#GUYS I'VE SOLVED THE PROBLEM

[wrylu]

an unfinished vincentgaz piece, but i thought shy looked cute 💗

[thresholdbb]

I've made the mistake of putting myself on the greater internet for Star Trek/cosplay posting, and I'm getting a lot of dudes with the most basic, unsolicited advice ever

Should've stayed here in my enclosure

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

the only thing better than an akechi palace is forcing akechi to experience the horrors of his palace :) With Friends

[philcoulsonismyhero]

Man, I'd missed DnD. My flatmate got a group together and we had our fourth session tonight and it feels like we're really properly getting into the swing of it and it's So much fun.

My character, Benjamin Larkwright, is a war wizard who was a magically-trained soldier as a young man and then a watchman for about a decade before quitting to take up his magic again and become an adventurer, and playing a mystery adventure as an ex-cop who keeps forgetting about his magic and solving problems like a detective is Really fun. I'm getting to mess around with all the crime drama tropes that I love while Also being a wizard, it's Great.

A couple of stand-out moments from this last session included getting to do the Hot Fuzz fence jumping thing, where the loxodon paladin just walked through the garden wall and Benjamin, on principle, vaulted a bit of still-intact wall aaand managed to roll an 8, land badly on his bad ankle and nearly faceplant in the street. The other wizard who, despite being a nerd and unathletic, is also 17 and limber managed to get over the wall with no trouble and got waved off from helping him up with a cranky "I've got a bad ankle, it's fine, I'm old, leave me alone." (He's like 45ish.)

We'd also earlier been to talk to the local sheriff about the epidemic of missing people we'd been hired to investigate (by his sister, it turned out, who thought he wasn't doing enough about it), and I got to play Benjamin going from marching in all judgemental and dragging this guy's curtains open in the face of his dreadful hangover and pointedly shifting the bottles off his desk to put down the list of missings we got from his sister, to leaving with a gentle word about hangover cures and all his missing person files and a promise to deal with whatever hold the villain has over him that he couldn't tell us about but had clearly caused an extended breakdown and is preventing him from investigating properly himself. (Kidnapped wife and son, we later worked out, who are among the people going missing around this Highly Suspicious Casino that appeared in town six months ago.)

The best moment, though was when I finally got to catch the other wizard out on the gems she stole from a bag in the mail car when we were searching the train to the town for Weird Shit. She'd managed to do it while the rest of the party were all out on the platform tidying up the mess from our fight with a gargoyle that had also been sent in the post via the train, so none of us had any reason to even suspect she'd nicked them. But then we were investigating a weird magical effect outside the temple we were in, and Abigail goes and pulls out these gems right in front of Benjamin's nose to see if they react to the magical field. He recognises them from before, asks her where she got them from, and she lies to his face that they were something she inherited from his wizard grandfather. So, two sessions after the theft, I finally get to insight check her, with my +5 insight vs her +0 deception, and I roll a 21. Which, upon realising that there's nothing she can roll to beat that, causes me, out of character, delighted, to exclaim "ha! Get insighted, crime child!"

Which was apparently the highlight of the session to the DM and everyone else and got me an inspiration as the culmination of a bunch of good ex-policeman roleplaying, which was delightful. (Got a good grade in DnD, which is both normal to want and possible to achieve.) The player of the other wizard now desperately wants me to draw a very pleased-with-himself Benjamin looming over a cowering Abigail pointing and exclaiming "Get insighted, Crime Child!", he was that amused by it, and honestly I might later when I'm less busy.

In-universe, Benjamin just gave her The Look, though, and said "alright, I'll believe you", with them both knowing Full Well that he doesn't. It was then followed up by him dashing (so Detect Magic didn't run out) over to the temple down the street to check if the magic field effect was also unable to penetrate the inside of that temple, and passing Abigail who tried to follow him on the way back, much slower on her "weak nerd legs" and pestering her into jogging the whole way back again while Benjamin made it very clear without outright saying that the jogging was her penance for the petty crime. (He's not a watchman anymore and he's not her dad so he's just going to mess with the kid in the hope that it makes her think twice the next time she gets the urge to be sticky-fingered with potentially dangerous magical items. And also for his own amusement, tbh.)

It was all very funny, I'm having a great time being the (metaphorical, he's aroace) straight guy to the rest of the party's hijinks and also occasionally indulging in my own. We ended the session thoroughly convinced that all roads lead to the Suspect Casino, having tugged on every investigative thread to Benjamin's satisfaction (and everyone else's), and he snapped his suspiciously-police-looking notebook shut and said "On that, Droozh, we are in complete agreement." to the loxodon paladin's declaration that he thinks now is Definitely the time to march into the casino and demand to know what the hell is going on. And yes, Droozh has wanted to do that since we arrived in town and the place seemed a bit sus from the whole 'got sent a gargoyle in the post' thing, but now we can march in and start cracking skulls in an Informed and Well Considered manner, having a better idea of what we're up against.

I love DnD, I've missed it.

[californiaquail]

(salpingo-oophor-)hysterectomies should be free and they should check if you want one at your annual physical in case you're too scared to ask

[dragoncharming]

*stumbles out covered in kiss marks* Another match with my archnemesis.

[medicinemane]

And maybe you'll be like "but if you don't trust businesses, how can you trust welfare?"

