Wretched Shenanigans

Ranking Baldur’s Gate 3 Characters/Companions on if they’d be successful in helping you lace a corset.

Astarion: 11/10. He wears them himself, he probably even judges you on how you’re doing it wrong. He has it down to a science.

Shadowheart: 7/10. She wears that corset top to bed. She’s all for the use and style, but she prefers the ones without laces. Probably could do it, but with practice.

Minsc: 5/10. He says “Why do our QUEENS wear these things…” he doesn’t get it. But if asked to help lace a corset, it’s not that he couldn’t—it’s just he’d probably ask Boo to do it.

Lae’zel: 8/10 on skill, because she definitely can, but why would she? She’d click her tongue and call you weak for needing assistance.

Wyll: 10/10, he studies it to be a gentleman. He knows the correct tensions, how hard to pull, how to tie them, etc. he even knows the front lace ones.

Karlach: 6/10. Once the heat is cooled down enough so that she can touch you, I think she’s just so excited to have physical contact with anyone that she forgets the task at hand. She’d have to be reminded frequently.

Jaheira: 9/10, but in a practical way. Like she helps you lace them, while expressing concern about how tight they are, and focuses on doing it right to be supportive and practical for combat.

Gale: 2/10. Don’t get me wrong, he does it right. But he definitely has some kind of spell to do it for him. Now taking it off? That’s a 10/10, a proper science.

Aylin: 12/10, laces Isobel’s corset while proclaiming her love for her. It’s an art form, and Aylin has conquered it.

Isobel: No data. Hasn’t laced a corset since Aylin came back.

Halsin: 7/10, he definitely knows how! I just think he goes off about the “oak father” and how corsets are against natures very way as he’s doing it.

Orin: 0/10, would she even need to? She snaps her fingers to change forms. She wears human flesh on her body. She’d cut a corset off, and then probably you in the process.

Gortash: -2/10. The man can’t even lace his own shirt, let alone someone’s corset.

the “i am from russia” was a warning

I asked a taxi driver in Bucharest to take the quickest route to the airport. 10 minutes later we're doing 120kph the wrong way done the street car tracks when another taxi tried to pass us and dude just floors it. Never spoke a word, smoked 9 cigarettes over the 30 minute ride, never took off his sunglasses and blasting opera all the way. I look at it as paying 15€ plús tip to lose all fear of death.

Having lived in Bucharest I can tell you he would have done that even with out you asking

not to Discourse but I’m a cis man and my partner is an afab enby and if you call us a “straight couple” I will personally come to your house tie you to a chair and make you listen to a podcast about gender identity on endless repeat

this is specifically @ the people who saw us at pride together and saw them wearing a “THEY/THEM” button and still referred to them as my “girlfriend” you’re all cancelled thanks

it’s called respecting queer people juice

y'know the really amazing thing about the notes on this post - apart from just the sheer number of people who are, like, viscerally terrified of the existence of a person who isn’t cis - is how many of them are responding to things that aren’t here. specifically, you’ll notice I said nothing about my sexuality. I didn’t say I identified as non-het, or that I considered myself part of the LGBTQIA community. on the flip side, I also didn’t give you any reason to believe I’m not bi, or that I’ve never been in a relationship with a cis man. y'all know nothing about my sexuality from this post and you don’t need to and I’m not going to tell you about it now because! this post! was not! about me!

it was about respecting my partner’s identity. and the fact that they don’t get that respect from people in the exact community that they should be able to count on getting it from.

ie, you.

they are not het or cis, and no relationship they are in will ever be a “straight relationship” because they. are not. het. or. cis.

everyone in the notes gatekeeping me because I’m “not oppressed”? I never said I was. the person you’re really attacking and invalidating by shitting on this post is them, a pansexual nonbinary person who is unerasably queer.

huh. it’s almost as if the whole “we can’t let straight men use queerness to worm their way into our community” discourse is just an excuse to hate trans people, isn’t it.

I reblog this every time I see it–

Had to label the old trash barrels so the collectors would know to take them

This should be the last post on tumblr before it is shut down.

Apparently there's a huge market for these

Part 4

I feel like I need to tell everyone how brilliantly the Globe incorporated a deaf Gildenstern into the 2018 Hamlet and then force all of you to watch it

ok, so Gildenstern is played by a deaf actor, Nadia Nadarajah. he* signs all his lines, and either Rosencratz interprets for him, or the person he’s talking to says something that makes it obvious what he just said, depending. how each character reacts to Gildenstern is completely in-character and often hilarious

it’s all brilliant and adds another layer of humor and pathos and you should all watch it

*casting at the Globe right now is gender neutral so I’m just going to use the character’s pronouns

guys I know I’m wittering on about this but the thing I want to emphasize is that there is no tokenism here. they didn’t just shove a deaf actor into a speaking role so they could pat themselves on the back about how progressive they are. they went to the effort of fully integrating Nadarajah’s deafness into the story so that it not only fit organically within the narrative but actually enhanced it. watching Hamlet’s signing disintegrate as his trust in R&G disintegrates adds a depth to that storyline I’ve never seen before. Claudius has exactly the awkwardness of someone who thinks of himself as a good person and therefore thinks he’s being kind and generous with his accommodations for disability, but has never even once actually asked a disabled person what they need, which is so on-point for his character it hurts.

