#i want sophie to explain to them what monopoly is

[skyes-shadow-thoughts]

keefe: screw capitalism. it’s a rigged system that keeps us poor and it isn’t fair. You shouldn’t need to work three jobs to afford basic necessities.

tam, playing Monopoly: sorry, if you wanted to win you should have tried not being poor.

#it’s ok keefe #i’m also a victim like you 😒 #but we love sassy tam tho #kotlc shitpost #i want sophie to explain to them what monopoly is #and then I want everyone to beat her. #the irony 😎✨ #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc exile #kotlc everblaze #kotlc flashback #kotlc legacy #kotlc lodestar #kotlc neverseen #kotlc stellarlune #kotlc unlocked

[juddygirl]

Lost in an empty bottle - New year's eve

New year, New Dan - Maxiel - 820 words

Sophie didn’t put any alcohol on the table, only water and coke with the homemade fancy dinner. Max had his own dish, bought the day before at the grocery store. Daniel is full from all the beautiful things Sophie prepared. He doesn’t even think about getting a drink, it doesn’t cross his mind, not even once throughout the night.

Maybe it’s Max’s hand on his thigh, stroking him gently, or the fact that it’s the first new year’s eve where he doesn’t feel pressured to do anything big, to have fun and show it, like he did before. 

It’s much more relaxed. They’ve moved to the living room now, playing games until midnight, sitting on the floor. He’s not a fan of these types of games, Daniel is much more of a sports guy. Yet he’s deeply invested in this monopoly game, while Max is losing his shit next to him, claiming Victoria is cheating. He’s only saying this because he hates losing, she tells Daniel, it infuriates Max even more. 

Daniel doesn’t know what time it is, he’s left his phone to charge upstairs. His family already wished him a happy new year and went back to the lavishing party his parents are used to throwing. He loved them growing up. He’d always got to dress up and stay late, run around with his friends while their parents were dancing eagerly waiting for the countdown to midnight. Once he was a teenager, he and his friends would steal a bottle of alcohol or two from the bar and sneak somewhere more private where they wouldn’t get caught and share the bottle between them. 

Then he became an athlete and with it more outrageous parties to celebrate the new year. One where he always felt like he didn’t belong, where it oozed pretentiousness he didn’t like but where the alcohol was good and free. There hasn’t been a new year celebration he remembers since he joins formula one. 

He passed out the previous year, he doesn’t remember much of that party. He just remembers waking up on the 1st of January in the club, the music still blasting, a girl asleep by his side. This one was the worst new year’s eve he’s ever been to. 

And now he’s there, in the house with his in-laws, missing the countdown because no one cared. It’s 2019 already, and Max says he isn’t feeling great. He looks pale and clammy in Daniel’s arms. 

“Babe, I’m sick don’t kiss me,” Max whines when Daniel steals a kiss to wish him a happy new year. 

He doesn’t listen, doesn’t care about getting sick. 

Their small party is over when Max runs to the bathroom. Daniel follows him. 

2019 starts with Max being sick and Daniel staying up all night with him, wiping the sweat off his forehead, handing him some water. He lets Max rest his head on his lap, and brushes his hair back. 

“I’m sorry I ruined New year,” Max says, eyes closed and dizzy. 

“You didn’t ruin shit mijn liejfe, this is the best new year’s eve I’ve ever had.” 

It’s true. He loved the simplicity of it, the fact that it looked more like a family gathering than a big event. He wants this, every year, with Max. He wants a lot with Max. For him to. 

Daniel never believed in the new year, new me bullshit. Until now. He doesn’t want to be the Daniel he used to be, he wants to be better, to be someone decent, who can be proud of. He never wants to go back to where he’s been. He makes a silent promise to himself, never go back there, never be this guy he hated to be. He knows this isn’t like all the other times when he tried to convince himself that this time would be the right one, the final one. It’s different. He feels it, but can’t explain it. He’s got too much to lose now. He has come so far. It would be a shame to lose it all for a drink, something that’s never gonna be kind or love him. A drink will never feel as good as being to I love you, a drink will never replace what he feels when he’s with Max. 

