Magpie collection

My favorite thing about Eliot Spencer is how invested he gets in whatever job/role he’s doing for the con. He has to play a caterer? He will give you a gourmet menu and poach some pears for dessert. He has to play a minor league baseball player? He will hit a home run and he will be excited when the local deli names a sandwich after him. He has to play a police officer? He will make Hardison respond to a call that’s nearby because there might be kids in that house. Eliot commits.

that’s so interesting because he is ALWAYS freaking out at how deeply Hardison commits to his characters.

I think there are key differences in how Eliot and Hardison over-invest in their roles, which is why Eliot fusses at Hardison about it without equating it to what he does himself. (Note: I’m focusing on original series only here.)

Eliot gets over-absorbed because he gets really into what his character does (chef, baseball player, etc.) and loses focus on what the con is trying to accomplish, which isn’t helpful but tends to add authenticity to his individual role. Eliot’s main risk is getting so immersed that he forgets it’s just a con and tries to be that persona rather than doing just enough to fool the mark. He may have some broad-strokes backstory in his head in case someone asks, but his main way to sell his character is just to play the role to the hilt in the current moment. (Prior to the team, he didn’t have a hacker or do long cons, so his main grifting option was to keep things simple, play the role, improv as needed, and hope no one asked too many questions before he finished the job. And be prepared to punch his way out if they did.)

Hardison doesn’t forget he’s playing a role. The part he overdoes is building an “interesting” (often meaning complicated) role and tending to over-act, which tends reduce the authenticity of his performance. The obvious example is “The Ice Man Job,” but it’s the same thing with the overall con in “The Gold Job”–he’s thought out every backstory detail and how to deliver it to the mark, but he lays on the perfectly constructed backstory too hard without reading when to dial back the complexity or exposition. (Prior to the team, it’s implied that he did most of his criminal activity on-line rather than in-person, so the exhaustive planning and documentation was his practical grifting approach.)

If you assign Eliot to be a chef, he’s gonna be a chef. He’ll get distracted from the con by the fact that they’re running out of onions and he just can’t get the flavor of this sauce quite right, but everyone around him will believe he’s a chef. If you ask him where he went to culinary school, he’ll glare at you and maybe throw out some sparse details (trusting Hardison to back it up if anyone tries to check it)–dig too far, and he’s probably gonna be relying on dodging questions or having Hardison in his ear feeding him backstory details.

If you assign Hardison to be a chef, he’s going to have thought out and documented every detail of his backstory, researched his character’s favorite recipes so he can discuss them in detail, etc. You ask him something–anything–about his character and he’ll answer in such detail that your head will spin. But if you tell him the kitchen’s down to its last onion and ask what he wants you to do about that, he’ll be caught completely by surprise and flummoxed about what to do (unless Eliot is in his ear telling him who to send on a supply run to and what menu items to scratch in the meantime).

@onyxbird, I love this distinction, thank you!! What I’m hearing from your lovely meta is that Eliot gets so stressed about Hardison overcompensating. if you want to lie, stick as close to the truth as possible, don’t give out too many explanations, and act casual. BE casual. But Hardison has to constantly prove how smart he is, how prepared he is, how well he fits in–so he automatically stands out. Online you need receipts all the time, but in real life you can trust non verbal cues.

Can I point out?

Oh no

The difference is Hardison is just making up characters. It’s fiction to him, here’s what a millionaire diamond smuggler would be like, here’s a fun adventure story to tell.

But Eliot is discovering different people he could have been. In another life he could have been the minor league baseball star, the country singer, the chef, the gym teacher. And just for a little whole he gets to be that other person, maybe a better person, maybe a happier person. Of course he gets wrapped up in it, and of course it’s hard for him to have to stop being that version of himself. What if things had been different. What if he hadn’t done what he’d done. What if he could just be this instead.

