Funny Roleplaying Moments
So last night, we were playing Mage, where my Amish Ninja usually handles the heavy-duty combat portions.
(Joder, the Amish Ninja in question, is an Akashic Brotherhood member who turned out to be the reincarnation of an ancient Samurai. He now has five dots in Do, and battles vampires with an enchanted pitchfork called “Barnburner.” This is about what you should expect should you ever ask me to join your campaign.)
But as it turns out, I may be playing second fiddle in combat, as our friend Lucy joined the campaign as a werewolf. And we were fighting one of the big bads when she failed her Rage roll – which meant that we had a deadly werewolf in a frenzy, where she would attack whoever was closest to her.
Not a problem. I did a Jackie Chan-style roll, succeeded in my Martial Arts Throw roll, and kicked the Big Bad right into Lucy’s angry werewolf, who was casting about for a target. Lucy shredded the mage, who fell bleeding to the floor – not quite dead, but certainly out of combat. However, Lucy was still in frenzy, our worst enemy was still breathing, and we were the only targets left.
Gini, playing our resident Forces mage, wondered what to do next. After all, none of the other players were particularly good in combat, and I was severely injured. So as she wondered what to do, I yelled to her – “Hey! You’ve got Forces! Just… you know, Weekend at Bernies him!”
She looked at me, startled, and then laughed out loud. One vulgar usage of Forces later, the still-bleeding body of our worst enemy rose off the floor, a puppet, and smacked into Lucy – who smashed him around the floor in true “Hulk smash Loki” style, thus satisfying her frenzy.
End result: one dead enemy, and a fair amount of laughs.
So I Said This Three Years Ago….
…and holy crap, does it resonate now for the Republicans.
And I gotta say, this pretty much sums up the conservative take on health care. I don’t know many Democrats who are double-fists in the air “HOO-AH!” about Obamacare. Most of us are praying it works better than we think it will. But we also see that it stops insurance companies from yanking care for pre-existing conditions, and gets insurance to some people who don’t need it…
…and when we ask, “So what do you have that’s better?” the answer is, “Well, not much.” (I’ve seen a counter-proposal or two, but lost me when they had several goals, and none of them were “Keep sick people insured.”)
So that’s my new political rule: the party that does the better job articulating what they’ll do, wins.
Remember that, Democrats.
Your Weekly SHIELD Rant
This week’s SHIELD was astonishing for one crazy reason:
It was really, really good.
For the first time, I actually cared about Generic Male Action Figure, mainly because he was in danger and other people cared about him. I felt that Agent Coulsen was clever, and the plot twist in the middle as we learned the reason behind the Asgardian staff was actually really satisfying. The backstory was good, the tie-in to the Marvel universe felt correct, and goddammit I was invested.
It’s like they fixed all the problems at once, and this limping, broken car suddenly shot down the freeway at 75 mph.
I mention this only because so many people have given up on the show that I feel like I kinda have to give it props. Was it the greatest hour of television? No. Was it the first time since the inception of the show I was excited to tune in next week? Yes. And do I hope that the Secret Guest Star shows up as a regular at some point down the line? Oh God yes.
I don’t know whether this is a fix, or just an above-average episode, and next week we return to the mundane. But if all of the past Agents of Shield have been hovering around a C to C-, this was a solid B+. If this had been the premiere of the show, I think people would have been really satisfied. And I hope this is the signal of a break into a new and better version of SHIELD, and not an aberration.
In the meantime, I really really want that guy back. You’ll know who it is when you see the show. And you’ll know why.
How Kids React To My Pretty Pretty Princess Nails.
Hi. I’m Ferrett. I’m a guy, and my nails usually look like this:
Or this:
And after last night’s lovely manicure , they look like this.
What I find fascinating about my nails, however, is how little kids react to them. Because when a six-year-old girl first sees my nails, her first reaction is almost inevitably disgust and/or suspicion. “Why do you have painted nails?” they ask, circling about me warily.
