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morrigan-sims · 2 months ago

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Top 24 Screenshots of 2024

I was tagged by @loony-moonsims Thank you!! (Sorry for being so late. I was on vacation and didn't have access to my laptop with all my screenshots.) I'm not going to tag anyone else to do this because it's way too late and I don't know who has or hasn't done it. But if you want to, feel free to say I tagged you!!! It is a lot of fun to do! I already did one favorite post from each month in my 2024 "Year In Review" post, but that was strictly one per month and didn't give me a chance to talk about it. So expect a lot of rambling under the cut.

tw for blood in several images and for spider imagery in Oct/Nov.

January

Starting on January 1st, I fell head-over-heels in love with Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous -- now my favorite game of all time -- and with Areelu Vorlesh. I tried my hand at recreating characters from images, which I'd never done before, and it actually turned out pretty well. (And started a mini obsession.) My first version of Areelu was not my most accurate, but I do have a deep soft spot for it, for many reasons. And while Reda isn't perfect either, I do love how she turned out as a sim.

February

The month of goth/dark fantasy people, I guess. The Lady of Ravens was very fun to design, and I discovered that that pose looks perfect with the crow/raven accessory I have.

March

In March I got bored of sweet, cutesy flower sims, and decided it was about time someone played into the horror of being both a person and a plant. And thus this sim, who someone described as "sleeping beauty if she took control of the roses and became a villain" was born. She has thorny vines growing under and over her skin, and that rose has burst from her eye. I wanted her to have little thorns poking out from under her skin, but no such cc existed, unfortunately.

Also in March, I played the first of Rook's two Horrible, Very Bad, No-Good weekends. This render (lovingly dubbed "Mirror Punch" in my folders) was meant to represent the scene that the party saw upon rushing to see what the giant crash they all heard from the lower floor of the inn was about. Rook had just woken up from being asleep for over 12 hours after passing out from exhaustion and stress, only to be told that the "chihuahua" the party had rescued the day before just so happened to be the very same man who had sold Rook to Captain Wolf 3 years ago. Oh, and this was after dying once and then having a very emotionally tense conversation with his mentor once he woke up. Because my boy is an idiot who doesn't know how to handle emotional surprises, he decided to try and punch a mirror, because repeatedly killing an imaginary version of said chihuahua/man wasn't working.

I'm still incredibly proud of this render. Editing the mirror to be cracked took me over two hours, let alone drawing in all the blood.

April

In April I was deep in my pirate obsession, in part brought about by obsessively watching Black Sails for the first time. I made the first draft of my ship infirmary (now the canon appearance of the Tide Breaker's infirmary), and also made this sim, who despite my best attempts to NOT relate everything to Rook ended up becoming the canon appearance (in my head at least) for Kholl, the Tide Breaker's surgeon, and Jay's mentor.

May

May was a great month for renders. Actually this one specific week was great for renders, since these both got posted in less than a week. The Nine of Swords is still one of my favorite renders I've ever made. I just love the way the composition works, with the chains framing it, and the swords (all copies of Wolf's rapier from my edit of her as Justice) hanging over Rook's head. Of course, I can only take partial credit, since I was inspired by Sara Kipin's version of the card.

Morana's Death card was also a lot of fun to make. It was my first attempt at putting trees into blender (a pain in the ass, but worth it) and with using photo background (easier, and also worth it). I really enjoyed how the final product turned out, and it's just such a good representation of her. She's named after a Slavic goddess of death and winter, and she's a necromancer from a frozen place, so it works well. I also really like the added touch of the red coming from the skull's eye, which was suggested by someone I was on call with while making the render.

June

June was ALSO all about the dnd characters. Aside from spending way too much time furnishing Lockwood Manor and making its awful owner, making Val as a sim, and giving Zenara a zillion new outfits, I also made these two edits.

The Judgement card was my first big in-game edit in a very, very long time. It was an interesting challenge to get it to turn out how I wanted it to. While the editing for this one was very simple, getting everything else as I wanted it was difficult. There was a lot of TOOL involved, and gshade and Relight saved my ass when it came to getting the nighttime scene to look right. This card is a recreation of a moment from Avra's backstory, where she awoke in her own grave. On digging her way out, she found a raven messenger waiting for her. The Judgement card is just too fucking perfect for her, and it was a lot of fun to create my own version of it.

Aspen's Fool Card was an idea that had been floating in my mind for MONTHS before I finally got around to making it. I could not possibly be happier with how it turned out. This was my first experiment with sizing up sims in blender, and it worked perfectly!!! A giant version of Fin (the jester-like god of death and Aspen's warlock patron) looming over Aspen dancing on strings was exactly what I had in mind. It was also my first experiment with bringing in 3D meshes that weren't already made for the sims, which was interesting.

July

July was all about the Liars. I played through (most of) Rook's SECOND Horrible, Very Bad, No-Good Weekend, which kicked off with the traumatic reveal that Rook's beloved mentor, Sigmar, was actually a corpse being puppeted by the BBEG, Dr. Purity. And not only that, but the party wizard, Maka, had known since day 1. Given Rook's name, and the fact that the special moves Sigmar had been teaching him were all named after chess pieces, it was just too damn perfect to turn Rook into a chess piece for this render. To this day, it's one of my favorite renders I've ever made. Not only does it LOOK amazing, but the layers upon layers of symbolism and little details hidden in it, most of which mean nothing to anyone other than me and the DM of Rook's game. This was my 2nd experiment with giant sims in blender, and also with outside models, as well as my first horizontal/landscape render. Making the pose for this one was a TON of fun, and I got to play around with some editing methods I hadn't used in a LONG time.

Speaking of Dr. Purity, his Temperance card was my most detailed blender set to date!! The many objects were a lot of fun to import and set up. And the editing was SO much fun. Drawing all the shadows on his clothes was a ton of fun, as was fixing the clipping in his hair and figuring out how to make it look like there was liquid in the flask was also fun. This is maybe my least popular render, but I am proud of it and I do love it. We finally got a face reveal of the BBEG, of course I had to do something with that!!! (I definitely didn't only start caring this much about him after finding out he was Sigmar's true identity. Nope, not at all.)

August

In August, I was back in a furnishing mood, this time working on the pirate ships. (I was simultaneously working on making maps for all three of them for our VTT.) I really love how this shot of Zara's cabin turned out. And this coming weekend Rook gets to step into this room again, this time as Captain in his own right! I can't fucking wait.

The Weeping Angels gif was SO much fun to make. It wasn't my first time making a gif, but it was the first in a long time, and also by far the most complicated one I'd ever made. It ended up being well over 30 frames long, and I love the final result!!! (After I made it, I watched it so many times I started to get a headache, lmao.)

September

September Rook was still having a Bad Time, and I got obsessed with Carrion.

I love how the editing (although simple) turned out on this render of Rook. The accents on the chains, the veins I drew under his skin, it all looks great. My poor boy, he does NOT deserve this, lmao. Sorry buddy. This render is (somewhat understandably) one of my least popular, but I still love it a lot.

Theodore's render is also super simple, but looks really good to me. Once again, drawing in details on the armor/clothes was a fun experiment, and so was adding more definition and age to Theodore's face. This was also only my 2nd time sculpting clothing in blender (the first being the Nine of Swords) with his cape, and it looks quite nice.

October

In October, I was hard-core fixating on Zara's upcoming introduction, so she (FINALLY) got her own tarot card. I can't believe it took me as long as it did to realize the World was her card. Anyways, I like how this one turned out. The symbolism with the items and their placement was a lot of fun to add in, and the colors turned out great.

The other shot I really really loved was this preview picture for my spider legs accessory edit. Using TOOL to get the sim in position was a pain, but it turned out SO worth it. This sim in general was super fun to make and looks badass as hell, but her in this pose with the throne is even better.

November

In November I took a break from editing and rendering to get back in P:WotR mode, so I did some neat little recreations of character portraits from the game. I was on my evil run this time, and these two were my two new discovery favorites. I was quite happy with how well I was able to recreate these just with what I had in my game.

