#yeah basically if it sucks hit da bricks

[shr0mwzrd]

The block button may as well be my fuckin prostate the way I just LOVE smashin that thang. Buttons were made to be pressed is all I'm saying

[sergeantsporks]

Heyo! love your work and I've run into a bit of a writing pickle and wanted another opinion: you see, I'm about 200k into a fic at the moment and pushing that number any higher is like pulling teeth. Have you ever chewed a piece of food for so long that it becomes entirely unappetizing? Yeah, that's about where I'm at with this story right now. The concept and story beats are still, in the abstract, interesting to me but the physical act of writing is near torturous. Have you ever ended up in a situation like that? How do you maintain momentum and find joy in working on a project that is no longer interesting by sheer virtue of overexposure?

You might want to try a detox. Reset. Basically, try writing something else. I can't say for sure that it'll help, but when I've been writing one of my longer fics for a while (like Gilded), I get a little sick of it, so I write something new. For me, I tend to open up writing requests at that time and write one or two short little blurbs and then I'm ready to go! So, yeah, take a break. But don't just stop writing for a bit, write something new. Doesn't have to be long, in fact, I'd advise against writing something long, since it'll suck you in and now you have TWO projects. Just clear your system of Very Long Fic with something else.

My other solution is if it sucks then hit da bricks, no shame in quitting a fic if you're not into it anymore, but obviously if you really do want to keep continuing this and you're just in a slump right now, uh. Don't do that.

[probablygoodrpgideas]

Will you be my Hunter Session 6

The session started with us trying to wrap up the Chimera fight. I say trying because no one was having fun and we agreed to just cancel the combat.

There were multiple things factoring into this. Multiple players, including me, were having a bad time out of game for various reasons. Sethra was having just the worst possible luck with Polaris which was frustrating.

Part of it was also the chimera itself though. Size 3 enemies are really clunky to use and the multiple head design, while cool, was also really confusing and we kept running into corner cases. Also a fight against an enemy that has 40 hp per player, armor 3, aether wall, and the ability to pacify/petrify just takes forever, especially since Stormbenders don't really have a light attack and I're doesn't have Bolt so no one could deal piercing damage.

I don't think the Chimera can't be a fun fight, but you probably shouldn't give it a goathead and a chicken head.

But yeah, GM tip: If what you're doing isn't fun, just stop. If it sucks, hit da bricks.

So, after we agreed to end the combat with a retreat, the heroes arrived at the gates of the eastern town. There, they got stopped by the guards claiming they were wanted criminals. The guard said that a tiefling in a yellow shirt had shown them an arrest warrant on truth paper by the government of Nar'adsch. After some threatening words from both sides, Mhoira threatened to murder the guards and I had them attack.

This was bad gming on my part. Mhoira had intended for the threats to be intimidation and while it shouldn't have worked, I shouldn't have just started combat at that. Multiple players were even hesitant to act on the first round because they didn't want this combat to happen and felt like it could still be prevented by talking a bit more. I should have communicated more with Mhoira's player about intent and risks but I was in a bad mood from the chimera fight being bad and made a mistake.

So anyway, the combat:

G: A Guard (From the Folk faction) P: A Pepperbox (Basic Foe) S: A Sapper (Basic Foe) D: A Diviner (Basic Foe) Sh: A Shopkeeper (From the Folk faction)

The Pepperbox and Sapper both felt pretty great, both are really good at their job.

Diviner and Guard were a bit underwhelming (for the Diviner in part because I couldn't really figure out how to use it properly, for the Guard in part because I kept forgetting Vigilance, I can't wait for 1.5 making Vigilance passive for foes)

The Shopkeeper is probably a really cool foe but I couldn't have made a worse map for it. Ideally, it wants to use the shop for area denial but it couldn't do that at all.

The map was pretty badly designed overall. It's centered on this corridor that is way too broad and no one really has a reason to be on the other side so all the fighting just happened pretty close to it.

Combat was relatively uneventful, apart from I're getting a wound from the Pepperbox and the Shopkeeper and Pepperbox getting knocked out, nothing particularly noteworthy happened.

After the Pepperbox was knocked out, the Guard asked them what their goal was, they weren't going to be able to fight the entire town after all. I're repeated that they weren't going to get arrested based off a warrant none of them had seen, at which point the Diviner, who up to this point hadn't said anything and only participated in the fight because government officals were under attack, asked the guard if he had understood everything correctly and the warrant was from the government of Nar'adsch.

