Remember when Terry played the Joker like a fiddle cause I sure do
Joker status: [ ] Told [ ] Told like a bitch [X] Batman: The Brave And The Told
Terry is literally what bruce would’ve been if his parents didn’t die. Well either that or terry got his sense of humor from his mom.
I love Batman Beyond because it’s basically Spider-Man as Batman with a healthy dosage of cyberpunk.
The best part is this isn’t just Terry fucking with Joker, Terry realized after bats told him “Joker likes to talk” that he likes to talk too. So he decided to answer joker back with something Joker was never expecting. Joker could easily deal with the typical hero “you won’t get away with this” talk or someone being absolutely quiet. But mockery? taking the piss? Telling joker straight up “you ain’t shit?”
The commitment to dragging Murph’s ass when he’s not even in the building. Impeccable. (Also Jasper should have known better, that’s a clear set up for a cursing)
Aabria as a dm, choices have consequences. Enjoy the problems you made for yourself. Buahaha. Someone tries to use the rules to get out of their consequences. Technically that works and it slaps, alright, let’s try this shit.
Aabria as a player, choices have consequences and I’m gonna make that everyone’s problem. Unless I can get away with it on a technicality.
Lives by the sword, dies by the sword. Gotta respect it.
One thing I like about Aabria is the fact that she allows the players to do what they want socially and then she’s like, OK let’s run that all the way through. I’m thinking about Thorn giving Nana Ava the help action to intimidate his trusted friends mostly as a bit and then being told, congratulations, it worked. She feels deeply betrayed. I’m talking Rue forcing Wuvvy to burn the note and then Wuvvy going full battle faun at the next opportunity. I love bits, but also it can be fun for a DM to be like here is a big, steaming plate of the consequences of your actions.
Lord knows I love a bit, but the moment a mechanic is involved, it counts.
And I *love* a consequence (even more than a bit.)
Aabria, your tags deserve to be in plain sight. Your Mind. 👁️👁️
Yeah sure we’ve all binged a long fic, but have you ever read a WIP and followed someone’s life?
Tidbits of information - (“I graduated today!”) - and small joys (“It’s my birthday!”) and you get to be there to say “This chapter made me cry, happy birthday, thank you for gifting us this”.
I remember reading this fic of someone at the end of high school, older than me then. They seemed infinitely wise, spoke of their future career and getting into the college they wanted. I remember them posting on days they felt like nothing could bring them down - and on days the whole world did and it’s the aftermath of a hospital visit. Cancer, I think it was, their father. I got to the end of the story, I know their father was fine, but also they got to finish their WIP. I graduated three years later than them, still dutifully wrote thank you notes in every comment. I wonder if they remember me, or just the collective of people reading the story as it updates.
Four years ago I was into my first year of university, my first year of figuring out being out in public spaces. I made excuses as to why my name didn’t match my paperwork and read a fic on the train, the same five chapters over and over again for the next years as I thought the story abandoned. It updated this week after such a long hiatus, I left another thank you comment.
There’s an author I love, they update their stories like a clockwork. When they don’t, I check their blog, just to see if their doing alright, not because I feel like they owe me, just to ensure whether I better get out my laptop to write that really detailed university level essay chapter analysis to get them smiling when their day sucked.
And then, once, when I was 17, I read a fic that hadn’t updated in over a decade. I wasn’t even in primary school when it started posting. On the last chapter, I left a comment that, in retrospect, was horribly rambly and most likely full of grammar mistakes. The author replied and though I couldn’t see their face, I thought of them crying. They were married now, had children, and hadn’t thought about this fic in years. They went through their files again, found another half written chapter and an outline. I got two new chapters to read that year.
And then, recently, someone told me they got back into writing original fiction because of my comments. I get to read nearly weekly chapters.
I love binge reading a finished fic, but nothing is ever going to top the feeling of anticipation of waiting for a chapter, the pure joy when someone tells you I was done with this, but you made me think of it again, so this is for you.
