

i have absolutely no filter in one very specific area, which is that if someone smells good i always tell them immediately and with great enthusiasm. unfortunately this has led many people to think i was hitting on them when actually i just really like smells. apparently i can come across as incredibly forward to people, but only that subset of people who smell really really good. if you smell normal we will probably have a regular time.

[stevethehairington]

not to be completely horny on main or anything buuuuuut i went to my local usl men's soccer team game tonight and there is this one player who's shorts are like. AT LEAST one to two sizes too small so like they are very tight and very short, and his thighs are INCREDIBLE, like hot damn soccer player legs man. BUT tonight it was RAINY and WET so all the players were slippin and slidin across that turf even more than usual and naturally this made the guy's shorts ride up even more fjksksld so they fully looked like volleyball spandex. aLSO they were the home team so they were wearing their WHITE uniforms in the RAIN and HOBOY. let 👏 me 👏 just 👏 tell 👏 you 👏 i suuuuuure enjoyed the show 🥵🤪🥴

[crystalflygeo]

Real talk if Zhongli was a teacher I'd either fail his class horribly (bc I wouldn't be able to concentrate) or be the absolute best student. There is no in between.

The question is, which one of these two options would get me bent over at his desk faster? >:3c

[uhohbestie]

I can't believe Grian and Joe Biden got fired on the same day.

[notasecrettelepath]

Posting something I’ve been obsessing over for the past month and a half!

Chapters: 2/20 Fandom: 9-1-1 (TV) Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)

Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Post-Season/Series 05, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Introspection, Eddie Diaz has Religious Trauma (9-1-1 TV), Catholic Guilt, Internalized Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Feelings Realization, Minor Evan "Buck" Buckley/Tapeworm Guy, Good Friend Henrietta "Hen" Wilson, POV Alternating, Firehouse 118 Crew as Family (9-1-1 TV), Coming Out, Christopher Diaz Has Two Dads, Friends to Lovers, Eddie Diaz Needs a Hug (9-1-1 TV), Shannon Diaz Haunts The Narrative, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Coma dreams, Eventual Fluff, Evan "Buck" Buckley Has Abandonment Issues, Evan "Buck" Buckley has Coma Dreams

Summary:

Evan Buckley rips open his wild heart and explores his yearning to be part of a family; what it means to learn the difference between being desired, being wanted and being loved. In the process, he discovers he could love a man, if only it wasn’t his best friend.

Eddie Diaz dons his armor and tries to come to terms with what it means to be a man and a father; what it means to grieve not only for Shannon, but also for the once-hallowed image he had of himself. In the process, he discovers he could love his best friend again, if only he wasn’t a man.

Christopher Diaz surprises his father at work and is told he looks a lot like Buck’s son, which is a thought he’d entertained more than once before.

And, above Los Angeles, a lightning storm brews.

Read it on AO3. I have around 13 chapters and 100K+ words done, I’ll be posting them periodically!

[emry-stars-art]

heya, I noticed for your fic 'Stay Where I Can Reach' you tagged dissociative personality disorder and was wondering if you mean dissociative identity disorder (DID) or depersonalization/derealization disorder (DPDR)? dissociative personality disorder is not a term I'm familiar with

thanks!!

Hiiii sorry I'm late!!

Short answer: I did purposefully tag it as personality disorder rather than identity disorder! For "as per my research" reasons mainly.

Long answer: I gave Andrew a more general dissociative disorder, bc DID is its own thing that would require me to do even more research than I already have 😅 The aim wasn't to give Andrew separate parts/alters with total amnesia between them - he's still a singlet, with one identity/part in his head. It's just that the one part has dissociative symptoms like other trauma disorders, even if it's more 'intense' than in some other cases.

When I was doing this initial research I found somewhere that dissociative personality disorder is a separate disgnosis from DID/OSDD? And it described what I was going for for that Andrew? I'm not gonna say that's 100% the end all be all, because hell if I know lol you may be right! Depersonalization or derealization disorder could in fact be the real term and just I found an outdated source/misread things. I might've accidentally used an umbrella term rather than a specific diagnosis or something. I could go back and refigure out the whole thing but I gotta be honest. I don't have a lot of extra energy or space or put toward it atm, but maybe if anyone thinks its worth a re-look I might put it on my list

[sapphic-luthor]

Congrats on the upcoming anniversary!!! I kept meaning to ask but how is the new living space working out? So extremely happy things seem to be on the up and up for you lately! Hope the vibes are most excellent and sending you more just for good measure - SMA

thank you!!! ngl living w my girlfriend is millions of times better than i ever could have imagined, every day is like waking up on a holiday bc it’s so exciting to be with her All The Time and coming home from work to her is like slipping into the comfiest chair or a hot water bottle-warmed bed in the winter it is just so so so so good. several times a week i have this internal (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) feeling that is basically just my brain spinning the thought [I LOVE OUR LIFE TOGETHER!!!!!!] in 3d words at the speed of light

[xcziel]

if i could have your attention please

jawdropping portrait of Liu Chang via 水与雨 on weibo

for those discerning interested parties who may find it relevant, i present: Haaaaaannnds

a photo post from a fan who clearly has their priorities straight

a beautiful collection from 氧气缺氧了 on weibo

[cherrygarden]

,