#the girlies coming out to play

[corporatefrog]

↳˗ˏˋ loose change ˊˎ˗ ↴

level 2 - my 43 year old roommate and me

featuring: yn officially meeting the single mother they'll be staying with during their time in South Park

notes: you KNOW i had to get the moms in this. they're so underutilized

series masterlist

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38…40…42…

My car slowed to a crawl as I scanned the street. I had rented a room in a woman’s house to save money during my trip. She seemed kind from the email’s we’d shared after I responded to her listing on Facebook. Apparently her son had moved out a few years prior and the house felt empty with no one else staying there. 

44…46!

The house was a blinding green that didn’t seem that eye-burning in the pictures I saw online. My eyes squinted to avoid damaging my retinas with the color. You could barely make out the number above the door. I pulled my car into the driveway, triple checking the number was correct before putting my car in park. Nothing would be more embarrassing than pulling into the wrong house and standing in their driveway like the biggest idiot in the world. I’d get chased out of town by self-hatred before I could even start my job. 

The front door opened as I was pulling my bags out of my car. I turned to see the woman I’d be staying with walking towards me with a smile. Her brown hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, blue shirt tucked into her red pants.

“Yn, it’s so nice to finally meet you.” 

—

Name: Liane Cartman

Age: 45

Status: Single Mother

Fun Fact: Since her son moved out, Liane has gotten really into rock climbing!

—

“Liane! Nice to finally meet you too!” I exclaimed, pushing down my exhaustion as I turned to face the woman. Sleep can wait until I’ve given a good first impression to my technical landlord. She grabbed my hand in both of hers, giving it a shake before letting go. Liane reached past me and lifted my bags before I could protest, talking over her shoulder as she walked back to the door.

“How was the drive? The mountains are always troublesome if you haven’t driven the roads before.” 

I speedwalked to reach her, “Oh, it wasn’t too bad! I found a podcast called Walk the Walk with-”

“With Jimmy Valmer!” Liane finished for me, opening the door while still carrying my bag, “Jimmy is such a sweetheart! He used to hang out with the boys all the time.” 

Upon entering the house, the smell of cedar covered my senses as though I’d walked into a warm fall night. The tv played an episode of Seinfeld while a cup of coffee sat still steaming on the end table. To my right, a picture of Liane and a young boy standing in front of Mount Rushmore hung on the wall. That must be her son! You can definitely see the resemblance between the two. I wonder if he’s as kind as his mother? 

Liane had started on this story about one time when her son and his friends held a competition to find a new friend for their group after one of them had gotten ill and how Jimmy had been one of the boys in the competition. Weird way to cope with sickness but you know I did weird stuff when I was 10 too.

Yeah, like wearing green lipstick to school everyday. 

Okay, fuck you?

“You’ll be staying upstairs in Eric’s old room. He doesn’t come visit much which is why I thought it would be best to rent out the room.” She said, beginning up the stairs still holding my suitcase. I feel bad that she’s carrying my suitcase but I can’t seem to get a word in between her stories about her son, his friends, or the town in general. I understand though. When you’ve been living alone for a while though, it feels different to have someone else in your space again. 

Liane led me to a room with deep purple walls and the brown hardwood floor that covered the rest of the house. The dark atmosphere was lightened by a large window beside the bed. Morning rays filtered through the window, casting light on the dust which lingered in the air from the room’s months of disuse.

The mattress creaked slightly as Liane placed my bag on the bed.

She turned to me with her kind smile, “I hope this room will work well for you.” She said, gesturing abstractly to the room around us. I assured her it was perfect, fighting back the exhaustion pulling at my eyelids as I thanked her again for her hospitality. 

Liane waved off the thanks as though I were doing her a favor. She began to head towards the door, saying I probably needed a few hours of “beauty sleep” (which was right. I began to wonder if the rays of light were actually beginning to wave around or if I was beginning to hallucinate from exhaustion) but stopped halfway through the doorway. 

“I forgot to mention! Some friends of mine are coming over for our Wednesday Wine Night tonight if you’d like to join us! No need to accept the offer, I just thought I’d extend the invitation. Their sons are all around your age so I’m sure they’d love to meet you.” She said before bidding me goodbye and leaving the room, shutting the door behind her. 

