Recreated Tang-dynasty outfits based on cave paintings
I need to do a proper update to “Things My Physio Has Said” but I lack the spoons at present. I will however share this short snippet.
For some months now he’s been hounding me to give up purses. Arm ones, shoulder ones, cross body ones, you name it, he’s been a one man campaign against what he calls “the scourge of women’s necks everywhere”.
(That and salon hair washing chairs. He hates salon chairs with the burning passion of a thousand suns and is so happy that the place I go to doesn’t use them.)
He has such a visceral hatred for them that he’s been shushed several times by other therapists mid rant, momentarily forgetting to use his “working on a client voice” and going off on a 15 minute tangent about how fashion is in itself an inherently classicist and sexist construct, and how the majority of clothing and fashion accessories aimed at women are designed to not only inconvenience them but to also harm them, in minute, tiny ways every day all day, wearing you down until the pain becomes normal and you can never figure out why you’re always so tired.
And it was during one of these rants, whilst lamenting the lack of proper pockets in the majority of my clothes, that he pointed out quite sensibly to me that backpacks were indeed a thing, my dear. So I decided to invest in one that isn’t too bulky and doesn’t make me look like a high schooler (I am but a short baby-faced hobbit) but can still fit all my vital shit in it like my epi-pens and my work folios. And I feel like I keep saying this, but it really is quite amazing the difference adjusting one small, seemingly inconsequential thing can do for your health.
My right shoulder, which is always inflamed, and also just so happens to be the side I carry my purses on because I have some mobility issues on the left, is actually doing better. In three short weeks the inflammation has gone down, and the muscles and tendons in my arm are a lot less gnarled up and compressed feeling. And tonight when I showed up with my new backpack, Magic Physio Man caught a glimpse of it in the waiting area and did a little jig, proclaiming “yeeeeesssss, fight the system through self care.”
And well, when he puts it like that.
i know we like to joke about how kravitz is bad at his job because, after sensing a lich, he denied that it could be coming from taako’s umbrella almost immediately. like the dude didn’t even bother to check.
but in media res i like to think that griffin himself was panicking because he didn’t expect that taako would ever hand it over. and then he did. pretty much right away. what else could griffin do? let kravitz arrest taako’s secret twin??? in that moment kravitz had to be useless and gay. there was no other option. justin nearly derailed an entire subplot and he didn’t even know it. i admire that kind of power.
au where kravitz cracks open that cold one and oh shit its lup!!!!
lup, fresh from losing her fucking mind watching taako date the grim reaper, ready to shovel talk kravitz/and or yell at taako: LISTEN HERE BONE BOY—
kravitz, watching a lich that looks exactly???? like taako??? bloom from the broken umbrella: WHAT THE—
taako, watching a STRANGE WOMAN who LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE HIM spring from the cracked umbrella and yell at his date: HOLY FU—
i also like the version of this story where he takes it back to the astral plane first, because then kravitz is stuck between a rock and a hard place where he can’t tell his boyfriend about the long-lost sister he doesn’t know he has, and that’s awkward, but also lup (now a fledgling reaper) keeps following kravitz to all of his dates with taako so she can spy on them. she has to, kravitz! she can’t talk to taako in person, kravitz! it would break his brain! and it’s not like kravitz can argue with that.
Can I talk for a second about Lup?
Specifically about how the language in TAZ represents her.
Because here’s the thing: trans characters in media are almost universally tragic. Trans characters do not get happy endings. Once in a blue moon, you get a narrative that’s trying to actually have a trans character instead of a trans caricature, and the moral of the story ends up being “even though I’m cursed with this terrible affliction that materially affects my quality of life, I have hope that someday I can achieve something resembling suburban mediocrity.” That’s the happy ending that trans characters can hope for. That’s what I’ve learned to treat as a happy ending.