December

In December I was back on my rendering bullshit, this time with Carrion. I'd had this idea for MONTHS, since one of the other players in his campaign gave it to me, honestly the scenes were basically done. I barely had to do anything to them, and the editing was super basic. (Hilariously someone left tags saying they loved the editing, and my only thought was "thank you, but I basically didn't do anything". Which I guess is a compliment to my blender skills if it makes them look well-edited.)

I especially loved pulling the reversal of the werewolf, where the full moon is monstrous and the new moon is safe. Also just creating Carrion's monster form in general was a lot of fun to do. I made several pieces of cc just for Carrion (his normal armor, his monster arm spikes), and did some whacky things to get him to look how I wanted. (There's actually two copies of monster Carrion standing there. One of them is just the tips of his toes the other is the rest of his body, sans toes. I did this so I could give him the split feet, which are actually illithid feet from BG3, converted by Shandir.)

I also just straight up painted + clone-stamped in a portion of his arm in the monster image, because it was clipping with his leg. I'm proud to say I don't think you can tell. And adding small lights for his eyes in that form was also a very fun little touch. (Honestly, the lighting in general was an adventure in this one. I hated it at the time, but looking back it was an interesting challenge.) I also learned what HDRIs are and how to use them, so that was a fun learning experience for me!

Final Thoughts

I made SO much progress in rendering this year, and I'm very proud of myself. I would love to whittle down my unfinished renders / not started render concepts to zero in 2025, but knowing me that's never going to happen. (ADHD, baby!!!) But I had a TON of fun this year and I'm so happy with all the things I made, be they in CAS, in build mode, or in blender.

And I'm glad you all were along for the ride!!! Whether you've been following me for years, or you just followed me last week, I'm glad you're here. While I'd make these things for myself, it's a thousand times more fun to share them with others, and knowing other people like my work just makes me more motivated to make it.

#morrigan.txt #ts4 #the sims 4 #simblr #top 24 screenshots from 2024 #this is SO fucking long I'm so sorry.#when I said long rambling ahead I meant it #long post #if you're on mobile you might not wanna open this lmao. Sorry.

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stillness-in-green · 5 months ago

Note

What do you think about Horikoshi ending the manga without a canon couple? Do you ship or used to ship MHA characters? Did you see romantic potential? Do you think Horikoshi might confirm a couple later?

No canon couple? Au contraire, my dear anon! The manga ended with the most important canonization of all!

(Everybody give a huge hand to The Only Hets Who Matter, Gentle and La Brava; they deserve it.)

As to the ships people actually care about or were expecting some word on (e.g. the stuff with the students), my reaction there is overwhelmingly “lol gj hori”. I’m glad he ended it with no canon student couple to speak of! While I do sympathize with the position of certain people on Twitter who contend that Ochaco’s arc about repression really needed her to actually confess to Deku, I hated what her crush on Deku did to her arc anyway, so I don’t have it in me to be too annoyed. Anyway, I don’t think it’s possible to do the Iron Might 2.0 part of the epilogue if Deku and Ochaco[1] have been dating the entire time, so I’m perfectly happy to run with the headcanon that she did confess at one point and it didn’t work out for whatever reason, so by the time the last chapter rolls around, they’ve just been friends for years.

1: Or Bakugou, for that matter, but with all due respect to the BakuDekus who haven’t been seeing Shonen Jump battle manga come and go for twenty years with nary a confirmed gay MC amongst them, that was never in the cards.

I remember posting once ages ago about a Japanese fan’s hope that Horikoshi, who the fan perceived as being at least somewhat progressive about women, could manage to end the series without a bunch of timeskip romances showing up at the last minute. While I have some deep reservations about Hori’s progressive cred at this point in time, and am not tremendously impressed with his writing of women, either, credit where credit is due: he did end the series without any timeskip romances.

As to there being any confirmation of couples in the material we have remaining, I imagine the last train station[2] for that is going to be the final volume release in December, as, on top of the usual volume extras, Horikoshi should be considerably more free to include expansions that his schedule and exhaustion kept him from in the weekly publication. I could even see a bonus chapter of some sort, maybe something post-epilogue so we can see the power suit in action or something silly and fourth wall-breaking to celebrate the series conclusion. There’s also going to be one last fanbook released in January, which I have been assuming will be a data book like Ultra Archive.

2: Or harbor, I suppose, since we’re talking about ships.

Now, do I think any of that stuff will confirm ships? Eh, that’s not really in my analytical wheelhouse. The farthest I’d venture to guess is that I would a) not be surprised to get some clarification on Deku and Ochaco, and b) definitely peg the volume release to have material like that over squirreling it away in the fanbook.

For myself, my shipping habits are somewhat erratic—it’s not really where my primary engagement in media lies, and certainly not for this series! But that’s not to say I don’t have ships, or that I’m not happy to talk about them, so if you’re curious about that, do feel free to hit the jump. I’ll order them by general sphere first, then by how passionate I am about them compared to ones I just think are kinda cute or funny for whatever reason.

DISCLAIMER: While I have not explicitly stated as much here before, I am a 40-year-old asexual proshipper, proshipper here meaning I'm in favor of curating your own fandom space and not harassing people about their fictional ships under any circumstances. When I say I ship something, that does not mean I’m idealizing the relationship, want it to be canon, think it would be cool in real life, or am mentally putting myself in the place of one the characters. It’s solely because there’s something in the dynamic I think is fun or interesting, and “interesting” can very much include the same kind of interest one might have in watching a building get demolished.