I let out a sigh as silence fell over the room. 

I did it. I really did it. I moved to an entirely new town and I’m living with a stranger for the next three months. All because my boss told me to. This is another level of follower. 

Bro you live in a capitalist society. Buying gas with your Speedway rewards card makes you a follower. 

Too exhausted to ignore my own snarky thoughts, I fell backwards onto the bed. My head immediately sunk into the pillows as the mattress cradled me like a newborn baby. It felt like I’d died and gone to bed heaven. It was the comfiest mattress I’d ever laid on. What kind of person gives up a bed like this to live alone? 

A kid who’s mother is so infuriating he cannot stand the thought of living with her for another second. 

That doesn’t make me feel any better. What if the kid is the asshole? Kids can be assholes too. 

Then he would’ve taken the mattress out of spite. Because he’s an asshole. 

I’m not listening to you anymore.

My eyes traced the sun rays that streaked across the ceiling, mind wandering as exhaustion gripped at my consciousness. I’m finally here. I wonder what’s going to happen over these next few months. The endless possibilities swirled through my head. If I can get in with this arcade and help it grow, my boss will have to give me a full time position after this internship. Then I’ll become super rich and be able to buy a lighthouse on the Canadian coast to live out the rest of my life in peace. 

Either that or we go broke and burn in a hellish ball of failure.

Thank you, inner voice. Thank you so much for that thought.

No problem.

Deciding sleeping on these hopeful thoughts might benefit me more than dwelling on the possible negatives, I continued to let my thoughts wander into the potential lives I could live in South Park until sleep overtook me as the world around me woke up.

taglist [reply to be added]:@n0tangeliccc , @valstarroz , @kenanonsthoughts , @axteroiid , @hand-writxen , @that-kid-fromtheplayground  , @woahnotmecryingoverafanfiction, @h3artilly, @sula0kin, @ryenwritess

[kmnchii]

shot to the heart

[couthbbg]

I love you queer hockey fans I love you queer training and coaching staff I love you queer arena staff I love you queer hockey journalists I love you queer back office staff I love you queer front office staff I love you queer Zamboni drivers I love you queer mascot dudes (gn) I love you queer hockey players of all ages everywhere professional or not. You all exist and love this sport despite the efforts of many to make you invisible and unwelcome. I love you I love you I love you

[kaidabakugou]

if you’re a city girl through and through like me when bakugou invites you to go hiking or camping with him he’s the most affectionate before he asks, drowning you in kisses and random gifts on top of the ones he regularly gets you, breakfast in bed the day he’s gonna ask and getting off work early just to pick up your favorite treats at the bakery before they close

he knows you’ll always say yes, it’s just a little added plus since he knows you’ll hate the part with the mosquitoes and the random sounds in the dark when it’s pitch back out and you’re clinging to him inside the tent or the distant howling in the silent night inside the old cottage

[graciehart]

TMSOURCE'S EPISODE OF THE WEEK 2x20 — "Red All Over"

[shuploc]

Have you managed to play bg3 at all yet?

Omg, have I? 😭

I got sick over the Christmas holiday and had to spend New Year's alone yesterday, and since I didn't have anyone to give a NY's smooch to, I got on BG3 so I could smooch Astarion (it might come as a shock to ya'll, but I'm rather insane)

I ended up finishing my third run then and went to bed lmao. I have about 255 hours played currently, and right now I'm trying to decide what I should do for my next run 😅 I absolutely love this game so much

[arctixout]

praying to all known gods we get a heavier song on the new album

[ohhiplumbob]

Babies first time trying to build and decorate a house in TS3 please don’t cyber bully me.