Anyway, I think we should romanticize reading WIPs more, growing up alongside the authors writing the stories we love.
it’s really great when you can hyperfixate on your own story. however it’s not great when you decide to hyperfixate on your fictional city’s infrastructure instead of. you know. writing.
ALT
adding this under “comments that could either be a compliment or a sick burn”
I work with kids. These kids are at my program before and after school, and then some of them have sports/dance/music sometimes all of the above before they finally go home, eat dinner, and go to sleep. Then rinse and repeat everyday, and games and more classes on the weekend, etc.
I’m all for extracurriculars, but this turns into the teen who is not only in the school play, but they’re on the newspaper, the football team, and seven different clubs. In college they take double the courseloads, and then once they graduate…what?
They work themselves raw because they arent used to downtime. They’ve been told they can always be doing something, and they don’t know how to relax. This turns into the adult that has anxiety because there’s nothing left to clean, the adult that desperately wants to watch that TV show but can’t force themselves to sit long enough for it.
Then they turn into the moms and dads who spend all their free time ferrying their kids to extracurriculars.
Like, these kids don’t know what downtime is? I told a kid I did nothing last weekend, and he looked at me like I was crazy. He asked what I was doing this weekend and I said “Probably sleeping, mostly,” and he actually gasped. Then he rattled off a bunch of things I could do, to which I had to stop him.
“No, you don’t understand. I plan on sleeping. I’m booked.”
“But you could–”
“Nah. I’m just gonna rest.”
It was as if I had said a bad word or something. I asked what he does when he gets sick, and he says he goes to practice anyway. I asked him what he does if he doesn’t feel like going, and he said he goes anyway. I asked when he takes time to rest, and he said when he sleeps at night.
Bring back lazy Sundays. Bring back Saturday morning cartoons. Bring back the idea of relaxing and soaking in your day before moving into the next thing. Bring back the right to breathe, the right to rest.
Bring back mental health days, and taking a break. Bring back taking a walk or watching a show or setting a timer to remind yourself to stop cleaning and relax.
If you’re running at 100% all the time with no time to recharge, then your battery is going to die spectacularly, and probably at the worst possible time.
Mood
Society is trying to burn us all out. Tell society to fuck off.
Go take a fucking nap. You’ve more than earned it and you deserve it.
We HAVE to recharge. Our bodies, our minds, our everything requires it.
My dad told me when I was young that the way to take a vacation is to work on something different and I thought, and still think, that that’s the most obscene idea anyone’s ever told me to my face.
>a wild therapist has entered the chat
I can’t tell yall how much of my practice is teaching people - teenagers and adults - to do nothing. To stop. To rest. To turn off.
Folks are so resistant. A lot of the time, people don’t think they deserve it. A lot of the time they don’t know how. A lot of the time they don’t think they’re allowed.
I only have my own experience to pull from. I spend a huge amount of my time on fucking around. Lazing. Chilling. Sloth. It drives my family CRAZY that I don’t care to push that hard. I just don’t. I never have. I love it and I prioritize it. Fuck everyone else. I used to feel bad about that and sometimes still do.
But last night I was at My Local working on catching up on my patient notes so I could have my whole weekend off to sleep late and write fics and recover from the week with nothing more pressing than laundry and the server I’ve known for a decade was like “Keep working hard, it’s what you do.”
And I said “Yeah, thanks!” Because I do work hard.
How much time I take to myself doesn’t negate the hard work I do. In fact? The amount of time I take is why I can work so hard.
Everyone around me is burning out. Everyone. A big part of why is because they don’t feel like they’re allowed to take that time.
Fuck that.
You hear me? Fuck. That.
If your space is clean of the kind of mess that will attract insects and it can wait? Let it wait. You need to rest. Because the rest is what lets you work hard.
You only have so many spoons. You will run out if you don’t let yourself take the time to replenish.
It’s not a matter of deserving. It’s a matter of necessity.
ALT
ALT
ALT
