#onnastik

[catwingsthespatula]

I bet Thomas Bilder would make a good limerick.

I bet you’re right!

There once was a man at the zoo

Who was doing his job, as you do

When a stranger appeared

And the wolves seemed afeared

So he said to him, “maybe it’s you.”

[flo-nelja]

“Undress. I have bought you new clothes.” for Peter/Martin maybe?

When Peter orders Martin to undress, he blushes and thinks about getting fucked on Peter's desk. Peter made it clear Martin was his. He's almost embarrassed when he only has to put on new, more expensive clothes.

In the mirror, he sees a man who's not him, so distant and cold. He tries to smile and it looks fake.

Are there magical clothes, he asks. Peter smiles, doesn't answer.

Martin almost regrets Peter didn't need to touch him to claim ownership. The fabric is soft against his skin and it's all he will ever have.

[drferox]

“Now I don't know anything about zoology, biology, geology, geography, marine biology, cryptozoology, evolutionary theory, evolutionary biology, meteorology, limnology, history, herpetology, palaeontology or archaeology but I think: what if a dinosaur had got in the lake?” That’s what the “but what if [flimsy justification for amputating a healthy part of a dog]?” asks are starting to sound like.

Most of these people are sending in things that they have heard breeders say. Breeders, for some reason, are often regarded are more trustworthy than veterinarians when it comes to nutrition, health, vaccines, animal welfare, etc. So they come from a trusted position, and use the justification of ‘doing something for a long time’ as a reason to keep doing it, and dismiss all other opposing views.

And these justifications for ear cropping and tail docking are easy to dismantle from a practical and ethical standpoint. The USA is really the outlier in permitting the practice to continue, not the default. But you don’t realise that unless you see the other point of view, especially when it’s in the media.

Scooby Doo is a Great Dane... with cropped ears. It’s so pervasive in American culture that you don’t always realise what look is a cosmetically modified dog, which I think is a real shame.

[hydrangeathief]

How about LAMPD as a polyship? :3

oh man i’d never considered? why haven’t i thought of this before! these are mostly involving deceit because i’ve done so many about the other four, and i like to think about how he would fit into this

i like the headcanon that deceit has to lie a majority of the time and thus will communicate to the others with statements that are in direct opposition to what he actually means. “patton, i would just hate being hugged right now.” “roman, you absolutely do not have a lovely singing voice.” “virgil, your eyeshadow is the opposite of flawless today.”

deceit, as a snake boy, is usually cold. what fixes this? five-person cuddle piles, of course.

deceit is really good at surprises. patton and roman love this and logan usually enjoys trying to figure out what and when something is going to happen. virgil hates surprises and deceit grudgingly lets something slip so that one of the others can warn him beforehand. he denies this, obviously.

i just had the thought of patton cooking breakfast one morning and deceit determinedly marches in, glares at him, and says, “i hate you.” patton is upset for the split second it takes him to remember that deceit speaks in lies and “hey, dee, wait! hold on, what’s the opposite of hate? do you love me? where are you going!”

he’s retreating because feelings are gross, obviously.

deceit sleeps in the middle next to virgil because he needs as much warmth as he can possibly get. 

good slimy boi! 

[centaurianthropology]

Do you think Melanie might have been considered for the Watcher’s Crown? She’s the only assistant (besides Basira, chosen as a hostage against Daisy) that we know for a fact Elias chose personally, he seems to have taken one look at her and gone “Mine!”, and he seemed surprisingly angry while he was Doing That to her given his apparent certainty that she never could have *actually* harmed him. Maybe the real problem was that at this rate she’s never going to be up for joining his apocalypse.

I think it’s very possible.  I also think it’s possible that Elias doesn’t actually know who would be involved in the ritual, so he’s trying to get all of them there and in position.  But I have the suspicion that Melanie is his favorite.  Tim he’s fairly neutral about, and I honestly think he doesn’t get what the Beholding sees in Martin (pun unintended).  But if Elias had his preference, Melanie would feature prominently in the Watcher’s Crown, if not as the one to wear it, then as his own backup.  

It’s my headcanon until proven otherwise that Melanie is slated to be the next head of the Institute.  If she somehow managed to kill Elias, she would become him.  I think part of him welcomes the notion, because of all of them she’s got the stubbornness, the ruthlessness, and the ability to actually function in situations which require schmoozing without losing power (or at least I assume she does, given her former career).  She’s ideal.

