pish-anty cough-ass

Hello, Tumblr. I cooked up some bullshit for you. In this post I would like to finally answer the question we’ve all been dying to know: would Eric Cartman ship Shadowzel? 

If you are unaware, Shadowzel is the ship between Shadowheart and Lae Zel from Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m not really into BG3 ships, but from my layman’s knowledge it’s a little toxic and often written as enemies or rivals to lovers, due to the fight between Shadowheart and Lae Zel at camp. 

Now what does Eric Cartman have to do with this? I’m glad you asked.

Eric(a) Cartman plays BG3! This is a plot point in the Panderverse special. Panderverse Cartman has the exact same personality as regular Cartman, except she lives in a universe where everyone is a diverse woman, according to her counterpart’s recollection of his visions of this universe. Both of these characters are the same person, and regular Cartman has a love of D&D, LARP, and other fantasy rpgs like Warcraft (S6E13, SOT, S10E8, S23E7). It can be assumed that regular Cartman would also play BG3, there’s really no reason that this would be a trait exclusive to Erica, because they are the same person.

Seeing that Eric Cartman also played one of my favorite games was a terrifying experience actually. He could be in my fandom spaces and I wouldn’t even know. I’ve thought a lot about what kind of player he’d be, and what kind of DM (in terms of standard D&D, he’s a DM in S23E7). The obvious choice is that he’d only play Durge murderhobo runs and kill any of the companions he didn’t like, but he has said himself (in S23E7) that he heavily prefers story-centric campaigns, so I doubt he’d be doing anything to ruin the story for himself like that. No. He’s got to be invested, especially so if Erica was upset about her save file not transferring between universes. This is where I started considering the horrifying possibility of Eric Cartman engaging in traditional fandom activities…

But isn’t Cartman homophobic? This would surely disqualify him from shipping Shadowzel, as it is a WLW ship. The answer to this question is surprisingly no. Cartman rarely talks about queer people in general, as most of the queerphobia in the show is reserved to Mr. Garrison’s character (heavily closeted homosexual). The main episode people bring up in favor of Cartman is homophobic theory is S1E4, where Cartman makes fun of Stan for his dog Sparky being gay. In this same episode he says “No way, dude. My mom says God hates gat people.” Cartman is an 8 year old in this episode (he turns 9 only six episodes later actually) and just parroting what his mom tells him. As early as S5E2, Cartman has grown past this. He participates in the protest against discrimination towards his Mountain Scouts leader, Big Gay Al, on the basis of his sexuality with his friends. People also bring up the fact that he uses the F slur sporadically through seasons 1-13. In S13E12 every single character in the show says it 100 fucking times and it was established in-universe that none of the kids, including Cartman, use it towards queer people, instead as an insult to people who are annoying and disruptive. After the mixed reception to that episode, the word has mostly disappeared from the show as a whole. You can ignore this entire paragraph because Cartman himself has directly stated his opinions on this in S19E6. 

There’s no catch or added context to this one, you can watch the episode yourself.

Since we have established that Cartman is not homophobic, what is there to suggest that he might be interested in shipping? There are actually two episodes about this. The entire plot of S16E7 is Cartman shipping Tolkien with the new girl, Nicole, and meddling with things to get them together. He even cries over their temporary breakup with Butters. Cartman is … very, very invested in his ships. Nicolkien is not even the first ship he’s made canon, apparently he shipped two background characters named Luke and Maria. The second Cartman shipping episode is S19E6. This is the legendary yaoi episode, where Cartman takes the role of the stereotypical deranged fujoshi (though he’s a fudanshi instead obv). No, I’m not kidding. Watch it for yourself. He becomes extremely invested in the ship between Tweek and Craig. Cartman made Creek canon. 

He keeps the ships he’s forced together in a scrapbook. You can see it better in S16E7 if you watch it yourself. I chose this picture because he’s being cute and I MUST push the adorable Cartman agenda.

Cartman plays BG3, is not homophobic, and is heavily invested in both queer and straight ships, so the idea that he would ship Shadowzel is clearly possible. But why Shadowzel specifically? Cartman’s shipping practices in his ‘real life’ are pure fluff. He becomes upset over any conflict. But in fiction, Cartman’s ships are as toxic as can be. In S13E10, Cartman invents a female persona called Bad Irene and roleplays a love triangle with Kyle and Stan’s personas. It’s extremely overdramatic and messy as hell. She rejects both her lovers by saying her one true love is abortion. I’m not kidding. I can not describe Bad Irene to you please just watch the episode. Cartman has also shipped himself with his own enemy/rival before, in S16E7 (again) Cartman spreads the lie that he and Kyle are a couple so Kyle won’t be able to interfere with Nicole/Tolkien, as Kyle has a crush on Nicole. Cartman performs a love song directed to Kyle in front of an entire stadium of people. 

Including this screenshot because I think it’s REALLY funny. While Cartman doesn’t really want to date Kyle in the show (yes I know Kyman has basis but it isn’t canon don’t kill me ok), he seems to be having a lot of fun / putting in a lot of effort into roleplaying it. Much like the relationships he portrays when he’s playing pretend, Shadowzel is a bit toxic, messy, and it is usually written as rivals or enemies to lovers as I mentioned earlier. Of all of the BG3 ships, I think this one would be the one Cartman is most interested in. If you can think of a better one, please tell me. I don’t know much about BG3 shipping because my favorite is the Emperor and he has zero popular pairings lmao.

It is thus my humble conclusion that Eric Cartman WOULD in fact ship Shadowzel. He might even doxx you if you disagree with it publicly. Thats all, goodbye Tumblr.

When I turned 17, we ordered a cake at the grocery store for my party, as we’d done many times before. If you wanted something written on the cake you’d write it into a section of the order form. We requested, very simply, “Happy Birthday Courtney”. When we went to pick it up the day of the party, this is what we got.

The bakery employees had absolutely no explanation for this. The order form, attached to the box, very clearly did not contain any of those extra names. Whomever had done the writing was no longer in, so there was no one to ask how this had happened. The fact that the name ‘Juan’ is misspelled bewilders me to this day. (I’ve never seen ‘Miley’ without the E, either, but it’s believable that someone might spell it that way.) Did this cake slip in from an alternate universe where I’m one quarter of a set of Hispanic quadruplets? Dyslexic Hispanic quadruplets, maybe?

This cake became the focal point of my party. At least two of my friends regularly called me ‘Courtney Mily Jaun Pablo’ for years to come. My siblings and I still reference it sometimes, eleven years later. It is probably the funniest thing ever to occur at any birthday celebration of my life, and may well remain so for the rest of my days.

No One Like You

now, it took us a while to realise it meant "(there is) no one like you". at first, we all parsed it as a botched "no one like(s) you"

Five days of embroidering. I took some inspiration from Scandinavian folk art and plan to add flowers and runes.

It’s my first time embroidering more than just the eyes on a teddy bear so please be kind, but am I supposed to layer the thread even more? Because I feel like there are a lot of holes but I’m also using very thick thread that sort of push the existing thread out of the way when I try to layer. I read up on different “color fill” techniques but none of them seem to quite work.

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Deadeye Navigator

People inside these things are strapped in like in a fighter jet seat. So the freefall and the flip (which, admittedly, usually doesn't happen) might not be very comfortable, but completely safe.

The big advantages of these free-fall lifeboats is that you can deploy them in any weather and even when a ship is listing heavily.