#I'm so fucking hyped to play on wednesday to see what happens

[redrocketpanda]

I'm literally vibrating with excitement about my Wednesday Dungeon of the Mad Mage D&D game & need to yell about it here bc otherwise I won't be able to concentrate until then

Firstly, I am in LOVE with my character - and apparently so is everyone else, which is an absolutely unexpected delight to me

Temerity is a Zariel Tiefling Barbarian, descended from the hells with 2 cambions for dads. She's a tiny, petite little thing with rose pink hair & grey tips, who wears pastel coloured high fashion dresses & killer heels, is super nice in very country gal kinda way, and is essentially a pretty little princess with a pink warhammer making her way through a dungeon with her pals

In our first game (3 weeks ago), we were missing a player but our cute ragtag bunch had fun traipsing around and getting into trouble. Temerity spent 2 rounds of combat checking out a statue of a hot sharkman and then (almost) single handedly defeated it with a single throw of a hand axe - crit hitting it & causing 18 points of damage

Then, the next week, the mysterious missing player turns up at the table with the cutest fucking Half-Orc bard boy called Elrig who plays thrash metal on his triangle. He's big and threatening looking, with a shady background, but all of his scars are from falling over & really he's just a soft boy

CUE INADVERTANT ROMANCE BETWEEN THE PRETTY LITTLE BARBARIAN PRINCESS AND THE BIG INTIMIDATING HALF-ORC BARD????

I managed to somehow snag a bardbarian romance but with cute little gender twists in week 2??!!!

We only had that one session but there was already a little flirting going on between them. Elrig seems very impressed with Temerity's combat skills & upbeat personality, and Temerity seems very taken with this big, strong boy who isn't quite who he appears to be. Plus neither of them are very smart so it makes it even more fun

We also had a very fun duo moment when Elrig was intimidating some goblins (to just tell them to keep away) and Temerity was hanging off his shoulders speaking in infernal to assist with the check. We rolled a 28. Elrig just stood there looking scary whilst Temerity's there like "yeaaaaah, y'all should be scared! Look at him... look at.. look at those muscles *feels them* wow... they're uh... they're real big..."

And possibly the cutest thing to come of this so far is that me & the player have exchanged Pinterest boards with each other. They sent me a song called Princess of the Night, which they think Elrig sings about Temerity. And we also sent each other character playlists???

Anyway it's TOO FUCKING CUTE. Like I LOVE Temerity, and I've never had a D&D romance before so it's all very akshsksjsk to me. Plus all the players are really nice?! We even had someone send some temerity/elrig related posts in the discord group and I am sooooooo

[redwineconversation]

now that I'm standing next to you I think I've changed my point of view (LOSC - Lyon Postgame Thoughts)

This was the freest I've seen Lyon play in a while. I think part of that was that it was against Lille, a bottom-ranked team who didn't park the bus, meaning that even Lyon's B and C team were able to stroll around the pitch as much as they wanted with little to no resistance.

I also think that we have to entertain the possibility the starting 11 played as freely as they did because they knew Bompastor would be gone soon. The metaphorical shackles would be soon be lifted.

I'm not above saying Majri played well, but again, this was against Lille, so anyone would have looked good. I still maintain Lyon should sell her this summer, hat trick against a bottom ranked team be damned. She scored. That's good. We increased our goal differential. That's also good. She suited my agenda of wanting to fucking win, but it doesn't change the fact that she doesn't have the level to start, or score, against top level teams.

Same with Marozsan - I'm not above saying she played well, but again, this was against a bottom-ranked team who offered little to no resistance. Lyon was strolling around and their greatest foe was the ever-consistent bad refereeing. Marozsan scored. Great. I like winning. She still needs to be sold this summer. A goal against a bottom ranked team isn't going to change my mind.

Everyone was praising Joseph after the game (not sure if the praise was for coming into the game, scoring, conceding the penalty, or getting injured) but you know who deserved much more praise and is completely flying under the radar? Mendy. Her and Marques are the only two academy players I would like to see stay. The rest can be sold or sent out on loan.

I really do think Mendy is under appreciated. It's interesting to me that there's so much hype around Joseph and Benyahia, and yet it's Mendy who fits the traditional Lyon mold so much better. A quiet player who just keeps her head down, it's her vision of the game that I find so interesting. It's not to say she was the best player on the pitch. But she is the one who I could grow into herself. It's always the quiet ones. Or whatever the saying is.

Endler saved what is arguably one of the tamest penalties of all time, but I will take it for two reasons: one, I like a clean sheet, and two, it is actually really hard to suddenly have to switch on in a game so dominated by Lyon that I was wondering if Endler was going to do a Bouhaddi, and by that I mean start chatting with supporters while the game was going on.

