i'm rereading FT rn and it's apparently still wearing the clothes it bought after Milu (i guess the garments were repaired?) so i think the list is incredibly short until circa NE
update 1: so that was a fucking lie. it had a bunch of wardrobe changes in ASR, lmfao. but after that, things are pretty chill until NE
update 2: i lied. this took longer than i thought bc i decided i might as well add all the relevant quotes for anyone who needs this information for detailed reference.
update 3: oops accidentally a GNL EVAC suit. thanks @marry-and-mirthful
All Systems Red:
armor, not described much, but here's the scraps it give us, read point 4 for additional details. "protective skin that went under my armor" "I let my helmet seal and go opaque" "opaquing the faceplate" "The armor’s boots have magnetized climbing clamps" "had taken off my helmet and the upper part of my armor" "I started shedding armor, every piece that had a PreservationAux logo on it"
crew uniform, briefly. then back to armor "It was based on a standard research group’s uniforms, and meant to be comfortable inside the habitat: knit gray pants, long-sleeved T-shirt, and a jacket, like the exercise clothes humans and augmented humans wore, plus soft shoes. I put it on, tugged the sleeves down over the gunports on my forearms, and went out into the habitat."
suit skin. then back to armor. "I was lying on the procedure table, my armor gone, just wearing what was left of my suit skin"
partially stolen deltfall armor, decorated with mud and fluids. "We didn’t have time to switch all the armor. Moving fast, we replaced the arm and shoulder pieces on both sides, the leg pieces that had the armor’s inventory code, the chest and back piece with the logos. Mensah smeared my remaining armor pieces with dirt and blood and fluid from the dead unit, so if we had missed anything distinctive GrayCris might not notice." (describing deltfall secunit: "energy weapons unfolding out of its armor")
presaux survey uniform, unsure if identical to the one mentioned in point 2. "the station units that helped us out of processing when we had catastrophic injuries gave me the gray PreservationAux survey uniform instead"
stolen clothes from a human's locker as it leaves PresAux. "I broke into a human’s personal possessions locker and stole work boots, a protective jacket, and an enviro mask and attachments. I took a knapsack from another locker, rolled up the jacket with the survey logo and tucked it into the bag, and now I looked like an augmented human traveling somewhere"
Artificial Condition
same stolen clothes it ends ASR in, described in more detail. "wearing gray and black work clothes, the long sleeves of the T-shirt and jacket, the pants and boots covering all my inorganic parts, and I was carrying a knapsack."
Perihelion crew uniform, printed sans logos. "It was basically ART’s crew uniform without the logos: pants with lots of sealable pockets, a long-sleeved shirt with a collar just high enough to cover my data port, and a soft hooded jacket, all of it either dark blue or black"
Rogue Protocol
same Perihelion clothes it ends AC in, presumably. no further detail.
GoodNightLander EVAC suit, to escape from the shuttle to Ship.
Exit Strategy
GoodNightLander EVAC suit, same one, this time to escape from Ship to HaveRatton.
newly printed clothes it buys from a vending booth immediately after arriving on HaveRatton. "I picked workboots not much different from the ones I’d stolen back on Port FreeCommerce, self-sizing and with some shielding to protect against heavy things dropping on them, not as important for me as a human. Then pants with lots of sealable pockets, a long-sleeved shirt with a collar to cover my data port, and another soft hooded jacket. Okay, so it was extremely similar to what I had been wearing, just in a different arrangement of black and dark blue" "I got a replacement knapsack, too, a better one with more sealable pockets"
same printed clothes, presumably, after it experiences catastrophic failure and bricks its memory (it's still wearing that in FT, so...) "I was wearing human clothes and not a suit skin and armor"
Fugitive Telemetry
same printed clothes, and it doesn't change clothes after being shot. "I knew this because my dark-colored pants, shirt, jacket, and boots had come from a place like that and I’d found it really annoying that the Preservation Station mall didn’t have one" "I told the MedUnit to stop and pulled my shirt back down"
Network Effect
Preservation survey uniform, including the "Preservation survey logo, which was just a variation on the planetary seal." "drone view showed me what I looked like, water dripping from my clothes, my jacket with the Preservation survey logo and shirt showing projectile weapon holes, stained with fluid and a little blood"
clothes it likes; unclear if this is still the same outfit from HaveRatton. "I’d changed out of the survey uniform before we’d entered the wormhole and back into the clothes I liked (human work boots, pants with lots of pockets (good for storing my small intel drones), T-shirt, and soft hooded jacket, all dark colors."
