#like obviously oliver IS a creep and a predator

[shisogelee]

not to be a hater but certain medias should simply never be found by the actor x reader crowd and saltburn is a perfect example

because with that array of fascinating characters and insane displays of queer psychosexual depravity? imagine being like yeah actually the most interesting part is the math nerd with 5 minutes of screentime

[icarusthelunarguard]

This Week’s Horrible-Scopes

It’s time for this week’s Horrible-Scopes! So for those of you that know your Astrological Signs, cool! If not, just pick one, roll a D12, or just make it up as you go along. It really doesn’t matter. Better yet! Check out “Heart of the Game, Fredonia” - they can sell you those D12’s with the symbols on them! Get in contact with them on Facebook, shipping to the U.S. only, and tell them “Shujin Tribble” sentcha. “Hail, Hail, Fredonia!” Home of the Blue Devil!

We’ve mentioned The Mimic in the Window at Heart of the Game Fredonia for a long time now. Matter of fact there was a phone conversation this week to talk about it. So it seems only fair that we finally explain about it while giving you your Star-Inspired purpose for the week. So get ready to learn more than you ever wanted to about… Uhm… Yeah, about that…

Aries 

After careful consultation with the Mimic Wrangler at Heart of the Game, and yes that’s his official title… I mean… NOW it is… The Mimic’s name isn’t something we can give you. Mostly because it’s not been identified by name as yet. So, officially, its name is legally, “Mimic Comma The.” So This Week… Don’t get upset when someone forgets your name. It's far more important that they remember who you are and how nice you are to them. Until and unless a Klingon Opera is written about you, it’s really not nearly as important as you might think.

Taurus 

Regarding The Mimic’s possible name, one of its cousins is named, “Squamoosh”. There are questions as to where this name comes from, especially considering this one seems to hail from China. Its preferred form is an oversized black and white furred biped, walking around eating everything it can get away with while repeating its name. So This Week… Ramen, GOOD QUALITY RAMEN, is a wonderful meal! Imagine the best Chicken Noodle Soup you’ve ever had - now throw that away because it’s not nearly close enough in YUMMY Factor. Make yourself some Ramen for dinner this week. AND DO NOT FOLLOW JAMIE OLIVER’S RECIPES!

Gemini 

You might not know it, but Mimics aren’t instinctual predators. Sure they want to eat something that gets close, but they also know how to comport themselves in a way that’s mutually beneficial. Take, for example, the story of the Mimic that took the shape of a table at an adventurers’ tavern. It thought it would be able to get a good meal by just waiting, but it ended up drunk from all the wine spilled on it. After it sobered up it ate the leftovers on its top, cleaning the room for the tavern owner. No one knew, until months and years later, that all the new chairs and tables were its well-behaved children. So This Week… Don’t seek out recognition for something you did well. Just know that what you did helped others and they are grateful no matter what.

Cancer Moon-Child 

Did You Know… that wine is, for some Mimics, a form of currency? Yes, you can bribe some Mimics with wine! This isn’t like throwing a Molotov Cocktail at it, you need to hold up a clear glass bottle, pitch it side-to-side, and announce that you have wine for it. There are two ways this will then go. Either the Mimic will open its mouth and drop its tongue for you to lob it in, or it’ll charge after you again. So This Week… Keep on your toes, plan for the best, and expect the worst. In other words, keep a Molly in reserve just in case. Figuratively Speaking, of course.

Leo 

It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while you can find The Mimic in the Library at the local college! It doesn’t show up often and not obviously during the school year. But during orientation when all the new visitors are milling about you’ll notice it creeping along in the shady areas. It’s not trying to get away from the loudest people - it’s trying to get closer. Because when it attacks, the sounds will just be more of the same and no one will think to check it out. So This Week… Stealth is your friend. You don’t have to try hard at it, just make sure you don’t make any crass sounds. 

Virgo 

Following up on that idea, did you know that Mimics can Speak? Just when you thought they were bothersome enough, try to imagine one of them with just enough intelligence to properly speak the words to an incantation. Maybe along with all the things it's accumulated it has the material components for certain spells, too. How dangerous would it be when your party’s Fireball is met with an equal but opposite Fireball? What then? So This Week… Ask your local DM what would happen if a Mimic launched a fireball into an oncoming fireball. Then ask how many hit dice of damage the room can sustain before structural collapse. Good luck on your cleric’s saving throws.