[trainingdummyrabbit]

☕️ Angela Lobotomy Corporation specifically

this post prettymuch

but hm hm hmmmm... lobcorp specifically... very difficult t come up with anything other than 'i love her i love her so much so so much i love her' because i do i do i do. but iguess if i were to elaborate..

she as a concept is so full of love, to me, but a very specific melancholy kind. theres so so much going on there and th Intricacies and the Situations but also i so badly just wanna give her hands a little squeeze and tell her i believe in her, yknow. playing thru lobcorp is a very particular brand of Difficult because every time she shows up whatever iwas thinking abt is Out The Window there she is there she is angelaaaa angela hi angela iloveyou!!!! every time she says literally anything i just have to. head in hands. auauauhghg

she feels like cold light through shutters, to me. a particular kind of calm stillness. th whir of an ac unit or maybe a ceiling fan. little bird. i literally cannot come up with anything other than I Would Literally Kill For Her. any time i try to come up w something it just circles back around. she means so much to me. i want to tuck her into my shirt pocket while i go out for errands. enrichment, or something.

tldr she can do whatever she wants forever i am correct and NOT taking arguments at this time. explodes u with my mind.

[britneyshakespeare]

you: nicholas alexander chavez, the actor from ryan murphy's recent work

me, a mama's girl and daytime tv viewer:

[almoststedytimetravel]

During the typhoon, Fuuka stole all the S.E.E.S members' DS' and jail broke them.

[enobariasdistrict2]

Thats so crazy to call yourself CEO of clove

..... I can't tell if you're kidding or genuinely upset I'm confused lol

[ajdrawshq]

i can almost guarantee ive said it before but. he would thrive in a zero escape game

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Ok this isn’t directed at anyone or any fandom — also I actually can’t scroll my dash at the moment so forgive me if this has been discussed lol — but as someone who has a healthy interest in pop culture and the entertainment industry but doesn’t follow any fandom other than Taylor’s, and even at that only in a very curated niche of it, but is it really plausible that Taylor is directly targeting Billie or any other artist with her releases?

I find it really hard to believe a voice memo album repackage only sold on her website or a single remix would make that much of an impact on her numbers or other artists. Obviously they’re released for a reason and every bit helps and it’s to help maintain the momentum on the charts, but I would just be genuinely surprised if those alone could be enough to block another artist’s anticipated release.

To me, releasing bonus content/remixes/whatever a few weeks after an initial release seems to be pretty par for the course not just for Taylor but for many pop artists. I feel like I hear of so many who will release an acoustic or remix version or special limited time offer vinyl or whatever when numbers start to stabilize or decrease to keep charting for a little while. It doesn’t seem to my like Taylor’s schedule for TTPD is especially different from Midnights was, for example, and I don’t think much of it differs from what many pop acts are doing these days either.

If anything I think Taylor has held back considerably for TTPD. Not out of any kind of magnanimity or charity or anything, but just because I’m assuming that’s what feels right for her at the moment. A month or two ago so many people complained about how she was doing no promo for the album release. All she did, save for a couple of short teasers on social media, was release her album. No press, no interviews, no appearances. Aside from surprise dropping the album a la folklore, I don’t really know what else she could have done to be inconspicuous. And even with that, her album still went number one. I don’t think that’s out of any kind of Machiavellian scheming, I think she’s just that huge at the moment that anything she does is going to be news and going to be eaten up.

Yes, the limited time drops of merch on her website are annoying and sure the differing bonus tracks on her variants can be annoying, but again, it’s nothing other artists aren’t doing themselves. She had 5 variants of her album. Billie and Olivia and plenty of others easily double that. (And I’m not knocking them for that, I’m saying it’s normal for their industry and everyone does it.)

I’ve seen comments on non-tumblr spaces about how Taylor is stepping on the necks of other artists (like Billie) and I just don’t see how? She’s doing typical music business stuff and it doesn’t even seem particularly aggressive. Super aggressive would be releasing more signed physicals or a new variant with a different song or releasing The Anthology on physical or some other move that would appeal to the collector instincts in fans and drive raging capitalist tendencies. A couple of voice memos and a remix hardly seem like they’d make enough impact to significantly block also-big artists like Billie who are Grammy winners with huge fan bases themselves.

Taylor’s just so huge now that anything she does is going to loom large. Think about how Cruel Summer because a massive hit four years after it was released just by sheer streaming strength, and that was thanks to Eras piquing people’s interest. Taylor released a brand new double album in the middle of the biggest tour in the world and changed her set list to make it one of the most theatrical spectacles on social media at the moment. TTPD is kind of assured staying power for the foreseeable future for that alone. (Not to mention the increased interest in her personal life of late probably increasing streams of her music a tiny bit too. That’s probably an unfortunate byproduct of her fame, but when news drops I’d bet it does cause a brief spike.)

