#i'm playing my irl campaign character

[nathanprscott]

deciding who to date has never been harder than in baldur's gate..

[blujayonthewing]

[yardsards]

clint mcelroy creating a dnd character: oh yeah, this bad boy can fit so much simple zest for life in him

[ragsy]

I really really love being a ttrpg GM but I really really don't have the motivation or interest to write my own homebrew campaigns these days but I also really really don't enjoy playing pre-written modules because I have a hard time sticking to what's on the page

Do you see my struggle

There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza dear liza

[vaguely-annoyed]

coping badly to fantasy flirting is smth i'm very proficient at

[psikind]

sorry I was gone all day btw it was the one year anniversary of the dnd campaign ever ending and I was not being normal

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for dumping a guy because of a throwaway comment to my friend? (TW: NSFW statements)

I'm using BG3 character names for this because I don't want to use letters. The name assignments have nothing to do with personality, it's based off of an inside joke.

Important characters- Me, 18ftm. My S/O, Minthara, 21ftm. My friends (Halsin- 22m, and Astarion- 22neu)

I started dating Minthara a few months back. A month or so before we started dating, and a month after I turned 18, I introduced Minthara to my D&D group (Halsin DMs, and Astarion is one of the players.)

Halsin and Astarion are in a long-term relationship, and because my home life... sucks, to be frank, they're basically my surrogate family.

It's important to note that I am a CSA survivor. They've known me since I was 16, know I'm uncomfortable with sex talk most times, and am an incest survivor. I'm really grateful I have them, and when I introduced Minthara, it seemed like everything was going perfectly. He got along with everyone super well, aside from a few hiccups and bumps.

However, yesterday-as-of-writing this, we were talking about our D&D characters for a campaign Minthara wasn't present for, one we were thinking of adding him to once it got off of hiatus.

Astarion is a big fan of a certain character. Jokingly, I asked if that character and their D&D Character would get along. Minthara jumped in and stated that he thought the comfort character would eat the D&D character's ass.

I cannot state enough that this was out of nowhere, and made Astarion very uncomfortable. They and I tried to play it off and continue the conversation, and Halsin deleted the message in the discord. We checked in in a separate discord server, and Halsin brought up he was a little concerned.

Minthara is very sexual. As in, before we started dating, he sent me NSFW-explicit-noncon art of his D&D character sexual. I know he's recovering from purity culture/deconstructing, so I never minded other than asking him not to try and show his porn art to my D&D group with no warning and to stop talking about his kinks in public when we were out on dates, but when he did it to Astarion I was a little disconcerted.

One thing led to another, and a lot of friends are telling me to leave him. But on the other hand, he genuinely does love me. He's very romantic, and when we spend time together IRL I always come out feeling happy. My mom likes him, and I've met his parents, and I don't want to break his heart or anything. He sends a lot of long voice messages comparing me to nice things and talking about how much he loves me.

I don't want to hurt him, but I also don't want to be with someone who treats my friends like this- this isn't an isolated incident, just the first time it's affected someone other than me.

[drop-dead-dropout]

Fuck's a pro shipper?

We've got a new one boys try not to scare em off /j

Okay but seriously, I'm more than happy to explain. I assume that if you're asking this question you're not aware of the proshipper vs antishipper, uh, "conflict", I guess. So, here is what both of those terms mean, to the best of my descriptive abilities:

Antishipper (often just "anti"): someone who vaguely believes that consuming problematic fiction (usually specifically problematic sexual fiction like lolicon or incest) is either a true reflection of them as a person or a corrupting force that will cause them to play out these desires in real life, onto real people. Basically, if you read age gap, you touch real kids in real life or secretly want to.

Proshipper (sometimes "profic"): someone who does not believe the above, and believes that fiction is not the same as reality because it doesn't harm anyone and therefore people should be left alone as long as you have no reason to believe that they would ever do something like that irl. Often hand in hand with things like anti censorship, kink positive, etc, though being a proshipper does not necessarily mean you have a problematic ship or kink yourself (example: me).