The guard said yes. The diviner told him that Nar'adsch didn't have a government and that any of the five factions fighting for control of it could have issued that warrant.

The guard was very embarrased about this and let the group pass.

[max1461]

Quit. If it sucks, hit da bricks

While I appreciate this advice, it is sadly not applicable to me. Due to my various Problems I have a pretty specific set of psychological needs which I've so far only been able to adequately address for myself in a school environment. I kind of need to be in school or else I Go Insane. I can think of some possible alternatives, but none that are immediately accessible to me right now. Which is why I say my best bet is to stay in this program at least for a while. Also, like, I like this program so far! It's sort of peripheral to what is making me unhappy in life. And career-wise it is a very good opportunity at a good school. It would be very dumb of me to quit I think. But for, again, reasons basically peripheral (though not orthogonal, sadly...) to my academic career, I have a need to Get Out Of Here. So yeah...

[trainingdummyrabbit]

which of your ocs would win a free for all. to the death

cocoa. without question and by a long shot.

magpie and luci are negligible on account of 1) Being A Normal Fucking Guy and 2) Not Even Having A Physical Form / Having Absolutely No Combat Prowess Whatsoever. they both just kinda yap their way out of things mostly, and have a better chance just skedaddling. If It Sucks, Hit Da Bricks!

lark is fine enough with combat, but honestly hes the least acclimated to everything out of everyone, so he runs at a disadvantage unless he figures someone out. rose and wolfe are also Just Fine and work better together, and would honestly go pretty far re: their adaptability. lilli and inigo are also pretty good, and would very quickly become a Fucking Problem if one or the other is in trouble, but a lot of their ability stems from their emotions and would be highly volatile all things considered. both pairs would wholly refuse to harm the other in the duo.

cocoa is cocoa. her physical strength is all right, but her Actual strength is that she just Doesnt Die. she will just get back up and keep going. aiming for nonphysical damage will Generally Just Make Things Worse For You. its hard to pick at her character because nobody really Knows any of that stuff, because shes completely unable to convey anything even if she wanted to. she is, wholly, An Issue.

so yeah, cocoasweep basically,

[strikingskeletonsiege]

HUH. ALL THESE YEARS LATER, AND TIMELINE DIFFERENCES CAN STILL SURPRISE ME. WHICH THEY SHOULDN'T, I'VE BEEN TELLIN' MYSELF "DIFFERENT TIMELINE, DIFFERENT RULES" BASICALLY SINCE I STUMBLED INTO THE MULTIVERSE NYEH HEH HEH

YEAH! SOMETIMES IT REALLY IS BETTER TO JUST BOUNCE!! IF SHIT SUCKS HIT DA BRICKS!!!

yeah, i did. wanted to join the guard but undyne turned me down 'cause my health's pretty terrible. to be honest it was really demoralizin, so my bro found ways of makin me feel better. finding stuff to do that was kind of like trainin helped, and it kept me active

he worked at the lab, but he was also a sentry part-time. this was back in our original timeline, things got shaken up pretty badly a while back and we had to move. won't lie, i like bein here more. least i've got a job to do and new friends that believe in me more

[nonsensegnomes]

What Gordon Smith said about Mike being pissed off with Saul because he knows Jimmy’s just trying to prove his brother right about him, kills me completely

wow yeah i knowwwwww, that scene in s4 when jimmy calls him up about the hummel scheme & mike just cuts completely through his bullshit and goes no but i'm sorry about your brother.... absolutely Deranged!! bc you know it means he was not taken in by the saul persona for one second, even in brba & even when he's threatening to break his legs – he's still seeing the pathetic little lawyer who used argue with him about stickers!!!!

