#also she would have the most batshit crazy dnd characters

[ramblerogue]

16, 22, 28, 32, 48 and 50!!

YEESSS THANK YOU SO MUCH FRENCHY!!!! UR TOO KIND TO SEND IN QUESTIONS!! :3c

16. has the most scars?

Okay, I had to go back and double check this one cause I realized I have an affinity for giving characters scars hSKHGSKGH:S (whoops! I love combat/left-overs of combat as a narrative tool!) BUT... I believe the OC who has the most scars is Arizona! She's a wandering cowboy in an apocalyptic wasteland, so she's accumulated many scars over the years! Lots of minuscule and extreme origins alike, I imagine, as it's just a rough life and she runs into trouble whether she likes it or not. (Knife fights with bandits, bites from coyotes, nicks from barb wire, burns from dropping the campfire coffee). Arizona also knows that she is big and can take a hit, so it's second nature for her to be a shield from danger if she's traveling with others. (Tho special shoutout to Aubrey who has Died, and come back because of her Undying Pact. She has the potential to get hurt A LOT but she won't keep scars because she regenerates to a crazy degree.)

22. would be the best to get a beer with?

Tiller!! It's her instinct to just be best friends with everybody, so she'd be very welcoming and nice to grab a beer with. She'd listen to you whine about your day, or gossip, or ask your life story, or ramble on about hers, or try to make you laugh! (I also wanna give an honorable mention to Nox, if you wanna grab a beer and THEN get into shenanigans. Nox needs a specific vibe to get along with a stranger but if the vibes are good, they're GOOD!! However, she can't get this superlative cause she would NOT pay for drinks lmao)

28. is the most competitive?

For silly things? Nox. For more serious things? Mayday. Nox would want to do stupid dares at parties, and gets upset if she doesn't win at Mafia. Mayday gets angry if she's not Good At Stuff, and so she tries really hard all the time HHGSKGSDG. It gets under her skin if she loses a fight, or if someone knows more about a subject she thought she was the most proficient in.

32. is the most likely to be a twitch streamer?

I wanna say Tiller because she's so personable, and she talks to herself anyway so I think a twitch chat would be a good outlet for her. She'd play a lot of narrative based games and agonize over making the right choice cause she'd want all the characters to be happy lmao! I can also see her dragging her friends on stream to guest star, even if "guest starring" is them walking around in the background of her camera. If we're counting NPCs, I'm also gonna say Russell. They would hyperfixate and stay up super late doing 100% completion-runs of games. They would also abuse glitches all the time, but only the funny ones.

48. do you consider the most sterotypical/classic example of their class?

Hmmm!! That'd have to be Nox! It's probably the curse of "Baby's First DnD Character", but she's your Very Typical Rogue. And sue me! I still really like rogues!! I made a campaign where like all the NPCs are rogues lmfao! But anyway yeah, she's got it all: chaotic neutral, edgy backstory, bastard with a heart of gold, loves sneaking and stealing anything not nailed down. Oh well! It's was fun for me!! I think the only atypical thing about her is that she's a dragonborn, so you have this very tall and shiny lizard that supposedly has great stealth lol!

50. is or was your favorite to play in combat?

OGGHHHH I'm so torn on this... I think I'm gonna go with Tiller! (I know I also picked her for the fav roleplay, WHATEVER I LIKE HER A LOT!!) But druids are so flexible!!! I feel like I keep finding new stuff to do! Like I usually do have support spells and things prepped because I don't want my party to DIE... but I also love the capability of just doing batshit things in the middle of combat. And the fact that you can change around your prepped spells is sooooo nice, and makes druids feel like a wildcard. Like they can play support or do major damage!! (I can't wait until Tiller isn't nerfed anymore so I can go all out!) Also, special shoutout to my sci-fi paladin, Eva! One time I one-hit killed a boss because I crit on some attack that had like 2 smites stacked on it KGLSHDGLSDG so THAT was really fun as well!!

[three--rings]

Why haven’t more of you read The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold?  

Okay, I’ll give you one thing up front.  It’s not terribly queer.  I mean, it IS queer.  It has major canon queer characters for some books, but yeah, okay, fair.  It could be more queer. Keep in mind that the series started being written in 1986 and even then included explicitly queer characters.  It spans 30 years of publication dates and about 40 years in-universe.

