#ASK campaign

[zimshan]

Attention Pennsylvania voters!

Senator Bob Casey’s race is now at a margin of 0.53%.

An automatic recount in PA is triggered with a margin of 0.5%. That’s a difference of 0.03% or a little over 2,000 votes. We need to make sure every ballot is counted here, and there’s thousands of uncounted ballots right now due to voter error.

Did you mail in a ballot? Check to see it was accepted here:

If it says anything other than accepted/counted/etc, your ballot needs your attention. A mistake in filling it out means that your ballot will not count unless you “cure” it. Check your county’s curing policies:

See full instructions for curing by county here.

You have until November 12 to cure your ballot in PA.

Do you know someone who mailed in a PA ballot? Please pass these links on to them. You may be the difference between their vote counting or not in a super close race.

Everyone else, you can help PA voters cure their ballots. If you live in Pennsylvania, you can help canvass in your county (see links in this thread). If you are in another state, you can sign up to call voters and help them cure by phone.

Want to help another state? Sign up for a shift through November 19.

[hellsitegenetics]

HEY CONGRATS??? ON BEATING ONE-TIME-I-DREAMT??? YOU DID IT???

i was asleep when this went down so you cannot imagine my surprise when i looked and found that we won by a margin of less than 1%

[aces-and-angels]

highlighting @amalashuor video from her insta. added subtitles for more accessibility. amal has been vetted/verified by el-shab-hussein/nabulsi; #175 on their spreadsheet even if you cannot donate money, please donate your time- read through amal's campaign. follow her here on tumblr and on instagram if you have one (amal_sufian97_). share her message

current stats: €407 raised of €30,000 goal

[video transcript below cut]:

amal: hello my friends all over the world. i am amal ashour from gaza, 27 years old. i am married and have one baby, maryam. for 225 days we have been suffering from the war in gaza. no one can imagine what is happening to us. the situation in gaza is very difficult. we live in very hot weather and there is no water.

i hope everyone will stand with me and help me. we want to leave gaza to a safe place. donate to us and share the video and donation link with your friends. donation link in bio. thank you, my friends.

[hellspawnmotel]

I dont need to ask why mona calls you babygirl. I know already

[qqueenofhades]

Haaaave you seen what happened with the NABJ Dumpy interview? WHO thought this would be a good idea? The Harris campaign must be setting off fireworks right how. I am just stunned his team A. let him do this in the first place and B. LET HIM STAY UP THERRE FOR SO LONG AND KEEP SAYING STUPID SHIT. Holy fuck.

Jesus rollerskating Christ. I took a peek at the Tweetymachine and this was just a sample of what popped up:

So let's recap, he was an hour late because he didn't want to be fact-checked in real time, he was booed onstage, he was supposed to talk for an hour and was yanked after 34 minutes (in the middle of a question about Project 2025, not-coincidentally), he rambled and insulted black people in front of the National Association of Black Journalists, insulted Kamala yet again, questioned whether she was "actually" black (they want to do Obama birtherism so bad they just can't help themselves), denigrated a black female reporter who actually asked him tough questions, and.... got this for it, I guess. Wow.

Good luck, Donnie Dumptruck!

[bitsbug]

For pride month, I would like to introduce you all to the "sex" sign. enjoy!

[pinkfey]

vetted palestinian gfm in need of urgent support (10/03/24)

Ahmed's family's campaign has raised €976/€20,000. Ahmed is displaced in southern Gaza caring for his father and brothers while his wife is alone in the north with their fifteen-month-old daughter, Najah, under constant bombardment. They have lost a child before and live in anxiety and fear of never seeing one another again. Just a few days ago, Ahmed's encampment was bombed, and last night he received news their home in the north was destroyed. Any donations help support safe passage so the family can reunite. This campaign has been vetted and promoted by @/gaza-evacuation funds here. (contacted by @najah-meshal)

Eman's family's campaign has raised $1,305/$5,000. Eman is a science teacher and mother of five children; Nada (11), Rahaf (8), Sarah (5), Sham (3), and Zeina (9 months). They are struggling to find clean drinking water, survive the harsh climate, endure sickness, and are surviving on canned food. All donations are used to support their basic survival. This campaign has been vetted by association through Eman's sister Eslam here. (contacted by @emanfamily3)

Shaima's family's campaign has raised $2,179/$30,000. Shaima is a mother of four (Magdy, Walid, Abdel Rahim, and Amal) currently separated from her husband, who was across the border at the time of Israel's attack on Gaza. They have been displaced six times and are in desperate need to evacuate to Egypt to reunite and escape the genocide. Any funds will help secure their safety. This campaign has been vetted by association; information here. (contacted by @familygazaamal)

Mahmoud's family's campaign has raised $4,035/$40,000. While Mahmoud was able to evacuate to Egypt, his sister, Soha, her husband, Hassan, and their four children (Ahed, Mohammed, Majd, and Karim) are still in Gaza. They have been displaced seven times and now reside in a refugee camp, where conditions continue to worsen. Donations, through Mahmoud, support the family as they struggle to find stability. This campaign has been vetted by @/90-ghost here. (contacted by @ahed-family2)

Lama and Mohammed's campaign has raised $4,115/$10,000. Lama and Mohammed were forcibly displaced from Khan Younis to Rafah along with Mohammed's family of twelve; their house was destroyed in the winter. Lama is now pregnant and in need of care. All funds aid in securing their evacuation. This campaign has been vetted and promoted by @/gaza-evacuation-funds and vetted by association; information here. (contacted by @lamahourani7)

[ihassheepquake]

Somewhere out there Aabira Iyengar and Aimee Carrero are losing it. They just felt a disturbance in the Force if they aren't watching.

