AHHH. MINOTAURS. ALCOHOL. MOTHERHOOD.

moc weepe 👀🤑💉mid 40s 💯👞upper trustee 😉🙊💸 2,918 | 352 | 27 😳🔪🤫❤️🤭 entrepreneur 🧠🥇🧊🔨

[stickandthorn]

Me doing my morning affirmations: There was no dancing. There was NO laughter. There. Was. No. Limbo. You were scared the entire time. The threats will haunt you to the end of your days.

[stickandthorn]

watching the playoff game at a pizza place smoking a cigarette at half time, this is the most American I’ve felt in a minute.

[stickandthorn]

KNICKS IN 5 LETS GO BABY!!!!

[stickandthorn]

watching the playoff game at a pizza place smoking a cigarette at half time, this is the most American I’ve felt in a minute.

[stickandthorn]

Never a better day for me to be a basketball fan. Not only could I enjoy the playoff game tonight in all its glory, the 8 year old boys at my job asked me to referee their basketball game and I did so with exacting precision. Those little fuckers don’t think I know how free throws work. I do. And you know what they had a lot of fun, frankly, so did I.

[stickandthorn]

On this episode of “can that actor actually play the violin?” we have Sam Reid as Lestat in The Vampire Lestat. The answer is unfortunately no. While I’ve definitely seen worse actor violin playing, his bow arm is totally off. He plays from the shoulder, doesn’t move his wrist at all, and he doesn’t keep his bow straight. They don’t have many clear shots of him playing so I can’t comment further, but from what we do see, it’s mid.

[stickandthorn]

I’d die on the hill that “stranger danger” is a deeply unhelpful mentality to have. “Ooooh everyone is out to get me they’re all gonna perpetrate harm that’s actually more likely to come from someone I already know. I better never talk to anyone in my community who I don’t already know, just to be safe. I’m sure there are no other biases interwoven with this mentality” like oh my god human traffickers do not just randomly spawn in every parking lot. You don’t have to go solo hitchhiking across the country but you also don’t have to live in fear that every guy on the street is the knife man who’s gonna get you. Like have situational awareness, yeah. But most of the time the guy on the street is not knife man he’s actually just a guy on the street and he’s probably pretty chill, and you’re driving yourself crazy by living in a constant state of unnecessary fear.

[stickandthorn]

Like always safety comes first, especially if you’re in a marginalized group more likely to be targeted by random people around you. But that’s different from stranger danger. I might even say that stranger danger is something that contributes to marginalized groups getting targeted by random people. Which strangers do you find distrust worthy? Why? Does vague distrust justify harmful actions in the name of self defense? Stranger danger draws everyone away from more important issues of safety (underlying bigotries, systemic injustices, abuse in the home, etc) and towards an amorphous boogeyman that has no solution, because it’s not the real cause or culprit.

[champ-the-mudkip]

I think a lot of this mentality much be leftover from childhood for millennials. We were taught "stranger danger" as a safety precaution. It wasn't uncommon to be completely on your own to get yourself to and from school, because both parents having to work was a new ish thing. I started walking home with only my slightly older sister starting at I think 6 years old, and I walked 20 minutes home completely alone starting when I was 8.

So I think the influence of the stranger danger campaigns and similar child safety things might have overcorrected and led into now-adults still treating the world like it's filled with kidnappers in white cans ready to lure you in with candy.

[stickandthorn]

With no ill intent towards the person who reblogged, this is a great opportunity to talk about how stranger danger is an ineffective safety measure for children. The VAST majority of harm usually ascribed to stranger danger (kidnapping, assault, etc) is perpetrated by someone the child already knows. But the problem with stranger danger isn’t even that it’s targeted towards the wrong group, it’s that it doesn’t teach children actually safety skills. Children should be taught warning signs, inappropriate behaviors, and safety measures that can apply to ANY adult. And that goes deeper. You teach children that adults who touch without asking or when they tell them to stop is bad, AND you let them say no to hugs from relatives that they don’t want. It’s not just don’t take candy from strangers, it’s that you don’t owe anyone who gives you a gift anything, including trust. Stranger danger is bad for everyone, not just adults. 

