#art having a grading system for everything

[paul-simon-juggling]

Tonight I bring you two increasingly chaotic Simon & Garfunkel anecdotes, courtesy of Penny Marshall from her autobiography, "My Mother Was Nuts."

#you can read the whole thing for free on the internet archive #there are other small anecdotes in the book #mostly about artie of course #but these two were my fave #once again i would watch a sitcom about the four of them #art having a grading system for everything #maths teacher behaviour #smells like autism to me /hj #paul being the babysitter while everyone else takes acid #h i s g u i t a r c l o s e t #paul made artie wear a hairpiece which he didn't like #he said join me #the friend group ever #paul simon #art garfunkel #carrie fisher #paul simon and carrie fisher #penny marshall #simon and garfunkel #simon & garfunkel #s&g

[hyp3rfixation-h3ll]

burgertron HATE ged prep . burgertron PILEDRIVE WHOEVER MADE IT SO THAT YOU HAVE TO TAKE 4 SEPARATE TESTS TO GET A PIECE OF PAPER THAT SAYS YOU DID IT into THE FUCKING DIRT!!!!!!!

#the captain's rambles #if you couldnt tell im having a bit of a rough time <:'] #my mom is like “oh well youre Making it stressful it's gonna be okay” I HAVE TO FUCKING DO SHIT WITH VARIABLES #THIS SHIT WOULD BE STRESSFUL EVEN IF I *WASNT* ALREADY DREADING DOING IT #i HATE education i HATE SCHOOL i hate everything this STUPID SYSTEM STANDS FOR and most importantly I LOATHE VARIABLS #whoever put LETTERS ?? in MATH??? Die. #because now i have to fucking figure out what x and y are on a practice test #i dont even HATE math normally. in every other instance of math im actually okay w/ solving questions #ged math ??? is on some shit #FUCK geds man i hate it here . i wanna just fuck off and go do whatever and be productive with something i Actually Enjoy Doing #not having to sit here and do tests so i can get a piece of paper that does nothing but allow me to apply for a community college #<- a place i am EQUALLY unexcited for and dreading #miserable fucking books i have to do work in. and then i gotta do like 4 different equally fucking miserable tests for each subject #and then i have to pray to god i didnt fail and i got the minimum passing grade of AT LEAST 145 out of *200.* #im going to destroy Everything. #i dont want congratulations for doing this shit either because i didnt wanna do it IN THE FIRST PLACE !!!!!! #im only doing this because i HAVE TO to get my parents off my ass about it not because i WANNA #if it were up to me i'd be doing just art and collecting or other hobbies i ACTUALLY ENJOY and i wouldnt be worrying about academics #but we cant have nice things so now i have to stress abt this shit like a college student studying for midterms #rant over. im gonna go eat now . pray 4 me that i dont kill someone /lh

[inkskinned]

they don't see it, because it is around them like air. to them, it would have to be through movies, through magazines. they think it happens outside of life, like it must be selected to be interacted with.

but you discovered in the fifth grade that you couldn't wear shirts with words on them, it was an excuse for someone to look at your chest. you were catcalled before you were in middle school. sometimes you look at that memory and deny it - surely that can't be right, you were young. but you were in a skirt, so maybe that was a natural byproduct. it was a skirt from that place "justice by limited too" - a store literally for kids. it was popular around then. you wore that skirt twice and then never again.

you can't wear headphones, because what if a man wants to talk to you? there's a guy on the internet who complains that women shut themselves off from being approached. at night, you often keep the headphones positioned but with the sound off, just in case you need to hear something behind you.

you learned at 12 that you can't make eye contact, don't acknowledge the aggression. just walk faster and hope he picks on somebody else. don't wear your hair like that. do not park next to that kind of car, park an entire cityblock away if you must.

you can't go to the museum, you're sitting and tying your shoe when he approaches you and mentions that nobody understands art anymore. that in the whole world, it's just you-two. you have no recourse for eating a meal (it's rabbit food if it's salad, and someone will roll their eyes, eat a sandwich. it's pick-me behavior if it's a burger, we get it you're a cool girl). if you like mushrooms you are cottagecore, which is cheesy. if you like video games you're an egirl (similar to a pick-me). boys do not get categories, but if you point out the categories are sexist, you are told okay but these girls really exist.

it is somehow developing, a little undercurrent that you've been uncomfortable with. the nickname "karen" went from being "a white woman that uses her whiteness as a weapon, particularly against people of color," to now mean "any woman raising her voice or being even a little upset." the reappropriation of a term used specifically to call out white women for their racism has set your skin on edge. now it is just another version of "bitch," one that can be said on television. recently you saw a woman get called a karen because a drunk driver sideswiped her, and she screamed when it happened. the comments on the dashcam video all say "why do women always scream about everything." "when has the world ever been bettered by women screaming." "this fucking karen. she deserved to get hit."

in the sitcom, it's a joke that the wife is furious; slamming her hands down into the sink. i do everything around here, might as well do this too. in your house, your father is always in-his-office. before you know better, your first boyfriend is the type to say it's just easier for you. you used to beg him to take you on dates. he used to make a big deal about it, about the sacrifice of effort, even if you were the one who did most of the planning.

someone on the internet makes a "POV: the most boring person you've ever met" where he puts a towel on his head and just talks like a normal person. his impression of a boring woman is just a woman that is talking about her pretty-average life without exaggeration.

you are sometimes actually sad in the reverse, because actually you did used to struggle to pay attention in conversations. you were also easily bored of normal things, your adhd pinging off of every radio tower in the vacinity. it took time and therapy and patience, and now you delight in the small things about your friends. you like having them show you their organizational systems and talk about their taylor swift tickets. you are entertained by them because you learned to be, even though your brain is structured to only be excited by novelty. you kind of hate the idea that the reason your father will never actually pay attention to you is that you're no longer interesting. eventually the shine wore off, and you were just a person, not a spaceship. he never learned how to just, like, form an actual intimate friendship. it was always at a distance, this sense - emotional closeness was too much. (and yes. he's homophobic).

you're already tired of whatever the fuck is happening with the words "divine feminine", a rancid take that is basically just a rebranding of the patriarchy in action. what the fuck do they mean "being small and delicate and needing protection" is feminine. the words they are looking for are that they want a partner, not that their desire for equivalent support is relegated to gender. the human desire for community is not actually gendered at all. also, what fucking wolves are these "divine masculine" men even battling. fuckken taxes? shouldn't their "desire to protect" also mean "protect you from emotional neglect", or are all emotions off-limits (and how sad would that be. that's a horrible bar to set.)

and they tell you it's really not bad actually, because it's just there. they suggest you get off the internet or you stop reading that book or you stop thinking so hard about the movie or you stop just-being-a-feminist because honestly it's a killjoy sort of thing and then you tilt your head to the side and there's that little siren in the back of your head. if things were actually fine, being a feminist wouldn't put a stop to anything, it would go completely unnoticed, because you wouldn't have any comment to make about any of this

but you are ruining your own life, they tell you. also, girls don't sit like that. also, all girls are catty. also, all girls are bad drivers. also, all girls just need a cute bracelet and an iced coffee.

you do like iced coffee, is the thing. when you close your eyes, the world around you has this strange note to it. and once you hear it, it never stops ringing.