[reality-detective]

Google is censoring this pro-Trump ad to protect Biden.  Make it go viral 🤔

[shorthaltsjester]

doing questionable things like rewatching a bard’s lament for “fun” and scanlan and vex you will always be famous. the fact that scanlan brings up that they’ve travelled across planes to fix vex’s daddy issues but then it’s vex’s daddy issues that ground her rebuttal to scanlan when she tells him to stop treating kaylie like an object. and god. vex’s “fuck him! fuck him for not saying anything sooner. and fuck us for not asking.” in the immediate aftermath, and then once she has time to put her walls back up, vex’s “my take-away from scanlan is that we all talk too much.”

the fact that vex was the one who made that comment that without his magic scanlan is just some guy but he’s also the some guy that vex spends the campaign looking up to (even if she does it through barbs and snark), the fact that when vex was fighting against saundor hearing things like “unproven ally” scanlan was all jokes until he realized how much vex believed what was being said to her. the fact that when scanlan comes back, it’s vex who literally sees through his disguise.

what do you mean scanlan was a deadbeat father who discovered a daughter that he did love but loved only as an object until vex called him out on it? what do you mean vex was a woman who struggled to forgive in part due to her crapshoot father and she was the first to forgive scanlan when he came back?

vex and scanlan also have such interesting interactions in terms of the balance of snark, silliness, and sincerity. it’s not uncommon from any characters of sam or laura’s since they are both silly little guys who also love drama and roasting each other especially when it comes to character rp, but as always it’s so dynamic when it’s the two of them bouncing off each other, especially when they’re doing so through scanlan and vex who are already bitchy characters (affectionate) with humour as a deflection method. but it’s a silly and deeply sincere moment when vex finally puts the witch hat scanlan gave her back on with his promise that he won’t run away from the final battle. it is one of my favourite laughable moments in c1 but it also reeks of sincerity when scanlan asks vex if she prefers planetar scanlan or normal scanlan and vex tells him he is fucking hot as a planetar, but she loves him like he was and he’s her favourite when he’s just himself.

like. they’re insane do you understand. the dawnfather asks vex to prove herself and scanlan turns her into a dragon to help her succeed, pelor asks vox machina what vex means to them and scanlan says she’s greedy and mean and the most perfect of them all. the knowing mistress asks scanlan to prove himself and vex escorts him on a broom he unlocked for her and then she picks an impossible lock for him, ioun tries to remind scanlan that his strength is the joy he provides to his friends and he makes a deflective quip that he’s really powerful and vex undercuts his deflection with a sincere assertion that he is. scanlan cast his last wish spell letting her see her brother on her wedding day. vex sent herself across the continent alone with her worry and grief while scanlan’s corpse lay awaiting resurrection to ensure that his daughter could be there to either bring him back or say goodbye.

they are the platonic chosen soulmates of all time to me. i make a post like this like once a year minimum and it’s because they Haunt me. both sam and laura said what if we made high charisma characters using their charisma as a shield and humour as a weapon and they saw through each other’s masks but they never explicitly talked about it to one another. good riddance to talks machina but i will never forget the episode post bard’s lament with laura and sam where sam revealed that vex was the only one who said anything that actually got through to scanlan and another episode where laura revealed that the reason vex was so angry and sad when scanlan left was that vex felt like her and scanlan had a unique bond where they were the only two who really saw one another’s masks for what they were. also laura providing the insight that while vex was actively working on being more forgiving, another reason she was so open and happy with scanlan when he came back was that vex didn’t want to scare him away again.

what am i supposed to do with all that? be normal about scanlan and vex? literally impossible

[blorbologist]

Y'know, I think I figured out why the Hells still feel like a new low-level party to me, even though they're level 13 and almost 100 episodes in.

I don't quite think it's the lack of conversations, or the fact half the party's plot hooks are big ties to past campaigns - though that definitely plays a part.

... Bell's Hells still primarily rely on quest givers.

Most of their goals are given to them and do not feel organic to the party, and constantly remind us that the Hells are pretty much never the most powerful people in the room. Which is usually something you see with a low-level party.

NPCs offering jobs is not a bad thing; it's a very common plot hook. Matt has been extremely skilled with using NPC quest givers in those two campaigns. Not only do they provide an obvious plot thread, but they can put the party in the path of others (say, the Nein running into the Iron Shepherds while doing a job for the Gentleman and everything that came of that). And the Hells had a solid start with it too - Eshteross was an excellent quest giver!

The problem is that Bell's Hells have never really not had a quest giver.