He kisses Max’s sweaty forehead, unbothered by how gross Max currently looks. Max hums, a small smile spreading on his face. 

“Please remind me to never get food from this place.” He says before sitting back up, feeling sick again. 

Daniel rubs his back, pulling the blanket he fletched early over his shoulder so Max doesn’t get cold. 

No, Daniel will never touch a drop of alcohol ever again. 

“I love you,” He replies. 

Max grunts, annoyed at his cheesiness right at that moment. He leans into Daniel a few minutes after, safe there. He loves him too.

#sunday fic #maxiel #maxiel fic #max verstappen #daniel ricciardo #f1 fic #mv1 #dr3 #lost in an empty bottle #🍷

[frankendykes-monster]

So probably the best way to start this is to mention the obvious and say that Joker (2019) has pretty much all of nothing to do with...The Joker.  I had mention to someone else a week or two back, but for as much as The Joker can work in a wide variety of stories, the character is inherently limited, my go-to phrase being “one dimensional.”  The Joker’s ongoing motivation is that he wants to defeat Batman, nothing more, nothing less.  “Killing Batman” is only a single part of it, “it” being proving that Batman is fallible and has some weakness.  There are characters like The Riddler that zero in on a single aspect of that such as, surely there are some problems that can be created that even The World’s Greatest Detective cannot solve, but The Joker is a convenient character in that he can be applied to any aspect of Batman’s character, which is why you get stories like Batman and The Joker getting into a surfing contest, because it all goes back to that theme of if there’s something that Batman is not the best at, Batman is ultimately doomed to fail (with regards to suspension of disbelief that is needed for superheroes to work, both creators and the audience have to commit to the concept that superheroes existing 100% makes the world around them a better place, and a major incoming failure on Batman’s part makes for greatest suspense in that it threatens that concept.)

But then, there lies the issue.  Joker does not actually have any driving motivation for WHY he wants to defeat Batman, he simply is.  It’s my theory on why no origin story has ever permanently stuck, because you can’t ever really make sense of that.  This compounds itself into Batman and Joker’s relationship and can never really evolve, it’ll play out in the same way every time just with new set dressing.  What you can do is raise the stakes, but with the back to back publishing of “The Killing Joke” and “A Death in The Family” in 1988, raising the stakes meant making The Joker a sadistic serial killer at the cost of everything else about the character, creating a Joker where everyone questions why he deserves to be alive to appear in another comic three to six months down the pipeline.  There have been some instances of trying to make The Joker more nuanced, like Grant Morrison introducing the concept of “super sanity” in their Batman work and addressing how The Joker reinvents his personality on the fly, but it’s ultimately set dressing that doesn’t alter anything.

So, that begs the question of why Joker, the film, calls itself “Joker” in the first place or why it takes place in Gotham instead of New York and blah blah blah the short answer is if they didn’t, Warner Bros wouldn’t have been able to rake in a billion dollars.  It’s on par with Sony deciding to make Venom (2018) and never addressing why Venom has those large white eye covers if his design isn’t based on Spider-Man, I’ll give Joker (2019) the compliment that it’s more interesting than that film at least.  I really did not want to bring up all this Batman shit while watching this but then they started addressing Thomas Wayne and I began mentally groaning.  I don’t want to dive into the concept of how or if the Batman mythos is impacted if you make Thomas (and Martha Wayne, who like in most Batman stories is more of a cameo than an actual character here) a shitty person, but then again I wouldn’t have to bring that up if the film didn’t cram it in in the first place.  I am...SO...SO THANKFUL I did not see any memes or theories or head canons surrounding “B-B_BUH JOCKER IS BEETMANS HALF BROTHER?????/???” which...whatever. Come to think I didn't see anyone bitch that he doesnt become The Joker until 90 minutes in either.  I think the majority of my goodwill (what turned it from, oh you know the good outweighs the bad enough for me to be able to tell someone this is watchable, to, oh you can skip this) was destroyed at the Waynes getting shot scene with, WHOOPS, The Joker was responsible (indirectly!)  That gave me BAD Batman (1989) flashbacks, and when you remind me of Batman (1989), you kind of do get on my bad side.  Fuck that movie.