“Because they’re pretty.”
“But you’re a boy.”
“Boys can be pretty.”
Sometimes they make the disgust-face and back away. Other times they tell me, “Boys aren’t supposed to be pretty!” and we get into a brief argument that I inevitably lose. Regardless of whether they’re a girl or a boy, I’ve had this conversation at least forty times – this angry violation of their world, this curt rejection.
If I see the child again, however, they invariably ask again. It’s the same question: “Why do you have painted nails?” They clearly remember me. And I tell them, once again, it’s because I think painted nails are pretty, and this time their response is puzzlement. You can see them scrunching up their faces as they process this new idea that maybe some boys have long, girly fingernails, and they’re sure that it’s weird, but is it wrong? They’re now no longer sure. And sometimes they grab my hand without permission to touch my nails, as if to confirm this is a Real Thing.
When they leave, they’re still deeply suspicious of the nails.
The third time, they’ve come to terms with it. It’s no longer an issue; this is what Ferrett does, and this is how some people are. But what happens next is often very telling: on subsequent visits, the kids become enthusiastic about my nails. They start to show their nails off to me, asking about my color, and when I walk through the door the first thing some of them do is see what color Ferrett is wearing today. These kids now think it’s cool that I wear pretty pretty princess nails. In particular for little girls, it’s often an avenue of connectivity – hey, you have wild nails, see the color my Mommy let me get?
Yet each of them, at one point, had told me with disgust that boys did not wear painted nails.
And I think that’s a microcosm of humanity, really. When presented with something new that’s against how society tells you things should be, whether that’s homosexuality or transgendered people or polyamory or cross-dressing or a thousand other things, the inevitable gut reaction from people is a sort of visceral “Eeyew.” Which is often not them rejecting the idea itself, but rather a reaction to having their concept of normality violently jabbed. People like knowing how things are supposed to be. They like feeling like they’re on top of things. And this reminder that whoah, maybe you don’t know how people behave, is a threatening and ferocious action.
Then they see it a few more times and, circling the idea carefully, they come to recognize that maybe this is just another puzzle piece in the vast number of ways that human beings can be, and they come to accept it. Then in some cases, once they move beyond that, they become fans. And – this is the important bit – having become fans, they forget that they were once opposed. That process of adjustment fades away, and I never remind them. It’s better if they believe that this was always the way, really.
And I don’t like dealing with kids who reject me, making little “cuckoo” gestures with their fingers to their friends as they retreat. It’s strangely stinging, being written off by an adorable seven-year-old moppet. But I also know that this reaction fades more often than not. It’s a thing that humans often do, and it’s a dumb thing, but it generally takes a few sharp shocks to the worldview before they arrive at acceptance and tolerance. And if they’re lucky, that worldview expands enough that newer concepts don’t seem all that crazy – once you’ve absorbed the idea that people can be gay, and that gender can be fluid, then expanding to accept the idea of transgendered lesbians is but a little hop.
That rejection is immediate, and painful, and by no means am I saying you’re not correct to be hurt by it. But what I am saying is that that rejection is often not the final word, if that person is lucky enough to encounter enough other people like you. People are often staggeringly thoughtless as they evolve, and ideally they learn to get past this sort of ugly brutality as kids… but sometimes a kid can go through a whole adolescence without meeting Dude With Painted Nails, clinging tight to a tragically narrowed world. When they finally encounter you, they’re as ill-prepared to deal with it as the six-year-old was. The reason we’re tolerant of kids is that they don’t know any better, and while it’s comforting to think that everyone gets handed the Big Grown-Ups Manual when they turn sixteen, a tome that contains all the proper ways to respond to things, the sad truth is that kids become grownups by running head-first into experiences, and usually cocking them up. If they aren’t lucky enough to have the right experiences at the right time, some portion of them remains a dumb kid even if they’re sixteen or sixty or a hundred.