You're probably asking this question because you saw me day in my bio that I am a proshipper. I've tried to stay neutral in this initial description, but obviously I probably didn't manage to be completely unbiased considering that I believe myself to be right (most people do) so if you want to ask further questions after this that's perfectly fine. That being said:

Why am I a proshipper?

So, to understand this, let's first look over the issues within both communities— every group has issues, after all.

What problems do proshippers have?:

- sometimes 4chan assholes co-opt the label "proshipper" just because they're lolicons, even though there's good evidence to suggest that they would do or even have done criminal sexual acts in real life, or that they possess actual csam (child sexual abuse material, a term being used in favor of "cp" these days as porn implies consent). Proshipping has nothing to do with the harmful idea that you should be allowed to exploit and abuse real children.

- there are still many gray areas which proshippers themselves don't agree on. For example: I've seen a bunch of arguments about if writing fanfiction of live action shows or movies changes the equation. The general consensus of proshippers is that writing fanfiction of a character played by a child actor is definitely a more delicate situation and should not be sexual as it's inextricably tied to the image of a real child, but there are others who believe differently.

- I'm genuinely struggling to come up with more of these. Um, sometimes lolicons are really shitty people, like in point 1. This isn't SUPER relevant though cause in reality the overlap between predominantly queer or female proshippers and Reddit incels who just wanna jerk off to a petite anime girl is pretty small, though I'm sure it exists somewhere .

Now, what problems do antis have? (Fair warning, this is gonna sound even more "biased" but I hope my logic is still sound from the outside :p):

- I don't have any statistics on this (haven't exactly been many research papers on fandom drama), so you're going to have to trust me when I say that antis are absolutely NOTORIOUS for extreme harassment campaigns. The first time I was exposed to the word "antishipper", it was attached to a story of a former animator committing suicide because antis had gotten them fired by "exposing" their porn alt on Twitter and they could no longer afford medication for their disability. So, hell of an intro!

- their opinions are, in pretty basic ways, not backed by science or even practical common sense. The human brain can distinguish between fiction and reality after around age four or five

and people certainly aren't trying to hand nsfw content to children that age so I think it's safe to say that the people who are reading these things won't be "confused" by them or whatever. Also, even just using your brain and talking to these people, you find out most of them project onto the YOUNGER character.

- they claim to support victims but often simply don't. I won't keep dragging threats into the spotlight because I know there are probably antis who aren't as violent, but it's honestly astonishing to me how often they jump straight to wishing death and terrible things on people, and this has included more than once telling a rape victim they hope they get assaulted again just because they're a proshipper. See, a lot of these "taboo" sexual fantasies like age gap and incest actually themselves stem from a traumatic experience, and any therapist will tell you that fiction is a much healthier way to explore intrusive thoughts and urges than more dangerous coping mechanisms like self harm or substance abuse. And when confronted with this, in my experience and many others', antis will simply ignore that fact or say that the therapist is some sort of evil enabler.

-the general cognitive dissonance of believing an incest fanfiction will make you "forget" that incest is bad vs being fine with horror movies and slashers speaks to a deeper and honestly kind of worrying anti-sex mindset. I'm not sure I'm qualified to tackle this particular topic, but I definitely agree that it's a thing; after all, I have no idea how else those two things could coexist.

Anyways, I'd like to close this off by saying not everyone is as crazy opinionated as I am, I'm just autistic and like talking lol. A lot of people who id as proshippers just have a sort of minding their own business, ship-and-let-ship mentality, and a lot of antis are unfortunately just teenagers who were told proshipper = evil pedophile groomer and thus they put "proship dni" in their bios just cause they don't know and don't really care what it means. It is undeniable that many antis are kids themselves, and that does worry me, because fandom drama (especially Twitter fandom drama) is dangerous and vitriolic and also they're putting extremely serious threats on their digital footprints at the tender age of 14! But whatever, I'm not their parents, that's just my worry. Sorry for rambling this long lol, I wouldn't blame you if you dropped out halfway through but this is basically my summary of this whole thing. Do with this knowledge what you will! Or, you know, don't! I'm not a cop!