@mj–spooks

@gnar-slabdash how very fucking dare you be so so correct and break my heart like this 😭😭😭

I want to point out also that when Hardison has No Time To Prepare– like mile high job, or bank shot job, he does great! he goes with the flow, a little nervously, but he grifts solidly. A little awkward, but normal-human-levels of awkwardness, people go “oh yeah, Teme the violinist is just Like That” he gets the mark’s company to throw him a birthday party! he wins a court case! It’s only when he has time to plan ahead of time that things get a little iffy– the difference between a stilted, scripted skit and solid improv. you assign Hardison to be a chef, and you get a mess. but If Someone needs to be a chef and Eliot’s not there and you shove Hardison in the kitchen, I believe he could make it…at least long enough to channel Eliot, shout ‘who put raw onions in this?’ and run while everyone’s distracted.

march moodboard

i think a big reason that I get frustrated with the "liberals have never made anybody's lives better" is that in the US it used to be legal for insurance companies to charge you more if you were sick or even just straight up deny you the ability to sign up for them if you already had a "pre-existing condition", and this was only stopped by the passage of the ACA during Obama's term. but a lot of people who talk about politics on here are too young to really be affected by that since they would have been on their parents insurance (which the ACA required insurers extend until you're 26). and this was all done via politicking and not blowing up insurance CEOs mansions or whatever.

I'm not saying that the ACA fixed insurance forever, god no. but "you can't deny someone insurance for being sick" is a massive change and people don't realize it!

You are underselling the change. Let us recall "rescission," where as soon as it turned out that someone had an expensive medical condition, the insurance company would start coming through their medical history looking for ways to invent a preexisting condition and revoke their coverage.

It really frightens me if kids don't know about how bad the US insurance system used to be.

My dad didn't have any health insurance in his 40s, because he was a freelancer and his (Frankly not bad at all) existing health issues allowed insurunace to fully deny him.

When his girlfriend was dying of cancer they had to have a long discussion about what they'd do when she hit her insurance's lifetime coverage limit and they would no longer cover her cancer care.

People should understand that it was Obama and the Democrats who stopped that kind of thing.

Yeah the way to avoid that shit was to get a group plan through your employer, without that insurance was unaffordable/worthless

And even those group plans were not reliable unless they were huge. I know someone who worked for a smallish company. About 100 people. One of their workers had a child with hemophilia. Required VERY expensive regular infusions to treat. When renewal time came around, the insurance company gave the company management a choice: They could either exclude hemophilia from the plan or double their premium. They got the (Democratic) state insurance commissioner and their (Democratic) state legislator involved and the insurers eventually backed down. But it could have gone the other way. The real solution is a single insurance pool that includes everyone.

Also: medical transition or a gender dysphoria diagnosis could be a preexisting condition.

I was denied insurance outright for having a high BMI and a thyroid condition, despite being in excellent health at the time. Them not being able to do this anymore is huge, actually.

So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see “John knew that...” in prose writing I immediately think “how?  How does he know it?”  Interrogate your witnesses.  Cross-examine them.  Make them explain their reasoning.  It pays dividends.

All of this, but also feels/felt. My editor has forbidden me from using those and it’s forced me to stretch my skills.

This is your "show not tell" advice explained!

Spot on 😆

worried that thing you put in your art or writing or game or music is too self-indulgent, too self-referential, too niche for anyone but yourself? fear not! you can do whatever you want forever. and you should.

a clip from my new comedy special (x)

Counter argument: Immortal, invisible, malevolent mouse

Ring slips around mouse’s neck and is gone.

The rest of the movie is just the 9 Nazgul trying to capture the mouse while the eye of Sauron watches an extended game of Mouse Trap unfolding before him.

Sorry to go off topic but I have to point out that “Immortal Invisible malevolent mouse” matches perfectly to the tune of the hymn “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise”

The Pacific Ocean is huge.

If they make an earth flag it should be of this angle to piss off the most amount of people

None Earth with South New Zealand

The amount of time you have to spend on this website to still remember the Deep Lore like None Pizza with Left Beef, only to apply it to this post. Truly, boggling.

