#thank fuck hes no in my area

[theropodtheroblogs]

The MSP who voted against the abortion bill is John Mason. Shockingly, he is SNP.

Me scuttling to his wiki page and all but screaming fucking YIKES

[nutria--oscura]

EDINBURGH LIKE SHOW: UNMATCHEDDDD

Forgot to take pictures with the cast but anywaysss

GOT THE COMIC BOOK (by @cerealforkart)AND FRAMED PICTURE (thank you @louthecoder) SIGNEDDD

[derrygirlstrash]

Clare is mischaracterized a lot lowkey because I think people love Clare for being an anxious lesbian so much that they instinctively craft a more palatable version of that trait onto her and it’s a shame because Clare is a fascinating little beastie. She is childhood friends with the likes of Erin and Michelle for a reason after all. She is arguably just as selfish as Erin /affectionate and just as impulsive as Michelle /affectionate it just is formed around the insane molten hot anxiety disorder inside her little lesbian brain. She thinks she’s better than them when in reality she is just as bad.

I’d argue she stays selfish /affectionate longer than Erin does. Until the final two episodes I fully believe Clare would have sold any of them up the river for a corn chip if that corn chip would save her skin. It’s often said that Clare and James hold the single brain cell but I think the truth is likely that Orla holds it and they just forgot to use it or hand it to someone cause they were going ham on a bag of sweets.

If you hate Erin for her selfish traits and just kinda forget that Clare is just as bad then idk what to tell you they’re birds of a feather.

[thanatika]

yeah i agree with your point about survival mechanics and i feel the same way about the lack of combat mechanics. "why would an educated city doctor need a weapon" because shit is hitting the fan in every way impossible and pretty much everyone is walking around armed... also why am i supposed to believe the the fact that he's a man of intellect will somehow provide him with food? i don't think anyone is going to be too eager to share food during an outbreak intellectual or not...

+ follow up for the previous ask but actually my favorite quest from the original pathologic is the day 11 bachelor quest that involves shooting down soldiers. i think it really drives the point home about how this random fuckass guy who is supposed to be battling a plague doesn't even have the time to do that anymore because the people in charge are asking completely irrelevant things of him now and he's at a position where he cannot refuse what is being asked of him. like i think it was good storytelling that even as the guy who lowkey wants to deal with the plague and solve its mystery you still have other, more pressing, less interesting and or pleasant tasks to complete

i agree! honestly, i feel this way about the combat mechanics even more than i do about the physical survival (food, health, illness, sleep) mechanics. because sure, i can see how it makes sense for daniil's position of authority to mean that his basic needs are somewhat provided for -- although i don't think it makes more sense than what we got in the original game. i've never seen anyone bring up "isn't it kind of unrealistic that the bachelor isn't given lots of food during a massive food shortage?" as a plothole that needed to be resolved. the townspeople generally don't like him much, and most of the people with power don't either, except for the kains. sure, maybe it's kind of weird that you can go see the kains while broke and on the verge of keeling over from hunger, and they won't do anything to help you, but... the kains are pretty self-centered, and they're so goddamn weird that maybe they forget that you need to eat food to live anyway. and it's half-implied that the powers that be are ultimately giving daniil this role as a convenient way to kill him, so it makes sense that they would put no pressure on the town authorities to keep him alive.

(and honestly, artemy is taken under the olgimsky's auspices as much as the kains take daniil's under theirs! which is to say, selfishly, with ulterior motives that are more important to them than the well-being of their healer, but... the olgimskys are set up as the wealthiest of the 3 families financially, as well as the ones with the most access to food, given their control over the meat industry. so if anything it's "weirder" that artemy isn't more materially provided for, though to be clear i don't think there's an actual plothole there either way.)

but anyway, you could handwave it and say that daniil's position of privilege and authority gives him more perks than he got in the original game, but the amount of fighting you have to do to get through town is... kind of an unavoidable physical reality? like you're given so many sidequests that you often wind up walking around town after dark, and that's when the bandits come out. is the idea that the bandits would be too scared to attack him because he's so important? because that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and even pathologic 2 establishes that he's seen as a valuable target by the bandits:

and then there's the quests where combat plays a more direct role in the story itself, like getting involved in saving andrey from the firing squad, or killing guards to break artemy out of prison, or the quest where you have to kill var in attempt to stop the arsonists (which i include on the same tier as the other ones because i really like the quest journal entry he has if you complete it where he blames himself for willow's death. it's a good character moment.)