and then Lup
She’s an incredibly skilled wizard with a brother who loves her more than anything
Our first interaction with her is her announcing at a press conference for a high-level mission that she “did this world and kind of crushed it” before mic-dropping
The most incredible love story in the narrative belongs to a trans woman and her lover. Let me say that again: this monologue, one of the most beautiful falling-in-love stories I’ve ever heard–
“Our capacity for love increases with each person we cross paths with throughout our lives, and with each moment we spend with those people. But, too often we neglect that part of ourselves in favor of others. And by the time we realize just how important it is, we find ourselves with fewer folks around to practice with. But the seven of you have something that nobody else ever had: time. All the time in the world. Time enough to grow indescribably close. Time enough to learn how to care for each other, how to allow yourselves to be cared for. And in the case of Barry and Lup, time enough to fall deeply and truly in love”
–is about the love relationship between a canonically trans woman and her partner, a man whose identifier is “the lover.” His role literally revolves around the intensity of his love for Lup. Trans characters never get love stories like this. I’ve literally never seen it before.
And when Lup returns? That monologue? I can’t even with the language that Griffin uses.
“If this truly was the last cycle, she had already burned her corporeal form. But that was the cost of undoing the damage she had done to this world”–she’s selfless and heroic; she doesn’t give a damn about herself as long as she can save this world
“She put on a fiery show of force just to remind herself how powerful she could be”–Griffin’s voice at this point just kills me; he’s reminding us, too, how fucking powerful Lup is
And then, of course, everyone’s favorite part: “Lup, phantasmal and resplendent, her outstretched palms still coated in flame”
PHANTASMAL and RESPLENDENT
“Hear that, babe? We’re legends”
LEGENDS
These are words that describe HEROES. These are words for the SAVIOR OF WORLDS.
I cannot stress this enough: I literally do not know one other narrative in which a canonically trans character (or even a strongly trans-coded character) gets this kind of hero’s treatment
Not to mention she survives. She gets her happy ending, with her brother and her lover and her family and all the world knowing her name, knowing what she did
This is unprecedented
Griffin McElroy, thank you. Thank you for giving me a character who is incidentally trans who is the farthest possible thing from a tragedy. Thank you for showing a trans woman who is idealized, glorified, even. Thank you for demonstrating to every other content creator what it means to write a trans character who gets to shine in the spotlight, who earns and rightfully gets her happy ending.
Thank you for Lup
Another thing I love about TAZ, they have (accidentally or not) turned out an interpretation of elves that matches the traditional Mischievous Unknowable Tricksters much more than the Tolkien elves that DnD usually ends up with.
Taako is the foremost example because he’s the main character, but he’s this glamorous, prickly, powerful weirdo with his own specific and slightly off-center moral code. He’s rob a corpse but not a bank. He likes doing things purely to spite other people. He refuses to do what he’s told, and will sometimes do things no one expects for seemingly random reasons. Even more than the rest of the Boys, he’s a very chaotic but in a consistent way. And he feeds off of attention, he’s an entertainer at heart.
Jenkins seems more straight laced, but by the end of his arc he’s a trickster as well. He uses his wits and magic to play a game and that game is called “steal things and kill people”. He makes convoluted plans and even though he has a steady job seems to enjoy the thrill of the “perfect crime”. Like Taako, he’s doing this because he’s bored.
Same thing with the possibly elven Sloane. She’s a principled thief in it all for the joy of the chase. She runs illegal races because she enjoys it, and she clearly likes the attention a lot. She’s not high and mighty, she’s a storm of a person who comes in and throws everything off course. She’s unpredictable but does have her own logic- Hurley has a pretty good grasp of her psyche. It’s just not quite the same logic everyone else uses.
Then you have Lydia and Edward, who might not actually be elves but are definitely playing off of expectations of them. Human twins in the forest running a weird magical death game? Suspicious. Dwarves doing the same thing? Super suspicious. But elves are strange and capricious and live for a very long time. Sometimes they just pull stunts like that. And Lydia and Edward definitely play up their garishness and glamour, they use appearances and bright colours and music and gaudiness to distract from what they’re really doing. Only in the final battle do we see them dressing down, they’ve finally put away the props and costumes and are playing for keeps.