#writeblr #this is far too long #sjw bullshit #idk i MEANT to write about somethng else completely and if i have time i will #about like . how if ur gay this is even more obvious #bc they like. hi ur 3 now where is ur boyfriend #and ur like. :) good news mother i have activated the lasers in my plush dog and he is dancing in the guts of my barbie

[thepringlesofblood]

the vibe im getting from FHJY is that this is the season where they really lean into the high school aspect. that probably sounds bonkers since its called Fantasy High, but like. hear me out.

Freshman year, they come at high school from the "John Hughes" "80s teen movie trope" vibe, which is to say different from the real-world experience of high school.

it works great! operating in that frame of reference makes everything flow really well, and hits all the high-school-related-media notes in a very satisfying way while putting its own spin on it and not getting bogged down by the actual slog that is high school in reality.

there's still a lot of more modern inspo, but it stays in the kinda expectation-suspension-tropey area of how 80s movie high school works.

Sophomore year is spring break! I believe in you! They're not at school! They're on an adventure!

They lean into being a teenager and coming-of-age themes a lot (obvs), but the only big reference point to the institution of high school is that it'll be worth 60% of their grade.

A huge point, to be sure, and the exact kind of objectively unfair but somehow not against the rules shit that happens in high school, but not the main driving force of the season.

arthur aguefort also does a bunch of wack shit but it's more fantasy than it is high school although its a lot of both.

they lean into adventuring as a set career path much more, with the school giving money for hirelings and offering a basic incentive for other students to go, so that's a loose connection to the real-world career counseling high schools have, but again, not the main thing.

VERY Important though: we are now very much in the present. The viral shrimp party, livestreaming Kalina, online banking, the epic of Gorgug building a cell tower? this isn't john hughes 80s town anymore, this is now. (at least in Solace).

Junior year

almost everything in the trailer is about academia

we've got the cool doodles-in-the-margins style art and intro

in the interviews and BTS (so far), the cast have talked a lot about what they were like in high school (not the 80s)

and the precedent that The Seven set where the MacGuffin was getting their GED? It's time.

we're getting into what is actually hell about high school - the institution itself. the arbitrary standards that academia in the US holds, and how it leaves behind, punishes, and fails its students in its extremely important role of preparing them for life as an adult.

i could talk about this all day, but personally for me the quote from the trailer that shot me back to my junior year of high school was "You have perfect grades, and it still might not be enough for you to graduate"

riz's arc this season is shaping up to punch me in the academia trauma and personally i can't wait for the catharsis

Brennan has shown time and time again that he Gets and wants to tell stories about the ways in which the US education system affects, hurts, shapes, traumatizes, changes people, and how they survive and recover from it and make their own lives. I for one am so so ready to see that reflected with the bad kids.

#original post #fhjy #fantasy high #fhsy #d20 #dimension 20 #dropout #brennan lee mulligan #look i just have a lot of feelings #and opinions about how people just accept that high school is hell and don't ask why? who benefits? #tbh evan kelmp being like 'this is tracking' is what made me first notice that like #brennan Knows what he's talking about and wants to talk about it #the seven really dove deep into it and I fuckin loved it

[seat-safety-switch]

In the ancient past, folks used to think that “progress” meant automating everything. You’d go to an automatic diner – an automat, in their futuristic speak – order some food from a little locker, and eat it without ever having to interact with another human being. And now, their dream has come (almost) true. Due to budget constraints, the cool shiny chrome and Art Deco styling has not happened. Instead, your local grocery store now has an automated checkout system which accuses you of shoplifting if the wind blows over your shopping bag while you’re trying to load it.

I’ve complained previously about the gall of this industrial-grade insult machine, and I won’t belabour the point further. The real point is: why didn’t restaurants turn into this, too? To answer this question, I posed as an independent news reporter by not showering for a week, and headed to the local sushi restaurant. Here, a robot “wait staff member” (no gendered language for robots, please: it produces ambiguity in their parse system) was ready to deliver my food to me, on demand, however much I wanted.

Like all computer-based things, I knew that the robot was designed by humans, and so was the fancy iPad they chained to the table that I could use to order food. And humans never think of things like “ordering a negative amount of food.” All I had to do was sit and drink my complimentary water, and plug in a keyboard to the iPad. I watched out of the corner of my eye as the “order quantity” indicator went up.. and up.. and up.. and up.. and after a couple hours of the robot not kicking me out, it went to 2,147,483,647, and overflowed the counter. Now, the iPad proudly displayed that I was ready to order negative two billion items of tuna sashimi. I decided to add a few other items to the order, and then pressed a button which I assumed to say “wench, fetch me my food.”

Friends, and I use that term loosely because I know at least some of you are undercover law enforcement, I did not expect for the restaurant’s robot to literally catch fire, its lithium-ion batteries rupturing in an unquenchable fire as I waited patiently for my meal. On the plus side, when the bill did come, ushered to me by the replacement wait-staff-bot, I swiped my credit card and made enough money to purchase a small tropical island. Maybe there really is something to this future business.

[diaphobic]

(WIP)Diabolik Lovers: College AU

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any headcanon type stuff on this blog! But I wanted to post about a college au, it’s the one I typically write in and how I perceive the characters. Since the diaboys are really old, and the stuff that happens in the series is kinda (ehh), I aged them up a few years and added a night college.

There’s only a few big differences;

Students range from 18+, the uniform is slightly different, the school has dorms available, and no Yui ): she’s a human minor (set the girl free) but there are two MC’s (male and female) to play as.

Ryoutei University

A night school for the rich, working, and inhuman. The school is partnered with the Demon World’s top university. Though the existence of demons attending the school is not publicly know, the faction of the church that supervises the school knows. The school was made a sort of co-Ed (in terms of species) after a war took place in the human world, and they wanted to come to an agreement.

The school has one main building with additional buildings around the campus that hold events for sports, music, and other social gatherings.

There are dorms on the campus divided between male and female students. The female students are on the east side of the campus, and the male students are on the west. They are not allowed to cross between dorms. There’s a student led security team that surveys the dorms every day.

The schools budget is seemingly endless, they have just about everything in this school: pools, tracks, courts, a church, and other recreational activities for the full time students to enjoy.

━━━━༺❀༻━━━━

Basic Timetable of the schools schedule:

Classes begin: 8pm

Classes end: 3am

After school activities offered from 3:30am to 7am.

Classes are an hour and a half long. Depending on the student, they may have lunch starting from 11pm to 1am.

Cafeteria serves food until 2am

A typical meal consists of: rice, meat, miso soup, and a chosen desert.

━━━━༺❀༻━━━━

Diaboys Grades!

This is based off of a four year graduation system.

Sakamaki Family:

Subaru: freshman

Triplets: sophomore

Reiji: Junior (completing graduate classes)

Shu: Junior (he doesn’t have enough credits to be one, though…)

Mukami Family

Azusa: Sophomore

Yuma: Sophomore

Kou: Freshman (he was held back a year due to his work….)

Ruki: Junior (he hasn’t been at this school as long as Reiji, so he has about ten less credits than Reiji.)

Tsukinami Family

Shin: Sophomore

Carla: Senior (he couldn’t lie about the copious amounts of school credits he had collected)

MC: Freshman! MC came to this school recently and (if they had any) didn’t have their school record transferred to this school, so they have to start over regardless.

Because this is college, depending on the MC’s skill level in different courses they have a chance to take classes with all of the boys!