adds a deflection vest right after they are attacked by Perihelion. "I had a deflection vest from Station Security Operations designed to provide some protection from inert blades, slow projectiles, fire, acidic gas, low energy pulses, and so on. I hadn’t been wearing it because it was a) worthless for the kind of firepower usually deployed against me and b) it had a logo on it. (I know, I need to get over that.) I made myself put it on under my jacket"
Preservation EVAC suit. "These were a different model than I’d used before, more expensive, where you could step into them and pull them up with an assist from the suit’s own power supply." "My suit’s imaging went down and the helmet plate went dark, protecting my eyes against a flash." "In gravity they made movement cumbersome"
deflective security uniform Perihelion prints, plus hair products, for the parlay with Leonide. "It was dark blue, the pants and jacket of a deflective fabric that was way better than what Preservation Station Security had, with lots of sealable pockets for weapons and drones, plus stability-fabric boots so tough I could probably use them to jam a closing hatchway open. It looked like what a human security person would wear" "lubricant-like substance that when I followed the instructions flattened my hair down so it looked shorter"
Perihelion EVAC suit, on top of new security uniform, to get to Leonide's supply ship. "We used ART’s EVAC suits, which were better than the ones the Preservation survey owned. (They had secondary internal protective suits for planetary exploration, not that we’d need them on the transport.)" "The EVAC suits had their own lights and vision filters" "The patches were throwing a localized broadcast into the feed in multiple languages, readable by interfaces and our EVAC suits even while ART’s feed was inaccessible, the same way marker paints worked. Amena said aloud, “Perihelion. Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland.”"
Enviro suit, to explore the dock, plus a Perihelion EVAC suit to get to the dock. "This time we were wearing the environmental suits under the EVAC units. The material felt thin, but it protected against a lot of toxic substances and had a closed breathing system attached"
deflective security uniform, electric boogaloo, heavily damaged after getting its shit wrecked by the ag-bot and colonists (unless Perihelion had printed more new clothes for it). "felt the projectiles going through the enviro suit but not the deflection fabric of the uniform ART had made for me" "my environmental suit was gone, though I still had the shirt, pants, and boots I’d been wearing under it"
medical gown, after repair and decontam. "I was wearing the kind of soft smock thing that injured humans wear"
regular clothes, after leaving medical. likely its "favorite" clothes not the security uniform, but not explicitly stated. "my drones spotted my clothes, cleaned and recycler-repaired, folded on a gurney"
System Collapse
enviro suit, over unspecified clothes; i've included all the suit's features that are mentioned. "while wearing an environmental suit instead of armor" "ART had altered an environmental suit for me so the sleeves locked in to my weapon ports and I could fire without burning holes through the fabric" "even through the environmental suit mask. (Yes, I was wearing it despite the fact that we were in an air bubble so I didn’t need it" "backup drone in the pocket of my environmental suit" "enviro suit camera" "had let the helmets fold back" "I pulled up the hood of my environmental suit and let it secure the face mask." "I still had the projectile weapon, clamped to my environmental suit’s harness in the back" "soft-drop pack’s instructional feed told me how to fasten it to my environmental suit" "I grabbed the safety harness of Iris’s environmental suit" "Amena had made my hair fluffy" "the environmental suits weren’t designed for stealth" "pulled out the little suit-repair kit she had attached to her belt. She patched the projectile hole in the back," "It got a hand on my environmental suit helmet (which was not meant for this kind of pressure and was already creaking)"
unspecified clothes after returning to Perihelion; it doesn't mention anything
Platform Decay
Three. is Three clothing? it wore Three at the start of the book. and three was wearing a suit, i guess. "we had needed a suit" "We had ended up with an armored suit designed to look like one that Wilken and Gerth had used back on Milu" "with a little help from a set of removable EVAC suit-maneuvering thrusters"
worker suit. "I was wearing the same type of safety suit and helmet as the legitimate human workers and the fake worker security" "They were all in protective suits that looked bulky enough to hide security armor."
