There Is No Neutral Ground

… A shrouded figure moves through a graveyard in the light of a lantern, swinging in the tug of no breeze. As they go, a whisper follows them, telling a tale of lost things, of shattered pride, and of dreams that never died.

… they raise their hand, with the echo of someone else in their bones. As their fingertips gently brush against the ghostly face before them, their heart aches with someone else’s grief.

… Steam rises from the tea cup as the old woman pushes it towards the flickering shadow sitting across the kitchen table. She smiles her gentlest smile, and waits for it to speak.

Hey so, I recreated the character sheet from the Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay video. It’s got layers that you can turn on or off to make it look like you are selecting the different options. It’s also got a little clickable option so you can change the gender ID on the bottom left to match your choice. I’ve also added Other as a gender choice [it wasn’t in the demo] for those NB gamers/PCs and if you wanna change that to say Non-Binary/Third/Trans/etc the font I used is called Bahnschrift SemiBold & SemiLight. I don’t have access to Illustrator so I couldn’t make fillable version with all the different combinations of stuff ticked, unfortunately. The section where the portrait goes has it’s own folder so you can draw or add your PC with a straight edge cutoff.

Like, I don’t judge kids who enjoy Fortnite. My little cousin plays Fortnite.

But last week, my little cousin also stole his mother’s credit card and spent about a month’s salary on microtransactions without his parents’ knowledge.

Modern gaming has become vile and predatory in ways that we didn’t have to deal with as children.

Trading card packets.

My favourite pokemon was a fucking charizard. And I was into pokemon from the beginning. A 1st edition charizard? 130 dollars. Attempts to buy it via packs? Hundreds of dollars.

80s kids! Remember these?

Remember how you filled them one pack at a time? 

In digging up this image, I found out that the two companies I remember putting these things out had been doing it for decades before, just for sports stuff.

As you can see, I’ve been a bit last minute in sharing some recent comic ops –– I live in Australia and sleep on an opposite schedule from North America, which means a miss a lot of these when they’re going around social media.

When Nott stole from a guest: nothing happened When Vex stole from a guest: she was mercilessly attacked on reddit, twitter, called a greedy bitch and had her alignment changed

When Fjord threatened Caleb with his sword because he was stealing scrolls during a mission: everyone called it a shippy sexually charged moment.  When Jester and Caleb disagreed over money management: she was called a spoiled selfish brat who had humiliated him

When Molly slapped Caleb out of a panic attack and when he got uncomfortably close to his personal space: it was called a sexy shippy moment When Jester insisted to check Fjord’s abs with a medicine check to solve part of the orb mystery (after Caleb’s insistence): everyone claimed it was gross creepy groping 

When Scanlan modified several allies’ memories to try to make them fall for him or get him drugs: it was all for laughs and giggles or interesting character choices that would eventually lead to his redemption When Jester denied the Traveler’s suggestion that she use magic to get a boy to like her: she’s suddenly seriously 100% considering roofying Fjord to get him to bed

When Vax waxed poetic through long conversation with his two romantic interests: it was all swoons and heartfelt moments the fandom wrote thousands of words worth of meta about When Jester quietly fumes over being jealous of an apparent romantic rival in the background: she’s stealing the spotlight and being catty and manipulative over someone she has no claim over

When Fjord cut off a man’s hand to take off his genie-bracelet: it was a badass and dark moment that had everyone speculating about his alignment When Jester tattooed a little smiley face on a sailor: she’s suddenly an abuser branding her victims like a r*pist

So I am really honestly sorry for all the people who have actual and real reasons to be critical of Laura’s character and who are genuinely uncomfortable with some of her decisions, but the double standard has rendered me unable to take most of those claims seriously or lightly because they exist within a context where the trend is to demonize female characters over things their male counterparts are celebrated for. 

me, an intelectual: Jackie refused to sit down when Dum Dum told him so because he’s wearing a belt covered in brads on his entire ass for some reason