━━━━༺❀༻━━━━

School Events

There are school events that the students can join! Monthly events sponsored by the school to places like the “Princess land amusement park” at night.

Sports festivals happen often as the students are encouraged to exercise and maintain school spirit.

Art exhibits hosted by the art department happen often, usually when the students are having their exams to showcase their work this semester.

There’s a swim, basketball, football, and tennis team along with various indoor club activities. In short, almost everyone can join a club activity they’d want to. (Laito tried out the photography club, but was promptly banned after he took naughty photos…)

━━━━༺❀༻━━━━

Tuition??

The school is EXPENSIVE!! All of the students tuition is double the price of a community university (not counting dorms)! Karlheinz is emptying his wallet for his kids…

#diabolik lovers #laito sakamaki #reiji sakamaki #ayato sakamaki #kanato sakamaki #subaru sakamaki #shu sakamaki #diabolik lovers reactions #yuma mukami #mukami azusa #ruki mukami #dialover #diabolik lovers headcanons

[callsignfate]

Hiii!

Can you please write headcanons for Laswell and Valeria having a wife who is an highschool art teacher? (or even just a highschool teacher)

Hi!

I wrote these because I immediately had ideas for them both! I also want to say how underappreciated teachers are as a whole and they deserve more everything. A close family member of mine went to college to be a teacher and often substituted a lot, so that helped me a lot. I wrote this in the mind of the American School system because Kate lives in the USA and because I only have knowledge in the American School System. I will be posting Valeria's next!

Part One/ Part Two/ Part Three

♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡ ♡ She 100% is in awe of how you deal with so much attitude and teenagers all day, everyday, for seemigly way too many days straight.

♡ Loves to do her paperwork sitting next to you while you grade papers or create assignments. She often finds it easier to do paperwork with you, so she loves this time.

♡ if you come home stressed about parent teacher conferences (let's be honest here half the time it's the parents fault for the kids awful attitude and they blame it on the teachers or say some rude shit) she will often tell you that it's not your fault and make you a warm drink, because she was going to make her umpteenth coffee anyways.

♡ You both often are exhausted from paper work and fall asleep at the table until one of you wakes up and wakes the other up to head to bed, or to make more coffee and keep going after a power nap, teachers have a ton of shit to do.

♡ If you are an art teacher she loves when you bring home the art work show it to her, though after the walls and fridge are full she will mentally beg you to put it in a drawer somewhere.

♡ Kate loves when you talk about students and call them 'your kids' knowing that you love your job even though sometimes like her you wish you could take a long well needed vacation.

♡ She also feels sad when you tell her about a student who had opened up to you/you had found out that they were going through something at home, she hates how terribly out of it you are and seem wishing you could save them.

♡ Sometimes, she gets an odd day off in the middle of the week and wishes it was easier for you to call out. She will understand completely, but she will wait for you to get home.

♡ Genuinely shocked when you say you need more supplies, you had already seemingly bought way too many off already, "How could they go through that many pencils?!" Or "How often do you write on a whiteboard that you already need more packs of markers?"

♡ Watching you spend your own check on them makes her realize just how little you get paid and how underfunded the school you work at is. She loves and hates watching how excited you are to spend your money on your students.

♡ Loves watching you plan fun lessons for your students, often running them by her to see if she has any feedback, she doesn't but she will grin as you explain and the pure excitement in your voice.

♡ Kate loves your outfits, often being as she describes 'very you' and loves to watch you happily wear them as you get ready for work.

♡ Will make jokes about your patience with them often, "How do you deal with them?" Loves it if you counter back with."I deal with you." She adores the pure amount of willpower you have to deal with teenagers every day. She 100% says all of the time, "I don't know how you can do it, I couldn't."

♡ Hates how much time you put in for your work that isn't paid, often noticing how you work late into the night to get papers graded and making up lessons on your own time.

♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡

(I will edit this more when I get done putting my cows in for the night, yes I own cows, they are only pets, I love them.)

Masterlist/ More like this/ Request

#kate laswell x reader #kate laswell #laswell #call of duty laswell #laswell cod #laswell mw2 #cod laswell #kate laswell fluff #kate laswell x wife #kate laswell x fem!reader #kate laswell x gn!reader

[theresattrpgforthat]

I’m probably gonna sound very disjointed. But I have an idea for a superhero campaign where all the P.Cs are kids cause all adults have disappeared.

I thought MASKS would be a good system for this but my friend informed me that in order for MASKS to work you kinda need mentor characters.

So in your opinion, what would be a good, easy to learn superhero based system to run this game.

THEME: Superheros, Kids - Only

Henshin, by Cave of Monsters Games.

Henshin A Sentai RPG is a storytelling tabletop game about young heroes with transformative powers who battle both monsters and personal problems. It borrows from a Japanese superhero culture of color-coded masked teams, giant robots, and over-the-top special effects. Anyone can tell fun, collaborative stories in Henshin!, regardless of familiarity with the tropes, and the game showcases a diversity of settings and characters for every player.

This book includes instructions and actual play examples for everything needed to start playing Henshin! right away. Also included are the eleven Color playbooks, seven ready-to-play settings, original exclusive art, and references to digital downloads. Resources and information can be found at henshingame.com. Let’s Henshin!

Henshin is inspired by the Tokusatsu genre of superhero media, and reminds me intensely of Power Rangers. Your characters will wrestle with personal obstacles such as dealing with their temper, their failures, and the way they are seen by their peers. The system is inspired by No Dice, No Masters but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily GM-less, just that it doesn’t use dice. Henshin’s settings are also very flexible, so you should be able to write your own custom setting in which the kids have taken on super-powered relics in order to survive in a world without adults.

Masks: Retconned, by Sam Roberts.

You’re like most teenagers, with one small difference: You’re a superhero. Fight villains, be part of a team, save the day, and maybe, slowly figure out who you are.

Masks: Retconned is a game of teen superhero adventures, designed for 3+ players. Most of the players will take on the role of individual Heroes on a Team. Imagine these as the protagonists of your new comic book series. One player takes on the role of GM, embodying the superheroic setting, supporting characters, and villains.

If you like the basic premise of Masks but you don’t want to deal with the adult entanglements, you might want to take a look at Masks: Retconned. The game is very bare-bones, and only has the basic mechanics - your stats, your emotions, and the graded success scale and what it means for moves. The rest is meant to be designed as you need it. So if you don’t mind doing a little bit of game design before you sit down to play, you might want to check this out!

Powered by Cereal, by bismuth.

Become the Teen With Attitude you always wanted to be Inspired by tokusatsu hero teams and magical girl squads, PbC is a game about building a brightly-coloured Hero team and playing their adventures across a Series, fighting to save the world from evil!

PbC brings all players together to collaborate on crafting a Series, with its own aesthetics for heroes and villains, its own setting, and unique qualities for each hero. Play comprises the Episodes of the Series: both the Heroes' lives, and fights against Boss characters. It uses a relatively straightforward d6 system and encourages the Hero players to think about how their individual actions work towards a team strategy, bolstering allies and keeping momentum!

Characters in PbC are embodiments of different virtues, and these virtues will define your personal strengths, as represented in the Verbs and Adjectives assigned to your character. Relationships are also important in this game, and this is represented by connections that each player will have with side characters, whether that be positive or negative. Overall the game is still very lighthearted, as it’s inspired by Saturday morning cartoons.

