#proxy | starters

[gen4grl]

wahhhh finally got my hands on blues beautiful figure … the trio is finally together again!!!

[hierophants-hourglass]

In The Woods Somewhere

Jakob kneels at the river bank, hands resting on the silty layer of soil just below the water’s surface. The coolness of the mountain water is soothing as it threads over his skin. His eyes are closed and his ears are tuned to the sounds of the gentle stream. It’s too early for the birds to share their songs, and he’s desperate for a distraction from the nightmare that had terrorized him minutes before. He’s tempted to dunk himself entirely, to chill the unpleasant warmth that comes with adrenal surge, but he knows that would be dangerous when his fire had been allowed to burn out.

He’s currently alone. His animal companions have been distant lately. They don’t attempt to threaten his safety, but they seem avoidant. Perhaps he’s closer to the city than he realizes- after all he’s traveling on memory, his damn map had been ruined by the recent rain. 

The throbbing of his head isn’t as thunderous as it had been when he initially roused, but it aches residually. His stomach churns as his thoughts drift. He really shouldn’t be leaving his camp alone, not when it’s occupied with goods to sell. Fine pelts, preserved meats, leather work- a season’s worth of effort in one place. His visit to the nearest market has a dual purpose, but he isn’t sure he can stomach visiting her gravemarker. In a few days, it will be two years since her death. Jakob finds it hard to believe it will bring him any comfort to visit an empty plot, but he knows it would be spineless of him to acquiesce fully to her parents, both of whom have threatened him before. 

He… he doesn’t blame them. As much as his heart aches with the thought, he knows that he failed her that night- but it wasn’t just her that he had failed.

Jakob sighs, gently shaking the string of thoughts out of his head. He can’t afford to spiral, not when he knows the stress makes him vulnerable to the second occupant of his body. There’s an instant regret of acknowledging them, the power they hold over him. He knows he doesn’t remember everything about what happened, his memory too shattered by the creature’s bond. The elf’s headache worsens and his brow furrows as he lifts a hand to rub the center of his forehead, his fingers meeting the rough patch of star shaped scar tissue.

The elf is stubborn, though, and pushes himself to stand. He needs to get ready to move, and to emotionally prepare himself for the gawking he’s sure to receive for his unusual appearance. As his thoughts forcibly drift back to his errands for the day, the brewing pressure beyond his brow begins to ease and settle. 

But there’s another problem. As he begins to make his way back through the brush leading to his camp, something feels.. off. He slows his progress to a  careful creeping pace, and he realizes why. He hears in the distance the sound of a voice talking. There’s a certain burning in his head, followed by a familiar sense of dread. He’s far enough out of the way of any main paths that he shouldn't be hearing anyone, especially not at this hour. 

He’s careful as he approaches, peering through the thick forest. From here, he can see someone in the center of his camp, looking through the leather backpack he had left. They appear to be alone, talking to themselves. Jakob only has his knife on him, his bow and quiver left near his extinguished campfire, He wasn’t ignorant enough to leave his goods completely exposed, most of the more valuable items tucked away in the surrounding brush, but having someone snooping around isn’t exactly a good sign.

The elf moves to pull his dagger from its sheath, but hesitates. He doesn’t know who they are or what they are capable of, or if they even deserve his ire. His calloused fingers twitch before wrapping around the antler hilt of the knife. He’s pressed to admit he’d be more likely to kill them if he just had his bow on him. The distance would be safer and easier for a multitude of reasons, but it wouldn’t be fair of him- even if drawing attention to himself by speaking to them could be disastrous.

“Shh-ouldn’t touch th-ings. That. Aren’t, yours.”

The elf is comically short for his blood, just over five feet tall. He’s thin and tired looking, with dark eyes and bags beneath them. His hair is in a loose braid with a few choppy fringes of hair that frame his sharp features. A pair of antlers branch near his temples, more tree-like than belonging to a creature. Jakob’s wearing his resting clothes, but even now he wears her scarf. It rests loosely around his collar, appearing well used and loved. From where the stranger is standing, they can’t see the knife he’s holding at his side. 

[godzexperiment]

i believe nix should legally be allowed in every d.ominion verse to comment on the fact everybody has taken to the term '8 balls' for lower angels and especially pester his older siblings for it

[soraka-in-warhammer40k]

You never notice just how absolutely absurd good GW is at making miniatures until you have to paint something that's not a GW mini or not specifically created to emulate a GW mini (like my Kroot proxies).