So, yeah, I think there’s probably a degree of frustration that, after she signed the contract in the face of Martin’s protests, she suddenly turned around and hated him for it.  That she’s suddenly so resistant.  It was one thing when she was trying to kill him, but was also recording statements.  That was just more steps on the way to whatever destiny he has in mind for her.  But now, with her refusing to work as much as Tim is, I think Elias is frustrated.

I think, at the end of the day, he doesn’t really get how people work.  He doesn’t get what would inspire or intimidate them.  Every time he tries to directly meddle with them, outside of overt threats or brutal pipe murder, it doesn’t seem to go off quite like he wanted it to.

Or maybe it does.  Maybe all of these seemingly ham-handed attempts at manipulation are really skillful manipulation disguised as something less successful.  We don’t know, and until the Watcher’s Crown starts coming into better focus, I doubt we’ll have any more clue about what his plans are for Melanie or any of the others.

[prokopetz]

What TTRPGs might you recommend for someone who wants to try GMing for the first time but has executive dysfunction that makes it difficult to plan stuff out or keep track of too many things?

Tough one; most RPGs that are structured enough to be friendly to beginning GMs also tend to have a fair number of moving parts to keep track of. (And necessarily so - you’ve gotta have rules for them to provide guidance!)

If you’re not sure how much rules load you can handle, and you’re okay with figuring things out as you go, you might start with a minimalist game like Risus or Lasers & Feelings and see how that works out for you. There’s a whole family of games like this: 1-4 pages in length, focusing on freeform improv with rules that only come up when you need to resolve some immediate conflict.

If you find that’s not enough to keep you on track, you could also look at games like Die For You, Lady Blackbird or Pokéthulhu. These are mini-games with no more than 10-15 pages of rules text, usually bundled together with a pre-written scenario, or a framework for quickly generating one. They’re not as flexible as more full-featured tabletop RPGs, being designed to run one specific premise or scenario, but that’s kinda inevitable when you’re trying to balance having enough structure to remove the need for serious prep with having light enough rules that it’s easy to hold the whole game in your head at once.

I can provide further options in both categories if you can give me a little bit of guidance on what you’re after in terms of content or themes. Don’t be afraid to get specific - there’s probably a game out there for whatever you have in mind.

[ceruleanvulpine]

Ship meme: Jon/Martin?

ok, so, i basically entirely avoided seeing any of this show’s fandom before i started it? literally all i saw were like two posts from pipcomix about like …. elias being a bastard (no details) and jon pronouncing “gerard” weird. i honestly have no clue what about that made me start listening ksjdkfk

and then, when i did start, i was thinking a lot about fanart and character design and so i continued not looking at posts so i could work out what i thought people looked like (and avoid spoilers). in short, i did not hear about ANY ships

but from martin’s first appearance it’s easy to read him as having a crush on jon!! literally it is imo the lowest-effort reading of his canonical behavior, like yes he’s just a nervous, friendly person but he gets especially flustered when people ask him about jon and he has a lot of lines about doing things FOR him. it’s Just There

i think jon goes from disliking martin straight into paranoia about everyone and then starts isolating himself really badly, plus he’s a dumbass, so he absolutely hasn’t noticed what’s up. i mean, for god’s sake, he got paranoid about martin trying to take care of him. and martin … is i think sure his feelings are unrequited and trying his hardest not to be bitter or anything about it, but i’m sure he fails sometimes (see “it’s not about you-“ “it never is.” even though that was in a different context)

i would love for them to get their shit together and talk about their feelings. this is almost certainly never going to happen, because no one is ok in this podcast ! and … i was going to say i would still definitely read fic where they were sweet, and i would, but the fandom seems to agree with me on this because literally nothing i’ve read has had happy jon/martin.

this may be selection bias because your recs are my only source of non-spoilery fic though and they skew Dark :P

[ncfan-1]

Out of curiosity, how come you haven’t posted any Magnus Archives stuff in a while? Just busy with other things?

Erm, as it happens, my schedule has gotten so tight that I’m not making ‘ncfan listens’ posts for it anymore. I’m writing more abbreviated notes down in a notebook. I know I’ll have gotten caught up by the time Season 4 premieres (that shouldn’t be a for a few months, right?); I’ll start doing them again then, when there’s only one a week to deal with. Sorry.