That is to say, there are a handful of Too Problematic For Tumblr ships in here—one age gap but otherwise wholesome, one age gap and tacitly abusive, and one that really hits the Tumblr Trifecta by being age gap, abusive and incestuous. I've put all three at the very bottom in their own section in descending order of Most BadWrong, but if you’re one of those people deep into The Discourse about how ships need to be Morally Correct otherwise the shippers are terrible people who should kys, this is not the post for you. The block button’s there if you need it—and be advised that it’s there if I need it, too, and I’m not afraid to use it. (I grew up in dark fantasy shoujo fandoms; I am not litigating my ships with anybody.)

~~~Stillness’s Dubious and Delightful BNHA Ship Opinions~~~

Villain-o-rama-rama:

Spinarakiya, ShigaRD, Spinaraki: Alas for my short-lived OT3! I was really, really pumped for this in the stretch between MVA and the early stages of the first war, what with there being such interesting possible angles between all three parties, only for Re-Destro to get arrested and never seen in person again, Spinner to get snatched up by Gigantomachia and never look back, and Shigaraki to get lost to the possession plot for, at least as far as scenes with his allies were concerned, basically the rest of the series.

Not exactly great material for my shipping heart, though I’ll refrain from the rant comparing how long the PLF members were living in close contact with each other compared to the League of Villains and why that should have meant they developed stronger relationships than what we got.

But canon being what it is, I do still ship the hell out of these three in a canon divergence situation, or any number of potential AUs. I love the connective tissue there, with Re-Destro + Shigaraki having some startlingly strong background parallels and lasting injuries courtesy of each other, Shigaraki + Spinner having the gaming and the emptiness themes, and Spinner + Re-Destro having their Big Gay Feelings About Shigaraki as well as an appreciation for patterned fabrics some shared early frustrations about Shigaraki’s seeming lack of plans or direction.

It's a good dynamic, and I think they could all do a lot for each other, though certainly not in ways that are good for the continued survival of Hero Society. But fuck Hero Society anyway.

As to the component parts, I don’t ship Re-Destro and Spinner without Shigaraki being at least an invisible part of the dynamic (though I would read the fic where he wasn’t with considerable interest!), but I’m also very much on board with ShigRD and Spinaraki individually. My constant refrain about Shigaraki and RD is that they have a lot of common ground but very little common language, and I’m fascinated by how much of that they could recognize in each other and how much of it they could then recognize back in themselves, versus how much you’d get one of those cases of, “This guy is a freak and I’m so normal.”

It's so, so, so important to me that Re-Destro is the first ally Shigaraki won entirely on his own merits. He's got no borrowed reputation from Stain, no monsters on loan from Sensei, and no help from people on Sensei’s payroll, yet still, as a result of his efforts (both in his own fights and in making the League his own, even if it didn’t start that way) he wins himself an army and a follower who never saw a light that wasn’t his.

I weep for the Shigaraki/Re-Destro relationship we could have had if Horikoshi didn’t decide that Shigaraki in the endgame was to be nothing but a pawn, and therefore couldn’t be allowed to keep any of his markers of independence and growth.

As to Spinaraki, man, what is there even to say? The relationship so clear and obvious that it had even the mhatwt bros out there saying, “Spinaraki but at what cost?” in the last chapter! I will admit that I liked them better when their romance had that apocalyptic tinge than when it suddenly started getting painted as primarily about them being Gamer Bros, but at least that melancholic “beauty at the end of the world” shading came back when Shigaraki talked about destroying Mount Fuji for Spinner (be still my heart!).

They will meet and be close in every world and I will hear nothing else.

RiKoku: I don’t think I truly understood the appeal of ex-lover ships until these two. They snuck up on me in a big way, pretty much entirely a result of my realization when I was halfway through the (first and only, sadly) MLA Week event that Trumpet was pretty free-roaming and independent from Re-Destro all the way through Deika only to be glued to his side from there on out. Together with the Spinner parallels (the subordinates who fought each other and then came together to the crater to see their worlds remade) and my jokes about wanting to see the MLA heads during their stressed-out, over-achiever college years, all the pieces fell into place for a Rikiya and Koku who had dated for a few years and then broken up when Rikiya realized that his authority as Re-Destro—and Koku’s strong subordination to that authority—meant that he could not responsibly stay in the relationship. (This also presents several good explanations for why a man in Rikiya’s situation isn’t married with at least one child already.)

Anyway, to me, they never really fell out of love with each other; Re-Destro just couldn’t justify overlooking the power dynamic problems once he realized how extreme they were. (This does make for a fun alternate angle on RD’s personal life post-Deika, wherein Trumpet watches RD pass the mantle of leadership to Shigaraki Tomura and then more or less immediately pounces on him because now he doesn’t have the power dynamic excuse anymore. Look up the great Whatever Is Spared by @leftofrevolution on AO3 for more on this.)

Overhonest: I just like Nemoto much more than I like Chrono, and thus my Overhaul ship of choice follows suit. I like the idea that their feelings are wildly unbalanced but not totally one-sided—Overhaul has more baggage than a freshly loaded airport carousel, but he does like the Shie Hassaikai, as proven by them being mentioned in the Likes section of his character page. Nemoto in particular is someone whose presence we know Overhaul finds reassuring and we know it because he told Nemoto so directly when Nemoto asked, which means it can’t be anything other than the plain truth. He relies on Nemoto enough to make demands of him, he expects (and gets!) effectiveness, and he even bothers to take the time to justify out loud why it would be okay for him to merge himself with Nemoto physically (because Nemoto would say yes if asked, right? of course he would) rather than just doing it with no thought to Nemoto’s feelings about it because why should he care about that.

And Nemoto, for his part, is of course an obsessive weirdo who’s totally smitten with the first person he’s ever found who legitimately wants him around, so smitten that he’ll happily overlook the fact that Overhaul primarily wants him around because he’s useful.

Moving away from what’s on-the-page canon, I enjoy (and write) the take that Overhaul is sex-repulsed, not because he’s fully asexual, but as an extension of his mysophobia. This makes his sex life extremely fraught, but not non-existent. When I dabble with writing them (and they’re by far the ship I’ve written the most explicit material for in this fandom), I write him as basically a sex-repulsed demi (not that he would know or use that terminology!) who is attracted to Nemoto but has been largely left aggravated and sexually frustrated by their periodic experiments in non-traditional ways of getting him off. (Nemoto, for his part, is more than willing to keep trying! No kink is too weird for this guy if it means finding something Overhaul would actually like.)

(To get real here for a second, if Spinarakiya is meaningful to me as a person who’s comfortably poly, Overhonest is meaningful to me as an asexual person who's only ever had allosexual partners.)

AFOUji: Truly the Evil Husbands of all time. I wish the shift from Final Boss Shigaraki to Final Boss AFO hadn’t left Ujiko with a few truly inexplicable characterization beats,[3] because I truly do love these two as just the worst pair of mutually enabling monsters making the world worse and more dangerous for everyone while being 100% supportive of each other’s passions the entire time. Here’s to 70 years of Dark Lord/Mad Scientist domestic bliss.

3: For the record, I consider these to be his, “I've only been living for the boy's sake,” line in Chapter 269 and his clear reticence and dissastisfaction with Shigaraki getting the surgery in Chapter 240.

DabiSkep: Skeptic is the only man Dabi has ever thanked for his contributions. Dabi goes out of his way to kidnap him. I’m 90% convinced that they’d been working on the video together prior to the Villa raid. The combination of Skeptic’s deep and abiding neuroticism with Dabi’s swings between lazy malice and manic pushiness is extremely funny. What can I say; it’s just about the only Dabi ship that really clicks for me. I enjoy leftof’s take that Skeptic had a goth phase he never completely exited and so Dabi appeals to his inner Hot Topic teen, which he is 100% aware of and 150% embarrassed by.

School Environs:

Mirio/Tamaki: Tamaki literally regains consciousness at the exact moment Mirio loses his quirk. Other than cases where there’s some actual explanation for that—a magical connection, psychic powers, etc.—I have never seen that kind of beat happen outside of a shoujo manga. The bit where one romantic lead just mysteriously has a Bad Feeling in the same instant that something Bad happens to their love interest is so shoujo-coded. Jesus Christ, Tamaki is so moe. And Mirio so clearly thinks the world of him, too, as evinced by what an over-the-top sobriquet he dubbed Tamaki with. They’re great, end of story.

Monoma/Shinsou: I’ll admit I liked this somewhat better when I thought there was any chance at all Shinsou might end up in Class B—I kind of loathe that he wound up in Class A for the self-evidently terrible reason that it’s The Main Character Class, when it seems so obviously a conflict of interest for Aizawa to be teaching him. But eh, it’s okay; it just means Monoma will have to nobly learn to look past it after a lot of time spent being completely obnoxious about it.