I’ve gotten to see these kids evolve, live, right before my sparkly sparkly nails. Now they love ’em.
That’s a good thing.
Girls With Porcelain Skin In An Alternate World
Anyone who’s seen me date knows I have a type: busty, zaftig, and pale. I’ve dated other women of all types, often to great results, but I’m inevitably drawn to pudgy women whose skin has never seen the sun.
And yet I wonder.
I had a hellishly isolated middle school experience, where I was bullied so much they had to transfer me to another school just so I had a chance at making friends. I grew up literally believing that I would go to my grave not just a virgin, but alone in the universe; my family was there for me, but they were it. If you were to ask twelve-year-old me to envision my life today, he would tell you that I’d probably be working a convenience store clerk job, putting in my eight hours before returning to an empty apartment, watching TV, and going to bed.
And why not? That was what I did in school. I couldn’t trust anyone, since the bullies frequently presented themselves as friendly – the better to get some embarrassing dirt on me before turning on me. So I took the bus to school, reading, and I went to classes alone, and I ate lunch alone, reading, and I read on the bus back home and then I busied myself doing stuff at home. Alone.
Friends were not my strong point.
And when I eventually did start to clamber out into socialized territory somewhere around 11th grade, most of the women who were nice to me were busty, zaftig, and pale. It’d be an easy theory to go with, saying their plump nature made them more sympathetic to other ostracized kids, but some of those girls had tons of friends; they were just sweet to everyone, and I was swept up in their wake. And as it turned out, the first girl I dated was a plump Irish redhead, and the second girl was a pale Scandinavian, and the third was a short Jewish girl from a , and by then a clear pattern had been established.
And yet.
And yet.
When I was in ninth grade, there was a girl called Rayna, an absolutely beautiful black girl who was – as much as anyone was kind to me back then – really, really nice. She’d make small talk with me between classes, and sometimes we’d even chat at her locker – and if you were ever a lonely kid like I was, you know how those ninety seconds of conversation were things you’d treasure and replay throughout the day. Rayna may have been the teenager I talked with most in a given day, and certainly one of the only ones who ever sought me out.
And she was pretty, and kind to me, and in retrospect I think she may have wanted to ask me out. She mentioned parties that she was going to, or sometimes said what she did on weekends. But I was so used to being shunned that I was just happy for her, and it never would have occurred to me to ask her somewhere or even that we could interact outside of school. And another sorta-friend once said to me, “Wow, she likes you,” and I went, “Oh, you think?” and I never actually connected “like” to “dating like,” and so that particular avenue went unexplored.
(Though I should add that when I finally went off on the bullies in my chemistry class, in one of my most famous personal stories, Rayna was the first one to cheer.)
And I wonder: what would have happened if I’d asked Rayna out? Looking back with more experienced Ferrett-eyes, I think she would have said yes. And what would have happened if she’d been my first kiss? What if, instead of nice pale-skinned girls who had been the first to respond to my overtures, it had been a nice dark-skinned girl? Am I little more than a duckling, imprinting on the first set of women to find me attractive? Would today, instead of porcelain skin being my strongest visual overture, would it be someone more like Rayna instead of Beth, Gayle, and Dana?
I don’t know. Alas, I think of Rayna fondly, as she was my friend at a time when I wasn’t quite sure what a friend was. And the visuals don’t matter all that much anyway, as I tend to be more attracted to brains than to body – I have very intense crushes on women who I have absolutely no idea what they look like, but am pretty sure I could fall dazzlingly in love with them based on their brain chemistry.
But occasionally I am flipping through photos and I see someone like Christina Hendricks, and there is this visceral wellspring of lust that explodes out of seeing that milky skin and curvy figure. And I wonder. I wonder where that attraction came from, and could it have been altered if some different girls had kissed me back when I thought no girl ever would.
I don’t know. Some days, I don’t know myself, and other days I know how much I don’t know myself, and that thought is more than a little disturbing.