BUT.  Let me tell you why you should read these books. (I know there are a lot of them.  Don’t worry you will get through them REALLY FAST.)

These books are Feminist As Fuck.  What would you say if I told you there was a whole series of sci-fi space operas where the ongoing through-line was a study of the effects of reproductive freedom on an entire patriarchal society? You’d probably say why haven’t I heard of them.  

The reason no one talks about how fucking progressive these books are is because the main focus is always on the BATSHIT INSANE SPACE OPERA PLOT.  Like, these books MOVE and a million things happen and there’s battles and romance and politics and different planets and weird-ass genetic science, and it’s a LOT.  The characters are a LOT.  But underneath all that noisy laser-blasting craziness is not only incredible character work, but also very real social commentary about gender and sex and in a very big way reproduction and the importance of women’s control over their own reproductive choices.  For a series that most people would tell you features a genius straight white male lead and fun space battles, that’s...something.

Said lead for most of the books, Miles Vorkosigan, is one of the greatest fictional characters of all time.  He’s one of the few genius characters who ACTUALLY feels super-intelligent.  And he’s also a Total Dumbass.  He mostly succeeds far too well and creates new problems for himself constantly.

Said lead is pretty severely physically disabled.  Born with a plethora of health problems and deformities due to plot.  It never stops being an issue throughout the series, though it changes in the WAY it is a problem and how he deals with it (mostly by being super smart and having a charisma score that is through the roof.)  (Actually yeah, he’s a dnd character that maxed out intelligence and charisma and dumped pretty much Everything Else.  But still decides he has to be a soldier.)  

The first two books are the story of his parents’ meeting and romance.  The story started as an OG fanfic of TOS Star Trek in which a female Federation officer is trapped on a planet with a Klingon general and they clash over their vastly different cultural worldviews.  Basically the entire series is in some way a story of a Very Enlightened Galactic Civilization (i.e. Star Trek Federation) encountering a very backwards Stuck-in-the-Past-Patriarchal Planet called Barrayar (think Westeros, really.) 

Cordelia Vorkosigan (nee Naismith) is the only character in the series more awesome than Miles and she’s his mother.  She comes from Beta, a planet known for it’s sexual openness and equality.  (They have three genders and earrings for denoting your orientation and availability status.)  Barrayar was cut off from the rest of the galaxy for hundreds of years and its colonists descended back into feudalism.

Pretty much each book in the series can stand alone as an exciting adventure story (in space!) with great writing and characters.  But as a whole, the characters grow and learn and change over time.  There are always real consequences for things, that last and continue to be important.  That’s actually so RARE in fictional series.

Also taken as a whole the most important piece of technology in the series is the uterine replicator, which means women don’t have to be pregnant to have children (as well as eliminating a lot of genetic illness, which is another common topic.)  This ends up, over time, changing a LOT about Barrayaran society and the place of women within it, and we see it evolve over 40+ years as the series goes on. 

If I haven’t tempted you yet, I will just throw out that at times the series includes: a romantic male lead who is casually bisexual, a fairly significant nonbinary character, a female romantic interest who is a 7 foot tall genetically modified cat/beast person, a planet of all men controlled by a conservative religious cult who believe women are the root of all sin and therefore homosexuality is the only virtuous lifestyle (That’s actually a stand alone novel called Ethan of Athos, if you want to just read that.  It wouldn’t be a terrible place to start. Also keep in mind it was published in 1986!!!), a group of people genetically engineered to have 4 arms instead of 2 arms and 2 legs called Quaddies, a whole novel that is basically a Austen-esque comedy of manners involving bugs that vomit butter, protagonists with mental health issues, a chillingly accurate portrayal of an emotionally abusive marriage from the inside, a trans man character who steals all the ladies hearts, and a canon poly OT3.

Hopefully I have tempted you now, and you want to know where to start.  Generally you should follow the Chronological Order as recommended by the author, but I recommend you start with Shards of Honour (the first written) and not the chronologically first book Falling Free which is a standalone novel unrelated to the rest of the series except as background.    

