Starfleet Captain Longcat

So I'm going to be very honest about a couple of things:

First: I do not care about the anachronism. like I joked about it in some tags but that's not the important part of it. Pizza is also possibly anachronistic. I feel that it being anachronistic is getting a lot of focus in part because it's such an egregiously out-of-place moment in every respect, but like, that's not important to me.

Second: I think that a lot of people who have mentioned it, myself included, would probably have rolled our eyes and given it a pass if it weren't part of weird pattern. Like, the bra strap moment in isolation is an eh, I don't like it but whatever thing for me. It's when you take it in context with the weird "a moment on the lips forever on the hips" line, calling Tyranny pure chaos for having a very reasonable and measured response last episode that just didn't give Bolaire the answer he wanted, and the "clingy ex-girlfriend" and "personality disorder" lines about Termina on Tale Gate that it becomes item number four or five in an ongoing pattern of 1990s-2000s-era casual misogyny. I think it was the tipping point for a number of people whereas again, on its own, it's just a "huh?" moment.

Anyway: I don't know what he's going for with this moment, because I straight up do not know what he's going for with the character overall, and that's what I find frustrating. I can point to every other character and tell you what's being set up for them plot-wise and some degree of their motivations, and why they do what they do. I even can tell you what I'd make Bolaire about if this were a TV show being written and someone had come to me saying "hey, people are not liking this Bolaire character! how do we course-correct?" But in terms of what Taliesin was trying to achieve in that moment, or with Bolaire overall? literally no idea.

I know people specifically got upset when a number of people mentioned the focus on one-liners but unlike the anachronism, that actually does feel relevant to me, because with every scene Bolaire is in, it feels like his only motivation is trying to be the wittiest guy in the room. Which again, would be fine in isolation, but it becomes deeply frustrating when he is consistently failing to follow the obvious plot threads that are actually for him and about him. Like, it feels wild that after Olgud popped open the Coffin of Olbalad and Lady Cormoray didn't emerge and Knife & Palette was incredibly vital to determining the next steps of the story and Murray and Hal were otherwise occupied, Bolaire was like the most important thing for me to do is clearly to inspect Occtis and the Stone of Nightsong, right now.

I suppose generously I could say that perhaps Taliesin is having difficulty with the structure of the campaign; a lot of this kind of feels like FOMO and he is at the table where a lot of what you do is very much on your own separate from everyone else. But even if it's a case of difficulty adjusting, that still doesn't make me feel like anything is going on with the character narratively nor in terms of building an arc, and the growing list of misogynistic non-sequiturs are really not helping.

Also. Since I just posted about Travis and have this sort of criticism of fandom at the forefront of my mind, I may as well just say this outright: Just as I think Travis has often gotten the short end of the fandom stick on Tumblr because of backlash about the chuds liking him, I think Taliesin has been granted degrees of generosity none of the rest of the cast get from the fandom, in that he escapes the misogyny directed at the women, but isn't held to the same standards as the other men. Or put it bluntly, I think if one of the other men in the cast did a single item off that list of weird misogynistic moments? A number of the people currently up in arms about how mean we're being Bolaire right now would be calling for their head. Hell, I'm confident they would, because they've done so to Liam and Travis and Sam, repeatedly.

if you've made replies on posts there is now a tab on your blog showing every post youve replied to and your reply.

if this is not what you want, either go to your blog and click comments and disable it from there or just go to your individual blogs setting pages. just change it from blue to grey if you dont want everyone to see your replies AND the post you're replying to

PLEASE BE ADVISED that it is set to disabled for blogs that have not made any replies but it will turn ON if you reply with that blog in the future.! i just tested it with my main, which was greyed out but it turned on the moment i left a test reply

so couple of clarifications. comments are disabled as default for primary blogs that have their likes disabled. they are seemingly enabled for all other blogs that have replied to posts

@alilcajun @aralioideae

you can't just put the work of someone who's currently trying to eradicate trans people on display without being questioned about it, especially if you claim to care about us.

touch grass bingo!

text and an extended explanation and some relevant links below the cut

The idea of this is you can brag online for clout for doing simple little nice things. So, post pics as you complete it and link back to this post!

And please save the pic and fill yours out by crossing off squares as you go, but

Or some might feel dox-y (maybe the clouds are real specific today and will reveal where you live) so you can describe it (or lie, but do it legit for you).

Have fun!

Clothing company Patagonia is currently sueing drag queen Pattie Gonia for "irreparable” harm to their brand.

To be clear; Pattie named herself after the region in South America.

So Pattie is asking people to politely ask Patagonia to drop the lawsuit.

I'm extending the invitation to all of you, because sueing a drag queen for 'infringement' in the current political cultural landscape is vile. Especially a drag queen who has raised millions of dollars for non-profits, uses her platform to raise awareness for climate activism, and fully aligns with Patagonia's apparent climate-conscious mission statement.

They're claiming they're sueing for $1. They're actually asking her to stop using her name, and pay over $1 million in legal fees. They're straight up harassing her.

In contrast, drag queen Jan Sport has a Jansport bag line. It's that easy to just... work with a queen.

Anyway. Be respectful(ish), but feel free to be annoying on Patagnoia's socials, asking them to 'DROP THE LAWSUIT'

Just canceled my account (not that I used it that much). But I won’t permit this. Via @unaminh.bsky.social:

IMPORTANT: For any artists/writers/etc etc, using Linktree to point people to their work, from 5 July, they'll be feeding all imagery you use on your landing page into DALL-E by OpenAI.

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).

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.