Maybe it's a byproduct of the more plot-heavy structure of this campaign? But while prior parties have felt like they decided on their course of action and what they prioritized, Bell's Hells feels less like level 13 (13! Level 13!) experienced adventurers and more like an MMO group clicking on the exclamation point over an NPC's head. Where does the plot demand we go next? Who do we report back to?

They're level 13.

At level 13, Vox Machina had just defeated a necromantic city-state to clear their name and Percy's conscience. And, you know, the Conclave just destroyed Emon. No one was explicitly telling the group to gather Vestiges and save the world (though Matt guided them there), and they were usually among the most powerful people in the room. They chose which Vestiges to prioritize, which dragons to tackle when, even if the over-all plot was pretty clear.

At level 13, the Mighty Nein were celebrating Traveler Con (another PC goal, I'll note) after brokering peace between two nations, accidentally becoming pirates and heroes of the Dynasty. The Nein regularly chose what to do based on personal goals, not grand ones. Though definitely smaller fish than Vox Machina at this level, they were very independent and gaining solid political clout.

While we're at it: level 13 is one level lower than the Ring of Brass, who had a huge amount of sway over Avalir. They ended the world, and also saved it, while in the grand scheme of things being only a smidge more powerful than Bell's Hells are now.

Can you really see the Hells wielding that amount of influence, when they're constantly being told what to do next?

The god-eater might be unleashed, so Bell's Hells have no time to do anything but what is asked of them. No time for therapy unless stolen from Feywild time, no travel on foot and late-night watches. They haven't even had time to grieve FCG. Percy was grieved in the middle of the Conclave arc. Molly was grieved when half the party was still in irons.

Matt is in the very unfortunate spot of not being able to give the Hells the same agency as the other two parties. Not only because of the world-ending plot introduced so early on; they are surrounded by characters they know (and the cast knows) are stronger and wiser than them - the familiarity of the past PCs and NPCs is to their disadvantage.

Why would the party reasonably ignore Keyleth's task that will help save the world and go off on a romp? Why would the cast when they know well Keyleth has to be sensible and with the best intentions in mind? The stakes are just too high.

It means that the Hells still feel like they're running errands instead of pursuing their own destiny. Their accomplishments are diminished as just being parts of a to-do list, and any stakes feel padded by several level 20 PCs/NPCs standing 5 steps away ready to catch them.

This isn't Bell's Hell's fault, nor is it Matt's. It could be amended, I think, if the Hells are really left to their own devices for a long period of time without support and shortcuts (like during the party split)... which would be really tricky to pull off at this point in the campaign.

They're level 13. They're big fish, but they're stuck in a pond full of friendly sharks, so they don't feel big at all.

[hellsitegenetics]

Hey so. Uh. I'm sorry for your loss. In the tumblr bracket. i voted for you

honestly it's kind of an honor to lose to such an og-- especially by such a small margin! feels a little crazy that so many people know who i am, you know?

(the vote isn't fully over by the way, you can check it out here)

[comikbook]

hello all…u should send me asks about her…i need to develop her more

[flickering-nightfall]

could you tell us more about the gift? :D

Oh, sure! I can stick some of my Gift drawing backlog in here while I'm at it~

The Gift is an unruly creature whose presence begets chewed wires and headaches wherever it goes. It's spunky and mischievous with a penchant for violence, and it revels in its job: to kill as much rot as it can without getting eaten by it first.

It exists only in an alternate universe where Pebbles is stopped before Moon collapses. Moon is damaged but alive - and after many long talks, Pebbles begrudgingly allows the other iterators to assist him with his rot.

The Gift's campaign uses the points system with an emphasis on rot kills. The gross cyan mixture on its spears is - via interacting with their stomach, in true slugcat fashion - weird altered barf. On contact with targets, "immunospears" explode like a spore puff and damage everything Five Pebbles related within their radius. This means you can kill even Mother Long Legs with good aim and enough food pips. Unfortunately, this does also kill neurons and inspectors, so the Gift has to be a little bit careful on its path of carnage.

Notably, Gift's goal isn't to eradicate the rot, just to help control it. If there's a way to cure the rot, this one silly creature can't do it for a whole superstructure.

It's been specially made (with love and care) by the other iterators so that Pebbles' inspectors don't target it. This is also why Pebbles won't murder it unless it shows direct violence towards him. His local group worked hard on this wretched being and they'll be very upset with him if he kills it. Plus it is actually good at its intended purpose. He just has to count the days until it keels over on its own.

Gift probably has some scavenger in there somewhere too, and maybe a bit of lizard. They're strong, but outside of fighting, I wouldn't say they're the smartest slugcat...

I've also played with the possibility of Arti and Spearmaster existing in this timeline. It ends as well as you'd expect. (I thought it would be funny if you could team up with Spearmaster and piggyback them around as your living spear generator though.)

There's some other stuff to the idea, such as a repeatable campaign where your strength and food requirement goes up every time you replay it, and a random pool of pearls you spawn with addressed to either Moon or Pebbles. I might go ahead and post that old campaign writeup still, so there'll be more in that!

[ardentinwoe]

More mechs

[undead-knick-knack]

It's only a matter of time