When you try to do something in PbC, you roll a number of d6’s, and check to see how many results were unique. The more unique results you have, the more successes! This means that there’s a cap on how successful your character ca be, but I think the fact that any roll is going to have at least one success really communicates the tone of this game. This another game where the setting is build-your-own, and I don’t see any mechanics that require adults to be part of the setting.

Teens With Powers, by Unknown Dungeon.

Teens with Powers is a one-page roleplaying game about extraordinary young people, inspired by TV shows like Teen Titans and Avatar the Last Airbender, and shonen manga.  As a group, the players and GM come up with the setting, themes, and age-range of the characters. Then each player creates a character with a singular power that they can use to help solve problems and fight evil, while also traversing the trials of being young adults.

Teens with Powers uses a dice-pool system to resolve risky actions, and a back-and-forth combat system to allow of maximum expression and excitement. Also included is a back-page with GM advice and rules.

Teens with Power is a stripped-down Forged in the Dark game. There isn’t much of a setting involved in the first place, so you should be able to build your own setting to fit your preferences. The downside is that there isn’t much guidance or inspiration for powers, so it might be worth it to check out something like Supertables to help you come up with your powers.

This ruleset has a mechanic called Limit, which tracks how close your character is coming to breaking down - push too far, and you lose control of your powers, likely causing damage and hurting something or someone you care about. This might be also good for a high-tension game where the disappearance of adults is the cause of a lot of stress and fear for your characters.

Super City, by David Garrett.

One in every one hundred children in Super City is born with super powers. You are one of those children. Together with your classmates at Super City Elementary, you save helpless citizens, rescue lost pets, and eat delicious ice cream.

Utilizing the ultralight VRBS system, Super City is easy enough for a six year-old to master, but also provides the structure for anyone to generate a superhero story of their own.

Super City was designed to be able to run for small kids, so the rule-set is definitely very light. Your powers will be represented as verbs, and you’ll gain better control over your powers as you progress. The game is organized over a series of scenes, which will present you with a number of problems that you’ll have to solve. You also have a collective pool of Energy, which is meant to track how close your characters are to running out of steam. The goal is to get through the mission without running out of Energy, which depletes when you fail a roll.

This is a game without a setting or history, which means you can backfill whatever lore makes sense for your characters.

Cosmic Ray Kids, by Hedgemaze Press.

Cosmic Ray Kids is a single-page (front and back) atomic-age adventure roleplaying game for all ages. Play as superpowered youngsters who fight the forces of evil with heroics and heart!

Cosmic Ray Kids uses a push-your-luck style of gameplay, that looks very much like the PUSH system by Cezar Capacle. Rolling a 6 is the best possible result. If you roll a 4 or lower, you can choose to roll again - but roll higher than a 7 and you’ve gone too far!

This game also has a Boost resource that is communal, and can be spent to improve a roll up to a certain point. This gives the players an option in case there is something that they can’t risk a re-roll for but still need a success, and also encourages the group to work together to figure out how to solve problems. If you want a game that has a retro-cartoon feel that encourages the characters to work together, Cosmic Ray Kids might be worth checking out!

A Special Extra:

It’s not a superhero game, but Children of the Fall is a GM-less game that takes place in an apocalypse that has turned adults into bloodthirsty monsters. It’s very gritty and dark, but an interesting premise.

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #game recommendations #dnd #indie ttrpg #asks #superheroes

[spacevixenmusic]

Unfairly Maligned Games, Vol. 2

Games I loved that got low scores, review bombed, or have some other weird negative stigma attached to them that I think is unfairly earned.

NOTE: I don't believe in giving games a number score or a letter grade. Maybe I'm just bad at criticism or very easy to please, whatever.

We Happy Few [2018]

Originally advertised as some kind of procedurally-generated stealth horror survival game that people kept insisting was "like BioShock" even though there is literally zero correlation or even vague resemblance to BioShock, this game's crowdfunded development process was a long hard rollercoaster ride through concept and scope changes, getting picked up by major studios and publishers, a constantly evolving marketing campaign, and a loud, rude blasting of negative press right before and right after launch due to bad take misinformation and some game-breaking bugs on Day One.

We Happy Few started as a Kickstarter project from Compulsion Games, a small studio known only for their previous game Contrast. In Contrast, you play as a child's silent imaginary friend in a cabaret dancer costume who can phase in and out of backgrounds to become a shadow on the wall and solve platforming puzzles. Working together, you help the child navigate through her emotions as her parents struggle through their own relation-shit in an early 1900s European port town. Seeing as their first game was stylish as hell and widely praised among indie crowds, it's no surprise that a Kickstarter for a new game from that studio became an instant success, so much so that it caught the eye of several big studios (Microsoft and Gearbox Publishing), and it quickly turned into a vastly bigger project with many more hands working on it. The proc-gen element was downtuned and streamlined, and the main emphasis of the game became about survival, stealth, and story.

And let me tell you. In terms of story, this game is phenomenal. The simple premise is that you play through the lives of three people living in 1950s-60s England, under a government that is forcing everyone to take these candy pills called Joy that make you instantly and excessively cheerful, so you can easily forget about all the horrible things that the government wants you to forget ever happened about The War, the Missing Children, and all the people still actively dying of malnutrition from the ongoing Famine and all that. The people are mandated to forget their worries, grin and bear it, pretend everything's just peachy keen, and if you refuse to take that pill, people will notice your un-cheerful behavior and call the police to track you down and beat you senseless. Can't have any Downers in our perfectly lovely happy town, now can we?

The game's art direction features two stark parallels between a dreary English village and early 60s-70s psychedelia (with a hint of A Clockwork Orange for good measure), and a soundtrack influenced by bands of the era, such as The Doors, The Beatles, The Byrds, etc. The dichotomy of looting dilapidated rural homes while avoiding plague-ridden peasants versus the rainbow streets and lava lamp light show sex dens in the cities is truly astonishing. It's a game about, funnily enough, Contrasts between the bright and cheerful life everyone is forced to think they're living, and the grim depressing reality that lies underneath. Many people initially assumed this meant the game had some kind of anti-drug message about not relying on your depression medication cause pills can't fix everything, but it's clear right from the get-go that's nowhere near the case. We Happy Few is a story about revisionist history, the pressure to conform, submission to a corrupt system that might not even know what it's doing, and the very British notion of Keeping Calm and Carrying On as if major atrocities hadn't just been committed in a massive world war.

Gameplay-wise, this is a strange hybrid of survival and stealth, with combat definitely being present, but taking a backseat for the most part. It's much easier to distract enemies than fight them, and many of the characters excel at hiding in plain sight, provided you don't do anything to make people suspicious, like running and jumping around or breaking into houses to raid them for food. You do have options and skill trees though, so the game does allow you to tailor it to your own playstyle to a degree. I had significantly more fun playing it slow and methodical, sneaking up and choking out enemies, and watching NPCs bump into each other awkwardly while quoting ancient English literature for no apparent reason. Taking it slow, reading every scrap of paper and Journal I found, my final playtime was about 50~ hours.