I just painted up seven player figures of the starter classes of Frosthaven, a board game that clearly was sold as a game and mechanic system first, with the miniatures as a "We put some through our neighbours 3D printer have fun"-type of afterthought.

Don't get me wrong, Frosthaven and its predecessor Gloomhaven are absolute delights for my friend circle, but the contrast is just insane. Some miniatures look almost nothing like the singular aviable artwork, the print quality makes features disappear at times, and oh boy some of them clearly should have gone through some Q&A iterations because that's not how eyes on a face should be alligned.

You don't notice it as is, but the moment you try to paint them up... yikes. Also they are so SMALL. They literally could have kept the base size and just increase everything else by 20% on most miniatures and it would be SO much easier to work with.

I have never been so happy to just have some simple clear-cut CSM-trim up next on my to-paint list.

[raayllum]

They're so sick for this

& was gonna originally leave it in the tags but then I liked it so why not:

I do think this parallel helps contextualize why Claudia's offer is there in the narrative beyond just characterization "she knows this is a loss the boys have experienced, and there is possible room to convince them," or beyond "I doubt they're going to bring Harrow back fully (if at all) so why tease it" and well: I think this parallel is exactly why.

For starters, there's the sheer difference in presentation that help to contrast and compare Callum and Claudia as characters. More importantly for next season, I think, is that it ties together Claudia wanting to save her father is what led to her working with Aaravos in the first place versus Callum wanting to free Rayla's parents likely being something that is just going to put him further on Aaravos' dark path of destiny for him, if not outright lead to disaster. The road to ruin is paved with good intentions, after all - even if he's being selfless about it because it's not even for himself or one of his direct loved ones, but purely by proxy

[that-one-creepy-hoe]

Here’s so Brian head canons because I have absolute brain rot right now. 

Warnings: NSFW, facial, somnophilia, fem!reader

Brian SFW Headcanons

There’s a lot I have to say about this man. 

For starters he’s like a perfect cutie. Like everyone thinks he’s at least a little cute. 

But I headcanon him as decently tall. Not like Ej or Lj tall but more like how he was in Marble Hornets. So probably like 6’0 to 6’2 depends on how bad he slouches.

He’s also like decently buff, not like raging muscles but enough that you can kinda see it and feel it on him

He most definitely gets a little southern accent when he’s angry

From first glance you would think with the way he jokes with Tim that he’s like an asshole type, but he is probably one of the most respectful proxies around. 

That’s not to say he isn’t mean, he just doesn't see the point in being needlessly mean when the situation doesn’t call for it.

I also think that he has just some autistic tendencies which is why he rarely talks to people. But most people around think he’s nice.

He is like the opposite to hoodie tbh

Also he’s very much aware of hoodie and tries to actively undo most bad impressions he gives people just because Brian finds it so exhausting to try and remember who Hoodie fucked with last.

If you were to end up being friends with him he’d probably do just about everything with you.

Not like how Toby would, more like the bff you automatically pick over everyone else.

He definitely would do just about anything with you no matter the time. Want him to dye your hair? He already bought dye. Want a new hair cut? He’s getting the clippers out.

Generally he’s just a odd guy who hangs out with too many smokers

NSFW

He definitely whimpers when he cums

He isn’t like Toby or Ben, but very much so occasionally whimpers when he is extremely worked up

he’s more of like a Service Dom, very much a giver rather an a receiver

He isn’t too big of a fan of quickies but isn’t completely against them

please tell this man how good his dick feels/how big he is because I��m telling you he will melt in seconds

speaking of dick—

this man isn’t massive but he definitely ain’t small

I would say he’s a nice 7.5 and decently girthy

Oh and did I mention he absolutely loves giving head?

