ok this is insanely cool

u know whats crazy its 2026 and phone in bed is still the only way to survive. they never made a way around this

yes it was sad when mike wheeler died in a fatal vampire juggalo barn accident but ultimately i think it was necessary for steve’s story

So y’all know the classic edge trope of “my blade cannot be sheathed until it has tasted blood”? What if a magic sword that has that requirement, except it’s sort of inverted. A sword that, instead of being inhabited by an evil spirit which once awakened cannot be lulled back to sleep except by blood sacrifice, was inhabited by a benevolent spirit who would not allow the sword to be drawn unless bloodshed were the only possible solution. A sword whose power could never be misused because it would only allow itself to be used in situations where it was justified. What about a Paladin who spends their entire journey fighting with a sheathed sword, incapacitating but never killing or maiming. The party believes that the Paladin has taken an oath of no killing, until they face the big villain. And it is in that moment, and that moment alone, that the sword will allow itself to be drawn.

Idk, this image set my mindwheels a-turning.

But do y’all see the vision?

[Image description: screen shot of a Tumblr reply from @hijodeporos, featuring a closeup, black and white image in sepia tones, of a person in armor holding an unsheathed sword engraved with a Latin motto. Below the photo is the English translation: "Do not unsheath me without reason. Do not wield me without valor." Description ends.]

...At first glance I thought that was a photo of a three-point car seat belt, and thought the anti-sword was something that could only be unsheathed in order to protect.

But now that I've read & looked more carefully, I've had another thought:

The Paladin starts out tugging at his sword at the approach of every potential conflict, and only after he realizes he can't free his sword does he look for other solutions.

After a while, it just becomes an automatic muscle memory -- as a sort of self-soothing behavior to reassure himself that there is another way, this time, just like there has always been.

And then, one day, he puts his hand on the pommel, and the sword seemingly unsheaths itself, and he has only a moment to mentally prepare himself to kill another.

Quoted tags:

Thank you for reblogging a post with ID. They should be easier to find (I still think it looks like a car seat belt).

I'd completely forgotten I'd written this post. So thanks for reminding me.

i was so sad, i drew a little bat so i wouldn’t be sad. and now i am no longer sad.

here is a little bat to banish your sadness

This nice little bat reminds me of this other nice little bat who was drawn in the 1200s:

This is the only website where I routinely see people say things like “oh this reminds me of something I recently saw from the 1200s”

Servant: Your highness, a party of adventurers has answered your call for help.

King: Excellent. What are they like?

Servant: One of them is a dragon-lady.

King: Interesting. Those are rare around these parts.

Servant: Another is a goblin paladin.

King: Not a role you usually see goblins in.

Servant: A third is a purple-skinned tiefling.

King: I didn't even know they come in that color.

Servant: The last one is a sapient gelatinous cube.

King: What. How did these four even meet?

Servant: They met in a tavern two hours ago, apparently.

Queen: My love, please return to bed.

King: *pacing* Why would a gelatinous cube come to a tavern? Can it even get drunk? How did it fit through the doors?

All-cubes party

Hypothesis debunked.

my character in my groups last major campaign (waterdeep dungeon heist) was an ooze wizard named tasha. it was a normal ochre jelly in the undercity that ate a wizard who was wearing a diadem of intellect, which it then accidentally attuned to and gained sentience. the first spell it cast was tahsas caustic brew, which it then in its infinite (7) wisdom deduced must make it tasha, since it was the one who cast the caustic brew.

my dm made a homebrew version of the plasmoid race from spelljammer, and let me have a version of the split ability from normal ochre jellys. if i took slashing damage while i was size medium, i could opt to split my hp and movement in half and control two small creatures- one of which was tahsa prime since it had the diadem in it. the other one was named twosha. my familiar was a small amount of slime that i separated out and controlled remotely, of course named threesha.

we ultimately TPKed when the party rouge (a tabaxi thief named moonshadow who was largely just a normal fucking guy who lived in waterdeep) and i decided it was a brilliant idea to get the drop on a polymorphed gold dragon by throwing two beads of fireball and casting a normal fireball at the same time. gold dragons are, of course, immune to fire damage.

our poor cleric (phaftonne levvi, a real world medieval irishman who got isekaied into faerune and thought the deity Gond was just a weird way of saying God - as in the Catholic God) was about to talk our way safely out of the situation, but of course once we did our triple fireball special (it was super ineffective!) a fight broke out and our level five asses all died to the ancient gold dragon (which is immune to fire damage).