[erinelezabeth920]

Love in the Time Of

Shame. Is the thing I want to talk about. Love in the time of shame.

I mean I don’t really want to talk about it. I’d really rather not actually, except that I have the sneaking suspicion that I’m not the only one. Not by a long shot. So here we go.  Last night I wanted to go to bed by 10pm, so I could get up early and go on a run BEFORE signing into Zoom at 7:45am to lead a yoga meditation class for my friends and family, BEFORE doing some reading of self-help books and solo meditation BEFORE I start trying to do an impossible job from my living room for an unclear number of hours per day with an attention span of basically zero to negative. 

When I write this it sounds absurd. I know that. But brains are weird. Especially mine. Remember the anxiety based overfunctioning/ underfunctioning I talked about last time? Overfunctioning much?  Anyway, that didn’t happen. We had finished a DnD session with my brother and college roommate, (my character is a rouge-gnome named Huckleberry Shake who has short purple hair, is really good at sneaking and lock picking, and carries a crossbow. I like to imagine a sort of cross between ‘Midsummer's Night Dream’ and Assassin’s Creed’.) Anyway, it was around 9:30 ish pm. It was also Cinco de Mayo, and we had picked up tacos from the neighborhood about a 15 minute drive south with a strong hispanic/ latinx population. The past couple weeks I’ve been referencing that line in ‘Wet Hot American Summer’ where they all pile into the pick up truck to go into town and go batshit crazy. “It always feels good to get away from camp, even for an hour!” Just to drive somewhere to pick up food feels like a crazy adventure these days. 

I made us magaritas when I got back; they were bright blue because we had some kind of blue liquor that I can’t remember the name of. After DnD I wanted to watch some TV. I made myself another margarita and some popcorn, which is my quarantine coping crutch. I watched this trashy but great Netflix show about teenagers in North Carolina called Outer Banks. Except the episodes kept ending on cliff hangers (OMG he KILLED HIM?), so I kept watching. I painted my toenails purple, using packing peanuts to space them out. I was kind of proud of myself actually.

It was about midnight when I went to bed. I woke up with a small headache, a result of tequila and salty popcorn and poor quality sleep. I was going to go on a walk/ run and listen to the news. I didn’t. I snoozed the alarm about ten times. It was raining out. I led my yoga class and ate some sourdough toast. And here we are. The light is filtering through the apartment windows, as I sit on the couch in my sweat pants. The crazy thing is, I just feel SO much shame. And guilt. Guilt for having a headache, shame for not waking up early to do all these things I honestly don’t even need to do. I feel shame for not writing more often, shame when I look at the dishes that are dirty. Shame when I don’t go outside to go on a walk, exercise, or when I close my work laptop early to lie on the couch and scroll through my phone.  I’ve been trying the past couple weeks to figure out this phenomena that seems to be happening to me, but also to other people I talk to. I feel okay for about 3 days, and then completely collapse. I just can’t do anything, flatline, but there doesn’t really seem to be a direct cause. It’s just like dropping on the roller coaster without warning. I was telling a friend the other day that on weekends, all I do is sleep. Usually I’m a very active person who has an almost clincally hard time sitting still. I haven’t felt like this, I told him, since I worked the hardest jobs in my life- full time wilderness therapy or residential treatment for children with Autism working 12 hour days. I work MAYBE six hours a day these days but probably more like four, broken up by lying on the couch watching documentaries and scrolling on my phone. So why am I SO DAMN EXHAUSTED? 

I did some research the other week into chronic stress for a newsletter article I was writing for parents of my elementary school. Chronic stress is different than acute stress, I found, because it has no concrete beginning and end. It’s not like a car crash or a loved one dying. Instead (for those of us with the intense privelage not to be on the front lines- god bless if you are) it’s a constant low hum in the background through news headlines, grocery store lines and crossing the street when another person is coming your direction on the sidewalk. It’s a disruption of normality with no conceivable ending, sending our brains into a low key 24/7 flight or fight mode, draining us with tiny doses of adrenaline and uncertainty that build up over time. It’s not in the forefront, but it’s there in our tight shoulders, exhaustion, inattention, insomnia, short fuses and total lack of motivation. Until we can’t take it any more and crash, seemingly out of nowhere. And then the whole thing starts again. 