Again though, let me gush about the story for a second. The base game has three full chapters, each of which has you play as a different character with different strengths and game mechanics (including such wildly inventive ideas as the burden of motherhood taking up inventory space if you don't periodically check on the baby you have to leave at home, and carefully maintaining a balanced blood sugar level so you don't collapse?!). Their stories are all deeply connected in ways that aren't immediately apparent but are cool as hell once the pieces of the puzzle come together. Each chapter more or less takes place at the same time, but the events always play out slightly differently, because memory-altering drugs fuck with your sense of reality and make us all question the reliability of each narrator. If that wasn't already cool enough, the game also features three DLC packages where you play as three ADDITIONAL characters, each of whom is also a recognizable face in the main story if you're paying attention. These DLCs add even more neat mechanics and open up the story events even more in and around the main game. They were honestly all an absolute blast to play, especially if you were already as invested in the story as I was. And the subject material goes all over the place, touching on such highly specific topics as 60s science fiction, gay lovers, Beatlemania, trippy drug-induced murder mysteries, the British occupation of India, and plenty more. I can't stress enough what a unique storytelling experience this game has to offer. It really is unlike anything else I've ever played! But alas, we should probably talk about why nobody else seems to be as enthused about the game as I am...

Aside from the huge misunderstanding about the game's message, We Happy Few was bombed with criticism on Day One due to some major bugs that hadn't been ironed out - remember, for a $60 game backed by some big names in the industry, it was still very much an indie passion project from the start, and it's clear it wasn't given the full AAA treatment at all. Several big-name Game Reviewers (a field I detest almost as much as Cartoon Reviewers) ripped into the game for its bugs, and while I can't fault people for being mad at broken quests and at least one full-on softlock, not everyone experienced those bugs, and many of them were ironed out in later patches. It's almost like chasing those Day One reviews and videos are a bad idea for people who want to Enjoy Games. Sadly, first impressions are all that seem to matter anymore in gaming, so those early negative reviews still sting to this day. But people out there will give games like Skyrim a perfect 10/10 despite a significant number of similar bugs (hell, they're almost a charm of the series at this point), so why should an indie game not be given the same graces?

In closing? We Happy Few is a phenomenal story in a completely fresh setting that really doesn't feel like anything else before it. The game has been criticized to hell and back for its early bugs or for "boring" gameplay or whatever the Review outlets chose to report, but to me it stands out as an extremely unique experience in a sea of Lowest Common Denominator games. I'd rather play an imperfect or buggy game with a unique or highly niche premise than yet another polished piece of pristine pop pleasure, and I genuinely think people would enjoy games like We Happy Few if they just lowered their goddamn expectations for once in their lives.

#unfairly maligned games #we happy few #fuck the haters I have nothing but love and praise for this game #it hit ALL my pleasure sensors and really resonated with me #and if I can convince even one other person to try it then I have succeeded in my mission

[thefortressofscience]

Random tips for writing a martial artist!

The ruleset for the competitive form of their style (ie Tae Kwon Do, Judo, Wrestling, etc...) will inform how that character approaches fighting. For example, Karate where points are awarded based on how many hits you land means that fighter might prioritize keeping someone at a distance, whereas in Knockdown Karate where victory is achieved through a KO that fighter may prioritize trying to pummel someone with close range attacks

A mixed martial artist will often have a "base" style. This is usually their first style and then they build around it by taking techniques from other styles in hopes of creating their own effective blend. Common base styles in MMA include Boxing, Wrestling, Brazilian Jiujitsu, and Muay Thai. In the last decade there's also been a wave of Karate practitioners joining MMA as well.

Related to the first two points, no two styles are fully comparable and no style is better than another. However, styles that pressure test their practitioners with a healthy dose of sparring and competitions will generally produce more competent fighters. After all, you don't get good at what you don't practice! So if you're writing a fight, the fighter with a more pressure tested background will probably come out on top more often than not.

Disabled martial artists exist, and also compete in tournaments. For example, in Paralympic Judo, the only difference is the fighters start off grabbing each other's uniform and the referee saying certain commands outloud so the fighters know to return to the center or avoid the edge of the arena.

In real life, fights between two experienced fighters are less like in movies where two characters are constantly rushing each other with few pauses. Generally, two fighters will try to feel each other out, making on the fly risk assessments with periodic high intensity exchanges. This is generally known as "explosiveness" in martial arts. Those on the higher end of explosiveness tend to resemble all out brawls more but the characters are still doing risk assessment with periodic lulls in the action. That said, this is a stylistic choice for the author, so you don't really need to consider this one if you're more interested in Rule of Cool.

A blackbelt in Japan typically does not mean the same thing it means in the West. In Japan, the first degree blackbelt is usually just a sign that you are now competent (and thus tourney-ready). It is not uncommon for a Japanese martial artist to get their shodan (first degree blackbelt) at an early age based on how many training hours they clock. Furthermore, most Japanese martial arts only have white and black belts. The colored grading system is largely a western invention to serve as a motivational tool.

Size matters. You might hear a lot about how size doesn't matter but that's just not true. A larger person has an advantage that can't be ignored. However, there are ways around this and a smaller fighter can still win. Typically, this requires the smaller fighter to keep larger foes in mind when they're training. It also requires them to strategize around their larger opponent's advantage. This applies specifically to two trained fighters. A smaller well trained person is still much more likely to defeat a larger, untrained enemy.

I want to stress these aren't rules or a do's and don't list, it's just tips for writing martial artists. You can also just disregard everything here because you're free to go hog wild. That said, I hope this can be useful to people wanting to write fights.

[kraro-school-life]

✦ Studyblr Introduction ✦

Hello! If you´re reading this, welcome to my blog! I am pretty new to Tumblr, but I´ve always admired the Studyblrs here, so I thought of making one too. I am really excited to start this, so let´s go!

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About me ✮⋆˙

My (nick)name is Karo (♦️)

pronouns: she/any pronouns

I am Polish, but now live in Germany

16 y/o, leo

English is my 3rd language (so it´s possible that I make some mistakes, forgive me pls)

My favourite colour is red!!

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Education ✮⋆˙

Gymnasium

As I´m still in high school I still have all my chosen (mandatory) subjects, but the ones I chose to have advanced are: Math, Physics, Economics and Art

My current average grade is 9,6 (out of 10)

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Hobbies ✮⋆˙

Figure Skating!

I do figure skating and am in the 8. Kürklasse (German system). I am currently training for my exam.

Art!

I love everything related to art. I have to keep a sketchbook for school, but I really enjoy working very long on paintings.

Adventure & Mountains!

Skiing, hiking, climbing, mountain biking, camping, cycling, you name it...

The internet!

memes, youtube, Pinterest, etc. Also kpop; I love kpop in general, but Stray Kids in particular (they´re my ult). I´m a huge STAY, but other groups i like are: Xikers, Nmixx and Xdinary Heroes.

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My Studyblr ✮⋆˙

Why did I make a Studyblr?

Motivation! Tracking and actually posting my progress makes me even more motivated to study. Because pretty pictures make everything better!!

Discipline! Honestly, I spend waaaay too much time on my phone. With this blog I hope to make a routine for myself and minimize my screen time, as I´m going to be posting here instead scrolling (hopefully).

Give back to the community! Studyblr helped me discover countless useful tips and tricks, as well as cool blogs that motivate me! I want to share my experiences in my own little corner of the internet for people to find.

Goals:

find a way to study sustainably, without burning out every other week

get my goal grades on exams and reports

figure out what I want to do in the future (mainly deciding on what I want to study in university)

genuinely enjoy my life as a teenager, and not “sit locked in my basement all day” - as my friend put it after seeing my grades lol

What to expect:

This blog is both a journal and archive for my academic journey, a diary of sorts. There will be everything and anything related to school (mostly tracking my progress), but also just my life. All photos are mine, except said otherwise.

