#i have known some of them for years

[uptownhags]

First day at my new Very Serious Job was wonderful in many important ways!! Truly, things about it will change my life. But the most on brand update I can give is that my security guard was cute as hell (real cute) and waited for my boss with me while telling stories about his canine partner! Bye.

[malinaa]

if i think about the hunger games in peeta's perspective i WILL start sobbing

[furiosophie]

@amikoroyaiart and i have this pre mw headcanon going that ghost and alex are actually rly close friends bc price and laswell sent ghost "on assignment" with alex post ghost coming back from the dead™ so alex could help him reintegrate and relearn how to act human

i've been having a lot of feelings about it over here on twt

[fivveweeks]

there are many disadvantages to being an artist

[hotasfahrenheit]

No matter how many hundreds, thousands, or million days...

No matter how long it will be...

May our love last forever.

[1000 Years Old, 1.01, 1.02, 1.12]

[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)

[mildcicada]

[teabutmakeitazure]

fellas is it psychopathic behaviour to remember in great detail who wronged/wrongly treated my mother during the lowest time in our lives and made her cry and such and how they did so to my family even though I have no other memories from those years and it's a massive hole in my memory and life and to have made a mental list of all those people and extended family members so that I know who to help and who to fuck over when the time is right?

[goldkirk]

I'm so proud of myself about finances in the past couple months. I still struggle with money but I did enough meditation and journaling and practicing about it to make myself able to actually face my loans and credit cards and savings and bills and start really truly organizing and addressing them for the first time in years instead of just flying by the seat of my pants.

Like. This is a huge deal for me. I've felt like I'm in deadly danger every time I've tried to think about money for years and years. I'm finally able to look it in the face and stare it down and start to organize and plan on purpose instead of just keeping up with the minimum to stay afloat. I'm so proud of myself.

It's still a refrain of "GUILT (funny link)" every time I think about money but I'm able to actually make spreadsheets and face the numbers and monthly tracking again, and even make a new full budget which I haven't been able to do in ages.

still feel guilt, overwhelm, and helplessness, but no longer feel as much deep elemental shame and terror. that's progress baby

[yardsards]

also. amber gris as a character is really important to me as an appalachian.

not just her accent or the specific type of person justin based her off of but like

the feeling of losing someone to addiction/overdose while the government does nothing to help, just criminalizes and stigmatizes and makes things worse. which obviously happens in more places than just around here, but we have one of the highest rates of overdose death in the whole country and that whole set of scenes felt like they were really informed by growing up around that

[noyzinerd]

In order for Derek to have a teenaged son, he also had to have been the father of a toddler at one point.

This means when it's time to roll out to disband a rogue hunter ring, and they get into Derek's newest, badass muscle car with the tinted windows, and Derek dons his sunglasses and says gruffly "They don't know who they're dealing with", that the moment he turns on his car, the Paw Patrol soundtrack immediately blasts from the speakers at full volume.

Or that, once in a while, the pack will hear Derek mindlessly humming a song that's gotten stuck in his head from countless repetitions every single day (because "Again, 'gen, 'gen, Dada! P'ay 'gen!"). And at some point Stiles, being fluent in memes and internet culture, is the only one to recognize the tune and ask "Wait, are you humming Baby Shark?"

And if you think Derek's control was solid before, that's NOTHING compared to the zen master level of composure he has now. When the hunters manage to capture Derek and Stiles and attempt to make Derek turn, they don't realize that, yeah, those sticks with the sonic pinging sound are loud and annoying, but have you ever had to deal with the demonic bat screeches of a 2-year-old for 4 hours that first night after he's not allowed to sleep with his pacifier anymore?

And, sure, being electrocuted loosens a werewolf's grasp on the shift a little bit, but have you ever had to hold back a shift because your child is having a complete meltdown in the middle of a Costco because his sock feels a little funny, and even though you fixed the problem, the ordeal happening at all was traumatic enough for him that it required rolling around on the ground, an additional 7 minutes of screaming, and an attempt to throw eggs out of the cart?

And the "torture" is laughable. Okay, wolfsbane makes you weak and lethargic and makes your skin burn and makes it hard to breathe and makes you throw up black goo, BUT have you ever had a random little girl throw sand in your kid's face, making him cry, and then, after telling her "No! We don't throw sand!", have to deal with an indignant mother yelling in your face because "You do NOT tell my daughter what to do! She is NOT your child and should NOT have to grow up in a world where any man can demand things from her!"?

You want to talk about torture, do you have any idea what 2-Year Sleep Regression is? Do you have any idea what it's like to wake up at 3AM to shrieking and then deal with a cranky toddler that refuses to take a nap, all of this FOR 6 WEEKS STRAIGHT?

Or how about when your 3-year-old has a tantrum because he asked for strawberries and when you give him strawberries you find out he actually meant blueberries but when you get him the blueberries, he has an even bigger tantrum because how DARE you put away the strawberries he didn't want in the first place?

There is a visible moment in which the hunters question whether or not they've made a mistake and accidentally captured two humans.

And after the two of them manage to get out of that mess and back to relative safety, Derek notices a cut on Stiles arm.

Stiles has to bite back a laugh when Derek, without even realizing he's doing it, sticks a Lightning McQueen bandaid on Stiles' cut before kissing his boo-boo better.

[childrenofthesun77]

Tsurugi is talking with touma over the phone here and we only hear tsurugi's side of the conversation. I know yoshimasa was the closest thing touma had to a good father figure so I can see him trying to be nice to his kids, but the image of touma picking up shuhei and his little sister from school is still funny.

[grinchwrapsupreme]

sitting here scanning through research papers about thymomas trying to figure out if Wilson could have had cancer the entire series because i’ve got problems

the answer is yes by the way

[claitea]

luigi time!

[pebblezone]

Thinking so hard about sertegra dancing fic that has not yet been created

[thotsfortherapy]

having mommy issues be like I hate that you know me I hate that we’re related I hate that you birthed me I hate that you don’t know how to love me properly I hate that you can’t see how much you hurt me I hate that I’m expected to love you