v passionate abt aro headcanons

A trans amateur cricketer says she is “heartbroken” after being abruptly kicked out of her local club by England’s cricketing regulator. Trans woman Lily was reportedly told by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) that she was no longer allowed to participate in the amateur cricketing club, which plays the sport entirely for fun, following updates to their inclusion policies.

I am 45F and I live next door to my two best friends. We deliberately bought land adjacent to each other 10 years ago because we were sick of being chronically single and being lonely. (our properties are in a triangle) 

We’ve since knocked down the fences on our properties so it’s 3 houses with a huge garden in the middle which has a vegetable patch and a garden. We even have a small greenhouse and chickens, 2 dogs and a cat who wander around. 

I consider my friends to be my family basically and it’s been really nice over the last few years to have my own house but also have people to do activities with, buy stuff in bulk, go travelling etc and just have a good time. We also help each other out a lot eg if I’m working from home, I can handle the repair man or sign for parcels, have someone to drive me to the doctor and bring me food when I’m sick and vice verse but also have my own space in my house. 

There are memes out there about how you need 1 person with a Netflix account, 1 person with Hulu and another with Amazon Prime but that’s basically my life. 

My married friend got annoyed at me the other day though because if she wants to make plans, ask a favor etc I always tell her “let me check I’m not doing anything with Alice & Claire” or “I need to check with Alice & Claire, I think we had plans for that”. 

However I don’t see what the problem with that is because she’s always telling me “let me check with Bob” (her husband) or she’ll only meet me if Bob is free. 

and when it released for ios? holy fuck were they DROWNING in money. when they took a weekend to put the game on sale for a dollar, down from five, a couple months after release, they made as much in that one weekend as they did since its release. it was among the top paid apps for weeks.

with critics, peggle was among some of the top downloadable, mobile, and general best games of all time at the time of its release in 2007 and onwards, and it only shot up in popularity as they made it more accessible to more people. and this was in a time before candy crush.

the thing about simple addictive puzzle games is that they make you feel competent, confident, smart, and cool for being good at them. not everybody can learn how to aim in a shooter or the best strategy in an rpg. but anybodys grandmother or baby brother can play a simple puzzle game, and the nature of these games and the way they make you feel only makes you want to play more and more.

however very very fucking few people who play simple puzzle games that you can master on the toilet would be going to E3 in the early 2010s. remember in 2012 when every ~hardcore gamer~ would screech about ‘fake gamers’ who only play candy crush? thats what peggle was. it was THE crack mobile game from the pre-candycrush era.

no one who was excited about peggle was going to E3. the hundreds of thousands of people who played peggle were not the type of people who would consider going to (or even giving a shit about) E3.

but it sold like hot cakes, and candy crush was churning out content like a madman, and EA owned popcap now, so because the game sold amazingly, and because they wanted to keep cashing in on it, and because corporate drones who controlled the scripts didnt comprehend that their consumerbase isnt one homogeneous mass, they decided to announce peggle 2 at E3 2013.

but not just “oh by the way peggle 2”, no. peggle sold like skyrim, it sold like black ops, clearly they should be saving the best for last, they should announce it like it was the craziest most incredible announcement of the night!

thus:

but then you twist both halves and unscrew it to find a flat-head screwdriver in the middle.

BUT, if you twist the very end and unscrew that

you find a phillips screwdriver.

BUT DON’T THINK THAT’S ALL THERE IS! THERE’S MORE!! unscrew the very end again to find a smaller flat-head screwdriver!

BUT THAT’S STILL NOT THE END!!

unscrew the end of this screwdriver to find a final, teeny tiny, flat-head screwdriver

look at how cute it is!

O-okay, let’s get into this, shall we?

*grumbling* Would you rather work for Lex Luthor or the Joker- *shouting* Lex Luthor, by like, a fucking mile!

Yes, yes, working for Lex Luthor is basically like being an Amazon employee that makes weapons of mass destruction, which is bad. Lex is like Donald Trump mixed with Mark Zuckerberg mixed with Jeffrey fucking Bezos, it’s not a great mix. He does not treat his henchmen well. Their lives still suck, and they are probably monitored on how long they take piss breaks for.

But let’s analyze what working for Lex Luthor is like versus the fucking Joker. With Lex you probably get a dental plan, a health plan, a paycheck, and the guy that you’re fighting really cares about human life. Superman will hit you just long enough to knock you out, so you’re not a treat, so he can stop the problem.

If you work for the Joker, your payment is you’re not fucking dead. You say one wrong thing? Bang. You don’t laugh at his jokes? Bang! You do laugh at his jokes? Bang! You think Joker gives a fuck about a henchman?

Who’s Lex Luthor’s right-hand-man? It’s a woman, you sexist, her name is Mercy, she’s awesome. Who’s Joker’s right-hand-man? Bob? Nah, he’s dead. Harley? Tried to kill her multiple times. Slappy? Who the fuck is Slappy?

The best case scenario of working for the Joker is that you fight the fucking Batman! And that presents its own fucking list of problems. If you stop Superman as a Lex Luthor henchman, Lex’ll be pissed, but he’ll be at least happy that Superman was caught. If you stop Batman as a Joker henchman, you better have a fucking coffin picked out yesterday.

This isn’t a fun hypothetical question, this is a screening technique that the doctors at Arkham use to determine your mental health! There is a right and a wrong answer to this question, and the correct one is Lex fucking Luthor. Thank you for coming to my fucking Ted Talk, have a nice day.

If someone does not love and respect both your proper and your freak? They were not meant for you.

I loved my dear friend, but it became clear to me in recent years that my friend did not love me.

Oh, she was happy to come and stay at my house half the weekend and tell me all her woes and how excited she was to do pottery and about her job and the men she was pursuing.

But she could not handle a five minute conversation about comics or movies or books or art that I was working on. She would sit there silently and say 'I have nothing to contribute' or she would start watching TikTok WHILE I was talking until I gave up.

It wasn't as if I didn't try, I only brought up topics in those genres I thought might interest her, or referenced things she'd talked about in the past, but it starting being very obvious that she didn't want to have a conversation, she wanted me to listen and affirm while she told me things.

And it genuinely hurt my feelings, because I don't particularly care about pottery or glazing, but I listened and learned and asked questions and eventually learned enough to have an actual conversation on the topic with her. Because I loved her and that is what she loves.

A few weeks ago, I went to see a different friend and she asked me if she could play a video game while we talked. I didn't mind, I was used to trying to fight with TikTok for attention.

We spent five hours talking, actually talking. Five hours of me getting to talk about the novel I've been working on for nearly two years at this point and for her to tell me all about the construction and design of her favorite game franchise, and not once did I feel like I was fighting for attention. It felt very much like hanging out and playing video games when I was a kid.