I know Michelle Terry gets a lot of hate mail for her policy of race-, gender-, and disability-blind casting, but fuck all those people. long may that policy continue.

the glenda jackson production of king lear on broadway did something similar with the Duke of Cornwall, and it was actually the best part of the play, imo.  because when Cornwall was speaking to Lear or to the Court, he had a sign language interpreter to speak the actual literal words aloud, but when he was talking to and conspiring with Regan, his wife, they were just signing back and forth with no translation for the audience, and it emphasized the intimacy between the two even as they turn against literally everyone else in the play, which was fantastic.

and the best part of it was, by the second half of the play, you were so used to it, that you didn’t even blink anymore when watching him and listening to the spoken words come from the interpreter - you just watched the actor playing Cornwall and let the words come from the other guy, but the guy kind of fades into the background.  it didn’t hurt that the actor for Cornwall was one of the tallest on stage, and had bright red hair - it was easy to watch him, instead of his interpreter.

which is why it was so shocking and so perfect when the interpreter is the one who kills him.

See, they folded the character of the servant who kills Cornwall into the person of this character who had been such a non-entity that you almost forgot he was on stage - until you realize, no, this is another person, and he’s been here, watching all this the whole time, and he finally gets to the breaking point where he can’t stand by and translate anymore, he has to do something to stop the cruelty he’s seeing, and it’s not just a random guy who comes in for the scene and sees them blinding Gloucester, it’s the man whose been by his side for the entire play, the man who was his voice who finally has a line of his own.  who finally speaks on his own behalf to say “no.”

and then, of course, he gets killed, but Cornwall dies in the same scene so it’s not like they need to get a new translator or anything.  but it was the most fucking brilliant choice i’ve ever seen re: casting in a Shakespearean production, and the rest of the play pales in my memory in comparison.

so apparently in 815 CE there was a common belief that sky pirates sailed ships in the clouds and (working in collaberation with frankish weather wizards) stole all the crops that got damaged in storms and took them back to the cloud realm of magonia.

And this was apparently a common enough belief that an archbishop felt the need to write a treatise to debunk it and insist that only god controls the weather, which is the only reason we know about it.

there are three important points to take from this, i think

You know, the more I encounter "people believed" things like this, and the more I try to look at them without the "myth of progress" lens (of we are more sophisticated than the people of history/people of other nations) -- the more these "beliefs" look like tumblr shitposts.

I just imagine folks standing in the middle of a wrecked field, knowing half a year's work has gone to waste and the winter's going to be hard, sighing and saying, "darn you, sky pirate Goncharov, why you have to be like this?" And everyone laughs a little. And next storm someone repeats the joke, and embellishes it a bit, and so on and so on. You might tell it to your kids with a straight face but pretty much everyone's in on the joke, and I just imagine the incredulous stifled laughter in the pews when they realize the archbishop is actually taking this stupid shit seriously.

The archbishop and half your neighbours who either aren’t in on the joke or - WORRYINGLY- you thought were in on the home but are now insisting it’s not a joke and you don’t feel gaslit because that terminology won’t be invented for another half millennium but if it did you would.

You know, like on tumblr/the internet.

This is money cat. He only appears every 1,383,986,917,198,001 posts. If you repost this in 30 seconds he will bring u good wealth and fortune.

how are we falling for this anyway reblog

I mean it’s a cat

Wors case scenario: cat

Oh boy I sure hope my good friend Jonathan Harker has a much better time on his business trip this year than he did last year.

bluey: s2 e26 ☆ sleepytime

if you only watch one episode of this show in your lifetime, make it this one

honestly thanks to @torbooks for letting me trot my trot

thank you for proving love, dr : )

I am covered in hickies how am I supposed to be a respected scientist looking like this!?!

Normalize kissing other the other scientists with tongue

*walks into the lab and comes out hours later covered in lipstick marks* the collaborative research is going well

There are many perks to being a marine biologist.

Small Town Grocery Store Stories: LGBTQ+ friendly edition

Me: minding my own damn business in the grocery store

One of my students and a few of his teammates enter the dairy aisle. 

My student is holding hands with one of his teammates. 

My student: Oh hey, Professor X!

Me, who has both my student and his girlfriend in my class: …Hello

My student, looking at his hand-holding partner: Oh! Don’t worry. My girlfriend knows. Not that I’m cheating! I’m not cheating. I’m not gay.

Hand Holding boy: Not that being gay is a bad thing! It’s a good thing!

My student: Right! But no, listen. We aren’t together, we just hold hands in public sometimes.

Hand Holding Boy: Especially on Friday nights. And weekends. And at away games.

My student: Because sometimes people will say shit and then we can punch them! And if the fight started because someone was being homophobic, coach won’t get mad at us.

Hand Holding Boy: Always nice to punch a homophobe. And [gesturing to another boy in the group] maybe they’ll think twice about saying something to [other boy’s name] if he ever gets a boyfriend and wants to hold his hand for real. The Gay One, resigned but smiling: I’ve decided it’s sweet and not really fucking weird.

This is what “boys will be boys” is meant to be

This is the best thing I’ve seen in a while.

So Arizona launched an “education hotline” that allows “concerned parents” to report “””critical race theory””” and other things like ~gender identity~ being taught in the classroom

It would be a shame if the number and email were spread to bad actors looking to prank call the AZ Department of Education

602-771-3500 or empower @ azed .gov 🤡

and for the love of god, don’t just spam it with memes or le funny shrek jokes or whatever, they’ll just hang up

make plausible-sounding reports for things that don’t actually exist, so that they actually have to waste time/resources investigating false leads - the goal is to waste time they would otherwise be using to do their jobs, not to get tumblr clout for being an epic troll

So apparently the internet article said the superintendent wouldn't be deterred by the prank calls because they would 'taper off eventually'. It'd be a real shame if this post stayed in circulation via queues so they get a consistent list of prank calls to filter through. 😇

listen…i’ll probably never get over how good brotherhood’s first opening was