My annoyance with Shinsou’s class placement aside, Monoma is one of my favorite students, and I like that he immediately latches onto Shinsou as a kindred spirit. And, like, if that were 100% one-directional, I would probably shrug it off, but Shinsou, despite trying to play at being aloof, does actually get invested enough that he gets pretty bothered by the idea of Monoma needing help, even in something as inconsequential as a class exercise. It’s just a much, much more interesting dynamic than Shinsou has with Deku or especially Kaminari.

Also, as someone with a bit of a Thing for mind fuckery, the way Copy and Brainwash can play off each other is Good.

MomoJirou: The fanart is cute and I like Momo better than Kaminari. And the culture clash thing is fun.

Shouto/Inasa: The fanart is cute and I like Inasa better than Deku or Bakugou.

Professional Sphere:

Hawksdeavor:The age gap adds flavor. The fact that Endeavor is still married but deeply unhappily so makes it even spicier. The difference in what they represent (or could potentially represent) to each other is the best part, with Hawks, for Endeavor, being someone who represents a totally clean page, while Endeavor, for Hawks, represents a lifelong adoration. Finding each other’s reality in all of that would be an interesting relationship arc and could be extremely fulfilling and strengthening for both of them.

The spoiler is (or at least should have been, if I’d been writing the series) their divided feelings on Dabi. Honestly, I really wanted to see them clash over the matter of Touya and how to deal with him, with Endeavor wanting to save him but not knowing how and Hawks just wanting him gone but not knowing how to get away with it. A certain pair of facts is glaring to me: first, that Hawks was a chief architect of the second war’s battle plans, whereas we never saw Endeavor involved with them at all, and second, that, when the big day came, Endeavor was slated to fight All For One with Hawks at his side despite at least some guilty protests from Enji that he really ought to be facing Dabi.

It smacks strongly of Hawks making some profoundly selfish decisions under the guise of clear-headed strategy and I really wanted it to blow up in his face when Dabi found his way to their battlefield anyway. Pushing Endeavor into a place where he had to choose between them and ultimately chose his son (say, by protecting him from an attack coming from Hawks) would have been validating for Touya, done a lot to lever Endeavor’s arc out of the reactiveness and passivity that drag it down so badly in the canon, and also handed Hawks a real consequence for how dismissively he treats the lives of Villains and how much he’s tried to avoid reckoning with both Endeavor’s abuse and Enji’s own attempts to do said reckoning!

In summary, Hawks and Endeavor could be very good for each other, and the incredible amount of baggage they’d have work through first would be key to either making that good ending feel earned or lead to them dramatically and deliciously imploding. Either one works for me, and either one, even without the romantic angle, would have been more interesting than the pablum we got.

NightMight: Speaking of could-have-been-good relationships that dramatically imploded! I love Sir Nighteye as the most visible cost of All Might’s lifestyle, the one he lost because he couldn’t step away from the path his ideals had set out, and how that ideal inevitably took him full circle so that he found himself standing, for Deku, in the same place Nighteye once stood for him. And of course by then it was too late and Deku wouldn’t listen to him anymore than he himself listened to Nighteye back then.

But Nighteye didn’t give up on caring about him, even if he had no avenue left to express it but throwing himself into finding a successor All Might would accept, which led to Nighteye's own (wonderful) relationship with Mirio.

Just great, difficult, adult stuff about irreconcilable differences that never stopped them from caring about each other even as those differences forced them to their parting of ways.

Mount Lady/Kamui Woods: They’re cute and I like the idea that they both have trouble, for opposite reasons, with cameramen. I like that he calls her just Lady when he thinks she’s in trouble. And not to put too fine a point on it, but I like that they’re kinda the most explicit Pro Hero couple and yet she’s the more prominent and important character with the more visible arc, which is a nice contrast to most of the other hetero relationships in this benighted manga.

Other/Cross-faction:

Togachaco: The yuri ship that could. My god, the canon divergence I want to give these two. You know why I want Deku and Ochaco to not be together in the end? Because I want Ochaco to realize that she did everything in her power to save her Villain while Deku—after all that talk on the cliff!—just killed his, and triggered Toga just before he left to do it, meaning Ochaco had a harder time with Toga than she might have otherwise.

But, I’m not here to talk about No. 2 Green; let’s talk instead about the canon divergence where Toga survives (shove that absurd death-via-blood-transfusion right into the incinerator) and then Ochaco has to come face to face with a system that does not want to let her be anywhere near as kind as she wants to be. The canon divergence where Ochaco realizes that her forgiveness is immaterial to justice, where she watches the system she fought to defend gear up to try Toga as an adult because Japan needs a scapegoat for the destruction of the war and all of the people who are actually most responsible are already dead or dying. Where Ochaco realizes that she has to do something drastic if she doesn’t want to live the rest of her life haunted by the knowledge that her compassion got a 17-year-old victim of emotional and psychiatric abuse executed by the state. The one where she decides to take a fucking stand, and it forces the rest of her class to confront that need as well.

“The cutest girl in the whole world,” my god.

Kotarou and Nao: I’m not as big on it by the time we’re seeing them in the Tenko flashback, though I certainly wasn’t pulling for some mean-spirited, allegedly feel-good “Nao slaps Kotarou and the whole family walks out of him” thing like you see in fanfic sometimes. No, what I really like with Kotarou and Nao is thinking about them when they’re both still young, in the stretch of years where they really think they'll be happy together. That her being with him can make all his problems go away, that him being able to bury his past and be better than all the people who hurt him (and there were so many people who hurt him) will be enough, that love is the answer to everything. Sure, the cracks are there, but they’re thin, and they can be hidden beneath all the days when things are good, when the two of them hold each other and feel safe and loved and sure.

The cracks are still there, and love isn’t enough when love becomes a band-aid and a blind eye. But the love is still there too, and it’s so fierce and so desperate, and it still won’t save them.

Sorry, everyone; they make me emotional. They are beautiful in the way of sparks dancing above flames, or early flowers blooming right before a vicious cold snap. Ah, me.

StainMight: GOD, All Might really needed to grapple more with Stain’s side of his legacy. Like, StainMight is really a victim of the way the story looked like it was setting up to criticize All Might’s methodology as well-intended but not sustainable long-term, but then, like every other aspect of the series that was about systemic critique, that criticism just evaporated and Stain became an All Might cheerleader with nothing to say about the system All Might supported for thirty years. Maddening! But for real, All Might should have been badly hurt in that car attack and then rescued by Stain, both to give Deku some stress about how All Might could be in danger after they parted on bad terms, and also to really make All Might have to sit with this opinionated zealot all-too-prepared to talk about how no one else is really living up to his example.

And there should be UST the whole time.

Yoichi and Kudou: I am almost entirely negative towards the OFA Collective these days, especially Kudou’s role in the endgame, but I still have some fondness for what he and Yoichi could have been. My god, the first One For All transfer really should have been because they kissed. More beautiful, more tragic, more profound, and preserves the Yoichi that had some actual fucking agency in the life he lived instead of just constantly being AFO’s or Kudou’s trophy princess there to talk about how respectively terrible and awesome they are.

TogaTsuyu: I just think it would be interesting if Tsuyu were actually allowed to be more present in the Toga plotline, rather than only arriving as a spoiler to avert major shifts every time. Toga says she likes Tsuyu, too, after all, and Tsuyu is so different from both Ochaco and Deku, so much more thoughtful and considered. I dunno, I just wonder how things might have gone if, for example, it had been Tsuyu that Toga managed to draw away in the Jakku fight. Given that side story with her snakey friend Habuko, evidence suggests that Tsuyu is a good deal more observant and intuitive than Ochaco, and I wonder if she might have been able to suss out what Toga was actually asking there better than Ochaco did, and how that might have changed things.

THE TUMBLR PROBLEMATIC ZONE:

Gentle Criminal and La Brava: I was willing to follow the canon’s initial vagary about these two, but I also like them quite a bit together, so if canon wants to put them in wedding rings at the end of the series, that’s fine by me! Yes, I’m aware that there’s a pretty significant age gap there, which would have been at its most apparent when she first sought him out, but I don’t for one single instant believe that he’d be anything less than a total gentleman to her. Indeed, it’d be entirely plausible to mount an argument based on his behavior that they were not at all romantically involved circa the Culture Festival arc,[4] and only become so after Gentle’s imprisonment and subsequent release. But in general, what I’m more concerned with is the dynamic—I regard a power differential in a relationship as a reason for both parties to be cautious and mindful of that differential, but not as an immediate game-ender.

4: Most obvious is that when she says, “I love you,” he only says things like, “Thank you,” in return.

In that sense, Gentle and La Brava are great—they click together perfectly and obviously make each other tremendously happy after a lifetime of rejection. La Brava, in Gentle’s theatrical attention-seeking, finds someone who accepts her overflowing way of showing love; Gentle, in living up to La Brava’s feelings, finds a reason for his skewed heroism beyond satisfying his pride. To whatever extent their life together was heading anywhere bad (and there’s no evidence of this at all save that Heroes were always likely to catch up to them eventually, making La Brava’svery extreme response to Gentle’s defeat likewise inevitable), Deku’s intervention got them off of that path and back onto one that let them be accepted by the world, which they seem to have capitalized on marvelously.

They’re the only Villains I can think of whose turn to Team Hero in the endgame works for me without any significant quibbles. Good for them! I hope they are so, so happy together, because they deserve it.

AFO and Kotarou: MEANWHILE, IN MY OTHER KOTAROU SHIP. I love AFO knowing Everything about what he’s doing here while Kotarou knows absolutely Nothing about what AFO is doing here. I love an AFO who is self-amused in being friendly and reassuring and distractingly attractive to Kotarou, an AFO who knows that his toying with Kotarou would make Shimura Nana sick with terror and rage, and even if she isn’t alive to be so anymore, the fantasy of it is satisfying enough, especially since Kotarou is himself a very handsome young man, one whose hurt and resentment AFO finds beguiling to sometimes prod at, as if unable to leave a bruise alone except the bruise isn’t on his own skin.

I have an AU I’m never likely to write where Kotarou winds up successfully knocking out Tenko on the night of the accident before going on the run with him, only for them to get picked up by AFO a few weeks later, and let me tell you guys, that’s where all my guilty pleasure AFO/Kotarou really lives.

That said, I liked this one much better before we got the opening for it in canon, and not just because AFO’s disguise persona was doofy-looking instead of devastatingly handsome. It was always one of those ships that tickled my inner hedonistic wickedness fancier but that I never wanted to be canon because my affection for the ship's vibe was not more important to me than the integrity of Shigaraki’s arc, and Shigaraki’s arc was far better served by his early childhood being as free from AFO as possible. Alas, the reveal is very AFOtarou but at what cost.

Dabideavor: Sorry not sorry everyone, but all the people screaming about how this is SICK FILTH seem to have missed the point that it is indeed, absolutely and completely, sick filth and that’s part of the appeal. Personally, I like it for two main reasons.

Firstly, I want Endeavor to have as hard a time as possible, and times don't get harder than this. I enjoy it when he's frozen and helpless in the face of the son whose life he destroyed because I have a long history of enjoying stoic male characters being made vulnerable through suffering.

Secondly, and more importantly, I like it because I like the version of Dabi you see in it, particularly compared to the Fanon Dabi who made so much League of Villains fan content un-fucking-readable for years.

I'm going to try to keep the hot fandom tea to a minimum here, limited to the upcoming footnote, but I hated Fanon Dabi.[5] He was an incoherent mash of a character designed to be a vehicle for the unabashed revenge fantasy of bloody murder against Bad Dads while also presenting no danger whatsoever of splash damage, a Woobie Big Brother who was completely harmless except to the father whose organs he was planning to paint the walls with. Every excuse that could be made, would be made, for Dabi's more questionable or even outright nasty moments, even if it meant minimizing or outright erasing the harm we saw Dabi do, right there on the page in literal manga monochrome.

5: There's a particular type of flanderization that goes into Fanon Dabi, the same kind of flanderization I saw attached to Steven Universe's Lapis Lazuli, and which informed the absolute umbrage certain people took with Rebecca Sugar for describing Spinel, the SU movie's villain, as toxic. There is a portion of fandom that loves abuse victims who get angry and lash out, but which will go absolutely ballistic at the slightest suggestion that abuse victims are themselves also capable of harm, that lashing out has the potential to hurt innocent people. In a perfectly executed DARVO, it becomes "victim blaming" to confront an abuse victim about the very real abuse they're inflicting on others. I only specified fictional characters here, but it's a dynamic you see in real life, too. Some people hunger for nothing so much as an acceptable target and abuse victims are not exempt from that statement.

The Dabi I thought was fun was the high-energy maniac who doesn't give a shit about anyone else getting caught in the crossfire of his revenge. Both that version of Dabi and the Endeavor who's paralyzed with guilt and despair are facilitated by Dabi’s father-obsession having a taboo sexual dimension to it that Dabi is all too ready to shove in the face of absolutely everyone who would think worse of Endeavor for it. That means Endeavor himself, of course, but also all the good little civilians who Endeavor keeps telling to watch him. Watch this, says Dabi, as he makes lewd hand gestures on force-streamed national television.

It's not about Dabi healing as an abuse victim, and it’s not about Dabi having a fulfilling arc—covering that stuff was canon's job! It's about the fact that I, for reasons both personal and related to fandom spite, am personally entertained by Dabi being pedal-to-the-metal deranged about doing whatever it takes to seize Daddy’s attention and never let him look away again, which also means acting to ensure that no one is capable of or willing to save Endeavor from that fate. Like, if you want someone who would spend ten years plotting the most agonizing possible way to torment his abuser, then it’s sophistry to suddenly declare some agonizing torments off-limits. Dabideavor is just committing to the bit.

#bnha #stillness answers #stillness ships #tw: incest #just discussion no depiction #it's the last one on the post

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trivialbob · 1 year ago

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TVs get larger and have more features as their prices drop. Cars today are substantially more reliable and safe than those from when I was a teenager. People live longer due to advances in medicine.

I'm an optimist. Life gets better.

When Amazon first arrived I was excited. I bundled my orders to avoid a shipping charge. Amazon didn't collect sales tax in those days. Then I got Prime. It's has a hefty annual fee, but it comes with the TV streaming and free shipping.

My adult kids have credit cards on file on my Prime account so they can take advantage of the free shipping and not pay the annual Prime fee. I can also treat myself to some free stuff by using their cards (kidding). Now that Netflix has stopped us from sharing accounts, I figure it's just a matter of time before Prime does that too.

Lately when I open Prime streaming there are commercials. Mostly they are for shows but this morning saw one for Maybelline eye makeup. I have to hit the Back button to get on to the main screen. It's easy to move along. But that extra new step annoys me.

This week I got an email from Amazon telling me there will be limited commercials on Prime streaming starting January 29.

This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time.

It made me think of the surcharges some restaurants now add to the bill. 6% for healthcare. 18% for fair wages. 2% for clean silverware! Any place with the tablet that swivels asks me to tip 20, 22, or 25% to the teenager who put two doughnuts into a wax bag. Recently I purchased something with a lifetime warranty. The salesman offered to sell me an extended warranty. None of these things make my shopping or dining experiences more enjoyable.

Amazon politely notes that I will have the option to pay a $2.99 monthly premium to avoid commercials. I'll probably put up with commercials. Paying more to Amazon doesn't sit well with me.

So it will be like the old days. Instead of using the pause button when I want to get a drink or snack I'll do that during the commercials like it's 1988, when I still had hair and a 75 pound television set.

Another thing about Amazon Prime: It is starting to feel like Temu. If I'm looking for some product that isn't necessarily under a particular name brand I see multiple items with the same picture but different company names. Gogoku, Calicob, Miaozuhn.

I can take my chance on lower priced things that might be crap, like some USB charging cables I bought that added hours to the time it took to charge my phone. There was probably a single strand of thin wire inside the rubber coating, that's my guess. Oh why did I trust you, AAguuds?

As much as I use online sellers I do like to shop local and support nearby stores. Amazon has begun to make that choice even easier.

#I feel like Amazon is on an arc and has reached the going down side

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alex51324 · 11 months ago

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Everyplate unboxing