hell, even in pathologic 2 itself, one of the biggest Bachelor Moments is on day 11, when you have that big dramatic convo with him after he killed a soldier for the papers he was delivering. plus one of bad grief's idle dialogues in patho 2 is commentary on the bachelor being "quick on the draw" and that he "already shot someone". like he just straight up is not living a combat-free existence. and overall, combat isn't just a good tool from a mechanical perspective, heightening the stakes and placing pressure on the player (though it is), it's also pretty important for him on a thematic level imo, almost as important as artemy and his "rivers of blood". in patho classic, daniil has this early interaction with the inquisitor:

which, thinking about it from a doylist perspective, was probably the writers' attempt to make it sound more plausible that this random medical researcher from the big city was competent with multiple types of guns. and i appreciate them coming up with that hint of backstory to cover their bases a bit, but with those bases covered, i think the fact that daniil ultimately spends more time shooting people than he does prescribing medicines for them actually does a lot for him thematically? i mean, if his whole thing is that he's this "tempted destroyer", someone who frames his career as a combative battle with death rather than a quest to save people's lives, whose "default" solution is to raze the town with artillery because he's too limited by his rationalist worldview and military upbringing (and bitterness over being manipulated and sabotaged) to come up with a solution that saves the any remaining infected survivors on his own. plus the way that clara frames artemy and daniil as two sides of the same coin in being violent destroyers and killers, who without player intervention will immediately devolve to running around chasing each other down in what's either an insanely dedicated tom and jerry LARP or some really elaborate foreplay. imo, that whole dichotomy (which is pretty core to the game, as the idea of dichotomies are core to it in general) works so much better with the way they're both presented in classic, stalking around with gun/scalpel in hand. hell, not to mention the effect that spending 12 in-game days trying not to starve and getting killed by bandits or guards or worms or soldiers every day would have on the player, and the way it would make them feel about the town and their natural projection of those feelings onto dankovsky, who is a perfectly fitting vessel for them as the avatar actually undergoing those virtual experiences.

ultimately i think they are mainly going this direction out of a desire to do something more creative and original, which is fine... it just seems a bit silly to me that they keep saying "well obviously that doesn't really work for the bachelor's scenario", when, well... even as recently as patho 2 in 2019, they seemed to think it fit his narrative pretty well! i'm also guessing that a lack of combat won't be that bandits are just no longer roaming the streets at night. it sounds more like pathologic 3 is set to be more of a nonlinear experience, where you'll probably fast travel from place to place instead of having to walk across town so much? so you'll be avoiding bandits just in the sense that the gameplay will be avoiding them. i guess i'm hoping that at the very least, there's still the implication of the crunch of not getting enough sleep or food and the threat of being stabbed to death while trying to get through town occurring to dankovsky in the background, even if those mechanics are deemphasized in favor of more macro-level town resource management, time control, and sherlock holmes fruit ninja or whatever the hell they were on about back in 2022 lmao.

[leverage-ot3]

not going to give the blog any attention or time of day but this is your reminder that the leverage crew would never be zionists or support israel whatsoever

I wasn't going to engage with it because I value my mental health but yeah. absolutely fucking NOT

y'all really think that this group of people that actively go out of their way to go against the rich and powerful, who make it their goal to help people that are oppressed, devalued by society and taken advantage by those more powerful would at all EVER align themselves with israel? bffrrn

I'm going to go off for a few paragraphs about why this is such a horrendously ridiculous and delusional idea, but I'm not going to clog up your dash so it's going under the cut. I want to respect people who already participate in activism and need fandom space for lighter things

tw for discussion of the atrocities and war crimes happening in palestine

over 25 THOUSAND innocent people have died as a result of israeli terror the last few months alone. over 10 thousand children. entire family lines have been erased from the world forever- grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren all martyred, often together as they are sheltering from bombs and bullets until they are murdered by soldiers that laugh as they shoot and detonate bombs.

you really think that eliot 'I adopt every child I see' spencer would support a regime that let a child stay trapped in a car where her family members were martyred, not let paramedics in for days and then when they finally let the paramedics approach they kill both her AND the EMS? you think he would stand with the government that arrests children as young as 6 years old for *checks hand* being terrorists (because what fucking 6 year old is a terrorist let alone any kind of national threat. they're fucking SIX). that snipes children for throwing rocks at tanks and their apartheid walls

he and all of them would weep at the picture released the other day of the little girl handing from rubble with her legs blown off.