also always so wild to me when i remember that mike and chuck actually met, like what is mike's TAKE on that whole clusterfuck!!! soooooo fascinating to me that they basically have opposite approaches to their family members dying: mike defines himself by matty's death & getting revenge (perhaps even moreso because he blames himself for it), whereas jimmy immediately starts eliminating every reaction and emotion he could possibly have to what chuck did bc he's experiencing similar amounts of anger & guilt but there's no one he can take it out on but himself – and chuck, who's gone

like imo jimmy is so so transparent about how he's (not) dealing with chuck's death but mike is one of the ONLY ones to call him on it! he even tells him that the scam shouldn't be jimmy's type of job any more than it's his – and then of course hard cut to s5 & the next time they work together is when jimmy's gotten himself in soooo far over his head w/ lalo 🙃

kinda an interesting parallel to his relationship with nacho; mike warns hin every time he tries to solve his salamanca problem that he's only going to make it worse + then lalo escalates the stakes so much mike can't help him any more 💀 but like as more clever people have pointed out, mike admires nacho for working so hard to ensure his dad doesn't have to take the bribe that mike feels so guilty for forcing matty to take

whereas with JIMMY what's so so fun is that mike actually sees him at his best in the first scheme they ever pull together (the kettlemans) – and then watches him deteriorate into the worst version of himself over the course of the show. like, he had a million dollars in cash right there in front of him! no one would know he took it!! but he makes the most moral choice he'll make for the entire show (apart from saul gone, i suppose) and gives it back to fix the kettlemans' mess – not to make chuck proud of him or to help kim (well it does a little but that's not Why he's doing it per se) or to assuage his guilt but just cause it's the right thing to do!!! he even returns the bribe, just like mike so desperately wishes he could've done! if you were mike & this guy you watched undo the same mistake you're most ashamed of came up to you like a week later talking about how he regrets not making that mistake, OF COURSE you'd do your best to stop him from pursuing this life & go a little insane when you couldn't!!!!!

anyway. uh. what was the question? oh yeah i think mike sees this version of his younger self who COULD have chosen better but ALLOWS himself not to, bc he's Doomed By The Narrative (chuck's voice in his head) to never be anything better than slippin' jimmy + i think it undermines the story he's been telling himself about that one defining moment that doomed him (because the reality is you CAN choose better! at any time you can make the right choice & face up to the consequences!! maybe you can't escape the past but you can walk off of the bad choice road! if it sucks hit da bricks!!!) + i think by brba all he sees when he looks at saul is a cloud of Contempt & Pity, so no fucking wonder he ended up trying to break his legs 🙃

[tauforged]

the fact that this time of year is like notoriously horrid for the mental health of a large percentage of the population, either for reasons related to the chaos of the holiday season or SAD or a million other reasons, and everyone knows this but we all still act as if nothing is wrong and are expected to continue as normal absolutely kills me. granted i was raised by two people who habitually ignore dire situations until they become catastrophic out of a desire to pretend everything is fine (they were continuing to use our oven for months after finding out it was leaking carbon monoxide and didn’t mention it until our detector started going off and i had to push them to stop fucking using it and call for repairs, to give a small idea) so a part of me is hoping my experiences aren’t universal and that i’m just surrounded by people whose entire approach to life is ‘ignore it until it goes away or you die and just continue like nothing is wrong’ but it’s really so insane to me. like, who are fucking kidding? everyone knows we’re miserable why do we have to act like we aren’t. why isn’t it acceptable to directly admit to feeling down. why do i have to justify to my supervisors how important it is to have holidays off and see my family. “well yeah nobody wants to work that holiday but somebody has to” WHY do we have to? what’s the point? i know we all know the answer but if everyone is so miserable why CAN’T we just close for the day and say fuck it??? if it sucks why aren’t we hitting da bricks. is the days revenue really worth it. i hate how being employed makes one basically subhuman. “oh well people will want to visit with their families for the occasion so we need to be open” as if we don’t also all have friends and families we want to spend time with? stupid cringe ass society. what’s the point in working ourselves to death when we aren’t even allowed the time to live the life we’re supposedly working towards. i haven’t had time to go hiking in years and now i’m so sore and broken from working myself to the bone that i don’t even know if i’d enjoy it anymore if i did. i know i’m just feeling existential cuz i haven’t eaten and as soon as this sandwich enters my mouth i’ll be normal again but it’s still getting to me man