Libra

Mimics have a nasty habit of being something OTHER than treasure chests, you know. Like we mentioned before they could be furniture, or maybe a painting, or worse yet… DICE! We’re not sure if the d12’s from Heart of the Game are Mimic Eggs or not, but the Mimic Wrangler doesn’t seem to think that’s a likely possibility. So This Week… Just because an outcome isn’t likely, doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Good luck playing Russian Roulette with the expiration date on your milk.

Scorpio 

Mimics are supposed to be masters of imitating things like wood or stone, but what does that actually mean? Could they have imitated medium-large cubes of stone and allowed themselves to be stacked into the walls of a castle? Could there be a night-time siege where, suddenly, the entire front of the castle drops to the ground and starts eating all the inhabitants? So This Week… Imagine the big castle battle from Lord of the Rings if the walls were Mimics waiting for a chance to feed. Who would they attack? Who would be eaten first? How many hours would that add to the movie’s running time?

Sagittarius 

Let’s stop scaring you about what a Mimic can do and get to what it can be used for. Officially they are a ‘Neutral’ alignment - neither ‘Good’ nor ‘Evil’, and we contend that’s wrong. We can prove they are some version of ‘Good’, and it’s not a far stretch at all. Mimics can disguise themselves as something potentially valuable and attack someone that tries to steal those valuables for themselves. We contend that makes them ‘Good’ for punishing the greedy. So This Week… You’re allowed to have a second spoon of sugar in your coffee. Go ahead and indulge just a little bit. You earned it.

Capricorn 

The normal mimic can imitate stone or wood, but what about the Metal Mimic? Yeah, that’s a thing too! But just like the Tavern Mimic, what if this version likes to shape itself into a metal weapon, like a sword or dagger? The only way you’d know it was a thing would be the additional PLUS on To Hit and on damage from it eating the opponent. So This Week… If you’re a DM and you use this idea in a campaign, we want to know about it! But if you’re the one that’s adopted this Metal Mimic Sword of Feasting, WE STILL WANT TO KNOW ABOUT IT!

Aquarius 

It’s probably good for us to remind you of something utterly devastating and borderline evil in the truest sense of the term. Have you ever heard of the Curse of the Mimic? Thanks to “Hamasamakun” on YouTube, imagine this scenario: 75% of everything non-magical you investigate turns out to be a Mimic. Which means you need to find out what else around you is a mimic, which then creates more mimics, and so on, and so on. So This Week… Stop trying to game the system at work and at play, because this is the result. Learn to Play Nice.

Pisces  

There doesn’t seem to be an upper limit on how old a mimic can be, considering they’re conjured by wizards, so let’s try something new. If Mimics can learn to speak, then it’s plausible for them to learn to hold conversations. And if that’s the case maybe they can even tell stories. So imagine this: you acquire a little baby Mimic, feed it, train it, and teach it to tell stories to your child at night to help them go to sleep. But their real purpose is to protect the child from all threats. So This Week… How would you know if your childhood imaginary friend, who would whisper in your ear as you went to sleep, wasn't a protective Mimic? Get ready to do your best “Enter Sandman” and sleep with one eye open. Good Luck.

And THOSE are your Horrible-Scopes for this week! Remember if you liked what you got, we’re obviously not working hard enough at these. BUT! If you want a better or nastier one for your own sign or someone else’s, all you need to do to bribe me is just Let Me Know - or check out the Ko-Fi page ( https://ko-fi.com/icarusthelunarguard )! These will be posted online at the end of each week via Tumblr, Facebook, Ko-Fi, Discord, and BLUESKY.

[tempural]

FIRST SET OF GORL SCOUTS FOR GORL SCOUT DAY!!  My latest drawing of Liv, and some of the first ones!

An essay under the cut:

The current state of my girl Scout has taken many years to simmer.  Before becoming invested in Liv, I was unfortunately struggling to write girl characters.  The media I consumed as a kid informed my storytelling vocabulary, and I must admit that much of the stories I consumed as a babby excluded girl characters.  Ed Edd n Eddy, BatMAN, SpiderMAN, x-MEN, hell, video games like TF2 have ONLY male classes!  The only female characters in TF2 are Scout's voiceless/faceless mom, the late addition of Pauling, and the Admin's disembodied voice.  Mainstream media tends to feed us men as the default/leading characters with so many varying designs and personalities.  Women are rarely written with much depth in comparison, and rarely have designs that go beyond ‘cute/hot girl’ or ‘hag’.  I recall reading writing advice for men that suggested that if one was having trouble writing women, they should think of her as a male character.  It’s a little silly how mainstream media tends to think of female characters as “the other”, barely humans!