all of them would be horrified of the bombardment that has murdered tens of thousands of innocent civilians, women, children, men, elderly alike with no fucking care. that shoots people with their hands up waving white flags. that bulldozes graveyards and digs up bodies and probably steals organs from they dying and deceased. that bombs hospitals, governmental and archival buildings, mosques, churches, holy sites, schools and universities. whose soldiers have a trend where they go through women's underwear drawers and make lewd comments about their lingerie and how kinky they must be. who make tiktoks of them playing in decimated playgrounds and signing their children's names on bombs. who force parents to collect pieces of their children in plastic bags because they have been blown apart by relentless bombing. who shoot a grandmother holding a child's hand. who murdered a woman that dared say that she was older than the 'state' of israel.

the fact that you're posting this as israel relentlessly bombs rafa, the place they were told would be the only safe place to be, where 1.6 million people are living in tents living off animal feed because no sufficient humanitarian aid (if any) has been let through

these people that advocate for comeuppance and exposing wrongs would not support a regime that actively targets and murders journalists and their entire families.

you really think any of them would actively support a genocidal sociopathic government? fucking delusional

to a certain extent, I know that people want to keep fandom and advocacy spaces separate and I acknowledge and relate to that- when we are logged on every moment of the day we sometimes need to take breaks and engage with something else for our mental health. I need that too. and there is a very thin line when you try to apply fandom to current events because in all honesty, making headcanons about how your faves would react to X horrendous event can come off as extremely tone-deaf. I get you love your blorbos (I do too!), but actual people are suffering and it can come off as disingenuous to a lot of folks when you try to talk about your characters instead of the very real harm that is going on. HOWEVER, the other account posted in the leverage tag that the crew would be zionists and started that discourse and since it was already out there in our space I wanted to make sure that people know that this blog does not support that whatsoever.

and before this gets misconstrued: antizionism is not antisemitism. I have a lot of love for my jewish friends and followers, but saying that we can't be critical of war crimes and incessant aggression because it is a jewish state is fucking ridiculous. we should be able to hold any and all governments accountable when they do bad things (this absolutely also means I think we should hold the US accountable for enabling them and I live here. every country that is complicit needs to face consequences). saying that israel is exempt from criticism because jewish people deserve a right to a homeland isn't a great take. I completely understand fear of antisemitism and discrimination, but at some point we have to think critically and acknowledge that people are dying by the thousands and standing up for that and calling out atrocities takes precedence. jewish voices for peace has some really good content about this topic

anyways there's a random blog out there posting about how your faves are zionists splattering their rancid sponge and I want to make sure my stance on this subject is very clear: fuck israel, free palestine, and no one is free until everyone is free

[skeletalheartattack]

...am I just losing my mind or did yer icon become evil? I don't remember that BeAst behind Boe

yuuuump always been behind me

[ratatatastic]

"Who's idea was it to put the cone on your head for the parade? Was that all you?" "Zach Eisenberg [Director, Executive Operations]—I think is his name—he takes care of us a lot at Amerant Bank Arena. I don't know his exact role with the team but he's just kind-of always around, and helps us out. He's friends with Brooks [Koepka.] I think he helps Brooks when he comes to the games. Anyways he found a pylon or I think I might have told him—I was pretty drunk at the time but I think I told him to go get a py—'if you could find a pylon, find one!' 'Cuz they sprung that speech on me, kind-of, last second, you know, five minutes before I was supposed to go up there. I'm like, 'What the fuck am I gonna say?' So I had him go grab the pylon and I grabbed it on the side of the stage right before I was gonna do my speech. And luckily all the clips are of that, you know, me telling him to go fuck himself... 'cuz the rest of my speech was terrible. There's really nothing to it! And I'm so happy that, you know, all the clips are only of that so!" "Yeah, we didn't know you said anything else! I thought that was the entire speech!" "That's all that matters!" "Exactly, exactly! I got away with it there!"

The Cam & Strick Podcast | 7.30.24 (x)

i love finding out they basically told ekky he was gonna have to do a whole speech 5 minutes before he was up while hes been drenched from rainwater and alcohol for like the past 6 hours absolutely pissed out of his mind like yeah no wonder his speech basically culminated to THANK YOU SOUTH FLORIDA AND ALSO GIVE IT UP FOR MY D PARTNER WOOOOO yeah that tracks