SO.  In the midst of ALLL of this.  Let’s talk about the “““real source material”““ for Joker (2019): Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982).

I don’t think I’m ruffling any feathers by saying that that is the case and that both of those films are wayyy better than Joker (2019).  I mean, there’s a reason why Robert De Niro was not only cast in this film, but he’s second billed right under Joaquin Phoenix.  Those are two fairly different films but they’re, at their core, stories of men who are ticking time bombs of violence ready for someone to light the fuse.  It’s another point against Joker (2019), not only for reminding me of much better films, but forcing me to ask why another pastiche of this story needed to be told.  Martin Scorsese kind of made his career with a monopoly on men losing their shit and everyone around them being caught in the tornado.  Joker (2019) admittedly plays the material much differently, in that all the way through we are supposed to sympathize with Arthur Fleck and stand alongside him every step of this of his downward spiral, and even with where he ends up, I’ll admit I don’t have an issue with that, but the film struggles with making me care half the time.  Like, yes, when Arthur is alone at home trying not to go awol, yeah, I get that, but at other times there’s stuff like how Arthur’s relationship with Sophie is never developed in any meaningful capacity, like why is enamored with him, why is she not as disturbed by him as most other people seem to be?  When we discover she’s not real, that explains it from a logical perspective I guess, but it isn’t a shock or a gut punch.

Can I be real for a second?  There are a lot of moments in this film where it made me embarrased as a neurodivergent person.  The number of people who definitely saw this, because, once again, it made a billion dollars, and came away thinking oh so that’s what mentally ill people are like, even if they’re sympathetic about it, it makes me sigh.

Even though the crux of this film is Arthur’s descent, it desperately wants to be important.  I know I’m not the first person to make this observation, but it does read like, oh, what’s popular now?  Incels?  Better make part of Arthur’s character arc that he can’t hit up any actual real women so he has to entertain himself with fantasies.  Antifa?  Better make it so Arthur accidentally inspires a movement of nebulous anti-rich people who all wear masks.  And so on and so on with no actual commentary while simultaneously it’s not really world-building either because it’s so front and center to the plot. I gotta say, if the film is about people in general not putting up with things anymore after being shat on nonstop, why oh why is there a joke aimed at a little person pretty early on, even through some meta lense where “oh the person telling the joke is an asshat who dies later so it’s cool”?

Now I’m not sure what to say next about the film itself so I guess now would be a good time to discuss the film’s ~impact~ as it were.  If it weren’t for Parasite (2019) I’d have no problem saying this was the biggest film of 2019 in the grand scheme of things, like EVERYONE came in with every possible perspective on this thing long before it came out.  I remember how back in like, late-2017/early-2018?  A bunch of people were shitting on the announcement of this film and Warner Bros had to do damage control by releasing some on-set photos of the second subway scene two days later.  It’s surreal more than anything actually watching this film now and seeing, wait, this is what everyone was memeing about nonstop?  This is a mainstream film?  With the directions it goes in?  With the topics it brings up?  Well I’ll be damned.  This is probably the first time since Les Miserables (2013) and Man of Steel (2013) where a movie comes out and no two people have the exact same opinion on it, so I’m curious as to how Joker is going to age in like, a decade.  So fucking weird that this is called a “superhero film” in retrospect just because it shares a name with a comic book character owned by the same company that developed and distributed this.

I wouldn’t be talking about this film if it wasn’t called “Joker” but then again hey nobody else would either.  I don’t hate this film despite how I’ve said nothing positive about and I was pretty prepared to call it “barely good” before the finale, so I don’t regret watching it, I don’t know what the fuck to say anymore.  Gang Weed memes are pretty funny if you haven’t actually seen any in the wild.  1940: “Let’s throw him into chemicals.”  2019: “Let’s throw him into society.”

[tessaservopoulos]

I lied I can't pick just one but I promise I won't prompt more than two... So, uh- Sam/Donna, 097: “So, how should we break the news that they’re going to have a new baby brother or sister?”