Like this guy is a literal god at giving head

makes it his mission to please you in the best way possible

Hes a bit more experienced with girls but he does swing any way

He can be mean and dom hard if you really want it or if he’s irritated but immediately feels bad after the fact

He just lives to please you tbh

But that doesn’t mean he hates head, he just gets more out of pleasing you

But he sure does love the teary eyed whiny look on your face when you try to stuff all of him into your mouth

Oh and this man loves to watch your face, any position where he can watch you blissfully moan out in pleasure while he fucks you is the best for him

If he had to pick tho he would probably have to go with the classic missionary or cowgirl

Brian typically likes vanilla sex but does indulge into some more fun stuff

Like one of his guilty pleasures that he could never admit out loud is somnophilia

Like just something about either lazily fingering you while you sleep and feeling you get wetter just makes him rock hard in seconds

He also loves to get off with your underwear, you don’t even have to have worn it he just wants it

Like when you two first started dating and he happened to do your laundry once, he couldnt even look at your panties. The shame of his thoughts were too much for him

Oh and this man loves to breed you, and cum on your face

Just the feeling of him deep inside of you, unloading himself as deep as he can get while you whimper and clench on him has him rock hard in seconds

Or the sight of him just covering your face in it as you look up at him with your mouth open has him palming himself

ok That’s all this is too long now—

[maniakminis]

The Coftyr half of my Quar Clash of Rhyfles box is built, and as a little bonus I converted a Tractor Tank for them out of a Chibi Sherman model kit that's been sitting in my backlog for a long time.

For reference, these tanks look like this:

I think this will be a fine proxy, and it fits in the starter box with all the other models! To balance it out I bought 3 extra anti-tank infantry and 3 heavy machine gunners for the Crusader side. Next step is to get everything painted!

[crushedsweets]

the song rusted from the rain by Billy Talent kind of remind me of tim and or toby idk... my mind is just being silly love ur au btw!

woah.. woah. anon. woah. also tysm youre so sweet <3

ok for starters just the general SOUND of the music is very accurate to them and i could see them drinking beers on the porch cleaning some weapons with this playing in the back.

for seconds, i like the idea of interpretting these two parts seperately. . like, the first being tim after the events of marble hornets. 'i stumble through the wreckage' him just tryna get his foot after his entire life got torn apart. 'among the broken mirrors' everyone around him evil asf he jsut wants a break. 'im rusted from the rain' he's tired, he's been doing this for so long, he's rusting, everything is ruining him.

then for toby, 'my bitter heart is pumping' toby being screwed over so much he's just rage and revenge and bitterness and his heart is PUMPING to get some of that anger out into the world. 'oil into my veins, im nothing but a tin man' can either reflect him being newer, younger proxy compared to tim, or be sort of yk. he's a machine, made to fight and kill and work without exhaustion. 'i dont feel any pain' duh.... toby..

both of them @ slendy of course.... cuz tobys a dog always. but i do kinda like the idea of tim having this awful weird relationship with slendy where its like. hates him, wants to defy him, wants to ruin every single mission, wants to make maskys life harder, etc - but at the same time, he wants the hallucinations and headaches and pain to ease, so he listens and does the job as effectively as possible no matter how bad he wants to fight back. eventually slendy starts losing his grip on tim/brian though . . . shackled in the graveyard, stuck there tryna support toby/kate even though slendy cant hurt him the way he used to

idk . this is good. this is good ty anon <3

[rileyy5]

Just watched “The Mourner” video that Ashur posted and oh my gosh, it’s so good. But I have so much to say about the father.

I genuinely believe that the father is one of the most unsettling characters that Ashur has ever written. Everything about him is just undoubtedly unnerving.

For starters, he obviously has Münchausen  syndrome by proxy, forcing his son to drink rat poison to keep him ill. Just that in itself is already disturbing enough, since the son clearly had zero idea that this was happening until the very end, also signifying that this has been happening for years when the father says,”it used to calm you down when you were a kid,” referring to the tomato soup with poison.

Besides the plot twist with the father at the end, just the general way he treats his son is weird and concerning. The snarky remarks he makes towards his son, saying,”I’m here to take care of you.. even if you’re leaving for collage in a few years.” Obviously the son isn’t gonna leave for collage any time soon, he’s literally on the verge of death and the dad knows that. It just shows how little he cares about his son, saying such insensitive things towards his dying son.

Also, how Roshan is constantly seeing this black figure in their house, even pointing it out to his father and yet he never cares or shows any interest in helping his son. Just shows how he only views his son as something he can use, never seeing him as a human.. it’s really just disturbing.

I probably didn’t get all of it, but jeez this character is really good in my opinion. Very much reminds me and I think a lot of us of Gypsy Rose’s mother who also had Münchausen syndrome.. just overall a really interesting video from Ashur, making great videos as usual.

[justeeeen]

Challengers: A Good Time to be Bisexual

Just watched Challengers. It's 3 am and I'm still thinking about it.