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Navigation ✮⋆˙

original posts ➜ #karoriginal text ➜ #karorambles updates on stuff ➜ #karoupdates reblog ➜ #karoreblog day to day posts ➜ #karodiaries

Studyblrs I really like ✮⋆˙

@plantingatree | @shoosiopao | @miprimordialsoup | @why-the-heck-not | @ink-stained-clouds | @isasarchives | @proto-skyentist | @cyberstudious

#studyblr #studyblr introduction #studyblr intro post #study blog #studybrl #intro post #studying #karoriginal

[myjunkisyuzuruhanyu]

This is just a looong thought on skating and technique...I am sure not everyone will agree with me but does that matter to me? We can agree to disagree bc neither you nor me are judges or the ISU 🤷

No matter what you think about Shoma's jumps especially the "beloved" 4F some ppl get so worked up about today again for the 544373th time in Shoma's career but truly besides skating fans who love the technical side of it and ppl who need something to complain about anyway imo most fans and casual watchers don't really care about technique. And why is that? Because most ppl can't tell jumps apart anyway, because most ppl are not interested in whether it's "perfect" technique or not, and as for Shoma because Shoma had a brilliant clean skate, because Shoma is drawing ppl in with his performance and not with his jumps and bc Shoma definetly deserved 1st place with a margin today. So really what's all the fuss about?

Some haters make it sound like Shoma getting high scores with his skate is the end of skating. I never in my entire fandom experience saw anyone say "oh Shoma or many other skaters with similar problem does not have perfect technique I am torn away by the sport because of it"...ppl come for the pretty, for the performance to the music, and yes jumps are cool and all but this is not what makes ppl stay in the fandom or get attached to skaters! Am I wrong?

Shoma is right when he said that the emphasis nowadays is too much on jumps and skating isn't this popular anymore in the world and he wants to put more emphasis on the artistry because artistic performances draw ppl to the sport. Frankly skaters not making it through their programs without falls or skate without emotion won't help making skating more popular. In the 6.0 system no one cared for the "right" technique of the jumps or underrotations it was all about the performance and if you landed your jumps. I don't pretend to understand the 6.0 system and I also don't want it back bc this system is fairer but tbh technique even today is really not the most important part of this sport imo. If some are keen on perfect technique then let's make a jumping contest and grade who has the best technique?

Ask yourself when you watched skating for the first time, did you care for the technical part or for the artistry? Did you like a skater because of their performance first or because of their technical stuff? Could you tell the jumps apart? Could you see what is UR and not? I for sure did neither know nor cared about anything technial. Did it make you NOT watch the sport bc someone had a "bad" technique? I guess not.

Ofc it's still a sport and jumps are an important part of it and ofc you have to evaluate them in a way and yes admittedly scoring is very controversial a lot of times and ISU needs reforms and more accountability of judges BUT it doesn't mean the wrong ppl win. Do I agree on all scores Shoma or anyone else gets? No I don't, but anyone seeing the protocols sees that judges aren't exactly agreeing on everything either. There is still a lot of subjectivity and anyone denying the subjective part is delusional, but there are rules in place and Shoma is neither breaking any rules nor does he judge himself and tbh if ISU would have put an emphasis on jumping technique they would never have validated Shoma's 4F in the first place bc it's not like he was never jumping it like this, tbh it actually was even much worse. This is Shoma's 9th season and the 9th season Shoma's 4F was ratified as such...for me at this point the same and same and same discussions about technique are really the least important part of skating...and it looks like ISU thinks just the same oops

So how about enjoying ice ART skating! Like the German word "Eiskunstlauf" puts the emphasis on ART in skating and I think the full package with artistry and jumps is more important than perfect technique.

And Shoma has the full package. He has the difficulty, he has the jumps even if not with "perfect" technique, he emotes to the audience, he makes ppl feel and get attached to skating, he has great deep edges, skates at lightning speed, he's a king at upper body movement and so much more. He is a brilliant skater and ppl who fail to see it just miss out on a wonderful skater. No one says Shoma's perfect but for me personally he comes pretty close. 😌

#figure skating #shoma uno #don't ask me how this got so long

[herrlindemann]

Sonic Seducer - 2008, interview with Flake

thanks to ramjohn for the scans.

While his colleagues from Rammstein are working at full speed in the studio on the still untitled successor to their 2005 album 'Rosenrot', we invited the eccentric keyboardist to our psycho couch for an entertaining one-on-one chat. Flake Lorenz on success, idols and the advantages of not owning a wallet!

What is your profession?

I'm forced to call myself a musician, anything else would be a lie! The last thing that would probably apply to me would be the term entertainer. You can't really call me an artist either...

Why shouldn't you be considered an artist?

Because such a view presupposes that I would make art! Music does not necessarily have to be art at the same time. As is well known, there is also dance music that is artistically less valuable.

Do you still have stage fright before performances today?

I still have stage fright, but mostly in situations where I'm not 100% sure about how the performance will go — like during my solo performance at the Berlin Volksbühne some time ago, for example. I prefer to follow a precise schedule with times and other details. I feel very safe knowing the band is standing here, I'm standing there and the crowd is standing over there etc.

Are you a generally insecure person?

Yes. I chronically doubt myself and all other people and things.

Would you describe yourself as a perfectionist?

Not at all! Quite the opposite: I'm a real Schludrian - fortunately!

What was your career aspiration as a child?

I really wanted to be a piano player. In the early days I had lessons, but I didn't have my own piano. So in my free time I practiced at the kitchen table on sheets of paper that I drew the keys on. At some point my parents saw that I was serious about playing the piano and bought me my own piano.

Were you a good student then?

At first, but later I became very bad. From the 7th grade I basically saw myself as a punk and school didn't interest me that much anymore.

Did you have to be bad at school to be a punk?

No, not necessarily. I became a bad student all by myself... I actually would have liked to have done better. In the early days of Feeling B I was still in 10th grade - when I came home from our performances at the weekend, I couldn't be completely rested and fit again at school on Monday morning!

What do you like?

Shipwrecks.

What do you hate?

Very much! I probably hate a lot more than I like. I couldn't come up with a top 10 hate objects without neglecting the rest of the stuff.

Where is the most beautiful place in the world for you?

At my home in the country, just outside of Berlin.

Who would you want to swap roles with for a day?

Actually with nobody. I've got enough trouble with myself that I don't necessarily have to take on another role!

What do you have in your pocket at the moment?

A tissue.

That's all?

And money. I always keep my money in my ass pocket — I've never used a wallet in my life!

Out of pure post punk conviction?

No. It's just that I wouldn't think of keeping my money in a wallet in real life. So far it has always looked like this: I kept my credit cards loose in my pocket on the front left and small change on the right. In the ass pockets, notes and banknotes for free use. That's how I got through life for a long time. A friend was very concerned that this would scratch my credit cards and ultimately render them unusable. So he gave me a small bag with a magnet closure. However, this magnetic clasp erased the magnetic strips on all credit cards, garage door openers and alarm system code cards the first time I opened it, so I had to apply for everything again! A clear sign of non-improvement! I dare not imagine what could happen if I used a wallet!

How important is success to you?