fashionable clothes to blend in throughout the exec area. "I pulled off my worker suit, rolled it up and stuffed it in my bag, and quickly put on the spare clothes I’d brought. They were a different style from what I would have picked for myself: a longer jacket, wide pants, and a shirt with a loose rolled collar that covered my data port, all in light browns and whites"
Preservation handmade wrap over its same clothes that were damaged after the explosions, "But I still had a burned sleeve, needle holes, and blood and fluid stains on my jacket and shirt." "It was a patterned wrap thing with loose sleeves, handmade on Preservation. I don’t like patterns, but this covered my bloodstains and exposed gunport. It also made me look less like a corporate and more like I belonged with the group"
shirt Farai bought it replaces the damaged shirt; it is careful not to damage this one, adjusting sleeves as needed. it regularly removes Naja's wrap to protect it from stains and damage. "I got you a new shirt, I hope it’s the right size." "I was wearing the new pullover shirt Farai had bought me, which was a dark red-brown and matched the colors in the jacket Naja had loaned me" "rolled up my sleeves so I could use the energy weapons in my arms without wrecking my shirt" "I stood up and took off the jacket Naja had loaned me; I didn’t want to get blood or brain fluid or anything on it." "I took my borrowed jacket off and stuffed it in my bag, left the bag on the floor, and rolled up my sleeves so I could use the energy weapons in my arms without wrecking my shirt." "Farai handed me my jacket, and as I pulled it on" "rolled my sleeves down over my gunports under my jacket"
Tula, a tentacled parasite in a horror show. "she immediately clamped on to me like a tentacled parasite in a horror show."
Ping me if I missed anything!
+ Bonus shenanigans/ignore this part if you're not down to be silly here.
My dream episode of gamechanger is an "Oops All Crew!" episode:
The premise is that a number of the crew have an important audition today, so the players need to make sure each crew members list of tasks gets done. BUT it turns out, they are auditioning for each players role on gamechanger at the podium!
It would be a race to reclaim the podium.
Players would compete similar to beat the buzzer, completing each absurd, crew themed task of their member of the crew so that they can take back their spot. In the meantime, the crew is competing to answer prompts for points.
The players are roaming across the backstage with tasks like:
Pick props to bring out when cued!
Pay the electrical bill!
Act as a stand in mannequin, the original broke!
And more!
It would have branching potential outcomes, like if a player ussurped the podium without completing all of their crew members tasks, then the unfinished tasks would start to bite them.
No electricity paid? The spotlight over your podium shuts down and you do all of your prompts in the dark, flickering light.
Didn't make or pick a prop? When the cue is called on your turn, nothing emerges. It would become more and more comedically derelict.
On the other hand, doing the absurd tasks, committing to the crew role, and finding ways to help your crew member under the table means they'll rack up more points in the meantime.
And using your new found power as crew to call people offstage for a sound check, swap out someone else's props, ect? Fair game!
Winning means either powering through with no crew... leaving it in the hands of the crew for as long as possible and trusting fate.... or giving it your best to help them succeed!
Dropout's first-ever Blu-Ray release features Season 1 & Season 2 of Game Changer. These beloved seasons been here the whole time, and now they're yours forever!
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In this game show, the game changes every show! And just like the show, our collection of items is also constantly changing! Check back in f
Understanding statistics just makes it so much harder for gender essentialists and terfs to push their garbage. Really anything from climate denial to crime rate panic disappears with a basic understanding of stats.
muppets treasure island and it was a blast as always! although i do have some questions about that island.... ms piggy did you take over that island and its people???
Call Me Traitor is the story of a living weapon fighting her way towards personhood and the awful lesbian she's doing it with. I keep calling it 'the sapphic Winter Soldier wizards' book despite being told we can't put that in the blurb.
STORY:
En is a weapon.
Battle spells are carved into her skin, she’s trained to work through pain, and she’s magically compelled with loyalty to the archmagi. When she's sent on a mission to retrieve a group of infamous traitors from exile in a land of unpredictable and deadly magic, she's forced to team up with a common soldier to have any chance of success, or survival.
Tamol is a disaster.
En isn’t fooled by the soldier’s silver tongue and good looks. Tamol is flighty, cowardly and the worst soldier En has ever met. But she’s also brilliant at magic and kinder than En has any right to expect. When she saves En’s life, it takes everything En has not to start falling for her. That is, until En discovers Tamol is one of the very traitors she seeks.