As Brene Brown says, “We’ve hit our collective weary.” In one podcast episode she interviews a grief expert. He says, we are all grieving right now. Even if we don’t name it, we’re showing the symptoms. But instead of grieving the death of an individual (for most of us), we are grieving the lifestyles we’ve lost (work settings, close contact, friendships, normalcy). And grief exhausts us. BUT, because most of us aren’t experiencing acute grief (ie a loved one dying) we feel shame on TOP of that grief, that we shouldn’t be tired or inept when others have it SO much worse. It’s a meta emotion. Shame layered on grief like a terrible lasagna. How can we be justified in experiencing grief when all we do is sit on the couch and watch Netflix and eat snacks for hours a day? We’re not even in a wartime or something concrete that gives justification and purpose. Instead it’s just a vague, deep sense of disruption of life as we know it. But it’s just as real. I was walking on the beach at the time I listened to the podcast; when he said the words, “We are grieving the loss of the world as we knew it,” the sun was setting over the water. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

A few weeks ago, Andy cut my hair. When the pieces fell to the floor of our friend’s porch and the scissors snipped away larger chunks than I woud have liked, my stomach dropped. I started panicking. I felt like the world was ending. I don’t panic when I read the news, go to the grocery store in a mask, or even read the death toll. But when my hair fell to the ground around me in the gathering twilight, I absolutely lost it. I came home and sobbed. It was the first time I’d cried since the pandemic began, and it’s like it just all came out. I was so angry at Andy, and he felt so bad. I was a shell of a person for twelve hours. I cancelled morning yoga for the first time in six weeks, lamenting everyone would have look at me close up on a screen. I wanted to stay in bed forever, (until we fixed the haircut and it actually looked pretty good). But for a second there I was broken, and it was because of a goddamn haircut. I mean for Christ sakes, people are dying out there. It made me feel so petty and stupid. There’s a global pandemic happening, and I am distraught FROM MY HAIR?!

But that’s how grief works. We can’t look at the thing head on, it’s too much. A death toll is just numbers. Our brains seek to survive, to normalize, to adapt just to get through. So instead the trauma seeps into the corners, slowly creeping into our bodies and collective exhaustion until one little thing causes the world to come crashing down. The straw that breaks the camel’s back. And then we feel overwhelming shame for being so affected by something so little. For me, my lizard brain was honestly convinced I would never be attractive or happy again. 

(ALSO to be fair we watched, ‘Little Women’ a few days later. In the movie there’s the scene where Jo cuts all her hair off to give her mother money to travel to their sick father in the war. She’s then pictured crying under the stairwell. “Is it mother?” her sister asks. “No,” she says, “It’s MY HAIR!”. "See?!” I said to Andy.)

The underlying theme here is shame. We’re ashamed of our emotions because they don’t seem justified. Comparative suffering. My suffering isn’t nearly as bad as others, therefore I should not feel this way. I’m ashamed of myself for eating snacks and worried I’m going to gain a bunch of weight. Then I’m ashamed for being ashamed instead of being body positive. I’m ashamed of myself for enjoying an evening with drinks (yes plural), popcorn, painting my toes and watching teenagers who are actually in their twenties look for buried treasure. Honestly, it sounds like a great night. And it was. 

I just finished re-reading “The Four Agreements”, the Toltec wisdom book. The first agreement is “Be Impeccable With Your Word.” I assumed from the first time I read it, it meant “always tell the truth”. The reality though, is it means, our words have power. Especially our words about ourselves. Just this morning I entered my enchilada and margaritas from yesterday into my ‘Weight Watchers’ app and felt terrible. I told myself I was fat, lazy and useless. Which seems absurd when I write it out, but that’s the honest to goodness narrative inside my head. Being impeccable with our word means watching what we say to ourselves, because our words create a reality. We create our own cycles of shame. 