There's small successes and big successes — it doesn't bother me that a lot of people think I'm great. With the fame I get from working with Rammstein, the positives and negatives are roughly balanced. It is important to develop your own position on these things. If the TV program annoys me, I turn it off — the same with Rammstein: If I don't want to have anything to do with the band, I put my hat on, go to the back room and have my peace.

What will your life look like in old age?

I don't want to say anything wrong at this point. Mick Jagger said at the time there was no way he would still be on stage singing 'Satisfaction' when he was 50... I also never thought I would live very old. The way of life in this band is anything but healthy: the touring life, the flights every day, the excitement, the noise pollution...

Also, there is a lot of drinking. It has gotten better, but in the past people often drank to the point of unconsciousness; especially in the east. Always. With a reason or without.

Do you have idols?

I think Helge Schneider is very good.

What's your biggest fear?

Quite factually: before dying.

What are your goals in life?

There are none today — I'm done, I've done everything I set out to do!

Do you have any regrets?

My only regret is that I didn't do various things. Then nothing.

#Rammstein #Flake #Flake Lorenz #interview #translation #2008 #*scans #*

[bratanimus]

33. you are such a nerd

@khaleesa, thank you for this awesome prompt! It was a lot of fun to write. And thanks to the lovely @pipergirl17 for betaing! I hope to work on the other prompts in my Ask box soon.

~*~

Hoard

Eddie sprawled on his stomach across Chrissy’s white eyelet comforter and peered over the edge of the bed, like the invisible Bilbo peeping at Smaug. All around herself, his girlfriend (someday he would stop italicizing that word in his mind, but today was not that day) had spread a veritable dragon’s hoard of paper, folders, notebooks, flashcards, pencil cases, and pens of all colors on the pink shag carpet. 

Sitting cross-legged in her running sweats, framed in a patch of afternoon sunlight, Chrissy looked luminous as she carefully pried open the lid of a box of new pencils as if it were a treasure chest.

“Tell me again,” Eddie said.

He pushed up the long sleeves of his T-shirt and rested his chin on the heels of both hands in what he hoped was a coquettish and distracting manner, his jean-clad legs bent and kicking his socked feet behind him like he was at an honest-to-god Annette Funicello pajama party. 

“Why are you doing this, exactly?”

Chrissy gave him the briefest of eye rolls, because she’d already started to explain on their way upstairs…though she’d been interrupted when they’d passed the Cunningham household’s actual dragon, who’d bellowed after them, “Door stays open!” Eddie could almost feel the mistrust billowing like acrid steam from Laura’s sewing room. Well, the old reptile would get used to him sooner or later. Or not. 

“Make fun all you want,” Chrissy huffed (oh, she was cute when she was miffed at him, and maybe he shouldn’t rile her up, but he was a dumbass still getting used to having her undivided attention, so sue him if he occasionally resorted to his old habits of poking and prodding and other sorts of ill-advised provocation, and anyway, she didn’t seem to mind). “But it’s the end of spring break.”

With that, Chrissy pinned him with a friendly glare, as if a reminder of the calendar date should’ve made everything crystal clear. 

Smirk (and dimples) still firmly in place, she broke the eraser off one of those brand new pencils, an unexpected act of violence that made Eddie’s eyebrows shoot upward. She tossed the nub into the flowery little trash can under her desk. Then she grabbed a fat, pink, arrowhead-shaped cap eraser from a pile of them and twisted it onto the top of the pencil. 

“Ah, I see,” said Eddie, not seeing at all. 

Chrissy only laughed at his confused expression, so he lay flat on his chest, chin on the bed’s edge, letting his arms dangle so he could fiddle with the felt tip pens scattered on the carpet. He stole a glance at Chrissy and pondered why one eraser might be somehow inherently better than another, so much so that she had to amputate and reattach, like some nerdy bookworm version of Mary Shelley.

“School starts back in a couple of days, right?” Chrissy went on as she attacked the next pencil.

“Uh-huh.” 

Eddie shoved aside her big green binder and slid his fingertips along the pens as he lined them up, orange and purple and red and blue—

Bonk! Another brand new nub landed in the trash can, and another cap eraser got reamed by a wooden writing instrument.

“I always reorganize my school supplies after fall break, Christmas break, and spring break. It helps me stay focused.”

“Mmm-hmm,” he bullshitted, as if he had any idea about systems for focusing.

He arranged the pens according to the colors of the rainbow, remembering Roy G. Biv, the acronym his seventh grade art teacher had taught for the progression of colors. But Chrissy owned way more than the seven basic shades here. There were at least two dozen. Did she carry these to school every day in a pencil case, a small treasure trove in her pink backpack?

“I love school supplies,” she gushed, continuing her mutilation of the pristine set of Ticonderogas, popping off a dozen heads one by one and replacing them with bloated Frankenstein ones.

He knew she had a thing about control, and Eddie had seen her do her fair share of feverish erasing in the two classes they shared this year. But were twelve cap erasers really necessary?

Messing with the felt tips on the floor, he must’ve asked that last bit out loud, because Chrissy said tightly, “Oh, you know. Just in case I need to correct a lot.”

Oops. He’d touched a nerve. He needed a distraction.

“I bet you pack five extra pairs of underwear for every overnight trip,” he mused, “just in case you have a blowout.”

“Ew!” she squealed.

An eraser nub hit him square between the eyes, which made him flinch and blink. 

“Seriously, Eddie.  Are blowouts something I should worry about?”

“Oh, I dunno. Hang around with me long enough—”

A larger arrowhead eraser smacked him on the cheek. He caught it before it fell off the bed, stuck it on his pinky, and made it speak over Chrissy’s giggles.

“Look, lady,” he Muppet-squeaked, “you have an eraser problem. And possibly an underwear problem. You need help!”

Chrissy pointed to his pinky. “Speak not to me, nor my Trapper Keeper, ever again. You’re just jealous of my loot.” 

“I have absolutely no use for dragon-guarded treasures,” Eddie murmured, quoting Tolkien as he slipped the eraser from his pinky and laid it reverently in Chrissy’s outstretched hand, “and the whole lot could stay here for ever, if only I could wake up and find this beastly tunnel was my own front-hall at home.”

Watching him, Chrissy’s eyes glimmered, prettier than any gemstones. His cheeks warmed. 

It was something to be looked at by her, wasn’t it? To be admired? He dropped his gaze back down to the pens he was arranging and hoped his face wasn’t too red.

“That’s it.” The words were barely a breath.

Eddie’s gaze rose again to find Chrissy staring down at her hoard of loot, hands upturned helplessly on her knees, the arrowhead eraser still in the center of her palm like the One Ring.

He tried to match her hushed tone. “What?”

“That’s how I feel. All the time. This house. All my things. It’s just…stuff.”

And she had no other home but this beastly one.

Eddie's heart pinched.

“Come up here,” he said.

She did, lying on her stomach next to him, chin resting on her folded arms as she watched him arrange the felt tips into different configurations with one hand. Gravity made his veins bulge a little; they looked knobbly and greenish-blue in the bright light from her window. His hand could almost be a pale dragon skittering over its mountain of treasure.

He didn’t know what to say, because he couldn’t say what he wanted to.

Come away with me. Let me be your treasure. You are already mine.

Leaning into her with one shoulder, he reached awkwardly into his front pocket and scrounged for the ever-present handful of mismatched polyhedral die, which he tossed to the floor, a field of shimmering stars around what he’d written across the landscape of her Pepto-Bismol carpet.