The empire never forgets.
Years ago, the exiled traitors were just normal students with a vision for a better kingdom. They put their lives on the line fighting for it and lost. So they were exiled to the Far Peninsula to die. But now, the empire discovers the traitors may yet live, and they’ve unearthed something in the wilderness that the archmagi will pay any price to get.
But the might of an unforgiving empire isn’t the greatest force in all the land. Something monstrous is living in the Far Peninsula that does not discriminate between soldiers, traitors, and kings.
Out October! Preorders (every one of them highly treasured for obscure publishing industry reasons) are up here!
So this is the book I have spent the last few years on! I think it's the best thing I've written. I am both nervous and hugely excited. Reblogs massively appreciated if that is your thing, and if you are inclined to preorder, they do help me out a lot with my publisher, but I completely understand that not everyone is in a position to. All interest treasured and appreciated!
(Also: HOW gorgeous is this art! I am unspeakably in love with it! How it captures these two idiots so accurately, and the incredible dawn clouds and the mountain and the sea. I pushed for Eliot Baum for the cover ever since he was among the initial artist suggestions because of the gorgeous way he does characters, and this both showed me that was the right choice and also completely blew me away. Highly recommend the follow: @eliotbaum. I am also a big fan of the title design, which is by Jess Kiley!)
I’m seeing so many bad takes about Skip > Hollanov and I just need to get this out of my system.
Listen, I don’t care if you like Scott/Kip more than Ilya/Shane. I’m just annoyed when people fundamentally misunderstand the characters and their relationship.
[Minor spoilers for episodes 1-3 of Heated Rivalry]
I didn’t love Game Changer; I thought it was a bit boring. I actually liked the Scott/Kip episode a lot more than their book. I thought it did a good job of distilling the best parts of the book and François Arnaud (my bi king) and Robbie G.K. were great in it.
Most importantly, I think episode 3 is important context especially for people who haven’t read Game Changer and Heated Rivalry. Getting to know Scott and Kip makes something that happens later more impactful not just for them but also for Ilya and Shane. And it also helps you understand Ilya and Shane more now that you have a different queer relationship and a gay hockey player (and a gay regular person) to compare them to.
1. Even when two people like each other and are able to communicate openly about what they want (as opposed to Ilya and Shane who can’t for various reasons), the fact that one of them is a hockey player is still a huge obstacle. Scott’s life is hockey and he’s scared he’ll lose it if he comes out. In 2025 it’s still rough for pro athletes who come out. In the show we’re currently in 2014. The NHL is the only professional league that doesn’t have any out players. There’s 600+ guys who play in the NHL statistically speaking there’s at least what 5-10% who are queer? But the environment being what it is no one has ever been brave enough to come out.
2. It’s one thing to be a queer hockey player in that deeply homophobic environment. It’s another thing to be two queer hockey players on rival teams. Boston and Montreal have been rivals for 100 years. The narrative the league has built around Shane and Ilya is huge. Yeah the league, people on their teams, a bunch of the fans, will react badly to their star players being queer. But the bigger drama is the fact that they’ll feel betrayed, like Shane and Ilya were lying to them the entire time. Loyalty is a huge thing in hockey culture and some fans might be like, whatever, I don’t care that you’re queer but you absolutely cannot be hooking up with someone on the rival team.
3. The personal stakes are different. Scott is a white dude.
Shane is Asian-Canadian in a sport that is very, very white. The fact that he’s half-Asian comes up several times in the show so far—when he’s drafted, when his mom talked about what it means for him to be visible, because lots of kids don’t get to see guys like him in the NHL. When the reporter compares him to Tiger Woods and Serena Williams. There’s no depictions of outright racism but they’re hinting that in the background shane is dealing with being a minority and at the very least deals with microaggresions on the daily.
Ilya is an immigrant. His family is toxic, Russia is not safe for queer people, and if he’s outted and kicked out of the NHL, he’ll have to go back to Russia and that’s his greatest fear.
4. Scott is also older than Ilya and Shane, and has had more time to figure his shit out. He knows himself and what he wants, he just hasn’t figured out how to make it work with hockey.
When Shane and Ilya first meet at the World Juniors, they’re only 17! Shane is still figuring out his sexuality. Ilya is the first man he’s slept with.