For starters: I LIKED MIKE FAIST FIRST I LIKE HIM FIRST I LIKED HIM IN DEAR EVAN HANSEN OK I LIKED HIM FIRST.

Secondly, I'm realizing that I'm not into tennis enough to have realized just how erotic the sounds people make when they hit the ball are? Like I could handle the make out scenes, the nudity, the almost sex, but the sounds?? Especially for Art, like why did they have this man to make the most erotic whimpery moaning noise I've ever heard EVERY SINGLE TIME he hits the ball (I know why)? Like I felt like I was intruding and I shouldn't have been there. Convinced they locked Mike Faist in a recording studio, blocked out the windows, and had him do what he had to do in there cause that was OBSCENE.

Thirdly, I cannot begin to express my excitement at the resurgence of loser pathetic men in movies. I think Patrick is a loser, but Art is PATHETIC. Like peak simp behavior. He literally turned on his best friend for Tashi, a woman he had like 2 interactions with. To be fair, he was young and dumb and this was by far the worse thing anyone did in the movie, but it's pathetic man behavior. He literally equates her to Jesus. I'm going crazy.

Fourthly, this movie is so fucking sexy. Honestly it doesn't show any physical sex happening on screen, but just, the vibes? The music?? The noises?? Did I mention the noises?? Zendaya is absolutely stunning, and I appreciated their refusal to let her wear a bra in this. Josh O'Connor, I never found attractive before, but there were some shots in this movie where I was like "Ok, yeah ok, I get it." And Mike Faist, the man that you are (between the two of us I originally only wanted to see this movie to see Mike Faist be pathetic).

Finally, this movie is actually pretty straight forward. Tashi says multiple times that all she cares about is "watching some good fucking tennis" and that she doesn't want anyone to be in love with her. As for Art and Patrick, I feel like the only reason they really love tennis is for the relationships they get out of it. Art played tennis when he was younger because he liked being with Patrick and he even mentions that his Grandma is really proud of him, so that's another person he's playing for. And later, he's playing tennis for Tashi. Patrick plays when he's younger for Art, but I think when he's older he might be playing for fame? He just seems like that kind of person. And in the beginning of the movie he seems a little upset that no one knows who he is. Tashi played tennis because she loves tennis, and when she can't play tennis anymore, she's in love with two people who can. And she knows that what they have is the potential to play a good game of tennis. Which is all she cares about. I mean, I don't think that's true. I think she loves Art, but I don't think she respects him (it's giving TomShiv). I think she has more chemistry with Patrick, and potentially loves him more, but thinks she could never be with him because he challenges her too much, and she's too egotistical to be with someone like Patrick who's also egotistical.

I think Art loves Tashi the most, Patrick loves Art the most, and Tashi loves Patrick, but loves tennis above all.

To be fair, I don't support Tashi erasure, like this is one hundred percent a polycule and not like, a gay romance with a woman getting in the way of it. I just think that above all, Tashi loves tennis. That doesn't mean that she's not deserving of love, and that doesn't mean she doesn't love Art and Patrick, she just loves something else more. Tennis will always be the 4th person in their relationship.

At the end they all get what they want. Art wins the game, and wins Tashi by proxy. Patrick wins Art back by physically catching him in his arms and reigniting their friendship. And Tashi gets to watch some good fucking tennis.

[cru5h-cascades]

Ight this might be the last time I'm overanalyzing the stuff posted over on the Emio twitter since I think it's actually joever for the account?? I am still extremely befuddled at what the hell happened last night so idk how much I'm gonna write here. Is this even an actual account run by Nintendo? Was AI actually behind this the entire time?? I legit don't know so maybe take all of this with a grain of salt. This reveal thing is driving me nuts y'all...

For starters, the Emio twitter changed it's pfp and banner alongside rebranding to Emio University (which isn't an actual university btw I looked it up). Hint towards Fukuyama being the Smiling Man? Or at least one of them (I still kinda think a sort of proxy thing is going on)??

This account is supposedly just an AI experiment made by who I thought was supposed to be a goddamn child, Corrine DeLacey (who also isn't real). Does this affect my Corrine theory? Fuck no! One of the trailers shows kids together and we still know wtf is up with the child abuse plot point teased in the ESRB ratings and such! Sure maybe the kid might not be named Corrine but the theory can still work!