This gets halfway there, but not all the way. So, just to get us the rest of the way there -

Chronic illness and disability are coming for you all. Yes, you. It's not "someone" who is going to "do everything right" (wtf does that even mean?). You are going to eat right, exercise, sleep enough, do whatever it is that you consider protects you like some magic ritual from being disabled and it is still coming for you one way or another as you get older. So whatever you tell yourself about disability and disabled people that lets you sleep at night thinking that that'll never be you? You can throw that safety blanket out the window, because it's not true. Disability and chronic illness come for everyone eventually, it's just that some of us lose the lottery early, which is why everyone should start being a whole lot more supportive about disability rights.

good read for teachers.

I’ve been yelling this for years

Hi yall, author of the piece here. Medium instituted a pay wall so here is a link to access it for free:

Being into Fallout 4 era ghouls is fine and all but it's not monsterfuckery. They're literally just humans with skin conditions and minor facial injuries. 'This entirely human man with Hollywood bone structure is missing exterior nose cartilage and has advanced eczema' =\= Monster.

Get back to me when you're hitting up super mutants and deathclaws, ya filthy casuals.

if people keep including normal human-looking vampires in their monsterfucker categories i'm allowed to say a 200 year old irradiated half-immortal man with no nose counts as entry-level monster too ;)

Idk man I don't think normal human looking vampires count as monster fucking either. They're still just guys. People. Like that's the point right

why can't they be both like isn't that half of all stories about monsters, is that they were human but became something More and yet we still write stories about them still being people and we keep loving them and it's fine

i count human-lookin monsters as like. entry-level for monsterfucking. yeah i'm into WAY WEIRDER but there's still that monsterous FLAVOR, that more-than-human, that stark and often dangerous difference. ghouls count AND they are people. it is both

#are... are we gatekeeping the monsterfucking#why are we doing that#the vampire might be pretty but an undead predator using you as their personal sippy cup is still a monster at the end of the day#i'll grant that the ghoul's KIND OF a grey area but like he's an irradiated mutant. still othered as monsters in the genre. still counts#yall confusing 'humanoid' with 'human' they ain't the same lol#the question of 'is this creature truly monstrous or a man who's been ostracized and othered by society' is worth exploring and often is#but that wasn't the question on offer#/soapbox

ikr something y'all should know about me, i am gonna always try to be the OPPOSITE of a gatekeeper. do I PERSONALLY count pretty human-lookin vampires when i think of monsters I'M PERSONALLY into? no. my monsters usually have more tails and claws and wings going on. horns MINIMUM. but some one dipping their toes into the monster genre with vampires and ghouls ain't gonna bother me, i will welcome that. because it's all the same ways we approach monsters, yes? because ghouls CAN BE monsters, they go feral - we see this OFTEN in canon, there are many perfectly normal ghouls who "are just people with different skin" but they OFTEN become something much worse.

so yeah i'm not gonna gatekeep and i will keep those doors open for everyone who can love something changed so deeply they stop being fully human, cause that shit rocks and is under a wider monsterfucker umbrella that we're ALL UNDER even if these folks aren't into tentacles and whatnot yet. let them have the starter kit characters it's fine and good

Monster-fuckery is a spectrum of desires and wish fulfillment, and we should all be holding hands in this club.

Granted, some of us might be holding more hands than others, but hey, whatever floats your eldritch boat.

ZENDAYA

photographed at the ‘Challengers’ premiere in Los Angeles — April 17, 2024

Speaking of therapy, I say, as though we're old friends, and you're not a stranger trapped in this metaphorical elevator with me and you can hear the suspension wires starting to fray.

I've been doing a lot of work recently that's focused on imposter syndrome and the feeling that no matter how well or how much I do, I'm not good enough. That I'm somehow tricking everyone into thinking my work is actually good.

Some days it's a minor niggle in my head that I can gentle and soothe with logic and affirmations. Or smother, depending on the mood. Other times it's loud and all-consuming and the mental anguish it causes me is so real I can feel it twitching in my muscles. This desperate fight-or-flight instinct with nowhere to go and nothing to fight but myself.

