#ours is bigger than yours

[thisblogisboundforglory-blog]

#8 - What Goes Around

Justin and Jason look up from their literature, suddenly, and at almost exactly the same time, because some out-of-place motion and a bit of fuss have caught their attention.

It's a girl. She's sprinted right under the spinning wheel, appearing from the lower level of the backstreet without warning, dodging the forty-passenger cabin (and the huge steel mechanism and the inattentive operators) with the grace of a dancer. With the body of a dancer, too.

"Oh my god," Justin breathes. "It's her."

Jason snatches the piece of paper from Justin's hand. He looks at the photo, looks at the girl, blinks, and looks back at the photo again.

"Can't be," he says.

"It is," asserts Justin. "And we are gettin' laid Vegas style." He adjusts his tight Wranglers, sets his hat on stun, and strides up to the girl. She is the one in the picture. Young, honey-blonde, dressed in cutoffs and a peach-colored tank top. Without makeup, feather boas, or Vaseline on the lens, she's even prettier. Younger, too. Although she must be eighteen because there are laws, right? Even in Vegas?

She's intent on getting somewhere fast, so Justin throws himself directly in her path on this tourist-clogged walkway, eases left when she does, goes right when she dodges, and smiles as if this were just one of those shall-we-dance moments. "Haven't I seen you somewhere before?" He asks.

"No," she says, and reverses direction.

Justin grabs her by the arm and spins her back around. He's a tall kid. Strong. Next season, he's trading in his red shirt for glory. The 'Devils are going to kick ass when he's finally in charge.

"Justin," Jason pleads. This walkway looks like a sidewalk, but it isn't. This is private property. And Jason has noted that every square inch has a camera aimed at it. And a few of the tourists are overdressed for the weather, with bulges under their Nautica jackets. And one of the half-naked Roman Centurions posing for pictures out on the real sidewalk has a haircut like—

"I was just going to call you," Justin tells the girl.

She looks all around her. Maybe like she's expecting backup. Or maybe like she's hoping nobody is following her. Either way, she doesn't look to Jason like someone out to show two cowboys a good time for the low, low price of $99.99.

Which is probably why she plants the flat of her Doc Martens into Justin's shinbone, knees him in the nuts when he crumples, and takes off like a jackrabbit, back through the big wheel from which she emerged.

And now all the characters out by the street (Roman Centurion, Cleopatra, Pikachu, three Michael Jacksons, an entourage of Elvi, some guys in skinny suits who might be the Beatles except one of them is really short and Black) are toed up to an invisible line. Obviously, there is a boundary between public sidewalk and private property that costumes cannot cross. They line up and point excitedly to where Justin is on his knees vomiting two yards of watered rum over the stamped concrete.

"Fucking cunt," Justin gasps, and staggers to his feet.

"Wait!" Jason yells. His voice is embarrassingly high and he feels like the second-string center he is when his quarterback rushes out of the pocket, jigs a wobbly left, and weaves through the oblivious crowd. 

The girl takes a shortcut down and through the five-foot drop into the ride’s mechanical pit.

Justin follows her and becomes a lanky plaid locust on the windshield of a forty-four-thousand pound enclosed cabin connected to the world's largest Ferris wheel, currently traveling at a deceptively sluggish one foot per second, which, applied to something the size and shape of, say, a human skull, has about the bite force of an American alligator—which could leave the target with just enough autonomic nervous system to twist and thrash as the body is taken up into the air no more than twenty feet until it succeeds in disengaging from the cabin. Which is when mass becomes about one hundred ninety pounds and acceleration becomes equivalent to gravity and-

At some point, Jason's brain stops calculating the Newtons of force and transfers that mental energy into the acceleration of his Ropers. He roars, skirts the wheel, and launches 225 pounds of enraged grief along the alley-like backstreet that leads to the parking lot behind these three casinos. He stumbles at the entrance to the underground tunnel – big enough to drive a truck through – and sees just beyond the gloom something that may be a girl and a dog running for their lives.