It’s not that I think Taylor does things purely out of the goodness of her heart or for artistic merit alone; I know she’s a shrewd businesswoman and I know she cares about charts and markers of success. I just don’t think she’s deliberately targeting other artists in some sort of feud. I’d bet she had her release plan pretty much pencilled in months ago, before anyone else’s releases were in the radar. This is chess, not checkers. Her imperial-level success at the moment does not mean she has to strategically cut off anyone else at the knees; it’s that she’s the closest thing we have to monoculture at the moment and she’s just everywhere whether she wants to be or not. She can make nearly zero effort to push the album and it’s still going to be number one. And the popularity will probably last through the summer thanks to Eras and the interest online.

So is the answer that she’s supposed to step aside for other artists? Is it unfair of her to occupy the national consciousness so pervasively? I genuinely don’t know though my gut instinct is no. No one would say that about other number one artists, but very few top artists are at her level of achievement at the moment. (I’d guess Beyoncé is probably her only contemporary in that regard right now.) I would very much bristle against that notion, because again, I don’t think anyone would tell any other artist that they’ve “had their turn” and should stop pushing their album so that someone else can have a shot. But Taylor is at such a level that even the most otherwise successful artists might struggle to overtake her for the time being.

And again in this specific case this week, we’re not talking about an indie act struggling to break through to their first big hit being struck down by Goliath. Billie is a multiple Grammy and Oscar winner! Her song was in one of the biggest movies of the year that dominated pop culture all summer! She is a headliner at festivals! She may not be quite at Taylor’s level of fame and numbers because no one is, but she has a huge fan base of her own! And I’m not pitting them against each other at all because I listen to her and Olivia and all kinds of current pop acts! My point is that Billie’s work speaks for itself as does her album release, just like Olivia and Dua and whoever else is releasing albums these days. At a certain point people need to step back and consider what is deliberate and what is just current industry trends that the pop acts in particular have to follow to get the numbers they want on the Billboard charts.

Maybe I’m completely wrong and maybe this is all a targeted plan to block other artists from taking over Number 1. But if I had to guess I really would think that at this point Taylor knows she’s going to dominate the charts no matter what she does — which is why she doesn’t have to make too many public moves anymore. Her fame and her work do it for her. I don’t doubt these extra drops help boost her numbers and there’s some sort of calculated reason why they come out when they do, I just don’t think that reason is “specifically block x person from beating me”. It’s probably more “try to maintain x sales” which at her level may de facto beat the next person behind her because she’s near untouchable, but the reasoning behind those actions is not the same, if you get what I mean.

It just all seems to be yet another point to villainize her for just doing her job and living her life, when at worst she’s just doing what everyone else is doing to play the system they all adhere do. It feels like another attempt to dehumanize her and turn her into this avatar for all of pop culture’s ills, ascribing her these Wicked Witch tendencies, when her team’s job, like all popular musicians’, is to make sales. It’s not that I think she’s some benevolent artist who doesn’t care because I’m sure she does, but I just find it really hard to believe the driving force is impeding other musicians as opposed to just maintaining her own sales. Perhaps the system is broken that any other act has trouble penetrating her dominance at the moment, and that’s another conversation, but if it were anyone else at this level of dominance right now, I’m positive none of these conversations would be happening to begin with.

[spectremarvel]

A notice to all new and old followers about how I feel about most internet-related issues

[spiritsong]

also I've been meaning to tell yall. NEW OC NEW OC 🚨 well not so new, she's been cooking for a WHILE but I was waiting for her to marinate you know. aka some details were still iffy and most importantly I didn't have a name lol. but now I do!!!!

her name is Soluwae and she is a Lolth-sworn Drow that belongs to a fringe Lolthite cult based in the Feydark. The cult is of my creation and actually ties in with Aune's background as well. Soluwae is the "Chosen One" of the cult, so suffice it to say she's had a very unique upbringing.

I still have to make her in the CC so I'll wait to share more details but I'm so excited that she's not just a nebulous entity floating around in my brain matter anymore

anyway for now, here are some vibes: