The Squad

I have an extremely important question. When you think of our beloved Tango Tek, what of his builds do you think of? Is it Toon Town? Decked Out? The Ranch? Bonus points if you include a picture (or send me a picture).

Along those lines, what other things do you think of when you think of Tango? (Among Us hamburger, a particular pink fluffy hat, etc)

I am contemplating a Project, and have officially entered the research stage.

love how no matter what, in all the pjo adaptations, grover has been nonwhite. filipino grover in the musical, black grover in the movies, and desi grover in the tv show

"oh sorry, i guess i was infodumping again" - sad, shy, apologetic

"you sly dog, you got me monologuing" - cool, strong, confident

Who’s your favourite content creator outside the minecraft sphere? I’m curious

Let the dirt hang heavy in your chest

Drag me deeper down the long, dark ground

i going to draw hbomb with those parent merch like "i love my hermits" and "#1 hermit hypeman"

he is like supportive hermit dad or older brother

oh my gosh the timelapse music is western now

have some fucking tips for androgynous presentation that mixes femme and masc styles and isn’t just ‘be afab and wear trousers from the men’s section’

recently I wore some of those trousers with the wide non form fitting legs   and added small heeled boots. 10/10 would recommend I felt very high fashion. looked masc but was making the femme click clack heel sound.

basic loungy outfits can be made 100% more queer by adding colour. srsly jeans with a nice tshirt is queer as fuck if the jeans are orange.

wearing the femmest outfit possible, long skirt, cute blouse, etc. becomes a power move when you do so without a single shred of makeup. bonus if your hair is short. bonus if it’s not a pixie. bonus if your shoes are stompy

find all your Statement Pieces. wear them together. voila.

we all know about suspenders. now put them where they don’t belong. attach them to skirts. attach them to your trousers but leave them hanging

literally just wear stuff you think looks rad because if you enjoy both masculine and feminine clothing styles it naturally follows the stuff you think looks rad together will end up being genderfuck

embrace alternative fashion/weird charity shop finds/vintage/stuff that breaks fashion rules even if its ‘technically’ femme/masc. part of fitting into gender roles is wearing mainstream and current femme/masc clothes because gender roles and their associated accepted dress are always shifting so anything that differs from that is automatically subversive.

billowy shirts. undo them as much as you’re comfortable with. somewhat obvious but the howl’s moving castle vibes are v strong. am I a femme arts student or a dashing masc pirate type? who knows. 

floral patterns feel a billion times more masc if the colours are bold. 

personally after I stopped wearing makeup I felt I lot more able to just be like huh. that’s my face. and feel kinda triumphant  in the ugly parts of it and just be unabashedly weird. and if that’s not genderfuck idk what is. same w not shaving my legs tbh. I enjoy just existing.

that said if you do like makeup, using just (just. no foundation or shit) eyeshadow or just lipstick? also a power move. 

If you go for the classic dapper style of androgynous presentation but want something closer to androgynous than just weird masc, try adding a soft girly jumper to your manly trousers and etc.

adding an emphasis to your natural waist to a masc outfit (with a belt or something) is a good way to feminise it and vice versa with emphasising a dropped waist in a femme outfit to bring attention away from your smaller natural one (again with a belt or maybe low waisted trousers)

long coats are very good I feel my most formless and inexplicable when my outer layer goes straight past my knees.

obviously all this is gonna be slightly biased to my agab/personal style/body type/etc. but yeah. there’s my tips and hopefully none of them are weirdly unachievable or equate androgyny with masculinity 

“You’re the one who asked if the Cod Empire had stories,” Jimmy says, sitting next to Scott by the edge of a mangrove island. In the distance in the swamp, they can watch several young codfolk attempt to play—Scott doesn’t know the name of the game. Something that involves a lot of treading water and throwing a ball around and makes Scott look exhausted just watching it, at least.

“Yeah, but I don’t get it. Don’t fables normally have like… morals?” Scott says. “The ones I knew did.”

“I mean, I’d say the story about the catfish was always pretty clear to me,” Jimmy says. “Doesn’t change, but adapts. It’s willing to eat anything, but not change who it is, and it outlives the goldfish, who change all the time, because of it—”

And Scott stands, distant from Ren but still covered in blood, red crystals floating around him. He raises his sword silently, then he sits down with the axolotl and waits. He’d finish it himself, but he’s always simply tried to survive, survive without changing who he is in the process. He doesn’t know if he’s succeeded. His teeth taste like iron and bile. If he’d been about to throw up, though, he would have done it days ago. Maybe that’s what victory tastes like.

“—that’s a moral, right?”

“Other people change the goldfish though. The goldfish don’t choose to change. That’s… that’s the point of goldfish breeding, Jimmy.”

“Yeah, and they die if you breathe on them funny. Don’t you know what a metaphor is? You’re the one who said fables normally have lessons!”

Scott sighs. “Yeah, yeah. Fine.” He sighs. “The oyster one, though.”

“Well that one’s just literal. Did you not know you can crack open oysters to check water quality? They’re a good indicator!”

Scott throws his hands up. “No! I didn’t grow up by the ocean! And the story’s more like that an animal just kills the oyster one day, and it finds out the pain the oyster had been preventing—”

And as Jimmy bleeds out on the grass, he realizes he’s bleeding out for them a second time. He hears, distant, Grian justify himself, but all Jimmy feels is like he’s somehow been cheated. He’s been killed first, again. The first name in a bloodbath of them. How is that fair? He’s never asked to die first! He’s never asked to die at all!

“—which is just. Really sad for the oyster?”

“Scott, they’re oysters.”

“They’re fables! We were just talking about metaphors!” Scott flops back. It’s undignified. He’ll get leaves in his hair, and mud all over his clothes. He doesn’t care. Here, the mangroves in the brackish swamp water smell like salt and something he hadn’t smelled anywhere else, and it doesn’t smell good, really, but he’s figured out it smells like life, and also maybe Jimmy, in a way that makes it easy to not care quite so much about appearances. Maybe it’s the bird in him, he thinks jokingly. He does have wings, and so many of the birds come to roost around trees like these.

They’re quiet for a while, Scott flopped back, children screaming and laughing in their game, and Jimmy watching all of them.

“Did you have a favorite?” Jimmy finally asks.

“Would it be cliche to say the one about the lovers? The seahorses, the one who builds a beautiful thing for his lover.”

“They die in the end, though.”

“Yeah, but, like—”

The war never comes to the hobbit hole. It’s funny; in the end, the two of them had gone to the war instead, when it came looking. Maybe they’d known better. Maybe, thinks Scott, in the afterlife their four hands had built, maybe they’d known better than to taint it.

“—the things they made were real.”

“Huh.”

Jimmy helps Scott up again. He looks at Scott in the eyes in that way that makes Scott either want to kiss him or strangle him. Scott’s never fully decided which, which probably makes it all the stranger that he’s sitting here, getting covered in swamp water and talking about fables.

“And yours?”

“Mine? Oh, uh, it’s one—funny, I think I learned it from Lizzie? I have no idea why that would be.”

Scott raises an eyebrow.

“It’s simple. It’s just that all things start as water, and all things will be water again one day.”

“…what? Why would that story be your favorite?”

Jimmy is quiet for quite a while.

“Maybe it’s because… no matter how badly we were to mess up…”

And he watches the explosion and he runs, he runs, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

“…no matter how bad of a decision we have to make…”

And Scott looks at the sword, and looks at Xonorth, and he doesn’t know what else he could do.

“…we’ll always end up back where we started.”

“That’s… oddly optimistic,” Scott says, although he’s not really sure that’s what he thinks about it. Somehow, instead of optimistic, it makes Scott feel like he’s somehow both too big and too small for his skin, thinking of the world like that. Thinking of everything going back to how it started.

On a circle, once again, they agree on their rules, and they shake hands, and they make their kingdoms. Again, and again, and—

“Well, I do like to keep cheerful when I can!” Jimmy says brightly. “Oh look, they’ve finished with their game!”

“Yeah,” Scott says. “So they have.”