And now, one last thing. This is basically what's convincing me that maybe this account might still be managed by Nintendo.

Look at the tags. Specifically #InTheWoods... possible reference to this scene from the second trailer posted on Nintendo's JP yt last week?

And then #WeAreEmio... if this account was ran by Dr. DeLacey (at least sort of) then why "we"? Why not "I"?

Idk what to make of this y'all. I have my doubts this was actually AI because why would the bot slow down posts after the full reveal trailer? How could a bot set up two different twitter spaces? And none of the tracks posted on the account sound even remotely AI generated.

[skullytotheark]

Ticci Toby: Level One

He gets his goggles later on in the year

The mouth piece is made from fabric and is glued onto the mask

Current lore:

Toby was 18 when he killed his father

Held captive for about four months

Breaks out and becomes a proxy when he was about to turn 19

[Here is the context for the sudden change btw]

I'd imagine that the mask in this canon grows as Toby ages & what not, adding small things throughout the years & what not

He finds the jacket in a metal box when he's 20 years old when he returns to the burnt remains of his house

Shorten cuz i ramble alot: The lore context behind the mask is that it was a starter proxy mask which he modifies [adds the mouthpiece which is fabric and finds goggles]. He gets a gasmask in his level 2 mask

[skyward-floored]

I have so many questions about Warriors and his magic. And the triforce. What is happening, why is it happening, and how did I not know this sooner?

XD Well I’ll give you as good of an explanation as I’m able!

So at the beginning of Hyrule Warriors, Link is just a soldier trainee of sorts, just doing drills and sparring and stuff and not wearing a helmet the dummy. When an army of monsters attack Hyrule, the trainees aren’t supposed to go fight but Link runs out anyway because he’s Link you know.

Impa and Zelda are both impressed by his skill and they start wondering if maybe he’s the hero (Zelda actually saw him earlier while he was training, they made brief eye contact). They can’t be sure though, and there’s a lot going on and the castle’s being attacked and they all lose contact with Zelda and then Link finds himself face to face with this dragon knight guy named Volga.

Link does okay but Volga finally smacks him out of the way and decides to kill him, and Impa comes to help him, but Volga decides to just blast them both to death with his fire breath. Link jumps forward at the last second and throws himself in front of Impa, but the fire engulfs them both.

Except... it doesn’t work. Because Link has his hand stretched out and the Triforce of courage is protecting both him and Impa from certain death. Turns out she was right— Link is the hero, and has a piece of the Triforce.

And in lu, he actually has a large scar from the incident!

Now that’s the only time Link explicitly uses the Triforce to help himself, but it’s obviously something he can do, even if it’s subconscious. For the rest of his magic though, he’s able to use it much more freely.

For starters there’s focus spirit— which is actually an ability that everyone can use, not just Link— once your magic meter is full, it essentially heightens your focus and makes you hit harder, culminating in a big attack right at the end. You’re also glowing as you use it, and it takes a while to get enough magic to use it at all, which means it’s pretty powerful I’d say. I wonder if Warriors’ll ever use it in the comic or not?

The other big magic thing is one of Link’s main weapons— the fire rod. Link shows off a great proficiency with it, and is able to do several different attacks with the thing, including sending a big fire dragon out that spirals around and hits stuff. It’s one of his main weapons too, so obviously he’s pretty good at it!

And of course, the less obvious magic of his fairy friend Proxi, who gives hints and basically speaks for Link. He can obviously talk to her, plus... the great fairies seem to have a keen interest in him (yikes).

Now I’m sure there’s more magic he uses that I either haven’t unlocked or can’t access (since I have the “boring” version of his game XD) but I think that’s mostly it. Does that answer all your questions? (hopefully this was helpful!)

[wolfs-wake]

How slenderman and proxies work

finally sharing my head canons and how slenderman works in my story! this is a good starter post for that i think.

Slenderman

Similar to Habit, Slenderman is connected to and is itself shaped by humanity. Habit is an accumulation of everything ‘bad’ with humanity in the same way Slenderman is the accumulation of the power of human belief and the duality of the human mind

the belief that humanity is innately toxic and ruled by fear. The belief in punishment and retribution from higher beings while also being the belief that humanity is innately good, driven by wonder and kindness (aka I like the slender mansion au)

Overall it is a being of thought, possessing power of unknown bounds, possibly infinite

Its intentions are inherently unknown to humans, as they are not something humans are capable of comprehending

It is a collective of human thought and belief, incapable of being fully understood in the same way humans are incapable of fully understanding the intricacies of their own conscious and subconscious minds 

Slender’s true appearance is closer to that of trees/roots/mycelium. We see the main part but its branches spread infinitely outward beyond our sight.