He doesn't follow.

What for?

What good would it do?

The thing he loves most in this world is already gone. The girl –

The girl was never the point.

Back at the wheel, whistles are blowing and large men in matching Nautica jackets are implementing crowd control. Here at the edge of the parking lot, Jason barely notices the old man waiting by Justin's truck.

Key.

Jason shoves a hand into his pocket, pulls out everything he’s shoved into it over the course of the afternoon: the cursed flyer, Justin’s keys, a phone, directions to the Cherry Patch Ranch, the drink receipts that always end up in his pocket because they’re on his credit card and littering makes him feel bad. He fumbles and drops the phone and receipts onto the half-gravel, half-asphalt. But he’s got the keys. They’re cutting a gash into his palm as his fist closes convulsively around them. His butt hits the ground. The jolt shakes a sob out of him.

Coyote leans against the pickup and squints into the tunnel, into the gloom that swallowed the intriguing female and her human-shaped she-pup.

Then, he unzips the fly of his jeans and calmly pisses on the truck, managing to hit the front license plate, the back license plate, the rubber testicles, and two of the four grotesquely oversized tires before he runs out of opinion to express. 

So much for the horse. Now what about the cowboy?

It isn’t easy for a one-legged Indian to sneak up on a cowboy in a gravel parking lot. Coyote manages to scoop up Jason’s dropped phone on the third attempt, cussing at his body's perverse desire to succumb to the laws of physics, and limps over to the weeping boy.

Right. Boy. Big as a cow, but mostly just boy.

"You wanna hand me up that piece of paper and go away now," Coyote growls, "Quick. And I forget I ever saw you."

Jason gulps air like it's the fourth quarter, tries to get up, fails, stalls, and clutches both fists around the keys; oblivious to anything other than the determination to dissolve into a big plaid puddle on the hot asphalt.

Coyote shrugs and pushes random tiny pictures on the smartphone screen. He holds it to his ear and a female voice on the other end sighs, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Coyote grins. "Lucky guess," he says.

The sky, he notes, is going blood red on the western horizon. It always does this time of day.

[hisbutler-problematic]

what i really love about black butler is they said what if there was one little boy and for some unknown reason absolutely unhinged occult stuff ALWAYS happened around him

they try to play it off by being like “oh he’s a phantomhive, they deal w all kinds of stuff” but then they make it very clear that this little boy is the only one who has to deal with shit like demons and shinigami and werewolves and zombies, etc

like no one is super surprised when he’s like “oh just another day dismantling the zombie factory” but there’s also a distinct “wtf do you mean zombie factory” air to it

queen: there’s witches and werewolves in germany that you have to deal with ciel: why the fuck do i have to go to germany (his only problem w that sentence)

and then the little boy has the audacity to be like “tbh don’t really believe this witch and werewolf thing :/“ to his DEMON butler

[uncanny-tranny]

weight loss is in your control. stop complaining about something that's completely optional. make healthier choices. obesity is a disease. you dug yourself this hole you keep bitching about

It's really predictable that when I make a post about fatphobia, people inevitably try to leverage their own fatphobia against me, so it's time to cash this in:

I need other non-fat people to really reckon with this, with the fact that seeing fat people as equal is so taboo to some, that you obviously should only care about fat people if you, too, are fat. Framing fatness as a disease, framing other people's entire existence as a disease? Consider how you treat diseases. Do you kindly sit down and have a chat with a disease, or do you eradicate it through any means necessary?

Framing human existence as a disease is inherently wrong. Fat people exist, whether or not they are "healthy," whether or not you approve of them. It's funny and harrowing to know that I only "should" care for fat people if I myself am ~afflicted~ with the disease you desperately want eradicated.

I don't typically respond to this, but I weirdly face fatphobia because I'm a thin person who sees fat people... as human beings. So I truly need other thin people to face this, to understand that it isn't "about health," it's about eradicating a certain type of person. If it was not, this person wouldn't feel the need to frame this as a disease, as a plight, as an abject failure on my end. This isn't about anybody's health. This is about a primal disgust response.