“Wait.” Chrissy’s head lifted from her forearms. She blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Does that say—”

It did indeed. Eddie had arranged her plethora of pens to read 

NERD

“You are such a nerd,” he whispered, creasing his brow and dipping his chin for emphasis. He wondered if she could somehow read on his face what he was really thinking.

Chrissy looked back at him and smiled like he’d just placed a crown on her head. He swallowed. Maybe she could read his thoughts. Eddie tucked her lovely smile away into his own mental hoard, for safekeeping.

“Takes one to know one,” she said, cutting the inhalation for his retort short with a kiss.

He nodded his fervent agreement until her widening grin made further kissing more difficult, but not impossible.

The eraser lay forgotten on the floor with the rest of the hoard. 

#hellcheer #hellcheer fic #eddissy #stranger things #stranger things fic #chrissy x eddie #eddie x chrissy #eddie munson #chrissy cunningham #ask fic #writing prompts #my fic #hoard

[erkasuniverse]

Tomorrow is my grandmother’s celebration of life. In her honor, I want to share some cool facts about her with you, my internet family.

She was a sixth grade math and science teacher in the public school system for 17 years. She taught sex ed every year and was famous for telling the kids to look through the book and “get it out of their systems” before she taught the class.

She loved Pepsi, and sometimes we’d sneak it to her in the hospital.

Cereal was her favorite breakfast, and Cheerios or Honey Smacks were her favorite.

She loved cats, and owned several over the years. Also owned my cats eventually because she kept feeding them wet food. They betrayed us for Friskies.

She loved old Westerns, and we’d watch Bonanza and Gunsmoke with religious regularity.

She loved to read. When we finally got her a kindle, she had me come set it up, and I set up every one after that, because no matter how many times I explained the set up process she couldn’t do it. Really, I think she just liked having me do it.

She loved celebrating holidays, and had themed shirts and jewelry for Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas—they were god awful, but she had a sweater, vest, and pair of earrings for every one.

She loved doing arts and crafts. She taught me crochet, even though I was terrible at it. If you had a project to do, she was probably in on it.

She loved kids. She was always kind to the kids at Church, always volunteering to feed us, always worried about her “babies.” She chaperoned several field trips and was always a hit.

She was not the best cook, honestly, but she introduced me to ramen noodles and instant drink mixes and lots of “fun” food I still enjoy. She would make instant spiced tea with Tang in it for us that little me thought was so fancy.

I have so many memories, I could write a book if I kept going. She was patient, and kind, and funny, and my very first best friend after my sister. We did everything together for a long time, and I always wanted to hang out with grandma. Sure, she wasn’t perfect, but she was my grandma.

I’ll love her forever and always, and I hope you guys enjoyed my little factoids. I know she would adore all her internet grandkids. So if you’re having a bad day, Grandma loves you and she’s cheering for you from Heaven.

#thoughts #writing #loss #memorial #ancestors #ancestor veneration

[sarcasticscribbles]

Artschool Dropout

I made a thread about how and why I became an artschool dropout, and want to share it here too. Storytime! It's mainly a highlight of parts I despite in the art worlds; capitalism and superiority. My experience was affected by the environment, and hell was a bad environment

Back in the distance year of 2019 I went to an(community) art college in like the *fancy* part of my area. I lived across the lake on the countryside, so I was not prepared for this environment. Rich people cosplaying poor is the best description. Fancy clothing made to look dirty and no-one wore shoes. It was very networking-vibe, with "omg we HAVE to talk more later" but never doing so. Like nurses energy. To be fair I became more and more non-approachable as time went on.

A good note is that Swedish education is normally free, even uni degrees, but this one cost money. It was that was never addressed or mentioned when I applied; that's on me maybe, but the few friends I had didn't know either. A lot was beaten around the bush when it came to expenses. A big draw for the school was a trip they made to Berlin during a film festival. Once the time came around they mentioned the cost for the trip (which was not mentioned before, I thought it was included) and kinda of shamed people if they wouldn't pay and go. Saying how its a highlight of the education and the few staying behind just watch movies for a week. In addition, the film festival wasn't included in the price, and we would have to pay extra to go. It was supposed to be a week, but two days was for travelling by train.

The price was something I would rather use for a private Berlin trip. It wasn't a lot, but I refused to do it, mainly for how indirect they were with everything. A friend and I said we wouldn't go and a staff complained how they would have to keep the school open just for us.

My classmates weren't an issue, it was the teachers and system, which all just felt like a money laundering scheme. One day we travelled to Stockholm, and we were tasked to go four hours alone, sit and stare at an object and think what it made is feel. Those were the instructions.

Four hours. Alone. Then home.

I and one other instead went to grab a coffee and trash talk. Once the time was up, I just made up on the spot "what it made me feel" and he gave me a job well done. I understand the assignment, but the execution from the teacher was all wrong.

It wasn't my crowd tho, I came from a gaming development High school while these people were like, social studies. I'm used to a nerdy crowd, is what I'm trying to say.

I have two funny examples:

I was talking to some guy during a break the ice get together with the whole school (very small school) and I explained I studied video game development before, and he said "omg that's so cool!!" And I answered, "yeah! Do you play?" And he said "yes, the piano :)"

And other time we were talking about painters, and when they asked me who my favourite was, I thought I would joke and said "oh, donatello :) because I love purple" and NO ONE got my tmnt ref and instead thought some Italian Renaissance was my favourite artist.

But back to the main issue, it was the school: First day our teacher handed us supplies from a closet and I was like "wow! Thank you! When these run out (BECAUSE WE'RE FKN ARTISTS) can we grab new ones in the closet?" And she said "no :) this is for the two years you are here" Like eight different hardness pens and a block of paper.

My worse experience was that every Tuesday was lecture day (although we didn't have grades nor exams) and all students gathered in a dark room to look at a PowerPoint about culture and people.

Fun in theory, but again executed so badly. My last lecture one teacher said "oh, and we gotten complaint not everyone can take notes during the presentation, so we thought one from each class could take notes and share with everyone else later :)! Any volunteer?"

Like ??? What? I raised my hand and said "you have a PowerPoint there? Why can't just share the presentation with everyone if they want to go back later?" AND SHE ANSWERED "that is a great idea, but unfortunately that would take weeks. So this is a better alternative:)"

TO THIS DAY, I DON'T KNOW WHAT SHE MEANT BY THAT

Smaller details ; expensive lunch, creepy teacher keeping images of women's privates on screen (and I'm an artist I don't mind nudity) pointless activities and little progression. I can't give it a fair judgement, I only lasted three weeks but jumped in the opportunity to leave.

Cherry on top was I had communicated in private with my mentor about quitting and the day it was decided I had to go back to get my stuff and have one last day and the teacher (not my mentor) exclaimed in the shadiest way "Sophie? I thought you quit" I hadn't told my friends yet.

Last day I replaced all my supplies with new from the fancy closet, and me and my friends stole coffee from the cafeteria during lunch (it was only included if you bought food) to celebrate my time. We all hated the system of the school, but all of us loved art.

My experience is mainly the environment the school was located in; upper-class pretending not to be. The people were alright and i got a few friends before quitting. It was also traditional, general art when I prefer digital art. The school, system, and teacher were hell, which is a shame because it took something I loved and turned it into all the things I hate. i don't regret going and I don't regret quitting when I did. Best thing to come out of it was my literal label Artschool Dropout

#artschool dropout