[ashcohens]

ayo what’s up i’m zoe aka the admin that doesn’t do anything!! i am so fawking ready to get this thing going… like i am so excited i love all of u with my whole entire hort so jot that down! i also love ashley with my whole entire hort yall are probably gonna hate her bc she’s dumb as bricks but… i love my baby… 

ok so now to tell u about her bc ik all about yalls characters!! here are some links but i’m gonna summarize it under da cut i don’t expect u to read all this shit lmao!! bio, headcanons (yeah there are only 3… drag me), edits tag, stats, and here’s a fancy page talking about some ashley/helen shivers comparisons!! so now that that’s all done i wanna talk to all of yall about our connections so pls hmu or lms and i’ll hit u up bc i love all of them

ashley’s fam sucks eggs. both her parents are really smart and so is her younger sister so her parents put all their time and effort into her sister and didn’t give a fuck about ashley

for a long ass time she worked really really hard and spent hours studying and would sit with teachers through lunch trying to understand her homework but she just… didn’t. it never clicked and she never got very good grades which sucked a lot for her. 

then she started talking to the boy she sat next to in history class that was in love with her and was all in for tutoring her. which quickly transformed into her tutoring him in things that weren’t history and him letting her cheat on tests.

and this basically progressed and her grades went wayyy up

she moved away and kept the same act up at her new school, and none of her teachers had any idea how dumb ashley really was. 

it worked and she got into college and now she’s here!

so personality wise, ashley is completely harmless she’s not one of the mean popular girls she’s so noice

she’s really genuine and nice to everyone she meets because that’s just who she is

occasionally she does say mean things but not from a mean place just because she didn’t think about what she was saying or didn’t even realize it was mean… oh ashley..

like she really does mean well… girl’s just dumb

she thinks everyone is as well-intentioned as she is and gives everyone the benefit of the doubt. she really doesn’t know that people don’t like her unless they’re super open about it

she doesn’t know how to talk to a guy without flirting with them, most of the time she doesn’t even realize what she’s doing 

idk what else y’all wanna know i don’t wanna go on for forever.. but she’s nice she’s dumb she’s genuine i could tell u anything u need to know about her so hmu!

[honorash-blog]

Sean Fitzgerald and Alex Da Corte’s ‘Body Without Organs’ @ FJORD

On the 4th of July, we headed to FJORD Gallery in Philadelphia, PA for an early look at their latest show, ‘Body Without Organs.’ ‘Body Without Organs’ is an installation showcasing the material-based paintings of Sean Robert Fitzgerald alongside the playful unconventional sculptural work of Alex Da Corte. Together, the work is playful but the colors and materials combined create an eerie dream-like environment. We were able to talk with Sean and get his insight on working collaboratively on the show while simultaneously running a gallery space and curating shows. After our interview, we wondered around upstairs to the studio spaces where Sean’s own studio is located.

Fjord Gallery is the creation of Philadelphia-based artists, Lindsay Chandler, Liam Holding, AJ Rombach and Sean Robert Fitzgerald along with Natessa Amin, Cameron Masters, and Justine Jividen. The 3-story building holds a gallery on the ground floor with studio spaces on the 2nd and 3rd floors. ‘Bodies Without Organs’ is FJORD’s 13th show in the gallery’s 1.5 year history and is on view from July 5-28th.

SF: The show is a collaborative work in progress between Alex and I, who met about a year ago and really hit it off in an artistic way. We quickly found that there were a lot of weird parallels between our work that we never even expected because we both work in very different ways and with very different subject matters. We collaborated earlier this year on a project for Title Magazine called ‘A Love Sonnet for Jack Smith’, which was a lot of fun. We made these short little animated GIF’s that were structured as a sonnet and inspired by imagery culled from some of Jack Smith’s films. We’ve had the idea brewing for this show for a while now, where Alex would basically make these props for my paintings. And by doing so, the paintings themselves are inevitably changed through the very act of collaborating. I came over to his studio and brought 15 or so paintings and told him he could choose whichever ones he wanted. We’ve been throwing these ideas back and forth for a couple of months and here it is!

F: How did you and Alex work together to create the final pieces? Did you re-work the paintings after or did you give Alex complete freedom to do what he wanted with your paintings?

SF: Some of them were more like – “You can do whatever you want,” whereas some of them were much more collaborative. Or sometimes I’d provide him with a loose sort of guideline for how I wanted the piece to be displayed. For example with this piece, the only real requirement I had was that both sides of the paintings had to be visible because a lot of the times, I re-work paintings by flipping the canvas around and re-stretching it. This one, I really liked from both sides. But, for example, the trapdoor piece In the other room we built together and it came about in this really almost unspoken organic way when Alex and I were hanging out in his studio one day. The show is very much about theatricality and parlor tricks so we thought how perfect to stick this little painting in this trap door hovering over this piece of black velvet.

