Basking in the experience of being a player again after being a forever DM for a while and the new DM is a first time DM and me watching with glee in real time as newbie DM experiences the DM struggle of all the players latching onto a throwaway NPC and interrogating the NPC and DM about their life.
Also laughing evilly as newbie DM experiences the specific DM hell of offhandedly mentioning a location or person for Flavor and then the players immediately latch onto that crumb and ask what the place's name is how far away is it is there any cool treasure to find there etc etc and you can tell poor DM did NOT have a name prepared.
She mentioned a dangerous cave and immediately all of us are like 'where's the cave what is the cave called what kind of monsters are in the cave' and her briefly buffering in her mental load time then saying "Um the cave is called... Death... Crevice. Yeah it's called death crevice, and nobody sent to it has ever returned. There's probably a mountain of dead bodies in there."
Guess where I want to go, of course. Death Crevice. Let me into the Death Crevice where I'm certain we'll either TPK or almost TPK. As a player I am a MENACE that routinely causes my DMs to sigh so wearily and hold their face in their hands at my antics. It's great I highly recommend.
TTRPGS have a win condition, that win condition being can I make my DM laugh or have them sighing at me in disappointment as I do something ill-advised. The win condition is making the DM feel like we care about the world they're crafting, and often that involves me purposely doing something that could start a dangerous encounter, because then I can nudge the other players into NOT BEING PASSIVE.
It's a struggle being a yapper who wants everyone to feel included but I keep ending up with groups where basically everyone else is pretty passive and shy and don't want the spotlight on them, they say it's ok if I'm leading the team and initiating interactions but I get self conscious when I'm the only one talking for too long and I feeeeel baaaad like please talk with me please show that you're engaged and want to be here and don't feel snubbed or left out. It's a collaborative game please Interact With The Game so I'm not the only one yapping.
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The White Audacity of this asshole racist girl my partner knows of who upon hearing that my partner doesn't like Astarion retorted with the white racist platitude of 'well would you feel the same way if he was Black?' and therefore showing her whole racist ass because fundamentally Astarion is a White man and making him Black not only fundamentally changes the tone of his character drastically, but if he was Black I can guarantee he would not be the fanbase and devteam's special favorite uwu boy. Because racism.
Rant ahead, TLDR is that Astarion would not be the fan favorite if he was Black. Because racism and antiblackness are very prevalent in the world and therefore characters with dark skin get ignored and written off and overly criticized.
Because Wyll exists, and he is Black, and all of his positive and endearing traits get written off as boring or have him get diminished and then desexualized by people who think calling a Black man wholesome is a compliment, and all those positive traits of Wyll's get taken (stolen really) and superimposed onto Astarion by people who want the romantic archetypal romance Wyll offers but with the pale white vampire man. I mean literally there are mods that steal Wyll's dance romance scene to give it to Astarion!!!
It doesn't get more obvious than that, that people would love Wyll's personality and story if he were a white man, but because he's Black, they all of a sudden find him boring and uninteresting and too wholesome to be compelling. It's a form of antiblackness.
It's the racist biases in the developers scrapping then undercooking Wyll's character arc and not giving him agency in his whole story while giving Astarion (who already has the most content of the companion characters) MORE content. It's the racist bias of taking the white vampire man's trauma more seriously when he's an enslaved man, but glossing over and often making fun of the fact that the Black man is also enslaved via a warlock pact where the white-coded slave-i-mean-pact holder woman dehumanizes him by literally inflicting bodily trauma on him (altering his appearance against his will so he looks devilish) while yanking on an invisible chain linked to him and calling him her pet.
See how people view Cazador versus Mizora. Cazador by and large is disliked and/or hated both in game and by the fanbase. But Mizora? Mizora is a flirty hot sexy demon lady who you can have a one night stand with in game even if you are in a relationship with Wyll! Why is sleeping with Mizora even an option if you are with Wyll?!?! He of course breaks up with you for doing that, because why the fuck would you sleep with his tormentor if you're dating him except to torment him more?!
See how the dev team trivialized Wyll's relationship with Mizora and makes it a punchline akin to Mizora being a toxic girlfriend instead of someone who literally enslaved Wyll. The way they had Wyll get gifted a framed picture of Mizora in one of the shorts. The way so much official artwork of Wyll inextricably ties him to Mizora by having her hand creepily on his shoulder.