Another means to describe is that the body we see and comprehend is a neuron but it’s limbs are ever reaching synapses connecting to elsewhere

PROXIES

Proxies are the unfortunate souls who are attached to Slender through some means, usually chance encounter

All it takes is one encounter, or even a connected bloodline to cause someone to be connected to Slender

Proxies’ only purpose is to carry out tasks for the entity. They may carry out these tasks willingly or be forced to do so

Some proxies (such as Tim and Brian) have only negative feelings about the Operator and thus are forced into their roles. This is done by forcing their brains to, in a sense, split into two or more (think endogenous system)

Others (like Toby) have mixed feelings, or a past they wish to forget and therefore are easier to control

This usually means the entity feeds upon the trauma, taking and/or suppressing the memories for the proxy, however the after effects of the initial event that caused the trauma still lingers, causing the proxy to have thoughts or feel emotions that seem out of place in the absence of the memory they were once tied to. This is usually remedied by “Slenderman” interacting with them, protecting or talking to them in a way to fill in the missing spaces with positive feelings and interactions

Example: Toby has negative thoughts and trauma from his father and upbringing; Slenderman replaces the original memory with an alternate version containing itself as a caring father figure as a means to control Toby.

I hope you guys enjoy whats coming based off this. much of my slenderman is based off theories seen in internet a occultism which i find fascinating. i have some posts and plans lined up to share and im very excited for whats to come!

thank to my lovely beta reader @ajarofham love you so much!

[the-lornacorn]

So, I play Magic: the Gathering and primarily (much like most people) commander. I've been playing the game since '07 on and off and I love the way commander plays. Goofy combos and weird interactions and cards you haven't heard of or thought about in years.

Commander isn't really a space for spikes, you wanna play hyper efficient and super linear games move to CEDH or legacy (very pro-proxying for that) or modern. There's been a theme to games recently and that theme is one player having 2-3x as much Mana as everyone else early in the game and winning as a result. The main ways this happens is with cards like Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus and Dockside Extortionist. They're "staples" for a certain brand of player that I don't personally like to play with (people who are playing borderline CEDH and claim their decks are a 7/10 power level). On Sol Ring, sure ban it, I don't care. I don't put it in every deck cause honestly it's not that fun. It used to be, back in the early days of commander. Ooo, Sol Ring, the restricted and banned card in vintage and legacy card, how fun to see it here. Now it's just like... Oh, turn 1 Sol Ring, cool, 👉 archenemy.

Now, the cost of that list of cards is about £350 for one of each. There's tons of them in games stores, there are people holding piles of them for financial speculation (I will return to this). This has led to the banning of these cards having a big financial ramification for local gaming stores, which SUCKS. Like genuinely, that sucks and people should be aware of that but also, this happens in modern, legacy, and standard regularly so, commander (which has bannings very rarely) having a banning of 3 cards is not the end of the world.

Returning to the speculators, the magic finance bros who are currently screaming, threatening people on the commander rules committee and going "oh no, all my apes, gone". Now, I have a sizeable collection of cards, some of those cards used to be worth tons (A Grim Tutor from the starter set for example) that then get reprinted and lose 90% of that value. I am honestly happy when that happens. I own reserved list and actively want it reprinted. This is a game; not stocks, not a bank bond, there is no financial regulatory body. The nature of the game comes first not the money. Stop treating card games like stocks, cause people doing game design and management want the game to play well, they shouldn't care about your portfolio. If we can't ban expensive things the game will get unhealthy.

Now, the argument that the cards chosen change the game too much, cause people to have to edit all their decks too much is kinda bollocks. Add in different ramp, pop a fellwar stone in, pop a worn powerstone in, try out some new stuff. This isn't going to change the deck itself, no one builds around these cards, they just make things fast and hard to manage.

In my opinion the only people that are struggling that need an apology are games stores. Wizards can very, very easily help this by sending out some products or promos to help alleviate this. I think that the loudness of some finance bros is causing a storm in a teacup. As is always the case the bourgeois will scream that the world is collapsing when they lose something. Most people do not own these damn cards, they cost more than a weekly food shop, more than a month's petrol, more than a bottomed out heating bill in the UK. This is a discussion about whether the game should be made less fun to pander to a class of people who spend thousands on a card game at a time.

