Bad: Hobbit pipeweed is probably just tobacco because [something from Tolkien’s unpublished letters].

Also bad: Pipeweed is totally marijuana. All hobbits are stoners.

Good: “Pipeweed” is a catch-all term for anything you can stick in a pipe and smoke. Some of it will give you a light nicotine buzz, and some of it will get you absolutely blasted out of your mind. Hobbits are perfectly aware which is which, but since their system of classification is based on what farm the pipeweed was grown on rather than what species of plants went into it, the distinctions are often opaque to outsiders. If a hobbit offers you a puff of “Old Toby”, make sure you know how old Toby likes his pipeweed before you accept!

“Those Uruks will rip your face off, man. You ever done Longbottom Leaf?”

This is completely unsupported by the text, but I like to imagine that Longbottom Leaf is so proverbially vile that its name has entered into the Shire’s lexicon: when confronted with an unfamiliar pipeweed, a hobbit might politely inquire “how long is it?” – meaning roughly: “how badly will this fuck me up?”

(If the answer is “long as a summer afternoon”, you either decline, or you make sure you don’t have any prior commitments!)

Official ref sheet for Acie!

She's a giant wild mermaid that was found on a secluded island in a massive lake. Eventually she was discovered and introduced to society. She has a hard time fitting in, but she tries to be gentle and people love her singing voice.

Bonus Notes:

I got autobanned for a week on reddit again because I said I'd have just given this guy the death penalty. Oops! Sorry, I meant I would have executed him to death until he dies via painful killing, just to clarify.

X

Mama Yor ❤️

if every time i complain about cis people/transphobia around my cis friends i had to put a big asterisk saying "oh but not you honey you could never do any harm to people with less power than you and you definitely don't benefit from systemic oppression that very explicitly gives you more legal rights and access to resources than i have" that would be a clear sign that they are not as transfriendly as they demand to be told they are. this is a post about trans women in predominantly tme spaces.

i don't want my transfem friends to have to tell me "but not you though" every two sentences when they're venting. i don't want my transfem friends to be scared of me.

Genuinely confused as to how Mercer got a reputation in the D20 fandom for being a humorless, Rules As Written Robot, inflexible and player-antagonist DM.

Like obviously this is coming from people who haven’t watched him DM on CR but where on earth did the idea emerge from in the first place

In part I think it comes down to the format of the shows: Dimension20 is concerned with making "good tv" so is willing to skip past the minor gameplay steps to get to the big payoffs. They operate in seasons with pre-determined lengths, which is a necessity of their higher production budget.

Critrole however is most like what you'd see at an actual table full of experienced people: the campaigns last as long as they need to so the party spend sessions goofing off or getting tripped up by minor hurdles. They don't edit for time which is part of the charm.

Mercer *is* technically more by the books than Brennan for instance, but Brennan is also just as likely to bend the rules for thematic player failures as he is to reward them IE: "Are you weakest at the shoulder or elbow?". However, accusations of being humourless or player-antagonist are totally overwrought, and strike me as the complaints of people who not only haven't watched CR, but haven't really played all that much d&d.

I don't want to "oh you sweet summer child" these people, but it smacks to me of folks who only started the hobby in the modern era of above-and-beyond storyteller DMs, and know nothing of the petty tyrants of old who'd kill your character at the earliest opportunity to make a point and shame you for missing a session after they mutilated your backup for fun. Matt is SO encouraging and understanding and empathetic to his players, he just shows it through a larger and subtler scale of story than the d20 audience might be used to.

Am I so beautiful that you've no words left?

i dont love how midna looks in this drawing but she's fine! the next time i draw her it will be better.

This scene has me crying until now, god they are so in love..

Please take this gift midlink enjoyers.. (there is a really big lack of fanart of them)

I drew Shadowheart in a dress. Drawing fabric is very fun, I recommend

"Tutorial" on how to "draw" a blind OC.

My kofi

Boring tired disclaimer: Keep in mind that this is an introductory "drawing" "tutorial" and has some generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. Which happens to be true for everything in general. Links below so that you can research and do a nuance. Ones that were directly mentioned are bolded.

I'm gonna reblog with some videos of people speaking various American Indian/indigenous American languages, because I think most people don't even know what they sound like. Not to be judgement of that—just, you know, I think people who want to be informed should know what they sound like!

