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Watch: It’s your right to share your salary, not doing so could be holding you back.

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I screamed at this

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trying to activate heroic cryo-pod defenders with a guardian new to the tangled shore 

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Let me tell you about one of my high school friends’ old Dungeons and Dragons PCs.

Olaf Olafson was your pretty straightforward Northman Barbarian type. Huge, strong, pale, red-haired and with a tremendous beard. What made Olaf special was the little things.

Despite living in a world with clerical magic, demons, and other powerful alignment-based Outsiders, Olaf was an atheist. This was because his people believed the last world had already ended and the gods went with it (basically post-Ragnarok). All that was left were ‘spirits’. Powerful spirits. Who could grant deific magic. But they weren’t gods, and you didn’t have to worship them- in fact you shouldn’t, because it would just inflate their already swollen egos.

Despite being an enormous, frightening, powerful man with dubious hygeine and a propensity for going literally berserk in combat, Olaf was a gentle fellow in towns and villages, had a deep fondness for small fluffy animals and children, and was a generous tipper.

Olaf liked to drink. Not mead, but wine. He liked to sip it. It made him feel ‘civilized’. He never drank it quickly enough to get drunk. His meals almost invariably consisted of “Wine. Meat. Cheese.” Which was what he would order in literally every tavern. They’d ask him to clarify, what sort of wine? What sort of meat? What sort of- Olaf would raise a hand and repeat, slowly, as if to a fool: “Wine. Meat. Cheese.” 

Olaf spoke broken common, more or less Hulk-speak, referred to himself in the third person almost exclusively, all that fun stuff. Then we had a story arc where I sent them up to Olaf’s homeland, where everyone spoke ‘Northman’ or whatever the hell I called it. While up there, he was incredibly fluent. Even poetic. “My brothers! I have returned from the decadent lands of the south, bearing riches and glory, and tales of great deeds!” The other players caught on and talked like a pack of movie Frankensteins, barely able to communicate in the foreign tongue.

For a long time, Olaf was the most financially stable member of the party. Because he bought a tavern in their home-base-town, hired the senior barmaid/waitress lady to be the manager, and funneled the profits back into the business. He kept his adventuring money and his tavern money separate, except when he would sometimes spend adventuring money to expand the tavern. 

 There’s not a lot to do in 3rd edition with skill ranks when you’re a barbarian, so eventually Olaf sank a point into Healing on a lark. A few sessions later, they captured an important enemy NPC, but he’d lost an arm in the fighting and was about to die. Their cleric had been captured and their NPC paladin wasn’t around, either. There was no magical healing available, and no one else had any ranks in healing. The dude was about to die, and take with him the knowledge of where their friends had been taken. Olaf- with a  single rank in Healing I remind you -offered to save his life in exchange for the location, and the guy agreed. Olaf then stuck a sword in the fire, said “Olaf see this once,” and cauterized the wound.

It worked, of course. I didn’t even make him roll. I was too busy trying not to piss myself laughing. “Olaf see this once.” Jesus Christ.

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if Hamilton had come out during the Glee Era, this is what the episode basically would be

- Opening scene: ND in the classroom talking among themselves. Schue walks in wearing full period costume. Everyone is confused and a little ashamed. Schue tells them he’s discovered they’re all failing history, and one of them tells him history is just SO BORING. 

 - cut to a scene of somehow all the kids in the same class in various stages of unconsciousness while a Professor Binns type teacher drones on about the war of 1812. 

- Schue assures them history is TOTALLY COOL, informs them about Hamilton, tries to white rap his way through either Guns and Ships or Yorktown. Santana makes that “why am I surrounded by white fools” face that she always makes. Hamilton is the assignment this week, even though COMPETITION looms in the future, but when have they ever actually practiced before the week of? 

- Blaine has been super friendly with some guy from Dalton or from Hairgellers Anonymous or something, is constantly liking his posts on FB. Kurt sings “Burn” over a montage of Blaine ignoring him in ridiculous situations that no one would ever be on their phone during. 

- Rachel has decided this week is one of the weeks where she’s aggressive about becoming a star, sings Satisfied. 

- Tensions are getting high, so Artie flawlessly white boy raps through “What’d I Miss” while Mike dances, to lighten the mood. 

- The kids are learning about Hamilton, but Schue is worried they’re not REALLY learning the point he’s trying to get at. 

- Probably the Unholy Trinity sings “Schuyler Sisters” 

- Schue walks back in on the kids excitedly talking about the show and/or history in general. Smiles that smile he smiles when he thinks he’s a good teacher. “See you guys? History is now. You’re the founding fathers. You’re the underdogs. Your time is coming, you just have to wait for it.” 

- New Directions: YEAH! 

- The group sings “Wait for It” in the auditorium either in full costume, or wearing just vaguely matching outfits. Finn takes lead, but Mercedes comes in on the middle solo. 

- They all smile at each other at the end, while Schue makes that face again. 

- Sue is in the background glowering that ND has managed to not fall apart yet again.

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During the most poor and homeless period of my life, I had a lot of people get angry with me because I spent $25 on Bath and Body Works candles during a sale. They couldn’t comprehend why the hell I would do that when I had been fighting for months to try and get us on our feet, afford food, and have an apartment to live in.

Those candles were placed beside wherever I slept that night. In the morning, I would move them and set them wherever I’d have to hang out. At one point I carried one around in my purse - one of those big honking 3-wick candles. I never lit them, but I’d open them and smell them a lot.

I credit that purchase with a lot of my drive that got me to where I am today. I had been working tirelessly, 15+ hour days with barely any reward, constantly on the phone or trying to deal with organizations and associations to “get help at”. It’d gone on for almost a year by the end of it, and I was so burnt out, to the point that I would shake 24/7. But I could get a bit of relief from my 3-wick “upper middle class lifestyle” candles. They represented my future goals, my home I wanted to decorate, and how I would one day not be in this mess anymore.

When we moved into the apartment, and our financial status improved, I burned those candles every single day. When they were empty, I cleaned them out, stuck labels on them, and they became the starting point of my really cute organization system I had ALWAYS planned to have.

So whenever I hear about someone very poor getting themselves a treat - maybe it’s Starbucks, maybe it’s a home deco item, maybe it’s a video game… I don’t judge them. I get it. I get that you can’t go without anything for that long without it making you go crazy. You need to pull some joy, inspiration, and motivation from somewhere.

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In the movie The Santa Clause, one becomes Santa by putting on the red coat after the death of the previous Santa. Even ignoring how morbid this premise is on its own, it’s possible that there’s another even darker level to the story. When Scott Calvin shows up at the North Pole as the new Santa, not only do the elves not appear surprised, they seem happy to see him and not at all upset about the Santa he replaced. And furthermore, at the very beginning of the movie, we see an elf standing with a crowd of children outside a toy store near Scott’s house. Why would she already be there if she didn’t have some sort of prior knowledge of what was going to occur? This leaves me no choice but to conclude that the elves not only hated the previous Santa but actually orchestrated his demise.

tl;dr: In The Santa Clause, the elves totally murdered the previous Santa.

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