[mewtwo24]

Okay but like. Two things about the volume 8 statue [redacted] chapter.

Firstly. By god no amount of "yeah it was unhinged" comments on this website prepared me for whatever the fuck that was. I need at least 5 business days to process.

Second, was I the only one who read that scene as:

Hua Cheng, teeming with self-satisfaction to see Mu Qing near writhing with scorned disgust and fury: this was a 100% successful trip

Xie Lian: our statues are fucking in Mu Qing's palace oh god oh fuck what do you m e a n successful

Hua Cheng, smirk getting even bigger: this was a 100% successful trip

[bandzboy]

i’ve been meant to talk about this but a lot twt stans have been agreeing to this which is we should boycott hybe fully and genuinely! they openly work with zionists (here's a thread that explains more about scooter braun and why you should boycott) and according to what i just saw… apparently yoongi’s movie is gonna have a screening in isnotreal and even after all the protests trucks and hashtags and emails that have been sent to this company this past few months, it’s clear they don't care about what we have to say and so, as much as we all want to support our faves, we have to make this company's pockets hurt. by that i mean, not buying albums or merch or stream music from their groups until something is done! unfortunately, these companies only gaf if money is not put in their pockets! so please download music listen to music illegally wtv you need to do we need to unite this time to make them open their eyes and realize we do not stand for this

[saturnniidae]

Shyly walks into your inbox. Starts chewing everything up thrashing my head around growling hissing slobber everywhere carnage death violence and then I run aaway

Man wtf! Someone missed his rabies vax or smth??? Can't have fuckin shit in these dragon infested wilds! Go back to whatever tower you gaurd, mighty beast!! Before this day we had no (minimum) quarrels, but I simply cannot let this slide. Now, the beef is PERSONAL😭🙏🙏

And don't you DARE try to pull ts again! Do NOT play w me lil bro I will literally use my ancient spell book to shrink you down to a miniscule size then put you in my orb for observation, similar to a child with a bug in a jar. If you're lucky you might even get a stick or leaf for enrichment..

And if you don't behave ill be turning you in to the kingdom gaurd. you will be put in the stocks and they'll throw tomatoes at you, ridiculing you like the unfunny court jester you are, all the while.

[starchaserdreams]

You know what came out when I was 12? Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. HP was my bible.

This meme is so accurate it hurts.

[elftwink]

been learning to play ironsworn (gritty fantasy ttrpg which you can play with a gm but is mostly suited for solo or small group co-op gmless play) after having the rulebook pdf for several years (stars finally aligned to remove invisible thing blocking me from reading it idk) because i'm on another solo ttrpg kick & i don't know what took me so long to get around to this game because it genuinely is exactly what i was looking for. years ago when i was playing through solo 5e modules i should have just been playing ironsworn (believe it or not, 5e isn't very suited to solo play and is extremely clunky when you try lol).

also though i have dabbled in some other solo ttrpgs, a considerable amount of them are journaling games which is fun but imo considerably more work (usually by the time i'm a quarter of the way through the journal entry, i know how to entire scene played out and i want to move on to the next gameplay thing, so i get frustrated and bored quickly. it feels like when you solve a level in a video game but don't have the coordination to pull off the necessary move so you have to spend 20 extra minutes doing something you already figured out), so i really appreciate like not needing to write something for the game to progress (ive been taking notes for my own record since im playing solo and thus am not really out loud roleplaying the way you do in a group, but i definitely could do that instead and not take notes and the game would still function perfectly)

& ive been playing by myself but also in the past ive played a lot of ttrpgs in very small groups which has been other games but is mostly dnd and like. we also should have been playing ironsworn so that having a gm was not necessary. have definitely played games where we had to adapt the rules soooo much to do something that is just base game included in ironsworn. plus it's rules-light enough to do pretty complex moves that pose difficulties in bulkier games (ever introduced someone to dnd and they tell you they want to do a sick backflip and catch something and then attack and you have to tell them that will require several different consecutive rolls and some creative liberties with how the rules are 'supposed' to let you move? you can just Do That in ironsworn. use the strike move and describe it. done!)