Even at this moment, typing this, I feel ashamed that this piece of writing is so scattered. My English major brain is mad at me. Get it together Erin. Find a cohesive theme and stick to it. Get emotional, but not too emotional. Tell stories, but not too many stories. But writing at it’s best is vulnerability and transparency;  and honestly right now it’s hard to hold on to any one thought for longer than a few seconds. And I’m pretty sure it’s not just me. Little pieces, scattered thoughts, just trying to put the puzzle together. (Oh and don’t even get me STARTED on puzzles... Andy is MUCH better than me at them, and, saving the face of our relationship, let’s just say that is another dangerous straw perched on the camel’s back through only the fault of my own...) Anyway, I think at this point, just find anything that makes you smile. Literally anything. I personally like Brad Leone’s Bon Appetite Youtube channel “It’s Alive.” He makes me laugh so much. The episode with him and Orville Peck making elote almost broke me.  Find those things, hold on to them and be kind to yourself. It’s okay to feel less than. Just remember you’re not. We’ve collectively hit weary, the point in the race where you’ve been running for so long, but the finish line is so far away. It’s okay just to go one step at a time. 

Paint your toes. Eat your popcorn. Drink your margaritas. Whatever we can do just to survive. One step at a time. You’re not alone. 

And that’s love in the time of. 

[xxrat--punkxx]

everyone go home, this post wins

I like how even though she’s the de facto leader of the Crimson Raiders and everyone looks to her in times of crisis, Lilith is kind of a dumbass

[mala-sadas]

I have a headcanon that the XY gang play a DnD campaign where they are teenagers who run around in a seemingly normal city named Yoake that is actually brimming with corruption, based off of the current campaign I'm playing. It's basically just a coping method for everyone of the stress from when they were 12, but more fun and a fuckton of memes and inside jokes.

Y's and Trevor's characters are named Aloutte Caela and Raphael Halle respectively, intern detective and forensic scientist respectively who often gets deep into investigating crimes by the police chief Theo. This annoys fellow intern Nor, as they keep bringing along their hypercompetent civilian friends to investigations and one upping him. Aloutte's dad and both of Raph's parents are in a transhumanism cult that they killed because their parents are that batshit crazy.

X, Shauna, and Tierno's characters all have a criminal past. X's character, Leandra Moor, lost all of her family except her older sister to an unwarranted police raid when she was 9, and move to Yoake with her sister, where she became a vigilante, friend, and assistant to *the* karma deliverer Rachel, along with one of the best baseball players of the high school all the teenaged characters attend. Much like X, she is cold, bitter, and depressed, though deeply cares for her friends.

Shauna's character is named Amira Lila Houx, former assassin, now an alcoholic. She's born in the slums of a nearby city and lived there for ten years with her mother, before she was adopted by Mr. Houx, who gave her everything she needed before training her as an assassin at the age of 12 by her permission. When she was 15 to 16, Houx vanished one night and never returned, so she emancipated herself, moved to Yoake, start going to high school, and started drinking. She's getting better though.

Tierno's character's name is Neil Ciro, and most of his family are involved in the drug business and they were all arrested. He has to live with his older cousin, who's distant because of having to support both of them. He dances to cope, and also jokes a lot to cope too. He's a lot more easygoing and relaxed than the others, and tries to help them all with their problems.

The NPCs/friends of the campaign are Rachel Blanchflower, a cold, aloof daughter of a CEO of a large company that she will inherit and extremely violent and brutal to those who deserve it, and happens to be dating and in love with Amira, Rose Kiyota, a very cheerful girl and youngest of the group, being 15 and in third year/last year of HS with them, always leaves quickly after a phone call, also close and dating Raph, and Theodore "Theo" Pinches, manliest man alive, just police chief and mentor.

Other NPCs are Nor Aswad, an intern of the police force, cold, aloof, and arrogant, often doing missions on his own, but has good ideals that slowly rot away as the group one ups him, eventually becoming a boss because he wants to stop them and get rewarded for his actions, especially under the eyes of Theo, Harpe "Essena" Aplake, a seemingly attractive and nice girl of the school that dated a lot of people and wears revealing clothing, but actually very bitter and troubled from childhood abuse.

And the last NPC is Nero Blumstein, a dorky, awkward, yet sharp assassin that Lea and Alo met on a yacht they snuck onto in order to take down the black market. Really ominous unknown past, but seems to be connected to Essena's past and deeply in love with her. She returns his feelings, though unfortunately doesn't think she deserves him so there's only tension. He seeks to kill the police officer that is her abusive father and also killed Lea's family.