This too shall pass, magic isn't dying. Don't let the finance bros and CEDH players at your game store determine the health of this game as a thing to play by arguing that their financial investment in a card game got undermined.

Ps. CEDH folks, just branch off into your own ban list. It's been done a thousand times, there's 1v1 EDH ban lists that are different on MTGO so, yeah, do that.

[echofromtheabyss]

Medium talk is worse than small talk and probably what we're all most afraid of

We all know Small Talk:

hi, how are you, nice weather, how about them (insert sports team here).

Small talk follows algorithms and a kind of ritual pattern. It's the kind of appropriate conversation level for interacting with retail workers in public, and total strangers.

We also all know Big Talk. (I'm only calling it that as the logical inverse implied by Small Talk.) Which is basically where a high degree of familiarity is assumed. A common ND fuckup is conversing in conversational modes that, to many of the general population, are reserved for high familiarity. Either in terms of talking at length about a topic (which I feel is something that was actually more socially acceptable in the past, but has become broadly unacceptable over time; this was NOT really part of a diagnostic category in the 70s) or in terms of overfamiliarity/not being at the right level of social distance from the person for the thing you're talking about.

Most people rely on lots of context cues that inform how they will hear what the other person is saying, and those context cues may not be there for a near-stranger. All they're left with is the most uncharitable possible assumption about your intentions.

So with this in mind, this leaves me with the WORST conversation category, that nobody acknowledges, because we're stuck on Small Talk and Big Talk:

Medium Talk.

You actually need something in common with the other person or something you relate to, to really successfully do Medium Talk. Small talk can be done with total strangers you're never going to see again, and Big Talk can cut past a lot of stuff; I don't need every social belongingness or ideological thing or hobby in common with my family members, or other people in a high-trust relationship with me, to have a meaningful conversation with them.

Medium Talk is actually where a lot of the tripwires and landmines are.

People are making decisions to escalate or de-escalate here, and listening for loyalty indicators. You run the risk of keeping things superficial while missing an actual connectedness bid, or of being overly familiar - or getting too comfortable and offending/scaring the other person before they have any context for processing what you're saying to them.

Medium Talk is when you're moving from the Social Niceties, along the continuum toward Big Talk. You're dipping your toe in the water, moving toward the deep end.

Average to high social skills people will often throw out feelers about escalating the conversation. In the 90s, LGBT people would sometimes drop hints about some or other thing that only other LGBT people would know about, based upon some kind of context cue. There is ultimately some of this same dynamic going on with some forms of nerdy gatekeeping ("name one star war") albeit in a clumsy way.

But people do it all the time.

I think there is a tendency for some people to assume talk is 100% verbal while habitually ignoring the visual and relational context cues that are processed as communication. It's especially hard for people who *can't* process that information, but I think that there are lots of reasons some people end up just not learning to do it.

People often escalate small talk based upon presence of some kind of marker such as a nerdy enamel pin, or a sports jersey. This is what wearing tons of geek swag is actually all about. 70s-80s social skills guides and advice for single people, often advised having/carrying/wearing some kind of "conversation starter."

Once I learned about 70s/80s/90s gay hanky code, I realized that there was a lot of this going on in all kinds of ways and that people scan other people visually for various kinds of context cues for the escalation of small talk.

A big problem is getting too "real" too fast, and people in the Medium Talk Zone will commonly use celebrities, low-stakes fandom stuff, and the like as socially acceptable proxies for discussing their viewpoints while saving face. If you are still in a low trust space, then the problem with just blurting stuff out to another person is that they don't know you well enough to have any context for what you are saying.

Most people are processing a ton of context cues while you are speaking, besides the words you are saying. When still in a low trust zone, you are likely to be taken in bad faith. You saying the same thing that their friend said, is not being heard by their brains as actually the same thing.

Nor is your presentation of the project being heard by the boss as being the same presentation that is being given by the shinier co-worker who steals it from you.

Most people don't just process the information, they process *who is saying it* as a *necessary part* of that information.

And this is where Medium Talk is so dicey.

Small Talk? No problem. Most of us can do it on a good day and most of us do it without realizing how much we do it.