the one thing is that although it's rules-light enough to theoretically play any setting or genre (some with more difficulty than others), ive found so far that like... the grittiness and sense of threat is very built into the mechanics so that would be sort of difficult to work around or change (but i think it's great from a game design perspective). what i mean is like, okay: you start with 5 max hp. there isn't really a way to raise this max hp, you just slowly gain abilities (assets) that make you less likely to have to lose the hp in the first place, or that make it easier to recover. when you encounter foes, you rank them on a scale of 1 -5, and enemies on the lowest side of this scale do one harm to you, while enemies on the highest side do five harm to you. so even though encountering an epic enemy won't always be deadly due to the assets you have, they are ALWAYS capable of taking you down to 0 hp with one good hit. so the feeling of threat is much more present compared to games where your character starts to be able to just tank and push through a failure or huge threat.

admittedly also i'm playing solo, im still learning how to balance combat, and also i built a character who has NO combat talents and iron (the close quarters fighting stat) is one of my lowest stats so i personally am under much more threat than if you built a character who knew how to fight or who could do deadly harm. but also the other thing about combat is it's extremely difficult to maintain control of the fight; you have to score a strong hit to do it on basically all moves, and there's a really limited pool of moves available when you don't have the initiative, and obviously none of them really favour you. i don't know that this makes combat genuinely more difficult, but it does make you feel like the fight is always about to spiral out of your control. every second you let it drag without decisive action feels like it brings you closer to dying. like i said, this is a feature of the game design and not a problem in any way. just thinking about it because when i was initially learning i was going to try to supplant it into a homebrew fantasy world of my own but the tone just wouldn't be right. and that it is somewhat difficult to replicate the kind of worlds that i typically play or run for dnd, which tend to lean somewhat sillier and definitely much higher fantasy

but i like to try new things and tbh especially in dnd i find that i very rarely feel that sense of threat and when i do feel it, it has nothing at all to do with the actual mechanics and reality of the combat and everything to do with how well the dm sells it to me and makes it sound and feel scary and dangerous. which is a testament to what a good gm can do for you but i do appreciate the threat feeling more built-in and also being actually real.

[kicktwine]

So how was stormblood? I know it's very hit or miss for people, so what're your thoughts?

I understand why it’s hit or miss! It — to get to the point i would be straight up lying if I said I was an unbiased consumer because I’m not, I’m a coastal American mid 20s rando with a Lot of very current cultural baggage around concepts like patriotism and freedom. And Hamilton references. It all has a sweet and strong and very anti-occupation message (along with themes I very much enjoy dissecting like the constant assertion that it Doesn’t Have To Be This Way, or the expansion into You may not understand this person but you must be able to accept them,) but when combined with Stormblood’s shakier coherence in writing and dialogue and pacing, it comes off as A Bit Off. to me. And I think it missed ever so slightly just due to how it was all structured and set up with the characters we have and motivations we have because the stuff OUTSIDE or Adjacent to the main story, despite how out of place it could feel, was structured great!! Like the Kojin and the Ananta trial and the Kugane mishaps and trying to murder Zenos twice and the ghost ship. Could the main structure have come across very well yes absolutely! It does it on and off it succeeds in there often! But sometimes it doesn’t. I can see a lot of where concepts were promised and not fully delivered, pacing was a bit off, things just happened without really belonging there (despite how much I loved Susano, he could have been better structured. same with many instances and also I feel like the unethical science should have been MORE IMPORTANT THAN IT — maybe it comes back. Who is that scientist.), sometimes dialogue felt somewhat canned. I feel like in a consequences-heavy expansion, many things just didn’t have important consequences, which was very strange