"But what golf tournament* were you at shortly after that? Somebody was dressed like a cone? Was that Lomberg who was dressed in like a costume? A cone costume?" "He came—Brooks came up to you—" "No, that was his buddy, that was his buddy. He was actually a Sunrise police officer. I actually saw him last night at the Zach Bryan concert! But yeah, no, that's one of his buddies. No, he was completely put to bed the day after. Right? Like he texted me—I personally didn't care, like, how many people at a hockey game are calling me a cone and telling Barkov he's got no hands like it's—you know, that's hockey. That's sports, right? So I didn't give a shit but—yeah, no, it was all in good fun. And then I got a way to get him back! It's perfect!" "But when you did see the first video of him in the box—and I remember watching that, I'm like, 'this motherfucker is rolling esctasy!' His eyes were fuckin' gigantic, he's like, 'Aaargghh.' Like, 'I can't take him, he's calling me a cone! I can't—' But that is kind-of odd that a professional athlete is gonna call you a cone and he's like a fan of yours...it's just—it was really bizarre!" "Goofy!" "Yeah..." "And his eyes were black which, you know..." "What does that mean?" "I just know what that means... and he was fucked up, you know..." "Yeah, yeah! He was definitely fucked up and he agreed that he was fucked up. And he apologised so I didn't care, obviously. And then when I was at that golf event I should've thrown a beer at his backswing or something—at the LIV event when he was actually competing? I should've fucked with him but I couldn't do it... I couldn't—I couldn't find the courage to throw something at him..." "So did he reach out to you like that night? And say, 'Hey, dude... I was just joking, you know...'" "'I took some pills and...'"

*2023 LIV Golf Team Championship (Miami) held from Oct. 20-22 in Doral

[and i suppose more context here lombo and koepka are friends and he even showed up to his cupday when he went golfing in parkland and not to mention that lombo facilitated koepka apologising to ekky so its why the whole cone costume came to be really]

theres a lot more context about this incident and the ensuing storm after it so for archival sakes here are articles about it (x)(x)(x)(x)(x) because its quite a saga but its water under the bridge and there's only so much tabloid-esque coverage thats been reignited after the ekky speech i can take about an athlete who's dumb enough to insult another guy while hes drunk off as his ass in a fucking public setting

but anyways i think its really funny that i said to myself wow thats an oddly petty thing to admit to you know the whole wanting to throw a beer at his backswing ekky... for such a good vibes sweet man who like the only thing youve particularly said about the cone novella is "we'll never be buddies" to which you quickly retracted and then went "holding ill will against somebody and pulling negativity in your body is never a good thing"

and then i remembered who he attended the liv event with and it all made sense

behind every aqua whos being a little mean there is a much worse much more evil looming presence who is encouraging them down this dark path (a gem but especially a june gem)

truly a tale as old as time

[firenati0n]

roop experiencing mutual pining/friends to lovers/near decade long slow burn/feelings realization tropes was not on my 2023 bingo card but here we are in the eleventh hour

[cherubchoirs]

All this (absolutely wonderful, thank you for the food) talk about the archangels has me curious as to what you think happened to god? I know Gabriel said that god is dead, but I like to think he meant that in the idealised version that heaven previously upholded were dead.

man i wish i had a good answer/one i could decide on!! i really can't say at all what direction canon will take, but i do agree that god isn't necessarily dead - all that matters imo is that he is absent because i think the game has a lot to say about the presence of god and theodicy as the issue christianity as an institution cannot address. earth has always been full of rampant suffering and god doesn't come, there is no just-world, and i think canon takes that to its extreme end. god isn't on earth, but he also is no longer in heaven and he has never been in hell. so now the world he made is left to deal with his negligence. it's a big reason that i hope he never actually appears, and is relegated only to the testaments (in a similar way that he's relegated to the bible).

for the sake of my au, god is actually dead but not exactly gone - his guilt and anger grew to the point that his internal existence, that of trinity, became disconnected and in disagreement with one another. the father tried to keep his iron grip, but the son finally condemned his constant need to abandon his own creation and the holy ghost, as his will, eventually determined god itself as the root cause of their woe. essentially, he had a catastrophic failure of his own components and his will tried to consume his entity. how he exists now is unknown, but god's corpse can be found far out in the now ruined and uninhabitable places of the ninth sphere though not always in the same place (i imagine this break up shook all of heaven terribly, in a way that mirrors the harrowing of hell - many angels perished in the disaster and much of heaven was destroyed so that now the cities are significantly smaller) additionally, strange reports of bizarre angel-like creatures have come in from the outskirts of the still civilized areas, but no one has ever gotten close enough to examine them.

[marshmallowloves]

What an odd little thing you are, Orbulon! You're equal parts adorable and offputting.

SO, you and Cici seem pretty happy together! Mind telling me about the last date you two went on? I'm soooo curious as to how an alien courts a human~ That's simply a little puzzle I MUST solve.

at ~ @princess-hope-selfships 💖

Hmmm! I could say the same about you! The complexity of the odd outfits you Earth-folk wear never ceases to fascinate me. Is your clothing part of your own courting ritual?

Still, I will teach you the ways of interstellar courting, man of questions! I have become something of an expert on this sort of thing, you know.