[stickandthorn]

I’d die on the hill that “stranger danger” is a deeply unhelpful mentality to have. “Ooooh everyone is out to get me they’re all gonna perpetrate harm that’s actually more likely to come from someone I already know. I better never talk to anyone in my community who I don’t already know, just to be safe. I’m sure there are no other biases interwoven with this mentality” like oh my god human traffickers do not just randomly spawn in every parking lot. You don’t have to go solo hitchhiking across the country but you also don’t have to live in fear that every guy on the street is the knife man who’s gonna get you. Like have situational awareness, yeah. But most of the time the guy on the street is not knife man he’s actually just a guy on the street and he’s probably pretty chill, and you’re driving yourself crazy by living in a constant state of unnecessary fear.

[stickandthorn]

Like always safety comes first, especially if you’re in a marginalized group more likely to be targeted by random people around you. But that’s different from stranger danger. I might even say that stranger danger is something that contributes to marginalized groups getting targeted by random people. Which strangers do you find distrust worthy? Why? Does vague distrust justify harmful actions in the name of self defense? Stranger danger draws everyone away from more important issues of safety (underlying bigotries, systemic injustices, abuse in the home, etc) and towards an amorphous boogeyman that has no solution, because it’s not the real cause or culprit.

[stickandthorn]

I’d die on the hill that “stranger danger” is a deeply unhelpful mentality to have. “Ooooh everyone is out to get me they’re all gonna perpetrate harm that’s actually more likely to come from someone I already know. I better never talk to anyone in my community who I don’t already know, just to be safe. I’m sure there are no other biases interwoven with this mentality” like oh my god human traffickers do not just randomly spawn in every parking lot. You don’t have to go solo hitchhiking across the country but you also don’t have to live in fear that every guy on the street is the knife man who’s gonna get you. Like have situational awareness, yeah. But most of the time the guy on the street is not knife man he’s actually just a guy on the street and he’s probably pretty chill, and you’re driving yourself crazy by living in a constant state of unnecessary fear.

[stickandthorn]

If you’re sad when a baby cries, that’s understandable, but remember that crying is a tool babies use to communicate. If you’re frustrated when a baby cries, that’s understandable, but also a good sign that you need to take a break if possible. But if you’re angry at a baby for crying, that communicates to me that you shouldn’t be around babies. I think more people need to understand these nuances, as obvious as they might seem to some.

[selkielore]

[stickandthorn]

C2 and C4 are two really good examples of how to handle character backstory as a DM, and C3 is a great example of what not to do.

C2 and C4 represent the two general categories of how to weave characters into a story.

In C2, the plot was centered around the character’s backstories. The things that happened to them and stuff they cared about to begin with are the plot, and important story beats follow them wherever they go. It’s not that the story is random or unconnected, it’s that the overarching narrative was constructed from what the players gave to Matt. Which creates a story that every player, and therefore every viewer, is super invested in.

In C4, the character backstories are informed by the story that’s going to be told. Brennan knew roughly what the larger plot would be, so he gave all the players ways to connect to that plot in character creation. The plot exists somewhat independent from what the characters do, but because they’re all connected to it and have reasons to care about it, they all naturally interweave into the broader story. And because the players had the freedom to choose in what way they connected to the plot, the plot can be approached from many different angles, which makes it all the more rich.

C3 is the worst both worlds. There was one extremely specific overarching story, but the players were given the total free rein with backstory creation that they had in C2, so most of them made characters that had absolutely no connection to the broader plot. Therefore there was no inherent reason for a lot of the characters/players to care about the plot, and their backstories, the cores of the characters, often felt irrelevant.

I think Matt tried to connect some characters to the plot through their backstory after the game had started, but that’s already too late. Connections that are narratively derived from the character’s backstory, but not derived from what the player actually wrote (like Fearne being Ruidus born) feel kind of meaningless and tacked on. Even a connection like Ashton’s primordial heritage feels kind of haphazard, because it isn’t really building on something that Talesin had already created, it’s inserting something that wasn’t there before. It doesn’t make him care in the same way because it’s not something the character already cared about (side note, if something like Ashton’s primordial heritage WAS part of Matt’s initial plan for the character, it should’ve been brought up/foreshadowed WAY more heavily WAY earlier, or even straight up revealed earlier).

A connection to the story isn’t just about letting the player interact with the story better, it’s about making the player feel like their character matters to the story on a deep level, and their character’s backstory is the best way to do that.

[stickandthorn]

I actually want to go deeper about creating a plot connection based on a preexisting backstory element vs inserting something into the backstory.