They’re a lot more involved in their world and as major characters we know them a lot better, but the elves of The Adventure Zone could easily slide into myths about strange and beautiful creatures who do everything for kicks and can’t be contained or understood.
I have a headcanon that Hermione insists her children attend some primary muggle schooling before Hogwarts, just as she had done. Now, imagine Arthur Weasley attending his grandchild’s science fair, being the ultra proud grandfather….and yet also completely geeking out over absolutely EVERYTHING.
Canon
“That is a volcano, that is a VERY SMALL VOLCANO, how - young lady, how did you make this? Baking soda and food coloring? MARVELOUS!”
the kids would love him.
Never have I ever loved anything more than I love this
All the muggle teachers would think he was being so adorable, “pretending” not to know how potato batteries and mini-volcanoes work, fawning over the hard work the kids did on even the simplest the projects. And he comes every year, because after the kids have aged out (”gone on to some boarding school in Scotland,” the teachers say over bad coffee in the break room, “they didn’t seem the type”), he gets an honorary invitation to the fair every year, because he never stops making the kids feel smart and good.
“And this airy-o-plane, it flies by means of a… rubber band? Did I hear that correctly? No magic at all? Doesn’t flap its wings like a bird? MARVELOUS! What an ingenious method of flight!” *looks around* “You, sir! With the ribbons! This child deserves one of those prizes!”
This is so wholesome.
Arthur Weasley, as the Science Fair attendee we all deserve.
After a couple years Arthur Weasley brings his own ribbons. They shimmer in a way that makes everyone wonder what kind of ink he uses—“secrets!” he tells anyone who asks—but they’re beautiful. They’re coveted even more than the official ribbons, because they remind you that while he was heaping praise on you, you felt magical.
This is one of the best HP headcanons I’ve ever read.
“You sir! With the ribbons!” Oh my HEART
All of her videos are so great tbh
her vids are like… Films.
she a has video where she deadass makes furniture out of bambo, a rustic sink out of a rock and literally makes a silk blanket…like from the start, she collects the silk, stretches it, everything, she a real crafter(also, i really want a video where she shows how to make those massive multipurpose cleavers she’s always using.)
I love love love her videos
best moment in TAZ: Balance was when Magnus finds a safe and cracks it open and then Taako points out that they can’t take the gold cause they are in the middle of a fucking bank.
“robbing a bank while stopping a bank robbery” is the funniest fucking thing to me.
worth pointing out here for maximum humor that Taako, previously, had absolutely 0 qualms about stealing priceless family heirlooms from a 10 year old boy and pawning them off at fantasy costco.
he’s a bright boy. he does his stealing at the end of the mission. when nobody is looking. not at the beginning when the chief of police is a name character with a distinctive voice and mannerisms and probably someone they’ll be talking to a lot.
maKhozen on youtube (and I believe geezmarty on tumblr) does a FANTASTIC animatic of this scene and I always lose my mind watching it. Just the artwork and Taako’s expression paired with the audio is so funny! Here it is below, enjoy!!!
إنسانية 🕊️
نزعت الخطاف من فم احد القروش وعند مشاهدة القروش الاخرى لذلك صارت القروش تأتي لنفس المكان لنزع الخطاف من فمها علما ان هذه القروش لا تحب ان يلمسها احد.
هذا في البهاما والغواصة ،خلال الـ 15 سنة الماضية ، أزالت 250 خطاف.
“She removed the hook from the mouth of one of the sharks and with other sharks watching, so the sharks come to the same place to to get hooks removed from their mouths. Note [???]
In the Bahamas and [???], over the past 15 years, she has removed 250 hooks.”
This is like that “how wonderful, then, to live in a world full of creatures that love to be petted” post. Beautiful.
She is inspirational. PLEASE REBLOG.
We MUST take care of wildlife.
nettropolis