[bubblyernie]

So so so excited to share this character!! I drew this back in early August when I got to do a session 0 for a post-apocalypse IRL setting (...MERICA) kids (adults) on bikes campaign!

This is my character, Terry, bigender canto-canadian from Montreal. There's a running joke that we should all just play ourselves since it was a real world setting but I was like how about me a little to the left? Hence, Terry LOL she's a scout, I'm gonna be the party's ranger-rogue basically, for everyone more familiar with DnD rather than KOB.

art tag // commission info

[nerdalmighty]

hey! so, i just recently started playing baldur's gate 3 after seeing people put it all over my dash for months--and you're one of the people i've seen reblogging a lot of posts about it LOL. so if you don't mind me asking, i was wondering what kind of character do you/did you play as? and do you have any sort of backstory for your tav that you'd like to share?

Hoooooooooooooh my god thank you so much for asking. I have a friend who comes over to watch me play on Thursdays and I make a powerpoint every week to catch her up on what she missed - this week's powerpoint literally has slides about my Tav's background (more on those later). This is about to be long, I'm about to drop ALL my lore so buckle up! AND THANK YOU FOR PUTTING UP WITH MY BG3 BRAIN WORMS!!!!! I'm glad they convinced you to play 😈

So to begin, I've been in my first ever dnd campaign with a group of friends for a little over a year now. I didn't know much about Baldur's Gate except that it was a dnd video game and that you could romance people. Me, being a Big Fan of Romance And Fantasy was like "okay well I'm in" and my friend actually let me start a game at his house. Through that, I met Shadowheart, Gale, and Astarion.

Backing up a bit to my character; I decided I'd put my character from my irl dnd campaign into the game since I already knew her whole deal. I get pretty overwhelmed with making decisions, ESPECIALLY with big open world games like bg3, so knowing who/what I wanted to be really helped me out.

In the campaign I'm in with friends, it's pirate themed, and I play a half-elf bard named Birdie Harp who's secretly half-siren (murder mermaid). To make a long story very short, she was born in the arctic and escaped her murderous pod during a coming-of-age trial where she also lost her siren abilities (hypnotizing voice, breathing underwater, etc).

I've watched a ton of Dimension 20 which is an actual play show on Dropout.tv (an "actual play" is where you watch other people run a campaign of dnd - like Critical Role, which a lot of people have at least heard of - HIGHLY recommend Dimension 20, as I find it incredibly funny and easier to get into than CR because of the episode lengths), and I knew that I really liked the silliness and theatricality of the bard class. I also loved the bards from The Owl House which helped influence my decision as well.

To be honest, Birdie is my first ever dnd character, so she's basically a self insert but with a MUCH more traumatic backstory than me (this IS dnd after all). As for the half-elf aspect, it was more of an "I want to be half mermaid, what's similar to that?" as opposed to a love for half-elves or something.

BACK TO BALDUR'S GATE - knowing I wanted Birdie to be in the game, I felt a lot less overwhelmed to come up with something entirely new - I knew a lot about the bard class having played one so I wanted to CONTINUE playing one (and I've learned even more since playing bg3!).

When I finally got my own game (I no longer play at my friend's house, but in the comfort of my own home), I recreated Birdie and started on my journey in earnest. I'm VERY MUCH someone who likes to be in control and know what to expect, so I've had guides and walkthroughs to help me the whole time - SUE ME! When it came to first meeting Shadowheart, Gale, and Astarion back at my friend's house, Gale actually immediately stole my heart - a kind, witty wizard who likes books and cats? Literally say less. I went home from that session with my friend fully thinking I'd be a Gale girlie until I really looked into the other options and saw The Vampire.