I did the Everyplate offer again! Seriously, guys--I'm not trying to be, like, a corporate shill here, but if you do their introductory offer and then immediately cancel, they will beg to give you the introductory offer again. And again. And again. I've done it like six times, all with the same credit card/address/etc. They've even started adding bonus offers--this time I got an extra meal and a packet of steak for $1.

If you live in the US, have a credit card, and like cooking, you should probably do it, is what I'm saying. All you have to do is remember to cancel it when the box arrives.

Here's the box:

It's a nice box, with a corrugated/reflective lining for temperature regulation. It's sturdy enough that you can re-use it (and the ice-packs that you get) as a little picnic cooler several times.

Here's inside the box:

Everything's just kind of jumbled in there, so you have to unpack it and sort out what goes with each meal. I've been doing the 6 meals/2 servings plan the last few times (the first few times I did 3 meals/4 servings), and with the extra meal offer this time I got 2 servings each of 7 meals. (You can get a smaller number of meals, but the shipping is a flat $11 no matter how many you get. If you pay attention when you're choosing which recipes you want, you can easily stretch the box out over 2 weeks--pick some things with vegetables that keep well, like carrots and so forth, and put the meat component in the freezer.)

Chicken stir-fry and dijon mustard steak:

With their stir-fries, I like to add some extra vegetables; I made this one last night and put in carrots and some more peppers, and it ended up being more like 3 servings than 2. The other one is originally a pork-chops recipe, but I'm going to do it with my free steak instead; I'm planning to have it tomorrow.

Shepherd's pie and linguine:

These two I'm putting aside for next week--I put the ground beef in the freezer, and everything else should be OK.

Sweet-potato hash and sausage flatbreads:

The sweet potato hash is also for next week. I made the flatbreads today. It was a little more complicated than I thought--they have you making a white sauce from scratch; I had to go out and buy milk--but it was really good!

Cherry pork chops/chicken:

They do a lot of recipes that are chicken or pork chops with some sort of fruit jam--I've done apricot and fig ones; this one has cherry jam. Since I ordered two meals that came with pork chops (this one and the dijon mushroom one) I swapped one set of pork chops for chicken, but then I also got the $1 steak, so I have an extra packet of meat; once I decide which one I want to have, I'll put the other one in the freezer.

I paid, like, $35 for all this food. I don't really understand why it's worth it to them to keep sending me this introductory offer when I have never bought a single full-price box, but they keep sending me emails asking me to please consider letting them send me a big box of food that they cannot possibly be making any money on, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . I will oblige them.

#food #groceries #this can't possibly go on forever #but if you have a US address and a credit card you can get in on it while it lasts #back in the day they used to advertise this thing where you could get 8 cassettes/CDs for a penny “just pay shipping”#but then they would automatically send you stuff every month unless you told them not to #and you had to buy several items at full price before you were allowed to cancel it #this is not like that #you can do the introductory offer and just cancel right away #you do not ever have to buy a full-price box #they do keep emailing you periodically but just to keep offering you discounted boxes with no obligation to ever buy a full price one #I'm guessing it's some kind of enshittification cycle thing where it makes them look good to investors if people cancel and come back?#just spitballing #but anyway it's pretty good stuff and I cannot stress enough how very much they do not try to stop you #from taking advantage of the introductory offer over and over again #they positively encourage it

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ultimateaclrecovery · 1 year ago

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Japan Day 6 Hakone!

Today we traveled to a mountain town called Hakone.

We got to see mt Fuji on the train and honestly the train ride of just having a full two hours to sit and not do anything was really nice

Then we saw an ad for the Hakone open air muesuem and it was really cool! Highlights including the foot bath, giant fried egg that you could stand on, a stained glass tower, a hilarious interactive display where they put your face on a digital artwork in the museum background and a Picasso room.

We then got to take a gondola up to the mountain top and down to the lake where we got to take a pirate ferry boat across!

And then after some brief chaos with the bus system (it just never came) and taking a taxi (that also went to the wrong place at first) we finally got to check in at the Ryoken and enjoy our private onsen. We also got to enjoy this many courses traditional dinner. There was a lot of sea food and my boyfriend kept trying to get me to keep trying it so I didn’t have the best time. But the non sea food parts were very good and everything was super pretty.

Overly long and tmi travel diary

We get up early to catch a two hour train to Hakone. My tummy is just a little a bit upset this morning. Between travel, stress, being on my period, and lots of new food it’s been through a lot. I also feel like I haven’t been pooping enough. But they could just be not eating enough for how much walking we’ve been doing.

The train is really nice and we get some lovely views of the sun rising over the mountains. I update my travel diary, take a nap and then we get to see a view mt Fuji through the window. It is impressively taller than everything else around it.

We transfer to a smaller train and then a another mountain train. And then it’s a cable car.

5000 yen for Hakone free pass for transit. I am down to 1000 yen in cash. (Really 3000 as I later find another 2000 yen note in my pocket that I didn’t see before)

We see an ad for Hakone open air museum and decide to get off a stop early and go see it. (I think I paid by credit card, 1200 yen each including a 200 yen discount from our Hakone passes).

The museum has a couple galleries where you can’t take pictures (although my bf tried) but mostly it’s big outdoor sculptures. There’s a fun star maze and some garden areas, and the whole place is set up with a great view of the surrounding mountains. I love the Picasso room. I hadn’t realized he did so many ceramics. We stop at a foot bath where we get a towel out of a vending machine for 100 yen. It’s small but a surprisingly nice towel and is branded to make it a souvenir. There’s a big tower made of stained glass that’s really fun. And a fried egg sculpture that you can stand on! I deeply love getting to stand on or interact with art.

After the museum we go grab lunch at a little road side restaurant. Ignoring the delightful ninja cafe next door full of authentic delicacies such as spaghetti and ninja ice cream.

Foot bath and a vending machine towel for 100 yen from Anthony

I get pork ginger and rice for lunch in the card.

After lunch we take the ropeway (hanging cable car) to the top of the mountain. On the side of the mountain are a bunch of thermal vents venting steam. You can see the yellow sulfur deposits around it. Supposedly you can get a black egg cooked in the sulfur water that adds seven years to your life, but we don’t get it.

We spend a little time at the top looking at the mountain and then head down the other ropeway to the lake. And then we get to ride a pirate ship!

The pirate ship we get is called queen ashinoko and is gold and red. We take it across the lake. I love all the sights and being on a boat and my bf tolerates it and enjoys the view. It does get a little chilly but is otherwise a delight. I see a lady take a bunch of silly titantic esque photos on one of the interior balconies. Sometimes it’s such a delight to watch other people live their best lives.

After the ferry we try to get on a bus to go to our hotel but it’s super delayed and the lines are insane so we give up and hail a taxi. Anthony impresses the taxi drive with his handful of Japanese and good pronociation and they have a good chat. The taxi ride ends up being just shy of 5000 yen which is more than I thought it would be (and we get a little turned about by the directions. Anthony gave the hotel name but written in English and just said like Japanese so we go to a bit of the wrong place first and then have to give the actual address which gets us to the right place.

We head into the rykone and They take your shoes and give slippers. The ryokan has a very traditional feel. We are shown where our private onsen will be and then to our rooms. Our rooms have yakata (?)robes in them to wear around. Mine is pink and my bfs is blue. They both have blue overcoats. We head down to the onsen before dinner. The sun is starting to set and the view is really pretty. The leaves are mostly either green or fallen but it’s still so peaceful. We shower first in the attached shower and then step into the sulphuric mineral water. It’s so cloudy and so hot but also feels so good. It would be better if it were like five degrees cooler but it’s still lovely. We hang out for a bit stepping in and out to cool off as needed. They’ve also put a thermos jug of cold water which is perfect.

We rinse back off and head back to our room for dinner.

Dinner will be served in our room and is a traditional set meal.

It starts with appetizers and is mostly fish which makes me sad. I knew this was likely that I wouldn’t like a good portion of it but it still makes me sad. The plates and the way everything is presented is so lovely. I try to focus on how fun it is and not how gross all the fish is. I get talked into trying a piece of the raw tuna and it’s awful. I also try a piece of sushi, the first bite is okay but when I take the second bite I realize that the first bite had way less fish in it and I Gag a little and almost throw up. I also try one of the little fish eggs since my bf claims they are mostly salty and not fishy. False. Very false and very gross. Combined with new and questionable vegetables I’m way past my limit of new food. Luckily there are some things that I like too. There’s a beef dish that is so delicious and comes with the cutest little wedge of cheese.