HOWEVER! I cannot give the new gameplay features abd dungeons any crap they are all SO GOOD. And so PRETTYYYYY. And there were so many solo duties that ruled! Every dungeon in this expansion was like whoa this is a PLACE im in you know what I mean??? I’m in a place that’s big and there’s people and there’s NEW MECHANICS and active time maneuvers (??!!!!!!!) and unique fights! I can jump on the roofs in Kugane! And, mind you, when the dialogue was good, it was good. Lyse has a fantastic voice actor. Alisaie is my favorite girl elf creature in thw world. Estinien is like the best p- the guy ever. also m’naago is my new friend. The tower was a great part of sb to me despite my singular gripe. I think Zenos’— I know it’s controversial to some people because he does assume your wol to be a bit more murderous than some people would prefer their characters be and doesn’t take no for an answer, but his um speech did something to my brain a little bit

ON that note the ending was very fast?????? Or like — not FAST, but I wasn’t expecting Zenos or Shinryu to go down in one fight. Two co-op fights, right next to each other. I kind of wanted to beat him up myself. And when Zenos was so impossible to beat before. I was expecting both of them to be WAY harder. Though Shinryu is a COOL fight I’d do the royal menagerie again in a second. I was kind of expecting a three stage trial? Like Nidhogg? I love going into space hiiii big dragon where were you this whole time… u were shafted… but u could not be suffered to live so. Maybe if we’d gotten an instance of fighting the dragon alone after beating the trial?? Could have been Themes. I don’t know

anyways no I can’t quite pin it down, but I’ve said it before I think they had the outline for the story and then built it and went oh this is too much and not enough at the same time and got stuck writing the whole thing after getting stuck in the story they already had. A COMMENDABLE job for getting turned around like that, way better than a lot of video games stories out there, good gameplay and areas that didn’t feel too empty. glances at coerthas falcons nest area. I think the ways they did the exploration thing was good, having us venture further into occupied territory etc, but so much exploration stuff felt oneoff and not there to do much for someone who has been skipping almost all of the side content except stuff I’ve been told is good. It almost felt like they were Trying New Stuff a lot, and some of it succeeded some of it failed. Such is trying stuff!! Such is trying to imitate what you had while making something new and exciting! And I can’t fault them for that

so like — putting aside the fact that I haven’t done post-sb which is like missing 40% of the Thing according to past expansions and my thoughts very well might change, i would 100% do the fights again, maybe watch some cutscenes, but I don’t think I’d NG+ this one. where is that lady selling buuz it is a CRIME i did not get to have any buuz let me buy one yoshi p

[skrunksthatwunk]

have just been introduced to a kitten named rascal who lives on my floor and whose babysitters (who are not his owner?) were trying Really hard to goad me into adopting which like. he's a little baby and he's so so so silly and he barely even bit me but like also. this cat isn't yours???? anyway if the owner's giving him up then I might finally have a cat which like AHHHHHG

[cringesunday]

special place in hell for the "x are the best years of your life" crowd

[rivilu]

Everyone's on about Miguel beefing with a 15 yo, which sure it's funny, but y'all are letting the Spot, "I now declare this child that MY INVENTION inflicted this anomalous occurrence on, my lifelong nemesis", the ULTIMATE beef haver, to go unchecked.

[its-tortle]

thinking about history of man and how perfectly it encapsulates the patterns of romance and female loss throughout history. it references mythologies to show how women have always been the pining, desperate lovers while men have cast them aside and blamed them for the consequences of their love. there's no rewriting it. heartbreak is age old and universal. there was heartbreak inside the walls of jericho. but still it never feels that way. over and over, she loves him more than anyone ever has in the history of man.

[el-im]

my mom keeps sending me weird little collages she’s making of us trying to prove I look like her. I ask where she’s making these and she goes ‘hey man I just learned how to do that’

[swiftfootedachilles]

what do i have to do to get people to read my stuff actually like im not about to get in everyones faces begging for attention but i dont understand how im expected to make FREE fandom content without much feedback on my work

[alma-artts]

guys. royals by lorde and jenny humphrey.