Blah blah blah, he's hot and funny, but he can also be incredibly soft, which really won me over in the end. So I've been romancing That Guy.

Through Acts 1 and 2, I wasn't all too sure about this version of Birdie's background - sure she COULD still be that half-siren from the arctic, but the game kept suggesting she was FROM Baldur's Gate. I LOVED the inclusion of the harpies in Act 1 and thought maybe that was a viable entry point for her backstory, but so far, she was kind of just... me? She was making the choices I wanted to make (and a few that I knew Astarion would like lmao), but she wasn't really her own entity apart from me except for her name. She also felt vastly different from that character I'd created for my friends over a year ago. For instance, my irl Birdie currently has a crush on a Gale-type character, but this Birdie is ass deep in Astarion (hey, sorry I said "ass deep in Astarion"). The thing I love about Baldur's Gate 3 is how you can really come up with your own backstories, since the in-game one for your Tav is so vague. It's totally fine to ignore tiny details in the game and mold them to your own headcanons for your Tav, but I was so unsure of what I wanted for this Birdie that I kind of internalized that she was from Baldur's Gate.

HEADS UP! The following has some spoilers for Act 3 and some side quests, so STOP reading if that's something you'd care to avoid (the last 3 paragraphs of this post are SAFE from spoilers):

When Act 3 finally rolled around (which is where I am currently, I only have the one playthrough so far because I become INCREDIBLY attached to things), I stumbled across the Water Queen's House in Baldur's Gate. Ah ha! Now this felt promising.

A temple dedicated to the Vengeful Sea Goddess, Umberlee, and her loyal Wave Servants to serve her. It's ocean themed, it has mermaid undertones, and their goddess is basically evil. Seems like the perfect place to FINALLY insert this version of Birdie. I wasn't 100% sure until I completed the Iron Throne mission and was faced with either handing a (mostly) innocent man over to the Wave Servants, or fighting to defend him.

Here are a few of the slides from this week's powerpoint that I mentioned all the way back at the start, starting with SOME background on the Wave Servants:

Ass and Shart are what I affectionately call Astarion and Shadowheart (Also I got this beautiful "Birdie" art on Pinterest which originated from someone named Dantrelium on Reddit):

Apologies for the small text here, but there are some more details about THIS Birdie here, which I literally made up/figured out earlier this week:

Essentially, this Birdie was born at the Water Queen's House as Kittiwake Crest - Kittiwakes are common arctic birds, which I thought would be a nice little homage to the original character she was based off of. She was raised by the collective of Wave Servants there, the main one being Flood Tide Allandra Grey who seems to be head honcho at the Wave Mother's House (in this reality, she is).

Since Umberlee is such a vengeful goddess, I imagine she asked her Wave Servants to commit unspeakable acts in her name, mainly drownings, which THEY see as merciful, but I think Birdie always saw as horrifying. Who were they to decide the fates of others? I also think that the Wave Servants themselves were abusive during her upbringing to keep her in line (but much like how Nocturne was a light in the darkness for Shadowheart, I don't think EVERY Wave Servant was evil). GOTTA have a classic tragic backstory.

Upon researching Umberlee, I learned that most of her servants are clerics, so in my mind, that means Birdie was raised to eventually become one, with her official title eventually going to be "Seawind Kittiwake Crest." Is she still half-siren/mermaid though? Not entirely sure. This IS a magical world though, so I'd be inclined to say yes, probably.

But when we first meet the Wave Servants, they're singing beautifully for their drowned sister, Holli. I think Birdie REALLY loved music and singing with her sisters and secretly trained herself in bard magic when she should have been learning to be a cleric. It's also a classic trait of bards to hide their pain through humor, so I often imagine the type of stupid things Birdie gets up to to bring herself joy (my favorite headcanon being when you meet Skittle the Rat in Wyrm's Rock prison - he's a rat merchant who speaks exclusively in puns. I think Birdie and Gale would excitedly throw puns back and forth with Skittle while Astarion and Shadowheart begrudgingly (and affectionately) roll their eyes in the background).