one the campaigns of all time.

my understanding and interpretation of Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” cannot be untangled from the fact that it was originally published to follow her poem about childhood sexual abuse, “Rage”

i just don’t think it was unintentional that these were presented flush against each other

I bet people turning 67 are having a great bonding experience with their grandchildren right now...what a wonderful world

the floating head of wisdom

Please don't fall victim to internet misinformation. There is no floating head. It's a regular horse, it's neck is just hidden due to the position of the camera. I made an image to help you understand the what's actually going on.

Thank you for the clarification

Can someone who understands psychology explain why this makes someone "rude"?

Phatic discourse, a subset of affiliative signaling.

When Co-workers do things like ask about weekend plans, chat about non-work topics, eat lunch in the same room, they are--subconsciously--reaffirming that they are part of a cooperative (or, minimally, non-antagonistic) social group.

The other primates cement social bonds by grooming each other; we do it by making small talk.

If they solicit your participation in these rituals, and you repeatedly refuse those bids, you are marking yourself out as, at best, an outsider to the group, and thus potentially antagonistic.

This is all happening on the monkey-brain level; they have no idea what they're doing or how they are interpreting your response, so there's no way to clear up the misunderstanding.

To the ape sleeping in your co-worker's DNA, either you are part of the grooming circle, or you are an outsider who, for all it knows, may be coming to steal all the bananas.

Even if you would prefer not to socialize with your co-workers, it's generally worth it to set aside 5 minutes a couple times a week for phatic communication. You don't have to answer your co-workers' affiliative signals every time, but it's less trouble in the long run if you respond to a few of them.

if you are the type of person who really just wants to be left alone to do their work in quiet: it is actually easier to achieve this as part of the in-group. when you enter a new space, in this case, a job, make it your GOAL to make everyone Know Who You Are. introduce yourself to everyone you meet. literally everyone. "hi I'm Jack I'm New." this helps burst the awkward bubble. you are now one of the monkeys.

at some point, either in response to an invitation, or just in the natural course of conversation, you can add in that you are a "quiet type" who "needs their silence" or what have you. customize to your personal needs. i find it helpful to imagine a well dressed elderly woman describing the sort of peace she needs to manifest.

roughly once a week if you see a group of people chatting, engage with them. keep it pleasant. it can be superficial. word will travel that you are Nice and Quiet and Not The Chatty Type protecting you from group lunches etc. if you have an office with a door that you keep closed a lot, putting up any kind of decor will also send positive signals.

humans are monkeys! for better or worse!

Pro tip: try to make a note (write it down if you have to) about some inconsequential thing that your coworker mentions so you can ask about it later. Kids and pets are great for This. As are hobbies. One guy in my office zoom called in from his house and I saw he had an arcade game in his office so I asked him about it later and he lit up like a Christmas tree. Another coworker has a pet pig and I ask every couple months how the pig is doing. This is a great strategy for pivoting conversation away from you and will make them think you are the friendliest monkey in the pod.

The grooming circle also serves a very practical purpose. Getting to know each other - even superficially but regularly - makes people more likely to feel comfortable asking for something they need, more likely to say yes, and more likely to trust each other with sensitive information. All of this makes people better fellow human beings to each other.

It means my coworker is more likely to feel safe enough to tell me "Can you take over my shift tomorrow?" and I'm more likely to say "yes" even when I don't want to, because I care about his well being and he also takes over shifts for me when he doesn't want to.

It means my coworker is more likely to ask me for help if they experience sexual harassment at work, or if they think they're being underpaid, or if they're actually very lonely and need someone, anyone, to go to their Mom's funeral with them.

And maybe this ritual of trust-building feels unnecessary to you. Maybe you would do all these things for random strangers, but your coworkers won't know that unless they get to know you a little, so they won't know that they can ask you for help.

#take part in the grooming. become one of the ingroup. band together to demand more bananas from your zookeeper aka your boss#monkey together strong or something

YES. Unionize your monkey grooming circle.

also, if your fellow monkeys are anxious you might steal their bananas? give them bananas instead. i.e., bring food to work. baked goods work great. they can be store bought; you don't need to go to a lot of effort. bring a box of grocery store brownies or whatever to work every so often and people will LOVE you for literally zero effort. everyone loves the coworker who gives them free food.