There's not a whole lot to say about this game, really. The starting lineup was like a high B team, because there were probably more than half regular starters. Once Lyon was up significantly Bompastor started rotating.

It was really a game where things happened the way it did because that was what was expected. A top ranked team with massive offensive power destroyed the bottom-ranked team who just didn't have the resources to defend. It's hard to write this recap and be funny, because it was actually - kind of boring. It happened as expected because that's what happens when the differential between the two teams is so great.

It'll be Wednesday's match, the return game against Benfica, that I think will be more telling of where this team is really at. I hope Lyon will pull through, but I think a lot of it depends on where Lyon is at mentally more than physically. Benfica will be putting up a fight for sure. The question is whether Lyon will punch back.

[uncloseted]

Do you think Tim Burton someone that we shouldn't support? I was hyped seeing the Wednesday Addams trailer but when I looked into Burton I found he's said a few racist things in the past. Now I'm not sure if I can watch Wednesday in good conscious or not despite the fact I adore the Addams family

I think there's a real difference between someone who has "said a few racist things in the past" (or said things that we retroactively consider to be racist) and a person who is actively being racist. People fuck up. They're often ignorant and uninformed. Sometimes they say things that aren't perfect. I think we need to make space for "yikes, friendly reminder that this isn't a good look" without defaulting to, "that person is racist and cancelled, nobody interact with their content ever again."

From what I can tell, the accusations of racism seem to be mostly over Burton's lack of diversity in his films. Which is accurate, but... he casts the same four people in everything he makes (Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Christopher Lee and Michael Gough). There's literally a lack of diversity in his films at all, because there's a lack of diversity in the actual individual actors that he hires. So it's kind of unsurprising that his films lack diversity and that he doesn't have great insight on the subject of diversity at large.

Specifically, when people accuse Burton of racism, they point to a 2016 interview with Bustle, in which he said he said that,

"Nowadays, people are talking about [diversity] more. But things either call for things, or they don’t. I remember back when I was a child watching The Brady Bunch and they started to get all politically correct. Like, OK, let’s have an Asian child and a black. I used to get more offended by that than just... I grew up watching blaxploitation movies, right? And I said, that’s great. I didn’t go like, OK, there should be more white people in these movies."

Is that a great take? Of course not. Movies made by white people that only include white people aren't the same as movies made by Black people that only include Black people. The Brady Bunch was doing important work by diversifying their cast, even if their moves towards diversity felt shoehorned to white kids in Burbank in the 60s. But is it a cancelable offense that proves he's always been secretly racist and that if we watch his works, we'll be supporting racism? I don't think so. I think he's just, you know, a white guy who grew up in Burbank in the 60s who has cast the same four people in his movies since 1988.

It should also be noted that in the same Bustle article, they interview Samuel L. Jackson about Tim Burton's perceived lack of representation in his films, to which his only response was, "I had to go back in my head and go, how many black characters have been in Tim Burton movies? And I may have been the first, I don’t know, or the most prominent in that particular way, but it happens the way it happens. I don’t think it’s any fault of his or his method of storytelling, it’s just how it’s played out. Tim’s a really great guy."

Also, the new Addams family TV show is actually pretty diverse. It stars Jenna Ortega, who is Mexican and Puerto Rican, as well as Luis Guzmán, who is Puerto Rican. It also features Fred Armisen, who is Venezuelan-Korean. An attempt to rectify the lack of diversity in Burton's works is being made here. If anything, this is the work of Burton's that's the worst to boycott, because Netflix has a history of cancelling shows that are led by Hispanic and Latin actors.

On a bit of a side note, I also want to say that the more I have these conversations, the more I feel like our increasing cultural focus on whether the media we consume is "ethical" or not is a red herring that's distracting from more important issues. Is a racist comment Tim Burton made in 2016 really the biggest race related issue we're facing right now? Fuck no. But by focusing on that, people can pat themselves on the back for "fighting racism" without actually having to contend with the messy, complicated, nuanced discussions that are necessary to solve the more pressing issues at hand, and without actually having to meaningfully change their lives. Even if literally nobody watched this new Addams family show, Tim Burton would still have an estimated net worth of $100 million. Even if literally nobody watched the new Addams family show, Tim Burton still got paid to make it. So in this case, even if his comments were totally unforgivable, I think boycotting it has very little worth. If he gives you the ick now that you've read that he's said racist things in the past, it's your prerogative not to watch it. That's totally fine, and I get feeling that way. But that's a personal decision, not a political or ethical one.