See the way in game that Wyll is victim-blamed for his pact, even though he was 17 at the time of making it, even though he was misled about the terms and consequences; he agreed to the pact because he wanted the power to save people's lives! He is an altruistic hero type who was lied to by someone he wanted help from! And he was punished for it, sent away by his father in shame for it because the pact prevented him from explaining himself. The way you cannot share sympathy or comfort him after Mizora tortures him and alters his appearance to be devilish.
The way that Wyll's one slightly mean comment about a rat diet towards Astarion gets him hate and has people writing him off based on that One Quip irrespective of how the entire rest of his characterization plays out. Meanwhile, Astarion is actively racist towards gnomes (and you can't call him out on it in game), is snarky and enables the player to be an evil asshole, is overall not a nice person to deal with, but his bad traits and mean lines get excused because he's so tormented and traumatized from being trapped in the Cazador vampire torment nexus for so long. Traumatized as Astarion is, I don't think that justifies his weird and arbitrary racism towards gnomes???
It's fine to admit your fav has racist biases, because everyone has racist biases it came free with living in a racist society. See Shadowheart being racist towards Lae'zel for being githyanki. See Lae'zel being racist to anyone not githyanki until she learns to be better about it. See how the drow characters both experience racial prejudice against them and also often are racist themselves. Like, there is so much fantasy racism going on in the Forgotten Realms. Pretty baked into it.
Astarion is a well-developed character, sure. He has depth and reason why he is the way he is. And the fact that he is a pale vampire is intrinsic to him. He would not be the fan favorite if he was a Black man, because we've already seen how people treat the one Black man companion, and that is to say that the one Black man gets treated badly and written off because the color of his skin somehow entirely diminishes any interest he has. Because, you know, racist biases and all that.
So yeah, Astarion couldn't be Black and still be a fan favorite because people are racist and have prejudices against Black people. Not saying you can't hit him with the melanin beam if you want tho, that's up to you, I'm not your mom I can't tell you what to do, if making the fan favorite vampire character have a different headcanon look brings you joy you can do it all you want.
Few years back (damn I checked and this goes back to 2020 jfc. Like. Before I changed my main username everywhere, before I changed my name even. Wild how time goes.) I did some hair studies and 'curl bombed' various characters of mine because I realized the effects of my internalized biases due to my whitenesst. I decided they would not in fact have straight hair like I originally drew them with, and so I did studies involving giving them different types of curly hair
and it's only recently I realize I forgot to include my beloved Vrei amongst my roster of characters deserving of the curl bomb treatment! I gotta draw her with curly hair options!!!
I need to throw the curl bomb at Vrei!!!
Threw together a progression of Vrei from her inception at 2018 to my most recent drawing of her which is from last month aka July 2026 and you can see the utter lack of curls I have given her which is an absolute travesty that I MUST amend.
Feel free to throw curly hair hairstyle suggestions my way to try on Vrei as I load this curl bomb grenade and pull the pin
All those interview tips and tricks advice blogs and videos are lying I stg cuz so far not a single interview I've done this month has asked me about myself or even allowed space for me to ask questions at the end, they were always so straight to the point asking what tasks I'm capable of/trained to do that are part of the job, asking my weekday availability, what my previous job was, as if the implication is that they'll somehow hire me immediately even when that is not the case.
Maybe it's because I'm applying to places that aren't the target cushy office type job that a lot of interview tips seem to apply to. Like I'm actually applying to places where it's clear they're hiring Urgently so they're expediting the interview process. Listen I just want an hourly paid job that lets me have Sundays off and pays more than the pitiful amount I get rn and I don't think that's too much to ask
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A big giant Fuck You to every business and job position and thing that requires paperwork that demands I write down my designated sex on that paperwork when my sex and/or gender have nothing to do with my capability to perform a job adequately. I think asking for someone's sex or gender on job applications should count as gender discrimination and therefore be illegal because society is indeed misogynistic and transphobic and having that arbitrary F or M mark can out me as a queer because my name and face doesn't match the standard for what my legal designation is, and allows the hiring manager to write me off as a Woman and discount my capabilities because of that F designation.