Wow, that’s a very detailed headcanon. (lol) I can imagine them doing something like this, though I do have to wonder if they’d really go for such a dark and complex story if the purpose of it is to help them cope with the stress that the XY chapter put on them. I would think they’d want to do something goofy and fun to help them forget the shit they went through. Not that this plot isn’t intriguing, though! Alo and Raph are pretty interesting, what with that deal with their parents and all...bet that’s not a strong family bond.

[bitchapalooza]

Honestly same(well I wouldn't say disgust but they are not the best in my opinion).

Nyo!Japan's is okay to me but she's also incredibly boring from an outside view??? Not very appealing for narrative??????

The nyos have different personalities to them but nyo!Japan, visually, seems like the same exact character as og!Japan at first glance. Its stated she yerns for the west but no where in her design does that display or imply that. This seems like an important trait to her as Japan IS one of the most westernized countries in Aisa. If such a trait is to be known to the audience, it has to be visually depicted(such as Kelsey from Craig Of The Creek who parades around in a cape and carries a "sword", immediately telling the audience she is into DND or any other kinda fantasy or role play kinda thing; I believe its called narrative character design but correct me if I'm wrong please). Instead of introducing her in a school uniform or kimono, she should have been introduced with at least one thing that gives off vibes of "yearning for the west" while still maintaining that Yamato Nadeshiko character style shes noted to have and is designed with. I'm not totally sure how that can be done but if it cant then chuck that out the window and embrace harajuku Japan—

Yeah sure its stereotype that the Japanese are polite but hey what about trends? Fashion statements don't always reflect a person's personality! She can be polite AND flashy!

Nyo!America is... I'd say she's okay except for her costume design. If he wanted to keep her bomber jacket in the design, the least he could do was make everything else cohesive to that jacket as THAT is the major focal point in her design. I'm talking paying homage to Amelia Earhart—

Or to the members of WASP—

And completely take away her baseball bat. It makes no sense. It is as impractical as her skirt because wtf why. If he was going for a bit of a baseball motif sorta thing, it was done wrong because playing such a sport in a skirt is really fucking tough. I mean look—

There's hardly any mobility here!

Nyo!England looks like a 12 year old girl playing hospital. I think giving her something more subtle and calm in style would fit her better, such as a simple collard shirt with either khaki pants or a nice skirt would work. Something soft and professional. Give her a pixie cut too like this—

OR she could look something like this—

Because fuck the elegance. Nothing about her og design even says elegance. It screams rejected Alice In Wonderland character. And that is not okay when everything in AIW is batshit crazy and is literally about drugs. Nothing makes sense and neither does nyo!England's design.

Nyo!Russia I have a problem with because she is noted to be "akin to a wearied mother figure who is emotionally unstable rather than childishly cruel". Nothing about her design SAYS WEARIED MOTHER. Emotionally unstable can't exactly be depicted unless you cross a line into what is considered not okay/insensitive, rather it is shown through actions than style. I would have given her something similar to these—

In order to show that she is a tired a mother. Whilst keeping a modern look to it and keeping that modest style as well. Maybe give her a more tired smile than a bright one as well. Take away the bright colors and give her more brown and yellows or keep the pink and give her way more accents of brown in her clothes than she alreayd does now. Both are great balances. There's just. Way too much brightness going on and its a boarderline eyesore if I'm honest.

I'm really happy with nyo!Italy's design as well as Nyo!Germany's. Nyo!France I actually really like; probably one of my favorite designs. Nyo!Canada's I don't see any problems with(MAYBE not her personality as it reads too much like og!Canada's??), and I actually like how her design reads "French Canadian" more than just regular Canadian due to the design similarities to nyo!France. I love nyo!Austria's design but I am a pan disaster that already loves og!Austria so take this with a grain of salt.

But what I love the most are the fandom's versions of the nyos. They're fun and creative and there are a lot of good ones out there.

I hate most of the nyo designs so much. The only ones I like are probably nyo!italy's, nyo!prussia's and nyo!austria's. maybe nyo!russia's too. nyo!japan, nyo!england and nyo!america disgust me