The last time we did "date" was November 2nd, 2024. Although it is about time for this side of the Earth to become colder, it was still quite warm! Because of this, the creamy ice-seller appeared. And as it happens, he carries an Earth-sweet that is very beloved by Cici - snowy cones!

She was very insistent that we acquire some, because when the weather is colder soon, they will no longer be available for purchase. How saddening! But she assured me that she was not too disappointed - in fact, she is very excited for the cold season to begin!

And so, we enjoyed the last snowy cones of the year at the edge of her front yard. And somehow, this made them taste even sweeter than usual.

...However, it was quite the ordeal to catch the seller in the first place…

[savetheghost]

Oh man I love Canadian geese, they distract everyone so loons can show up

at my work canadian geese are jjjuuuuuust tall enough to trigger the automatic doors

and when it gets hot

their babbies will run in to the air conditioning, and the adults wont follow

then they notice the babbies are MIA

and i wind up being the only person with enough experience dealing with animals that im the negotiator in this situation

scooping up baby geese and ushering them back out to the parents without getting my fingers bit

[anyonghalimaw]

one of these days me n my brother r literally gonna get in trouble 4 saying White person spotted out loud when we see one in public

[talentforlying]

So gemma using magic in general is one thing, how would john feel about gemma getting deeper into magic? Like, going from occasionally casting Basic Shield Spell but otherwise living a normal life, to being some sort of wizard full time

ARE YOU THE SAME ANON FROM THE LAST GEMMA QUESTION!! regardless i love you for this.

ultimately, i think he'd see gemma getting full-blown into magic as a failure on his part, and as a betrayal of his sister's wishes for her. (a betrayal by him, not by gemma.) and john reacts to his own failures by trying to correct them at any cost, regardless of who else's decisions were involved. so he'd be upset, definitely guilty, definitely exasperated and shit-scared for her, maybe a little angry. he's never going to want her to see all the awful, awful shit that he's had to, that he knows she will see if she continues, and he might even sabotage her at points to try and drive her out of the life; just social, high-school-clique stuff, getting important connections like clarice to refuse dealings with her, scaring off artifact brokers, things like that.

but i do think eventually john would come to realize that if gemma's determined to be an occultist, and a serious one at that — which, even john doesn't think of his magic as a full-time gig — then it'd be better for her to want to come to him for advice or assistance, knowing he'd always be willing to help, than for her to want to keep him in the dark as much as possible, knowing there's a non-zero chance of him being a pain in the ass to her about her future plans. he knows that gemma's smart, and savvy, and as well aware as he is by now that people will lie, cheat, steal, and kill to get what they want in this world; despite his inclination towards overprotectiveness, i think he'd come to trust that she can keep herself alive. bottom line, he'd end up working to establish himself in her orbit as a conflicted but stalwart source of backup, information, and offered comfort, so that she never has to go it alone the way he often has.

(i also think he might be secretly relieved that there's another constantine on the scene to take on the hard jobs, the endless violence, the ceaseless horrors. he'd be guilty as hell about feeling that way, because that's his niece and he doesn't want her seeing any of it, but it'd mean he could maybe retire from the constant vigil knowing there's someone he trusts handling things. and maybe become gemma's link back to normalcy in the same way cheryl was for him, if the retirement lasts.)

and, again, he'd come to be so proud of her. sometimes you just can't walk away from knowing something bad is happening, he knows that better than anyone, and to see that quality in gemma would lighten his heart tremendously.

(assuming that's why she continues in magic, of course; if she's just seeking fame and power, he'd do everything he could to shut her out of that world in a heartbeat, and take her hatred for it all the way to the grave.)

[uncaught-coolfish]

and even with all this banana slamma isn’t even the top blonde character with the worst stans

[todayisafridaynight]

STOP I OVERPLAYED ODE TO JOY WHILE LEARNING PIANO 😭😭😭😭😭

However! I am happy to share and am so glad you see the vision. Sorry In Advance to you and all your followers for the spam but here is a (mostly corrupted) office tour (please note the "Mine Power"-brand gym equipment):

P.S. I recall really liking The Wings of the Kirin, please enjoy!

EVERYONE OVERPLAYED ODE TO JOY GROWING UP IT CAME WITH YOUR PARENTS FORCING YOU TO LEARN THE PIANO LERKJALEKJ

BUT OH MY GOD NO DON'T APOLOGIZE THIS IS LITERALLY PERFECT I thank you again for my life this is so important to me you have no idea

[binders-and-beanies]

If u tell a trans disabled person to call the cops or tell someone else to call the cops abt them u do not care abt that person’s safety