Just. Take that part off of your paperwork. Omit that question. Take it off our IDs too. We don't need the government tracking our fucking assigned sexes. Stop asking for sex and/or gender on paperwooooork!!!!!
And if it's paperwork for medical stuff, it still shouldn't be asking for sex imo! I don't care if it's clunkier, it is more accurate to ask if someone has ovaries or testes, just ask directly if the patient has a penis or vagina in order to inform their care instead of taking an arbitrary F/M sex designation and extrapolating from that. Because the ovaries/testes penis/vagina clarification gives far more accurate information than F or M, because even if you are designated Female, that doesn't mean you have all those parts! Designated F for legal sex could be a child-free woman who got a hysterectomy so she doesn't have a uterus anymore. Could be a trans man who had a phalloplasty and so he doesn't have a uterus or vagina anymore. Could be one of a myriad of intersex variations where someone has ambiguous crotch parts and possibly has both ovaries and testes or has neither, someone born without a uterus, or someone with a hormonal/endocrine condition so that they had mixed sex traits develop in puberty (like PCOS/PMOS). Could be a trans woman who got a orchiectomy and vaginoplasty and legally changed her government designation to match. There's so many variations that that little F on your ID is almost completely useless except to find a way to discriminate against you.
Take sex designations off our legal documents it's not necessary and is an easy route to discriminate
Can we talk about how the very widespread proliferation of AAVE terminology and maliciously ignorant mislabeling of such terminology as internet speak/gen z lingo/gay speak treats this manner of speaking as inherently 'lesser' than 'standard english' in a way where it is both shameful and trendy because it's used as a punchline and cheap trend. The way people online assume terms originating from AAVE are stupid gen z slang (ageism) or that it's all inherently gay sounding (hello homophobia). The way I have to endure hearing European lily white gay men using AAVE terms as if they're just commonplace gay slang and not, you know, from Black Americans. Like no little gay Irish guy I don't think you should so flippantly be throwing around 'unc' and 'chopped' and 'kiki' and other such terms when it's clear you assume it's just gay slang and don't know the origins or the actual meanings and grammar.
The way that Black people's faces are so often used for memes and treated as inherently more funny and emotive than non-Black people, and if you think about it long enough you realize this is a remnant of a long-standing culture of Black people only being represented in western media via minstrel shows of white people doing blackface and doing comedy acts that openly mock and stereotype Black people. The way that in order to get recognition and make a living in entertainment, Black people also had to participate in this minstrelsy act of reinforcing the negative stereotypes about themselves, and this type of stereotype reinforcing excuse for comedy can be found even today.
The way that people will mis-use AAVE slang in order to sound funny and make jokes, which covertly communicates they think a certain way about the people who predominantly use that terminology aka how they see Black people. Because a lot of the jokes that misuse AAVE are also classist by nature, treating AAVE and American Southern accents as sounding less intelligent.
The way I see the latest trends of misusing and misappropriating the current trendy AAVE slang and how every time a term from AAVE goes viral the meaning of that term gets twisted and warped and watered down by the non-black people using that word because they assume it's just a funny internet meme. Seeing that happen a lot lately with the term 'Unc' where people are throwing the term around to mean a stupid and/or elderly person and giving it far more negative connotation than it originally had.
See what they did to Woke. How racists took that term and turned it into a bad thing, used it as the butt of their jokes, characterized things that are 'woke' as 'liberal bullshit' they love to hate.
Woke was originally about being aware of the antiblackness and racism in the world around you. Woke has and always will be about being aware of the injustices around you. Can y'all quit using it like a stand in for the N word you wanna say so badly.
I think far too many people have completely forgotten or never learned that making racist jokes and saying the N word are examples of OVERT anti-blackness and racism, absolutely not excusable or justifiable, there is no plausible deniability.
Using the N word has been an overt display of antiblackness and white supremacy for DECADES
Loudly tapping the sign that says 'using the N word if you're not Black is not acceptable and hasn't ever been acceptable because it has always been meant as a word to harm Black people.'
Also tapping the sign that says 'calling Black people monkeys or any other kind of animal or degrading thing is inherently racist and shows that you see Black people as lesser'
The way that complaints about racism and antiblackness get treated as an American problem when it is a worldwide problem and America is just a side effect of long-standing European racism. America has just distilled it down into a particularly heinous flavor. Racism is racism no matter the country.