Another thing I love about the game is how you can string together your own ideas of how companions react to things between big cut scenes. For example, in my head, in my game, Astarion has really become a Big Softy thanks to how fucking Stupid (affectionate) Birdie acts in life and has drawn him out of his shell, but also runs a tag team scam with her where she plays her lute to distract people while he loots an entire place. Gale is Birdie's partner in crime when it comes to tomfoolery and loves to joke and fool around with her (so long as it goes easy on his knees). And Shadowheart is basically a sister figure who flip flops between sassing with Astarion and joining in on the fun. THEY'RE JUST THE BEST, OKAY? OF COURSE I'M GONNA WALK AROUND WITH A BUNCH OF IDIOTS. I LOVE THEM.

Anyway, back to Birdie's backstory: she always hated the atrocities that were asked of her, and she was looking for a way out, but was too scared to take that step and leave since the Wave Mother's House is all she's ever known. One night, while stepping out to quietly dip her toes in the water, the Mindflayers captured her, and that's where we start Act One, all the way up on the Nautiloid. She changed her name to Birdie to distance herself from her previous life, fully took up the bard class, and the rest is history.

Back to that dilemma with handing over that (mostly) innocent guy or fighting the Wave Servants: with encouragement from the party, they convince Birdie to face her traumatic upbringing and fight the Wave Servants once and for all. At this point in Act 3, she's basically helped every single person with their problems except her own. Here's another slide featuring Ass and Birdie:

That's right folks, Birdie faced her past! But the bad news is we don't get to see Astarion in this (audio from The Adventurous Adventures of One Direction):

(Video description - Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3 wearing the Wave Mother's Armor with the following audio:

Guard 1: Whoa, check it out.

Guard 2: Hubba hubba hubba.

Gaurd 1: Nice. I love dudes in skirts.

END VIDEO.) I don't want to tell you how many times I recorded that until I felt like I got it right lol. Also yes, I DID do a scum save where I handed the guy over ONCE just so I could see Ass in this outfit, but Birdie did canonically save Redhammer in my actual save file.

And honestly, that's BASICALLY it for now! My most recent save was after that battle, so I need to figure out if Birdie's going to go back with her party to confront the rest of (or most of) the Wave Servants, or if this chapter of her life is closed.

In an ideal world I'd LOVE to make one of those artsy gif edits of my Tav like this and this, but PS5s make it hard to download clips without uploading them to YouTube first which I don't really want to do.

Thank you SO MUCH for this ask, I had a blast writing it!! Sorry it's so long, I just love this game so much and LOVE talking about it. Please feel free to ask more questions OR chat with me about YOUR Tav! I'd love to hear all about them :)

[utilitycaster]

I don't know how you feel about it, but I was extremely frustrated last night when I found out that break was called after around 3 hours. I just felt that at that point they should have just made it a Crown Keepers episode instead of promising that BH would be back and then them barely being in the episode. I don't know, I'm usually really go with the flow with CRs creative choices, but this was just a real big swing and a miss for me. I wish this had all just been its own episode

So here's my feelings:

My thoughts on EXU Prime, and later Kymal, were that I love the player characters and their relationships and much of the worldbuilding (notably all of Niirdal-Poc and the Qoniira Tetrarchy) and I liked many of Aabria's NPCs but there were some pretty big gaps left in "what the fuck is going on" that left me feeling as though I wouldn't mind seeing the characters again but I didn't feel strongly about continuing the story in-world, if that makes sense. The Aevilux reveal, for example, was sort of what the main plot of EXU Prime hinged upon (ie, that was Myr'atta Niselor's motivation; that was what the deal with Ted was) and so the fact that didn't come out for over 2.5 years irl after it ended meant I'd just kind of said "well, some weirdo from Syngorn really wanted to do shit to Opal for some reason related to her sister, who is also her patron, and we don't know why either of these things is the case, and I guess that's what happened" and made my peace with it. Similarly, I don't know what the Nameless Ones want, and never have (other than, at one point, the circlet of barbed vision, and I don't know why they want it). I made a joke that Myr'atta, Poska, and Otohan are all kind of the same and honestly that is the thing: if you don't know why a villain is doing something - even if the reason is "because I love to be evil and terrible!" it's hard to care, and if those are only villains, it's hard to be invested in the story about the heroes either, even if you like the heroes as characters.

