I dont know if people here keep up with whats going on on reddit, but the halflife subreddit is currently experieing a total and utter destruction of the sanity of its members and theyve crucified megaman

#Merry crisis

every time i listen to “you’re a mean one mr. grinch” i can’t help but sit there and think “what did the grinch do to hurt you?” because dude just stands there for 2 minutes and 58 seconds and drags the grinch into the dirt

he stole christmas, kayla! stop with your #notallgrinches propaganda!

you know what if someone told me i was a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce i’d probably be bitter enough to steal christmas too 

Interestingly, though The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is narrated by Boris Karloff, the big musical number is sung by the late Thurl Ravenscroft - an American voice actor better known as the voice of Tony the Tiger.

My headcanon is that the Grinch and Tony the Tiger had a bad breakup, and “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” is the resulting breakup song.

Did this really HAVE to be the first thing I see when I opened up Tumblr?

Yes.

oh god theres art

@altadude you know what must be done.

ive been avoiding reblogging this honestly but just. What the fuck. What the fuck tumblr

I apologize to all my followers for this

if i had to read this you do too

I have a hate-hate relationship with this

………

Good grief… I’m sorry, but I can’t not reblog this…

Tis the season bitches

DAMN IT WHY WOULD YOU BRING THIS BACK YOU HEATHEN

Why is this on my dash?

…..I’m.. Bothered? by the fact that I’m not bothered by this.

You’re not bothered?? I’m not only not bothered, I’m freaking invested. I’m having actual empathetic sadness for The Grinch. I want them to go into couple’s counseling. I want the “ten years later” when Tony visits Whoville on business and meets the reformed Grinch whose heart has grown 3 times its usual size. I want them to reminisce over a shared dinner of roast beast and wine, then spend a drunken night together, then realize that maybe things are different and people really do change. I want a 3-act story where there’s a long dark night of soul searching and the realization that maybe we’ve all got a little bit of bad banana with greasy black peel inside us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make a damned fine banana bread if someone will give us a chance. 

“maybe we’ve all got a little bit of bad banana with greasy black peel inside us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make a damned fine banana bread if someone will give us a chance” is an incredibly profound quote and I did NOT expect to get it from a Grinch x Tony the Tiger post

every fucking year i have to see this on my dash please just let me fucking r e s t

It’s that time again.

every day I learn bot comments on ao3 are stooping lower and lower

anyway if you get a comment like this, chances are that they are bot and their goal is to do whatever it takes to get you to delete your work, most certainly (from what I’ve heard) it’s because they want to “safely” steal your work, use it to train their ai without you being able to rightfully claim ownership of your work since “there’s no proof that the work was stolen/was posted elsewhere first by you” because the original source has already been deleted.

THEY ARE ALL BOTS. at first it was “ao3 is deleting fics and your entire account will be affected unless you delete the fics yourself” then it was “this work contains contents that are illegal and they have already reported you and your fic to the police” (yes, that’s how desperate these bots are), and now it’s this.

report their comments to ao3 for spam—in this case, specifically, I think you may be able to report them for harassment too—and don’t pay attention to them, most importantly don’t delete your works, don’t feel discouraged by their comments. remember that they are bots and they mass comment something like this on people’s works at random to get people to delete their works. (or even if they’re not bot, they are still pathetic bullies who don’t deserve your time or attention.)

Putting all tabletop players into a college level ethics class and forcing them to turn in a paper on moral philosophy before buying a new book

This is…. An interesting thing to say… on this post in particular….

I think a lot of people reblogging this from @probablybadrpgideas are interpreting this as “this would be such a funny wacky way to make the table soooo complicated” but I mean this as a complaint about the way that so many tabletop players seem to just. completely lack an understanding of ethics. what it actually means to behave ethically and treat others ethically. and i dont mean this as "why do people want to be mean and play as villains? :(" i mean "why are there so many tabletop players that sympathize with outright fascist factions to the point of wondering why theyre listed as 'Lawful Evil' in the book"

can you talk me through why this was a particularly bad or challenging thing for your party to have done

Goblins were in fact, for me, a turning point on this concept. I had a player who wanted to be a goblin, and I forgot about this fact up to the point that the party got a quest to kill goblins. As soon as I was announcing the quest I realized it would be a problem, though I didn't have anything else ready so I went with it. And it was! The players immediately questioned why the mayor was paying mercenaries to kill goblins, and then further questioned his justifications, at which point I realized it would be a better story if the goblins were a scapegoat and not an actual villain. This turned into a terse interrogation where the mayor threatened to put them in jail once their questions got pointed enough that he would have to either field accusations or lie; they then went CSI on the situation and drilled through his political cabinet to get answers. I had to improv pretty much all of it and I don't remember the actual ending (I know they sided with the goblins and the mayor was guilty), but this helped me realize that the Gary Gygax writing style of "certain races are just BAD and that's why they hang out in dungeons" was very short-sighted.

D&D writing, by and large, encourages a lack of questions. The surface runs deep. "Go into a cave and chop up goblins." Why are we doing this? "Goblins are bad." All goblins? "Yes."

I think the question of "why are there players comfortable siding with fascist factions and wondering why they're called 'lawful evil'" is pretty easily answered with... because D&D itself is inherently kind of fascist. And it's the most insidious kind of fascist, too- its villains are fascists, so how could you point fingers at the book?