Female characters that fall under the “schoolgirl” trope often exist just to be fragile babies or objects of sexual desire (or both at the same time!), and are rarely written with complex wants or sexual autonomy.  See: the Aerosmith video “Crazy” where Liv Tyler (the song singer’s at-the-time 17 year old daughter) plays a schoolgirl, gets upskirted, is ogled by a gas station attendant, pole-dances, has a lil’ pillowfight with her friend, and strips naked for skinny-dipping.  There’s nothing inherently seedy about the video’s subject.  Of course teenagers go on road trips and do “crazy” things!  But I find it extremely repetitive and boring to constantly regurgitate the sexy schoolgirl trope in which men (both the director, viewers, and characters in the video) are openly lusting after young girls.  

Even media that seeks to subvert that trope still play more on the lust of men rather than the desires of girls.  See: Hard Candy.  Elliot Page plays a 14 year old girl who lures child predators by playing on the innocent schoolgirl trope, then plays up the sexy schoolgirl trope to trap them into torture and murder.  In this case the girl is “in control” -- yet she isn’t.  Her personal wants are dictated by the desires of men, and the entire concept is predicated on the girl posturing as prey for sexual predators..  I really enjoy the movie, but it’s a very straightforward take and something in me wants a little bit more twists and turns.  There just doesn’t seem to be a world, even in media fantasy, where girls have desires but are not the object of desire.

The earliest form of a girl Scout/Liv that I have are these designs for what I labeled as the “Japanese Groupie” from 2013.  It plays upon the same concept as Hard Candy although I hadn’t seen the movie yet at the time:  She lures in sexual predators, and chops off their peepees.  She’s mistaken as a child, though she’s actually 35, and plays up her short stature and babyface for her trap.  She’s also mistaken as Japanese, although she’s Chinese, and she also plays that up because westerners are more enamoured with Japanese pop culture.  I still think the concept is fine, but too much impetus for the story is given to the predators, and too much of it plays on the viewer being aware of the identity stereotypes (while people still lack self-awareness in real life: people still mistake me for a child, or mistake me as Japanese)!  Not enough story is moved by the girl!  I want MORE.

The Scout-Chan SFM is the greatest piece of art in the history of TF2.  When I re-engaged with the game in 2018, I was SHAKEN when I discovered it, and had to tell everyone I knew about it!!  This is the POV I’m talking about, lads and ladettes!  I was enamoured!!  The SFM perfectly captured what I liked about the Scout and Spy dynamic!  Scout has a crush on Spy, and Spy doesn’t do anything about it (but helps Scout fight crime at night?!!).  I love the Sukeban Boy design design for Scout, the whole pun with Sailor Scouts is fun, and I grew up with Sailor Moon so it hit my nostalgia prostate button real good.  Most importantly for me, the SFM never shows Scout and Spy in a ”relationship”.  They remain distant, but close.  I love that.

I had to spread the word of Scout-Chan the only way I knew how.  I drew a couple of comics and sketches inspired by the SFM!  But they were obviously tinged with my own tastes and perhaps experiences.

My ideas got very off-topic from the original zombie-slayer Scout-Chan, and I wanted to make my own Scout that was a girl.  On the way, I drew variations that became other girl Scouts with their own personalities (but always the same face and body!  My Scouts are infinite, indistinguishable, and disposable!).  I eventually settled on basically the same outfit as my boy Scout, Ollie, with a ponytail that was in between the hairstyle of my 2013 dickchopper OC and Scout-chan.  She was to be named Liv, partially because it’s a feminine form of the name Oliver, and partially because of the aforementioned Liv Tyler moment.  There’s some interplay with how strange it is for Steven Tyler to cast his own daughter as a sexy model, and how many people compare the Scout and Spy relationship to a fatherly one, with all of that being tossed into a dumpster fire and coming out as a reversal of older-creepy-man into younger-girl-who-creeps-on-her-mentor-figure.