Veth’s connection to the plot through Yeza might seem like an insertion, but I would argue it isn’t. Players will give DMs plot hooks in their backstory, things that they care deeply about that remain unresolved. Yeza was one of those things for Veth, so using an already stated fact about him (he was an alchemist) to put him somewhere where the plot was happening was an expansion upon what Sam already wrote.

But Ashton being primordial? From what I remember, Ashton didn’t really care about who their parents were. Yes they were a mystery, but the things that mattered to Ashton were about being an orphan. The orphanage, the Nobodies, the life circumstance produced by not having parents. Sure, maybe Ashton did care about their parents, but I don’t think Talesin was that interested in them, otherwise he would’ve centered it in the backstory more. So making Ashton’s biggest backstory connection something related to their parents feels more like a DM insertion than an expansion upon the preexisting backstory.

[stickandthorn]

C2 and C4 are two really good examples of how to handle character backstory as a DM, and C3 is a great example of what not to do.

C2 and C4 represent the two general categories of how to weave characters into a story.

In C2, the plot was centered around the character’s backstories. The things that happened to them and stuff they cared about to begin with are the plot, and important story beats follow them wherever they go. It’s not that the story is random or unconnected, it’s that the overarching narrative was constructed from what the players gave to Matt. Which creates a story that every player, and therefore every viewer, is super invested in.

In C4, the character backstories are informed by the story that’s going to be told. Brennan knew roughly what the larger plot would be, so he gave all the players ways to connect to that plot in character creation. The plot exists somewhat independent from what the characters do, but because they’re all connected to it and have reasons to care about it, they all naturally interweave into the broader story. And because the players had the freedom to choose in what way they connected to the plot, the plot can be approached from many different angles, which makes it all the more rich.

C3 is the worst both worlds. There was one extremely specific overarching story, but the players were given the total free rein with backstory creation that they had in C2, so most of them made characters that had absolutely no connection to the broader plot. Therefore there was no inherent reason for a lot of the characters/players to care about the plot, and their backstories, the cores of the characters, often felt irrelevant.

I think Matt tried to connect some characters to the plot through their backstory after the game had started, but that’s already too late. Connections that are narratively derived from the character’s backstory, but not derived from what the player actually wrote (like Fearne being Ruidus born) feel kind of meaningless and tacked on. Even a connection like Ashton’s primordial heritage feels kind of haphazard, because it isn’t really building on something that Talesin had already created, it’s inserting something that wasn’t there before. It doesn’t make him care in the same way because it’s not something the character already cared about (side note, if something like Ashton’s primordial heritage WAS part of Matt’s initial plan for the character, it should’ve been brought up/foreshadowed WAY more heavily WAY earlier, or even straight up revealed earlier).

A connection to the story isn’t just about letting the player interact with the story better, it’s about making the player feel like their character matters to the story on a deep level, and their character’s backstory is the best way to do that.

[stickandthorn]

My house is reasonably close to a high school (like two blocks) and apparently they’re doing commencement today, and I guess they have the best mics and speakers ever, because I’m in my backyard and I can hear their speeches crystal fucking clear.

[stickandthorn]

I’m clinically behind on critical role but I want to get back in, if anyone wants to tell me like the 3 most important highlights from the last few months I would love that.

[stickandthorn]

Mighty Nein adaptation where everything is exactly the same except Molly/Lucien/Kingsley is constantly hitting the vape.

[stickandthorn]

The easiest way to tell the age of a toddler is by how proportional their head is to their body. Is their head ludicrously big and round? They’re somewhere in the 1 year old range. Is their head still big but not absolutely massive funko pop big? Around 2. Is their head kinda big but getting more reasonable? Around 3. Is their head pretty much normal? 4+

[stickandthorn]

the older I get the more convinced I become that pride merchandise is bought exclusively by freshly out middle schoolers and their fervently but anxiously supportive parents, and meant to torture every other gay person. Because what do you mean I’m supposed to want to wear the chunkiest rainbowiest most saturated clothes with slogans that make me sound like I’m a little known endangered species of spider. Like I don’t have taste. Like I don’t have a paycheck. The ugliest rainbow loom colors on the most synthetic fabric with bad screen printing and a distinctly neolib font. Like hell. Bass pro shop gets more sales from adult queers that pride collections do.