I fucking don't. My mom trying to get on food stamps fucked me up because a lady I never met without my permission got my SSN from my mom and started editing my files. My heart still races to this very second whenever I think about it, it kinda messed me up bad and I'll never ever ever see any kind of recourse

And I'm terrified that I'm gonna lose my medicaid just cause I inherited some money from my grandpa

And I've never even applied for disability cause it kinda doesn't matter finding out if I'd qualify or not cause of my depression, when the rules are so restrictive I don't know if I've even be allowed to keep my house

I do not fucking trust these things on a personal level. I feel like out of a lot of people I have the most to fear from them cause I'm on the edge of having things work, and that gets you punished

...but I need medicaid in order to have insurance (and when you strip out the finance side of medicaid, I love medicaid... they're honestly incredible insurance... I just... I just... dental is like 90% of why medicaid is so important to me, ever since I found out this state pays for it I've actually been able to do cleanings which is important to me cause I can't always get myself to brush)

And I think things like disability and food stamps are pretty damn important on a personal level, and honestly are also good for the economy cause they get people spending... it's practically a free cash infusion into the economy, cause these are people who need to buy stuff

There's just so much important stuff welfare does that it's worth dealing with government

No, what I want is more accountability so if someone gets my SSN from a 3rd party like my mom they're held to HIPPA styles standards where that's not ok to access my files without my permission (She changed my fucking address and tried to get medicaid to investigate me for fraud! Never even met me)

Like have some accountability there and in every situation

Secondly I want less punitive focused rules. I'd frankly prefer bezos get on disability than smack down some poor sod cause they got $2000 in the bank or cause their friend lets them live with them for free

If there's gonna be a cut off on these programs, it needs to be a solid step above the poverty line, cause... by definition I assume poverty line denotes kinda the minimum expected income people can reasonably live off of, and if you take away benefits people are gonna lose a chunk of money to covering that stuff themself, so you need a buffer before you kick people off

I don't fucking trust the government for a second, I've actively been fucked by them and on a personal level I avoid everything but medicaid and only that cause everything but the money is pleasant to deal with and I kinda need it (honestly if I was rich I'm not even kidding that I'd rather give medicaid like $400 a month than some insurance company, I sincerely like them as insurance)

But I'd trust them a lot more if they were less punitive, less out to hunt me down and gut me cause someone handed me a fiver or cause I started to get on my feet, and if government employees had concrete rules they had to follow that were actually transparent and enforced

Like 90% of my problems with welfare go away if they're held accountable and there's less "catch the welfare cheats" mentality going around

I don't trust the government in the slightest, but sadly there some jobs it kinda has to do, so I'd just rather force it to be an open book where the public can keep an eye on it and if they step out of line there's consequences (sort of like I don't trust most mega corps but happen to sometimes need stuff from them... did you know literally every cell service provider has been illegally selling shit like your location data to random people like bounty hunters, and the FCC just slapped them with a fine that's 0.02% of their yearly incomes and debated even doing that? I even can offer a source on that)

...I don't trust much of any authority cause they constantly fail me and kinda screw me. Don't trust doctors either, but I still gotta go to them, you know? ...they're just... they're real bad at listening... so many systems need systemic change

(You know who I really don't trust is the cops. I could point to so many examples. My uncle doesn't trust cops either, and he's an ex Fire and SWAT paramedic, he worked with them and we still got into a long conversation where he basically tore into them far better than I can)

(I don't trust authority that's not accountable)

[coquelicoq]

antony lewis sometimes i could kiss you right on the mouth.

[seenthisepisode]

~~~

[edge-oftheworld]

actually. you know what. why can't artists tour more often from an australian base?? southeast asia is right there. huge populations. jakarta, singapore, ho chi minh city, manila, kuala lumpur, penang, then up the mekong (they should take a tour boat like it's a tour bus) to bangkok and whatever the capital of laos is called i'll look it up later. go visit the mountainous cities in viet nam not just the delta ones up to bangladesh and mumbai and whatever the other big city in india is called (i'll look it up and update this post). sri lanka. up to south korea and japan and hong kong and taiwan then shanghai and beijing are HUGE like as an aussie i can barely comprehend their population. could do some nice holiday shows in bali, fiji, heck, why not do one in port vila? honiara? both cairns and perth are really good bases if we just get in some infrastructure how hard is that? connectivity between the western and eastern worlds of music and australia is so well placed to do this. i would say darwin too but no one wants to live in darwin it's too hot

BUT I JUST DID AN ENVIRO SCI DEGREE IN WHICH THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT FEEDING THE WORLD FROM DARWIN AND YOU KNOW WHAT?? WHY NOT DO IT WITH MUSIC TOO

[mossy-thing]

Just had my graduation ceremony

Pretty sure my ears might be bleeding

Applause should be banned permanently forever this feels like an ableist hatecrime

[stabbylambchop]

Hey uh

anyone here on Art Fight this year or-

Cuz I'm on there, same name and everything. I'm on Team Vampires.

You can like, add me or whatever...I mean, if you want...

I haven't interacted with anyone on here or even really drawn in a couple months, sweet pulsating spider-christ ...

[karinyosa]

there's this queer story hour thing near where i live happening at like a bookstore where a couple authors are gonna go talk about their books and i think the theme of the night is like queer awakenings and part of me wants to go but part of me cannot bring myself to rsvp because i'd have to go alone and i'm scawwed 😵‍💫

[sshoryuken]

The list of characters that Scott can and probably will make worse is growing so fucking fast and I fear for my life

(just me rambling about silly stuff in the tags because I'm happy and having fun)

[challenge-ant]

I was going to post another ant and dec in other things from b/ridget c/hristie's new sitcom but it's just l/iza ta/rbuck calling them cunts and I thought maybe not. dshjhjdsk

[acesammy]

it’s actually starting to bother me how many people are saying that TLOU show is inherently better at story telling than the game, bc games in general are a worse medium to tell stories in than TV