Adding onto this for the folks with anxiety: It’s so much easier to adapt if you put yourself in their place for a second. Imagine being rejected every time you interact with someone, and they seem to take every opportunity to get away from you. Your anxiety instincts will be SCREAMING that they hate you. Now you’re stuck working with this person you’re convinced hates you—everything spirals into discomfort from there.

When you’re neurodivergent or have mental illnesses like anxiety, it’s easy to see everyone else as The Judger of your own innocent actions rather than realizing they’re also conscious of your judgment and approval.

a single andes chocolate mint from the olive garden can fully nourish an adult human for up to 96 hours

This is genuinely the idea behind Kendal Mint Cake

Say what now?

Kendal Mint Cake is a sort of highly dense lump of sugar flavoured with peppermint oil. It does not spoil, and somehow contains 2x more sugar and glucose than sugar or glucose. It is a purposeful product intended as an emergency ration to give a boost of energy when mountaineering. It is associated with hikers and mountaineers in the UK and is sold in camping/outdoor stores. Typically you keep a packet permanently in your camping bag or car or emergency kit, and just never move or remove it. If the time comes, it’s there.

I gestured a hand across an explanation of a Scottish field geologist character named Ken(dal Mint Cake) stating that he always has a packet of Kendal mint cake somewhere and received a message from a friend saying “I didn’t know you also knew (guy that Ken could conceivably be based on)”. I didn’t. This is just a portrait of too many extant guys.

There are several species of this man crashing cheerfully around the UK receiving deep spiritual pleasure from crouching in a puddle in a howling gale up a mountain nibbling pieces of violent mint sugar and apparently metabolising sufficient joy from this to polish off Kendal Mint Cake in marketable quantities for over 100 years.

Unless they made too much of it originally and are still selling it.

It isn’t sugar cube. It’s sugar to the fourth power. Nobody sounds reasonable talking about it.

Tumblr users rising to the challenge . You’ll note the recurring theme

Step 1: go on an entirely optional adventure

Step 2: get into an unpleasant condition in bad weather

Step 3: become very uncomfortable and hateful

Step 4: Kendal mint cake

Step 5: access stratosphere with tits blown off

Step 6: summit

Step 7: say “that was lovely”

Ok, as someone from the Bahamas who has spent the latter half of his life in Canada, I think I can actually take a pass at answering this.

You see, I have camped (unwillingly) in -20C. I have had my face shredded by winds on the Saskatchewan prairies in -30C (after windchill). But never in my life have I been as cold as I was in York, in December, surrounded by mist and in the drizzling rain with only a rough idea how to get home... at 1 degree above freezing.

It wasn't just cold. It was miserable cold. It got into my bones and did not leave for hours after I was back inside and, ostensibly, warm. It was the kind of cold that made me look in the pantry and suddenly realize what the point of beans on toast was. It fundamentally changed my relationship with cold to the point where when I got back to Canada, I found myself going to the store in shorts while it was snowing, a concept so far beyond my Bahamian ass previously that it was unthinkable three years prior.

So while I have never mountaineered in Britain (aside from falling down Arthur's Seat once), I can totally believe it is in every way a more lunatic experience than, say, scaling Huayna Picchu (which I have done. Without water).

Ngl Joe Rogan's gormlessness would be almost endearing if he wasn't constantly pushing the public further right through sheer lack of comprehension. Like, you helped do this. This was literally always the plan, you do realise that right?

Instead he's sat there with the vibes of a high ranking nazi propagandist at a Hitler rally going 'wait up, I'm not sure I'm on board with some of this stuff' as if he had just wandered in by mistake.

fallen london

to all my fallen london hoes. if you have the wherewithal pls find me on FL (same name) and help me with my nightmares. they're so high and I don't have time for All That right now.

okay you have all ensured that I have about -27 nightmares. holy shit.

You’re at a shop and you see across the way someone collapse on the street, weary, covered in dirt, twitching a little. They pull out their phone and send a message and then three minutes later they are surrounded by dozens of doctors and inspectors and what not carefully nursing them back to health.

yeah pretty much

“and the universe said…”

having lunch and someone's watching cnc videoes loud as fuck style so i'm just here chewing my food while there's sounds of water jetting and steel screeching in the back