Anyway, because I'm several types of Mentally Unwell™, I was switching between workshop sheets ahead of next week. Filling in different forms. (Trying to get a good grade in therapy) And I got my "recognize your harmful ADHD coping mechanisms" worksheet mixed in with the "you're not actually lying to people, you just feel like you are because your brain is full of weasels" worksheet, and seeing them side by side made something go topsy turvy in my head, and I just had to sit and breathe for a couple of minutes until the urge to scream passed. Because it clicked, it all suddenly clicked.

The reason the imposter syndrome workshops and therapy sessions aren't sticking was because I do routinely trick people into thinking I'm someone I'm not.

Because I'm masking my ADHD for their convenience.

I've always known there was something wrong with me. My neurotypical peers made it abundantly clear I didn't fit in or was failing in some way I couldn't see nor remedy, no matter how hard I tried.

So I compressed myself into a workaholic box of hyper-competence in the hopes they'd stop noticing the flaws and exploit like me instead. And then subsequently lived with the daily fear that if they looked too close, they'd realize I'm a monumental fuck up with enough personal baggage to block the Suez Canal.

If you ever need someone to burn themselves to ashes for your comfort and convenience, I'm your gal.

Or I used to. Until I had a bit of a breakdown, and the rubber band holding my brain together snapped and pinged off into the stratosphere, never to be seen again.

Unfortunately, the trauma of living like that didn't also fuck off and instead left a gaping maw where my personality ought to be, so now I get to deal with that aftermath.

And it's that aftermath that's affecting the imposter syndrome shit. Because yes, I am hyper-competent and good at what I do-- but it doesn't feel real because that is how I mask.

And the truly frustrating thing is I am good at what I do. I am not pretending. I worked hard to be good at this. It just feels like I'm dicking around because 90% of my personality turns out to be trauma masquerading as humor in a trenchcoat, and having people genuinely like something weird I'm doing is so foreign my brain has decided it's just another form of masking.

I'm pretending to be a good author so people will think I'm a good author, and my brain thinks we are in Danger of being found out. We are in Danger, and writing is Dangerous because then people will know I'm Weird and not whatever palatable version I've presented myself as for their NT sensibilities.

Like the neurotic vampire with a raging praise kink wasn't an obvious giveaway.

Anyway. I got nothing else. Thanks for listening.

I'm going to go be very normal in another room and not stare into the abyss of my own soul for a bit.

I brought this post up with my ADHD therapist today (who also has ADHD), and she got so still that I thought our Zoom call had frozen.

Turns out she just needed to stare into her soul for a bit and it looked like this:

Every so often, I see notes from this post go past in my activity feed, and the tags really do look like a mass of people screaming as the suspension wires holding up the metaphorical elevator snap and we all plunge into the abyss.

Sorry/happy to have helped rip the bandaid off that coping mechanism for you. Hope it wasn't too load-bearing...

Anyway. I'm starting EMDR trauma therapy for this soon because I haven't been able to gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss DBT my way out of this one, so, y'know, really puts the trauma of masking in perspective when you have to resort to the same desensitization and reprocessing therapy you use to cope with the cPTSD from literally almost dying.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Unrelated but ADHD flavored note, where the hell did you get such a crystal clear image of Lisa staring at the table??? I can only find versions that look like they got converted to pdf or some shit

r/memeresotration.

The image looks grainy on the google search but when you click on it, it clarifies.

ca. 1876 Worth afternoon dress

Purple taffeta; pink machine-made lace; fuchsia, navy blue, and purple silk fringe; purple reversing to fuchsia taffeta ribbon; fuchsia taffeta lining

Museum of the City of New York

From the introduction to the 1999 Pocket Books edition of Salem's Lot by Stephen King

...Steve, buddy? I don't want you tell you your business, but it's really not

new game: map the rest of the cast of dracula onto lotr characters, wrong answers only

Lobelia Sackville-Baggins

The suitors are like a collective Legolas and Gimli, maybe?

No okay let's wrong answer this as hard as we can hang on I can do this I have a degree in *checks diploma* physics

@mayhemchicken are these answers wrong enough for you?