Former president of the Navajo Nation, Joe Shirley, giving an address in Navajo.

Nora Marks Dauenhauer telling a story, "Raven and Deer", in Tlingit.

Albert White Hat, a well known Lakota teacher, translator, and activist, speaking Lakota.

This YouTube user, Grahm Wiley-Camacho, has uploaded a bunch of videos in Colville Okanagan Salish, but I'm not sure who all the speakers are.

Multiple people speaking Cherokee and talking about revitalization of the language.

This guy speaking Yucatec Maya (guest starring: adorable small child).

There's a ton of material in Greenlandic on YouTube, but it's hard for me to find, because the titles and other metadata are also in Greenlandic! Of course, this represents a huge win for the language, since this is a biproduct of being in vibrant use by a community of speakers. Greenlandic has been an official language of the territory of Greenland since 1979, and the sole official language since 2009.

Here are some proceedings of the Greenlandic parliament, the Inatsisartut, which are conducted in Greenlandic.

Here is a radio show in Greenlandic, from Kalaallit Nunaata Radioa.

And here is a video of Aki-Matilda Høegh-Dam, Greenlandic MP in the Danish parliament (Folketing), causing some upset by speaking in Greenlandic instead of Danish.

Conversation between Loran Thompson and Francis Boots in Mohawk.

Interview with Yup'ik elder Raphael Jimmy about qaneryaraq "words of wisdom/right living".

official linguistics post

Twilight Sparkle deals with the many changes of alicornhood

“The Militarization of the Police Department – Deadly Farce,” an original painting by Richard Williams from “The 20 Dumbest People, Events, and Things of 2014″ in Mad magazine #531, published by DC Comics, February 2015.

Here’s the original, for comparison. And here’s a bit more about the artist and why he created the piece above for MAD Magazine.

Richard Williams on Norman Rockwell:

“For most people, he was the painter of ‘America,’” he added. “But even he said his vision was what he wanted ‘America’ to be. It was a mythical ‘America,’ a place where all people were decent, honest and full of good will. His work was full of gentle humor that made you feel a little better; even if you knew it wasn’t really true… you just wished it was. My parody of Rockwell’s painting simply says, ‘That myth is dead.’”

I think it’s relevant to add that even Norman Rockwell chose to leave his cushy job at the Saturday Evening Post because he wanted to make artwork that was more radical. The Post had rules that wouldn’t allow him to do artwork depicting black people as anything other than servants. The job paid really well and that was a huge reason he continued on. But he wanted change that and so he moved to Look magazine.

A lot of people know about the very first piece he did when he left the post which was the The Problem We All Live With which depicts Ruby Bridges walking to school under federal protection.

But I don’t think enough people know about Murder in Mississippi which depicts three real civil rights activists who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and sherriffs. The magazine ran the sketch instead of the finished piece because they felt it had a more striking statement to accompany the article. Norman Rockwell would finish that version after publication which is here

Rockwell’s legacy is sanitized because he decided to maintain his job at the Post for so long despite his frustrations with not being able to express himself. The civil rights movement was just his final straw to change what he could with the little time he had left. Look magazine received a lot of hate for Rockwell painting these as well.

Another favorite piece of mine is The Right to Know which depicts an integrated populace questioning their government. In 1968, the year of Vietnam and the year the Fair Housing Act only just got signed in months prior:

But I think it’s important to include the caption Rockwell originally wrote for the piece as well. I think it represents how a 74 year old Rockwell felt about the America he believed in and the people in it:

I’d just like to briefly say even Rockwell’s seemingly feel good Americana pieces are often more political than people today realize for example

likely the most famous picture of a Thanksgiving dinner ever painted and you see it all the time.

What you may not know is its actual title

“Freedom From Want” it’s a part of a series of 4, including this now famous meme

“Freedom of Speech” These paintings were illustrations of FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech where The President laid out a vision that would become what the Allies were fighting for in WWII universal human rights that became a part of the UN charter.

So this homey American Thanksgiving scene was also a bold statement that no one in the world should go hungry

Rockwell’s work was very political, he used that Americana small town America vibe of his work to make what he was saying feel very close to the viewers he was trying to reach and also his optimism of the human spirt but for sure not blind to the need to build a better world.