Fire Giants are dwarf slavers. Drow are a megalomaniacal theocracy who hate men. Orcs are violent tribes of marauding killers. Illithids want to destroy all life and keep an entire civilization to scrub their floors. But these narratives still push the idea that "evil" is a racial trait. The players are not only justified in their campaign to destroy these cultures, they're encouraged to do it.

They let the cat out of the bag by making these playable races; because now, they're not cut-and-dry villanous societies. They're people. There are Drow accountants whose lives are about balancing taxes, not worshipping Lolth. There are Yuan-Ti who don't sacrifice babies on altars, and much prefer playing the lute or sewing blankets. Yet we're still expected to read "Chaotic Evil" under the Monster Manual entry for a bugbear and take it seriously.

Reblogging again to add a quick take: as a DM introducing ethics makes your game so much better.

I had an intro to my campaign that involved a mad scientist kidnapping someone and turning them into a wererat. I didn't think much of it and I spent way more time fleshing out the other NPCs, I just wanted to use that wererat as a boss fight.

Once the party encountered him though they immediately saw what I totally missed: the guy who became the wererat was absolutely the victim of this story. I did my best at thinking on my feet and made the wererat this defeated guy who only followed the mad scientist because he felt like his life was ruined. So they, through good rolls, convinced him to help them fight the mad scientist and it made for such a better story.

The moral I'm trying to convey is that you need to treat every NPC in your game as a world within themselves. And I mean EVERY NPC. Why are the wolves attacking people? Are they desperately hungry? Mind controlled? Territorial due to poachers? Why are the goblins working for the wizard? Extortion? Promise of riches? If the bandits see that everyone is in armor, why wouldn't they just let the party pass and wait for easier prey? If one of the bandits die, why wouldn't the rest of them run for the hills?

here’s a couple of articles on the history of racism + xenophobia in tolkien & how that influenced dnd

anyone interested in the subject should definitely also check out the whole Three Black Halflings podcast, which talks about being black in nerdy spaces. a lot of times they’ll have on guests talking about their intersections and experiences in nerdy spaces. they have an episode with the author of the articles above.

they’ve also played a ttrpg based on african mythologies rather than mostly european ones like most mainstream fantasy.

highly recommend!!

the amount of people in the notes going "um actually you're the problem for pointing out subconscious biases" is just astouding.

Like I'm sorry to tell you, but if you keep playing shit that tells you some races are inherently evil and deserving of eradication, then yea. That will absolutely seep into your subconscious beliefs and worldview.

Especially with stuff like this, where it already is DEEPLY ingrained in society and all these "evil" races stereotype non-western ethnicities to some degree

btw, the refusal to acknowledge the racism present in modern fantasy and the like, are the product of "the curtains are just blue" mindset.

It's the same ridiculing of the notions that stories and actions may have meaning beyond what it explicitly stated.

There’s degrees of ableism in these portrayals as well, which isn’t surprising considering that racism and ableism are (often) appearance based discrimination against people who are deemed as “other” from the “acceptable” idea of human.

Yuan-ti struggle with emotions, Wearwolfism spreads like a disease, and Kobolds are sensitive to sunlight. The vast majority of monsters are monsters because they don’t look human enough, because they don’t act in an acceptably human way.

And in people’s efforts to find an easy blanket solution to ways that racism is baked into DnD monsters… that they kind of end up enforcing the ableism that’s baked into them as well.

Like as a neurodivergent and physically disabled person who gravitated towards more “monsterous” races/species, it’s kind of uncomfortable how the new books have answered the idea that races/species should be people with variety, rather than inherently evil, by also… homogenising them all towards the ideal of the acceptable human.

Kobolds are’t sensitive to the sun, Wearwolves can chose to control their curse, and Yuan-ti flavour text says nothing about their emotions now (they’re also way closer to human physiologically).

Why are we adverse to the idea of species having different requirements and capabilities? Why (especially in the case of the last two) are these linked to an idea of goodness? Why is a Yuan-ti’s capacity for goodness and verity tied to its ability to feel things in the right way? Why is a wearwolfs capacity for goodness tied to its ability to control its body?

What ideas do these implications enforce, and if left unchecked, how might that impact the way you interact with disabled people?

you don't know why but you're dying to try 🎵

We need to go back to using sailing ships full time like immediately. Yes it would take longer to get places but the Aesthetic is unmatched

Like there is nothing sexier hthan this

Can’t wait for OP to get scurvy

Are you under the impression that the ships themselves are what caused scurvy

Once again. Do you think this is the fault of the ships themselves

Hahhaha I’m not ok I just spent like 4 hours making a Minecraft escape room

Except it’s evil

It’s so evil

I would rage quit it if I went in blind

I’m so sorry PMSMP

But the rewards will be substantial

I hope you put Tallulah into it.

For enrichment.

some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.

I couldn't remember the word "doorknob" ten minutes ago.

ok but the onelook thesaurus will save your life, i literally could not live without this website

REBLOG TO SAVE A WRITER'S LIFE

LIFE SAVED

REBLOGGING TO SAVE ANOTHER WRITERS LIFE

I use this every time I sit down to write. It's the best tool in the world and I would be lost without it!

brb trying this

scar confessing he was the ore snatcher and talking about his plans for the bit that didn't end up happening + cub saying he's so proud of scar :)

a lonesome grieving mother is asking you to leave.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YOU GET ME