There’s also a hot pot like thing with pork and milk that is so cool and delicious.

We get sweet pudding for dessert.

After dessert we go have more onsen time. It’s fun to be in it at night with it being all dark. Unfortunately it’s too hot to really cuddle in the onsen which bums we out.

We head back up to the room and watch Japanese tv before bed. We get to see some sumo wrestling, a cooking show and some weird childrens tv show. I get a little sad because I had such high expectations for this part of the trip and then I didn’t get to cuddle or do more than cuddle and didn’t like a lot of the food.

It’s a traditional style hotel room so it has two twin beds. We push them together(I push mine into his) but it’s not really what I wanted. I take a moment to cry a little in the bathroom and I feel a bit better. It’s hard when you feel disappointed in something you feel like you should really be enjoying.

#japan day 6 #travel diary #overly long travel diary #japan #this was November #we are all just ignoring how slow I am at this #plus it’s fun to go back and relive

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tygergm · 11 months ago

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One Shot Recs

I've either run or played these all as one shots, and are ones I recommended to a friend recently. I also have links at the bottom to a bunch of free quickstarts for more games to look at that might be good for one shots too.

Blue Rose - AGE system from Green Ronin. Romantic fantasy where royalty is chosen by a magical stag and the rich are appropriately taxed. Cool Stunts mechanic to do extra abilities during a turn, easy system to get used to but has that crunchy feel too. Sentient animal race that forms bonds with people is an instant love every time. Free quickstart.

Heart: the City Beneath - Resistance system by Rowan Rook & Decard. A dungeon crawler where the dungeon is an NPC. Take stress until you can't, go out in a blaze of glory with one time Zenith abilities, such as summon a train to wipe out everything in its path - including you. Heart's the love of my life and the first RPG to make me cry(in a good way). It's earnest and grotesque and something about going in knowing you will End, and choosing it, does something to me. Also you can be full of bees(on purpose). Quickstart is PWYW($3ish suggested) but you should give them 1 million dollars actually.

Bones Deep - Troika! system based by @technicalgrimoire. The other love of my life. Be a skeleton on the ocean floor! What happened to your skin? Not important! Do jobs for witches, get credits from the crabs, join the cephalopods in their nefarious plans. The classes are fun(shapeshift your bones, or carve spells into them), and the mix of horror and humor is immaculately weird. Many random tables and a couple scenarios to make it easy to start swimming walking. Also not free($15 for digital), but worth every cent and then some(and the website is awesome resource!).

Index Card RPG - d20 system from Runehammer Games. It's 'simple enough to fit on index card'. There's actually lots of stuff, but it's easy to get a game rolling fast! Be a gerblin, get a bunch of loot. If you're a chronic low roller like me, a nice mechanic is when you fail you get to put points in a pool to use for later rolls. Probably the easiest one on this list to jump to from DnD. Free quickstart.

Wildsea - Wild Words system from Mythworks(took me awhile to find the name for it lol which isn't important just play it xD). You can be a mushroom person piloting a giant whale bone ship with a chainsaw on the front above a sea of trees. The world is so cool and unique. Health is measured in stuff to lose/break and there's a sliding success mechanic(you succeed, you succeed BUT- etc.). Free quickstart.

Tales from the Loop - Year Zero engine by Free League. Be kids in an alternate 80s-90s Scandinavia(or US) setting trying to navigate growing up alongside strange tech and apathetic adults. I really like how they tweaked the system to make it fun being kids for this, with iconic items and luck points, and it's very collab focused. I used this scenario as a one shot. There's a starter's set for $4.99.

Old Gods of Appalachia - Cypher system by Monte Cook. Face horrors man-made and monstrous in the haints and hollers of an alternate 1930ish Appalachia. Based on the podcast(don't know anything about the podcast? Even better imo). Cyphers are neat one-time use items you find during game to make you stronger/invisible/etc. Free quickstart.

Under Hill, By Water - OSR hack by Rise Up Comus. Hobbits! Okay, "halflings" for copyright but...it's hobbits. While some are off saving the world, your greatest worry is finding the lost pig before your wife realizes it's missing. It's not a boring life, just a quiet one. Random table generators for Events to happen each season make this easy to pick up, or come up with your own! $10. We loved this one so much we turned it into a mini campaign.

Mörk Borg - OSR-ish by Free League. Last but not least in the amount of shelf space in my room! The basic rules fit on one piece of paper, but the books are packed with amazing art and delicious disgustingness. It's easy, quick and deadly, with so many random tables for generating baddies, loot, etc., and usually each version of it has a doomsday countdown calendar with horrid new things to add, and then a final horrible event to end the game. It IS very dark and gloom, and I don't normally play it as rough as the OG, which works out fine! You can get a free version of the core book on the website linked, and tons of other free goodies there. My current fav hacks are Pirate Borg and Ork Borg.

List of free Quickstarts I found(and some I'll be playing soon!):

Coriolis

Dune

Fabula Ultima

City of Mist

Rapscallion

Fifth Season

Symbaroum

Dragonbane

SCP

Root

Fantasy AGE

Modern AGE

Myth-Stakes

Dead Air: Seasons

Broken Tales

Legacy: Life Among the Ruins

Heckin' Good Doggos

Star Trek Adventures

Flabbergasted!

Familiars of Terra

Daggerheart

Coyote & Crow

7th Sea

Candela Obscura

Fallout RPG

Happy Gaming!

#ttrpgs #technical grimoire #mythworks #rowan rook & decard #free league #game recs

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bruinhilda · 2 years ago

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I am nervously charging up my cordless impact driver and electric screwdriver.

My Dad uses a Drive medical recliner, you see. It’s the only thing he can safely sit/sleep in because of his weight and mobility issues.

But the recliner mechanism breaks after enough heavy use. And Dad is probably the world champion of “heavy use.” And the joy of living out here is that a lot of this stuff, and the services, just aren’t available.

The first two times, I was able to replace the chairs outright. I put the broken ones aside to either scavenge for parts/see if I could get them repaired.

But the third one broke early. As in, we haven’t finished paying off the credit card charges for the goddamn thing yet. And of course, the exact same part broke each time, so forget swapping out.

I got one of the chairs semi-working. And then began searching again.

And found a place that sold all the parts of the chair. That would ship out here, for a reasonable fee. (By comparison, if I order the chair with “free delivery,” the one company that will ship it will charge an extra $500, half the cost of the chair.)

So I have the full replacement mechanism, and am going to attempt to swap it out. And while it’s far from the first time I’ve been under the damn thing screwing it back together...it’s a major repair, y’know? Every what-if nightmare failure is dancing around in my head taunting me.

Wish me luck, please. I’m terrified that I’m about to fuck everything up.

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cleverhottubmiracle · 8 days ago

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Men's Lifestyle Men's Street Style We independently evaluate all recommended products and services. Any products or services put forward appear in no particular order. if you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. Let Me Tell You About This Legendary Knife Real Quick I own the only knife to have an entire museum dedicated to it, invented in 1890 and now selling over 15 million pieces annually. Pablo Picasso is said to have used an Opinel knife as a sculpting tool, and this knife was recognized by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1985 as one of the best-designed items in history, alongside the Porsche 911 and the Rolex watch. More on my Rolex later. This world-famous icon comes in at a whopping $19 in the US. The Iron Snail It’s also remained largely unchanged for over a century, but that doesn’t mean the modern-day designers at Opinel haven’t been putting their little fingies in the knife and innovating it, and they have some very cool ideas. So today, we’re looking at ten ish of my favorite toys, things I can’t live without, and what have you. Hey, everyone! It’s Michael. I think it’s going to be a good article because let me tell you something – I got a lot of cool toys. The Iron Snail The Iron Snail The first favorite thing in this article is a knife. It’s called The Carter; it’s from the James brand. To be honest, I don’t really know that much about knives yet. I’m starting to get into them now, so I don’t know a lot about steel yet. I don’t know a lot about handles and locks and all that, but I do like this knife. It gets the job done, and it’s aging very cool – some of the black is coming off of the steel, which I really like. I got this for free from Huckberry. Most of the things on the list today aren’t free, and they’re not affiliate links or anything – they’re just things that I like. I keep it with me every day, and a lot of knives I have don’t have a pocket clip, which makes it way