F: It has that cartoon humor, but in this super physical, textural and constructed way. It has this weird mix.

SF: That’s something that I found really interesting when working with sculpture and collaboratively with Alex. As soon as you turn something with this cartoony aspect into something physical it becomes really uncanny and strange. Have you ever seen when they turn things we know as cartoons into real life? It becomes really disturbing. Everything about it feels just wrong and I love it.

F: How do you feel about your canvases and these paintings that are very formal? You can look at them as image driven pieces but the way you are presenting them completely negates that.

SF: I actually really like that. Any opportunity in which an artist gets to see their work in a new context is automatically helpful. Even if you don’t like how you’re seeing it, it helps you think about it in a different way. I like how my paintings become objects in a very different way than if they were stuck on the wall. They have a completely different physicality in the space as part of a sculpture.

F: Was there one particular piece that you see totally different now?

SF: Yeah, this one over here is really cool. So going back to the idea of trickery or theatricality and parlor tricks, this one, I now see completely differently. First of all, the yellow wall completely sucks out this actually bright cadmium yellow and makes [the painting] into this poopy green. So that totally changed and the fact that this painting was re-streched over another support. The whole thing is really disturbing in that magic-trick or cartoon way because it looks like it’s floating when actually, if you look closely, the entire piece is supported against the the wall by this crystal heart at the top. It’s nice to give the viewer these extra little nuggets of detail that they can notice should they want to really engage with the piece in a more than superficial way.

F: The illusion is broken by having the heart there. It’s a smack in the viewers face which is great. How did you determine what the color of the wall should be? Did you create the pieces and then choose a color from the objects?

SF: The wall colors came from a couple of different things. In certain aspects, the choices for the wall colors were formal, but they also help to relate the pieces back to each other and form this sort of narrative throughout the show. Also, this Grace Jones album cover was a big inspiration for a lot of it which really just clicked as soon as Alex showed it to me and then everything came full circle and made total sense.

Courtesy of FJORD Gallery

F: Yeah For sure! This is exactly like the promotional image with the figure in black tights.

SF: Absolutely, which goes back to the Grace Jones cover, which goes back to this figure sculpture, which goes back to the title, which goes back to the ‘body without organs’ idea and the act of collaboration. It’s all a big circle.

F: There’s also this domesticity about the objects as well. I feel that this is a strange out of place apartment that I’ve walked into. The space feels like an apartment. Was it ever one?

SF: Yeah I think it was before it became Fjord. There’s actually 9 studios upstairs but it probably was an apartment and probably will be again which is really weird to think about. There’s definitely this really uncomfortable stage set thing going on. We made the installation and set the lighting knowing it was going to be primarily viewed at nighttime, so the lighting is very specific. For example, The other room is terribly uncomfortable in the way its lit. There’s only 2 lights and they’re really dim so it feels like you’re on the set of a David Lynch film or you’re stuck in a bad made for TV movie. In this space with the plant, you get the impression you’re in an office waiting room and everyone else waiting is smoking these cheap cigarettes and you just want to get out but you can’t.

F: All the details have been stripped away where this is a stand-in for an entire space stripped down to its very basic parts. Also with the idea of a cartoon, the logic of when you make a caricature, you draw certain attributes to create an intimate recognizable thing and this has the same vocabulary.

SF: I agree, especially because everything is a prop for itself. The clock doesn’t work and the palm tree doesn’t grow. It’s a really good way of thinking about it.

F: When you look at the space that way, you seem to notice the construction of the building too.

SF: Its funny, all of those things disappear when the walls are painted white. As soon as you paint them a color you’re transported to that house that hasn’t been built yet and you start to notice that the ceilings aren’t properly finished and maybe all of these things are actually floating off the ground a few inches.

F: All the objects feel like they came out of this apartment too.

SF: Yeah, this apartment that doesn’t actually exist. Or this cartoon apartment turned into this real-life nightmare tragicomedy with a man that you can only see out of the corner of your eye. Dressed in black, moving things around.

F: Also you have the transparent brick pattern over brick.

SF: A fake of a fake. The show is very much about things you’re not actually supposed to see. As if we were watching a magician from behind.