When I say I like how this ended, I mean it - I think it could have gone only a few ways, but I like that Morrighan and Opal have both become divine champions, Morrighan willingly and Opal less so (this is yet another case of "the gods don't do take-backsies on oaths", but also, I do feel for Opal despite it all because of Aimee's excellent work throughout). I mentioned how I felt about the exact details of Cyrus's death but I don't mind that he's dead. Fy'ra was a highlight throughout, as she frequently is, and I think she was faced with two extremely unpleasant choices and made a fascinating decision. But I'd have preferred to see this as a flashback (see next paragraph) or like. Just decide what happened. If I'm being extremely honest a lot of my issues with the Crown Keepers portion is that it felt like there was a very specific desired ending (Opal's complete corruption and Cyrus's death); I also said at some point well before that you can only do so much with the Crown Keepers while Dariax is there because Matt does, even if he's turning his brain off to play our Charisma-only kinda short king, know all the cheat codes for the main campaign. It's kind of like why how, even if the DM will control an absent player during RP, they usually have another player control in combat.

I don't mind that the Bells Hells portion was short. I think the choice to break where they did makes sense given everything else that went on. But I think that, criticism of the actual Crown Keepers portion aside, while you might have lost some of your audience for a Crown Keepers-only episode on the main feed, you would have preserved the drama of FCG's death better and gotten people more excited for the Crown Keepers if you had essentially run things exactly as done here but then just cut the two episodes together, which, as a pre-taped medium, they can now do! Hindsight is again 20-20 but: Run the first half of 92 as is. Break and tape a full Crown Keepers episode. Return to Bells Hells and narrate the message back from Dorian saying he'll be there, play out the rest of Bells Hells in the camp dealing with FCG's death, and then have Dorian arrive at the very end of that episode and end the episode when the party asks him what's been going on with him, then reveal there will be a Crown Keepers episode. Air your full Crown Keepers episode as episode 93, and then return to the main campaign with 94. It would have been better balanced in terms of time, people who wanted the Crown Keepers to return would have gotten hyped up, and people who dislike them or are neutral would have at least known what to expect and frankly if they skip the episode that's their choice to make. Hell, since there were 2 weeks? Could have even been like "hey, we'll do a Crown Keepers Marathon on Twitch and Youtube on some random weekday" to build up some hype!

So overall my answer is that I agree this wasn't a great creative choice. I don't think this means they shouldn't take big swings! But some will be misses and this was, while not an entire miss for me, at best a walk.

[dragonagitator]

My poor IRL husband has been subjected to my nattering on about BG3 for months now and has become quite bored by the topic, but tonight he finally agreed to watch some YouTube videos about the game and he did find those to be moderately interesting.

I then reminded him that he'd enjoyed the D&D game we played in with our neighbors a couple years ago, and I suggested that joining another campaign could be a fun way for us to make friends in our new city. But since he'd found it so confusing last time, maybe he should try playing BG3 for a while first as practice to get more familiar with basic D&D mechanics? Then he wouldn't have to constantly stop to ask questions at the table, and he agreed that might be a good idea.

And then I was like oh, you know how you found the D&D character creation process so confusing and time-consuming? Well, BG3 has this neat feature where you can play as one of the companion characters instead of having to make a new character from scratch, and he perked up at that.

I then mentioned that Gale was the BG3 character who most reminds me of him, so Gale would likely be the easiest origin character for him to relate to. So he should probably just be Gale because then he'd be able to start playing the game immediately with a prerolled character, and the Narrator would even help him along the way by explaining his backstory and motivations, and he seemed receptive to that idea.

at this point I'm internally screaming like

This conversation has been going so well for me so far that I decide to press my luck a little more.

Me: "You know what could be reeeeeeally fun? What if I sewed us some costumes of our Baldur's Gate characters so we could dress up like them and have ~☆~adventures~☆~ together, like--"

Him, excitedly: "Ooh! We could go to a Ren Faire!"

...which wasn't exactly where I was going with that.

But he does like the idea of a purple velvet tunic! Alas, he insists that he's completely incapable of growing a proper beard, but I'm still holding out hope for a slutty little clip-on earring.

[blujayonthewing]

I've had Elyss for eight years today and I'm feeling very normal about it

[sky-is-the-limit]

I like König purely becuase tall masked man but Gaz. Our man Gaz. He's beautiful. He's committed to what he believes in and he delivers some good one liners. In my eyes it's the same shit different fandom. Whenever a popular piece of media gains traction the only poc characters mysteriously disappear. I want to make it clear to the finicky people of fandoms you don't have to read or write or draw characters you don't like.That being said a discussion needs to be had about how fandoms often treat poc characters. To see people replace the main character with someone not even evolved in the main campaign is mind boggling. "But I don't know Gaz well enough" then you don't know Price well enough seeing as they're with each other most of the campaign. "But the actors sexuality" let me tell yall now how yall don't care. There's plenty of actors whose characters you write for are married with whole ass families or of a different sexuality and you still write their characters ignoring those facts. Yall didn't care before and yall dont care now don't try and act like you have some sort of upper ground. If you're not attracted to Gaz that's fine no one is forcing you to be. But completely writing out his character or not including him in TF 141 edits is mad. There's plenty of fics I've read where Gaz is not the main love interest but more of a friend/brotherly figure but at least he is there and the writer does his character justice. But I will say the Gaz fics are some of the fluffiest ones I've read. Real heart warming stuff.

AMEN. I also thirst after König because he's a big masked man, I devour all the smut content and the edits, I'm as thirsty as the next hoe in this place, there's nothing wrong with thirsting after König or Keegan or whoever else. There's also nothing wrong with NOT thirsting after Gaz, like no one is forcing someone to like a character they don't, that's just stupid. Also if you haven't played the games because you don't have access to do so or even don't want to that's totally valid and fine, many people read the wikis/watch vids/engage with the fandom and that's really cool to see, even if you're just here to thirst, been there done that.

With that being said, the stupid excuses that raise concern in this fandom are totally valid to be talked about. 1) "I'm not attracted to Gaz/I don't add him in 141 thirst content because Elliot is gay" What does the actor's sexuality have to do with the character? As far as I know Gaz' sexuality is nowhere discussed or confirmed, same way for the rest of the characters so why on earth does Elliot's sexuality matter in this context?

I don't see this being a big deal to people who ship Ghost x Soap since Neil and Samuel are only involved with women irl because guess what? It.doesn't.matter. They're ACTORS. Their personal lives have nothing to do with the characters they portray so why is it only an issue when it comes to Gaz/Elliot?

2) "I don't know him well enough." From that it's clear that you haven't played the games cause Gaz is literally who you play as in both MW1/MW2 so you know him as much as Price and MORE than Ghost or Soap. Which again, it's totally fine but when it's paired with König who you literally don't know cause that mf has only 1 paragraph on his wiki and the only thing said about him is that he had anxiety growing up (that some people infantilize and it's weird) in freaking 141 content that he has NOTHING to do with but leave out the first member of TF141 then...?

I've had many people under my posts commenting that the way some people treat Gaz in this fandom feels kinda racist and I admit this was not my initial thought due to me being privileged enough to not have it as such but after reading all these comments it does seem that way for some (like I said many do it due to either thirsting after masked men or haven't played/bothered with the games) and it's not fucking okay cause that goes further than fiction (someone said that 'oh they're fictional, they don't care if they're included or not' yeah Emily but you're excluding a 141 member from 141 content who happens to be a poc and his VA/FA is a gay man so let's talk about it.)

To the people who get annoyed/upset that I talk about this as if I don't have the right to, if you're in a fandom you can talk about the things you don't like/criticise certain behaviour without it being "such a big deal" since we're talking about fictional characters, when people are engaging with a fandom, spend hours reading/watching/playing content, they're also allowed to talk about things they don't like in said fandom. Relax.

Anyway, stan Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick cause he's the coolest mf in MW ✌️

[hollyevolving]

Oh hey I'm going to spend a lot of this episode on the verge of tears.

I haven't LARPed in 20 years, and I haven't played in a tabletop in over 10 years, because I have literally NEVER played in an in-person (non-video game) RPG where I didn't wind up bailing out before the end of the campaign.

And my reason for bailing was always the same: people hit on me without my consent. In every single game I played. So I just stopped.

There was a boffer LARP in my twenties where I was actually willing and happy to flirt with and even hook up with people who were my friends IRL. The trouble was that people who didn't know me at all would also try to get in, not just with me but with a bunch of other players. There was a whole culture of treating people who were poly or semi-poly as public property at that one. And there was no safe way to talk about it in the early 2000s. The vocabulary hadn't reached that community.

The last game was a tabletop D&D campaign where the DM kept having NPCs hit on my character. The DM who was friends with my then-husband. The husband who also played. Who I told how uncomfortable it was making me.

I never saw a game where a place was opened to speak up, and when I spoke up anyway, I was ignored.

It means the world to me that people have started talking about player consent and player boundaries, and have broached the topic of having open discussions during set up. People are no longer always assuming that everyone wants to be flirted with. And people are actually pausing gameplay to resolve player discomfort?

This is not the world I knew. This is much better.

And yeah, I'm sure it's not universally that good. But I'm talking about a kind of goodness that I never got to experience at all, from the ages of 16 (hey! a minor! didn't matter) to 32.

I still don't know if I could ever go back and play again, because my experiences ruined it that badly for me.

But I'm really glad that other people might never have to experience that at all.

[ganurath]

I believe I should send an ask to you sooo can you tell me about any of your interests? Anything about them, I’d love to know!

The various web serials of Wildbow, particularly Pale, are what got me on Tumblr. Pale is an urban fantasy story that started out as a murder mystery before spiraling roughly 3.7 million words out of the author's control. It has... a lot. There's a lot.

Wildbow's current web serial is a alternate timeline modern crime drama called Claw. Unlike Pale, this one looks like it may be as short as intended.

I'm also active in three TTRPG campaigns. My IRL group is running Tomb of Annihilation, where I'm playing a Reborn (intelligent zombie) Barbarian trying to figure out the circumstances of his death... And how not to be killed by The Campaign's Plot. The online games where I'm a player are a Changeling game set in New Orleans where my character basically is The Big Bad Wolf... and rooming with a senile reality warper and a mute banshee. Oh, and the other game is Invisible Sun, which is like my webcomic and/or fanfic reading list in that it's impossible to summarize.

I try to get at least some Warframe time in on the daily, as it fulfills my "numbers go up" cravings with less effort and more consistency than writing fanfic ever did. Recently finished building Protea Prime! I group up with my IRL D&D group on Tuesdays for it until recently, as we've switched to Deep Rock Galactic.

Recently got gifted a Magic the Gathering collection by my DM, who wanted to be rid of the cards, but didn't have the heart to sell them. He knew that I'd either do so or play with them, so I've been resorting my multiple collections (mine, his, and that of my older brother who thought selling wasn't worth the effort) to see what was playable/sellable. Found a fuckton of both.

My interest in xianxia is limited to the Beware of Chicken series, which is much better than the name makes it sound.

...Tagging this post is going to be a bitch.