The island is aglow with activity; Tanya and Rosie play court at the bar, Bill and Harry listening close by in amusement, while Sophie, Adam, and Max play an intense game of monopoly on the table in the courtyard, laughter and groans erupting from them at whoever seemed to be winning.

Donna watched, happiness billowing in her chest; a hand skated up her back, rubbing between her shoulder blades as she let out an exhale.

“Planning on joining them?” Sam teases her lightly, and she jabs her elbow into his ribs.

“They’re gonna know the second I don’t grab a drink something’s up,” there’s a slight whine to her voice, and Sam hides his smile in the kiss he presses to his wife’s hair. “Sophie’s already concerned about the nausea, she’s asked me four times to go to the doctor.”

“If it helps, the boys are clueless,” Sam supplies, pulling a laugh from Donna as she turns to face him.

“Have I mentioned lately how sweet you are?” she asks, cupping his jaw in her palm before she tugged him down to kiss her.

“Gross!” Max called across the courtyard, affection in his voice, and Donna and Sam pull apart, turning to face him. Their children were grinning at them, Sophie the apparent winner of their game- based on the pile of paper money in front of her- and Donna looked back up at Sam, gaze softening slightly.

“Should we just tell them, then?” she asks, and Sam bends his head, looking down at her; they’re quiet for a few moments, smiles playing around their lips- and then he nods, turning her smile into a full blown grin.

“Tell us what?” Sophie asks, tucking her hair behind her ear as she walks up to them, catching her mother’s words. Donna looks away from Sam, at their collected family, and takes a breath before she speaks.

“You know how you’ve been wanting me to go to the doctor, Soph?” her daughter nods, eyebrows furrowing, and Donna’s smile softens as she brushes her thumb over the lines, smoothing them out. “Well, I did. I know it’s about fifteen years after you stopped asking, but- you’re going to be a big sister.”

There’s a pause, and then an explosion of noise as everyone starts congratulating them at once. Donna’s head spins from it all, overwhelmed by love- so strikingly different from the last time she’d been pregnant.

“Explains why you wouldn’t do shots with us last night.”

“I don’t do shots with you because we aren’t twenty anymore,” Donna counters, and Rosie waves her words away, wrapping her up in a hug that Tanya joins instantly.

“I’m just happy you told us about this one, rather than a postcard with ‘oh by the way you have a niece’ written on the back a month after she was born,” the brunette lifts an eyebrow at her, and Donna rolls her eyes.

“As I said before: I’m not twenty anymore. And things are much different this time,” Donna’s unable to stop herself from looking over her shoulder, finding Sam. He’s with Bill and Harry and his boys, who both look thrilled at the prospect of a younger sibling- he turns his head when he feels her gaze, lips quirking into a soft smile that she returns.

“Yeah Mom. You’ve got all of us this time,” Sophie tells her, coming up and hugging her tightly. Donna sinks into the hug immediately, holding her daughter tightly against her. “Plus she’s going to be the cutest baby sister ever.”

“I’m barely out of the first trimester, you have no way of knowing it’s a sister yet,” Donna reminds her, and Sophie shakes her head.

“Nope, I’m getting a sister. I already got two brothers, I deserve a sister.”

“Please inform my womb of that, I have no say in the matter.”

Sophie sinks down, talking directly to Donna’s midsection. “Hey there, peanut. I need you to work with me on this, okay? We already have two brothers. Us girls have to stick together.”

Donna rolls her eyes, stroking a hand over her daughter’s head as fondness rolled through her.

#trinket-the-bear #asks #donna sheridan #sam carmichael #sam x donna #mamma mia fic #otp: the love you gave me #writing meme #LISTEN i'm weak for the idea of a post-mm baby #and according to canon and not meryl's age donna is only like 40/41 #so this is 100% plausible and i will probably write a whole fic some day

[asukaskerian]

OK, correct me if I'm wrong, but in your psychic wolves AU, it seems that being wolf-bonded is seen to be reserved only to the noble (and knight) caste, but at the same time, a lot of nobles see it as being undesirable in their families. Could you explain why, please?