Ilya is more sexually experienced but is more emotionally closed off. He’s not struggling with his sexuality but struggling with how to be more vulnerable and communicate what he’s feeling. He didn’t grow up in an environment where he was emotionally supported, and has been dealing with a lot of trauma alone.
And then there’s Kip who has a supportive dad and a queer friend group and is living a normal life as an out gay man without the kind of public pressure bearing down on Scott, Ilya, and Shane.
5. On the flip side, I think some people like Scott and Kip more because their relationship is more “traditional”. Like it’s easier to understand what’s going on there. They have a meetcute. They fall in love and are in a committed relationship.
In comparison, Shane and Ilya seem “toxic” to some people. I don’t think that’s true, I just think Shane and Ilya are two confused young people on separate personal journeys trying to figure out their own shit as well as trying to figure out their much more complicated situation.
I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding especially with regard to Ilya’s character—people seem to think he’s being abusive or manipulative towards Shane or whatever. But he’s never intentionally hurtful or cruel to Shane and I think it’s obvious that he’s so smitten, he just scared to acknowledge his feelings and also even talking about them is hard because of the language barrier. At the end of the first sex scene in episode 2 Ilya clearly has a moment of panic when Shane kisses his forehead because he’s like, oh shit this is turning into something more than a casual hookup and that’s even more dangerous for both of them. So he gets the fuck out of there and tries to stay away.
It’s wild to me that people think that Skip is “real romance” and Hollanov is “just sex”. Just sex?!? The pining, the yearning, the flirting, the banter, the mutual concern and care—how is this lost on y’all???
Heated Rivalry is doing some great visual storytelling and it is completely wasted on people with zero media literacy. Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams are acting the shit out of those roles—their microexpressions in every scene are telling you so much in lieu of the internal monologues you get in the book.
Anyway episode 4 is about to drop in a few hours and non-book readers are about to get a taste of what a down bad lover boy Ilya Rozanov actually is, literally just the most romantic motherfucker underneath that asshole facade.
hello!! i am opening up emergency ttrpg layout commissions because im behind on rent for this month (jan 2025)
prices are flexible and i can work with your budget (to a reasonable degree). i have very fast turnaround times and have worked with four happy clients so far as well as having done the layout for all of my own ttrpgs. half will need to be paid upfront after i accept the job
(i work in affinity!! if you dont have affinity 2, there is a new free version through canva that can open affinity 2 files)
[ID: 10 screenshots showing pages or spreads from ttrpgs. end ID]
(the first 3 are client commissions!!)
if youre interested please send me the following over dm or discord:
brief description of the project
number of unique pages desired (or potential range) and if you need a cover as well (ex: if your game will have a cover and a standard, repeated layout on each page following then say 1 page + cover. if youre looking for a fully designed zine, you might say 40-60 page range but i have a cover artist. etc)
The greatest challenge of writing this fic is that I know little about the workings of Montreal’s* public transportation system but I believe in my ability to fake it til I make it similar to the way that I accidentally convinced someone I was in a creative writing class that I was a New Yorker when I wrote a short story set in Brooklyn by referencing one (1) real location and having the Brooklynites say “the city” instead of “New York City”
*plausibly I COULD have set this fic in Boston (a city I am much more familiar with) instead of Montreal (a city I visited once a decade ago) but I feel like I am committed to this being set in Canada so here we are
I've visited Montreal a few times for friends and have taken the transit! Aesthetically, it has a lot of large scale sculptural art on the walls of some of the key stations. Some of the platforms are multi level where you have to go up or down a stairwell or two to get to the platform you want. Lots of nice brickwork. Trains are cleaner looking than Toronto's in my opinion.
Because Montreal is pretty snowy in the winter, they have these weird swinging doors that are hard to describe. Snatched a picture from duck duck go, they swivel from the center point! I'm not sure how effective at keeping out snow they actually were, but its pretty muddy in the entryways.
You can get tickets from the transit machines before you go down most stations. They are flimsy paper ones, dark blue with a couple coloured circles in a line. You can purchase multi-day passes which is pretty handy.
Montreal also has a pretty extensive bus service including one that can take you from the airport to outside one of the train stations. All of the announcing is in French for both the trains and busses (which is kinda obvious but worth mentioning).
Overall I thought it was pretty solid as far as transit goes!
gummygunk
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