more convenient. Also, I really want the Hell Gap from the James Brand. I think that knife looks so sick. I have no need for a giant knife to put on my belt like that, but man, oh man, I’d love to cut apples or something with it, you know? The Iron Snail I tried to journal and write things down every day, and I never kept up with it, but three years ago, I got the Midori Five Year Journal for my girlfriend, Taylor, for her birthday, and it’s amazing. And I got it for Taylor because Taylor was the only person I knew would do it every day no matter what, and she did. What’s amazing is that when you look at this book, one page represents five years, so the page is broken up into five different sections; for example, one page is January 1st, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026, and 2027. You go through the book five times, and now Taylor’s on the third year, and what’s happening is she’s like, “Oh, this year on January 1st, we were getting ice cream in Concord, Massachusetts, then the next year you were helping me move into New York, then the next year we were both crying outside of my apartment because I was moving to Denmark.” It’s amazing – you definitely have huge things happening in five years. The Iron Snail So my old wallet, or the wallet that I was using as of like three weeks ago, was from a brand called Simply Carbon Fiber, and I like that wallet. I switched to that wallet because my credit cards would never fall out, but the downside was my credit cards got destroyed with that wallet. The Iron Snail So anyways, Bronson of Bronson Leatherworks watches the Iron Snail, and he sent me a handmade wallet that he makes, so I switched over to that, and it’s been great. I’m also looking at the Ship John Foley wallet – I really like that one because it has a closure so I can hide my cards, and then it has a quick, fast-access section in case I have to put cash in there on a getaway or something like that. And having multiple wallets and rotating through them is not a problem for me – I have plenty of Pokemon cards that I could just fill hundreds of wallets in! I have a ton of Pokemon cards from when I was a kid. I really like small square things you could fit in your hand – I don’t know why. The Iron Snail I’m really not kidding when I say I like little, small rectangular things that fit in my hands. So I really like soap, and the soap that I’ve been on lately is Sterling Soap, made in Arkansas. It is all-natural and comes in like 50,000 different smells, so I always get a different smell. It comes in seasonal collections, which is very cool. Don’t worry; it’s a very masculine soap. There is no messing around with soap here! So, I definitely recommend you check them out. Very cool stuff. The Iron Snail Okay, so I can’t really talk about this next subject too much because I work for a watch YouTube channel, but the subject is watches. I wear my Rolex Explorer a bunch – I got it the day before I drove to Canada to get the Iron Snail (my brand, toot toot) Prologue jacket, and that was awesome, and then I jumped in the water with Brandon of Naked and Famous and broke it and then got it fixed. I do have a watch collection, but I don’t know when I’ll talk about it. If I do, it’ll probably be on Theo and Harris’s YouTube channel. So tune in there, but again, I have no idea when that’ll happen. The Iron Snail Also, you probably know this already, but since I work in the world of watches, I have a lot of access to watches, so I have different watches on all the time. I really like digital watches, too, for some reason. I always find it really hard to buy one versus other fancier watches – like my G-Shock DW 5600s. I love it. I got it my sophomore year in college, so I’ve had it for seven years, and I said in college, when the battery dies, I’m gonna get a solar Atomic DW 5600, but it hasn’t died yet, and I don’t know if it ever will. I’m going on seven years, but Huckberry also just sent me the Iron Man Flix, which is a collaboration between Huckberry and Timex where Huckberry really reintroduced kind of an iconic watch from the 90s. It wasn’t in the ’90s, but when I worked at the YMCA, there was this old man who swam laps every morning in the pool – he always wore a Timex Iron Man, and I always thought that was cool, so I have one now. And usually, if I do a workout in the morning or if I go for a walk or something like that, I like to not bring my phone or Apple watch and anything like that – I like to just not have any technology with me. Still, it is fun to have a watch that has a little personality with its beeps and boops. The Iron Snail Okay, I won’t go super into technology because last time I checked, this isn’t MKBHD – this is my setup right now:iPhone 13, 14-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max 64 gig RAM, and then I have my iPad M1, which I had in my last EDC article. It was way less important then than it is now because now that I’m designing clothes and logos and everything like that, I use the Apple Pencil and the iPad all the time. The Iron Snail Anyways, okay – cameras! This goes both ways: professional and for fun. A lot of you ask me what I shoot my videos on, and it is the Sony A7 S3 mixed with 99.9% of the time a Sigma 24-70 2.8 Art lens. One of the things I’m actually really sentimental about is the lens because for the past almost three years, I have filmed everything on that lens seven days a week – if someone stole that lens I’d be really sad. I shoot film only for fun when I’m not working, but I also have a Leica M4 P, and a Pentax Spotmatic SP2. The Spotmatic is actually an amazing camera – I got it for my sister many, many years ago. She never used it, so I stole it and never told her about it. I figured whenever I visit a factory that’s making something for the Snail I’ll take pictures on the Leica with the Flash and show them to you. Boot Talk (Kind Of) In my notes for this section, I just wrote “boots” – I don’t actually have a specific pair of boots to show you, so just picture a lot of different boots. Vibergs are on their way – Oxford 145s, and then I’ll probably get boots later, but it’s very exciting. I love boots and can’t live without boots! Next up is my briefcase – my girlfriend Taylor says I always say the name horribly wrong. It is my Bleu de Chauffe bag, and I love it. This is the postman bag in size medium. I’m friends with Bleu de Chauffe. They sent me this for free, but they never follow up or ask for a review or anything – they just say, “Pick what bag you want this year,” and then they mail it to me. I highly suggest you check them out, they’re super nice people. I don’t know if that matters – I always say when brands are nice, I don’t know if you care, but most brands that I talk to are very nice people, so it’s kind of nice to support nice people, you know? So I don’t know. Either way, they’re incredibly nice people. This bag, not that it particularly matters, has never failed to get me a compliment. I get complimented on this bag every single time I have it out, and I have actually had three women compliment me on how nice it smells if it’s in a room near them! I love that bag – it is stone-washed vegetable tan leather, so it’s very soft. It has a wool liner on the inside for your laptop, which is fantastic. Also, a bag that I saw in Denmark that I chased a woman down for is the Bree Elch bag – that bag is crazy! I haven’t bought that bag yet, but it’s one of the most gorgeous bags I have ever seen. The Iron Snail And finally, the first knife I talked about is the last item because it’s not just the Opinel number eight – it’s the Opinel number eight picnic plus set or whatever it’s called. This makes the hood go crazy – people 100% of the time, every time, go ballistic when they see the little add-ons that you could do with this knife, and I think it’s brilliant! I don’t think it was originally designed like this, but there’s a little slot when the knife is folded down that you could put other things into, and you make a picnic set out of it. So I travel for work a lot, but by travel, I mean I drive to New Jersey, and I eat my lunch in my car, so I always bring this with me to use as my fork, knife, and spoon, and I think you’ll never regret it in your entire life and there are very few things that you’ll never regret – one of them is also the five-year Midori Journal! Watch This Review Overview Of My Favorite Things Product Key Features Usage Benefits Opinel No. 8 Picnic Plus Iconic folding knife with add-ons (fork and spoon) Portable, multi-functional picnic tool Compact design, versatile use for picnics or travel The Carter (James Brand) Pocket clip for convenience, sleek design Everyday carry (EDC), suitable for basic tasks Durable, stylish, ages well with patina Five-Year Midori Journal Tracks daily entries over five years Daily journaling with segmented pages Captures long-term memories, reflection tool Rolex Explorer Luxury watch, rugged design Everyday wear, versatile for various activities Reliable, status symbol, long-lasting Sterling Soap All-natural, variety of seasonal scents Daily use for cleansing Masculine scents, unique seasonal options Bleu de Chauffe Postman Bag Stone-washed vegetable-tanned leather, wool-lined interior Carries laptops, documents, and essentials Stylish, durable, frequently complimented Timex Iron Man Flicks Iconic design, collaboration with Huckberry Everyday wear, workout accessory Durable, nostalgic design, functional Okay Good Bye! This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from FashionBeans, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here. The Iron Snail is a men’s fashion vlog (and now article series!) starring a young man named Michael and featuring a snail no bigger than a quarter. The two are set on taking over the world of fashion by creating a clothing line to end all clothing lines. Until then, we’re here to tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about the best clothing out there, from the highest quality raw denim jeans to the warmest jackets to the sturdiest boots…the Iron Snail has got you covered. Source link

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