OKAY YES it’s basically a relic of ancient times where warriors protecting their villages against trolls and things (yes they’re canon for the books so i’m assuming they also happened in here) had to bond with packs of wolves to fight them off. from that the noble caste emerged. traditionally castles maintain their own pack on the premises. 

it’s still seen as a mark of a warrior spirit, and it does unify a troop like nothing else, so the more warlike nobles and the ones that really get into hunting big game are like hell yes sign me up, but the more “oh i love to party and start mean rumors in the ballroom” types are less enthused about it.

some noble families, like tarvek’s father’s branch, see them as pointless relics of a less civilized time. like, okay, they sort of think, but they’re still animals. plus, they’re telepathic, which means if you like to keep secrets from people who should be your allies or trusted subordinates or you want to just not know them that well because you like your subordinates to be disposable and not give themselves airs like they’re anywhere near your level it would kinda be NOOOOPE opting the fuck out bye.

so probably what happened with the sturmvoraus pack was that adults and widowed wolves wandered off to bond to people from visiting packs, and breedings happened less and less, and the last bonded people were not of the ruling line so they were encouraged to move their allegiance elsewhere or let the last wolves die out without reproducing.

(also yeah, it’s forbidden to women, because GASP women are gentle and should stay behind to take care of the house not go HUNTING or WARRING, but men don’t actually have the monopoly on traits that might be attractive to a wolf, so it’s not uncommon that half of a litter will bond to women and then whoops “where did your pretty daughter sophie go my son was looking forward to her coming of age” “OH AILMENT OF THE LUNGS COUNTRY ESTATE HAHA UM I HAVE ANOTHER ONE??.” and it’s forbidden to peasants and servants, but if they’re around a wolf cub and the cub likes them, well, shit happens. in the end the wolf chooses and you just have to deal with it, but with the widening of the social gap between nobility and the rest of the populace it’s less and less desirable to allow a creature to draw you intimately close with people you ought to be working with, but cannot reliably choose to make sure they’re all “the right sort”.)

… did anything not make enough sense? i can expand. probably for like a dozen more pages. thirty more pages. psychic wooooolves.

#psychic wolves #Anonymous #GG psychic wolves AU

[wavelcngths]

08/03/19

Today was intense! Really really intense. For today’s play test we decided to test the game with people playing amongst themselves without us, and in four teams and not three. We wanted to see how easy the game was to pick up, how long it took for players to pick up and how the play experience would be affected by the change in team number. We took a group of eight people and let them split themselves into teams of two, explained the rules and let them get on their way. 

I decided to actively observe this play test and these are the things i’ve found: 

- As consistent with previous play test, all teams are laughing, bantering with each other and forming alliances. 

- With four teams its harder to make sure everyone knows the rules. 

- We have open communication, there is more strategy in this test than previously. 

- There is a consistent even playing field, even with players ganging up on others there is still an equal chance for players to take the win in our play. 

- Energy has stayed consistently high throughout game. 

- Teams find the scooby doo themed cards humorous, and think the “zoinks” card is extremely powerful. 

- The new espionage card is proving useful. 

- Found that players liked playing multiple time machines, (time machine-ing a time machine in play)

I’m absolutely thrilled at how engaged our playtesters were in out game today. In the group we had major worries about our game being too repetitive if played for too long or played too many times, but after today’s playtest i’ve gained confidence that our heist play experience might finally be fit for our target audience and we can now start refining our game. 

After the team finished this play test, it had what our team is calling the “monopoly effect” where the players are mad at each other (in a friendly way) about who the real winner is, but as a whole they have definitely bonded more which meets our statement of intent developing deeper understandings of newly formed friendships.

Taking everything we’ve noticed in this play test, to move forward I think as a group we need to define clearer rules and find an easy and quick way to differentiate between the card types. 

On a side note, I forgot to put this in previous blogs but Sophie and I have been working on an extra research document in google docs comparing our play to other games we’ve compared it to Exploding Kittens, 500, and Munchkin. 

#cards for play #ctec501