ashallter

[ashallter]

I, like I suspect many of the tumblr populace, ran into the issue in my youth of reading a lot of words I never heard spoken. My vocabulary has always been above average but my implementation is often flawed.

Like the day I told my dad I was the epitome of something and he laughed in my face. It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t correctly intuit the emphasis. (Mine was Ep-i-TOME vs Ep-i-to-ME).

My dad didn’t apologize for his rudeness but after my initial disgruntlement I just learned to roll with it. I’d get corrected and laugh it off. Some words were more frustrating though because it necessitated having to rework the word in my brain every time I read it. Like a few years ago when I learned I’d had “seneschal” wrong for decades. (I can’t explain why I thought it was sen-shull and not sen-es-shawl)

I learned that I had harbinger wrong during a Transformers movie without needing to embarrass myself. Thanks, Shia Lebouf. (Har-bing-er (wrong) made way more sense than har-binge-er (right) but no one asked me)

At this point in my life though I’ve managed to work out most of the kinks. I don’t often get corrected anymore.

But there’s one other snag that crops up between me and my beloved. I’ll confidently say a word and they’ll go, “That’s not how that’s pronounced.”

“Yes it is,” I’ll say, very firmly. Because in these cases I’ll generally have heard with my ears and repeated a word verbatim. I’ll know I heard it, so it can’t be wrong.

And pretty much every time I’ll be saying the British pronunciation instead of the American one. I’ve consumed enough British media that often it’s the only time I heard certain words said and I never realized American English handles it differently.

In some cases I’ll switch to the accepted American one. But they can pry machismo out of my cold dead hands, the American version is so stupid I can’t even handle it. I now recognize we stole the Spanish word but we made it worse.

[ashallter]

Judge demands answers on whether 2-year-old U.S. citizen was deported to Honduras

[ashallter]

It's with a heavy but hopeful heart that I watch Palestinian families fundraiser on here, slowly accumulating the precious little money to go around that they need to survive. However, not everyone is so lucky. A lot of Palestinians that have not had that kind of luck, that did not get early verification, that did not get massive platforms behind them from large bloggers, have approached me in my inbox, asking me kindly to do what I can for them. It kills me that I have so little to give myself, but I've seen this platform collectively raise enough to change someone's life. I've made a list of Palestinian fundraisers that are extremely low on funds, in the hope that drawing attention to people who have not been lucky at all can help turn that luck around. I know most of us can't possibly give enough to get all of these families safe in one go. But please, reblog this list. Pick one or two fundraisers, give what you can, and then keep track of it. Slowly, collectively, we can make a difference in these people's lives. Share and donate as much as you can. https://docs.google.com/document/d/178EGDFKkHlh3y4TMVX82kqgITHsqtoMdNccI2f_94Os/edit?usp=sharing

[ashallter]

My mom has always loved the idea of animals but her husbandry is often… lacking. So when she heard someone was giving away two free sheep she took them because it was so sad that they were full of tumors and unwanted.

She didn’t like. Do anything about the tumors.

But the sheep came and lived in our fields, wooly and much bigger than I’d imagined sheep to be. I asked mom if she’d have them sheared, because both wooly lads were starting to grow moss on the outer part of their wool.

No, she said, she’d just be sad looking at their bare tumors. The sheep remained unshorn. That was probably for the best since we knew fuck all about fibercraft.

I asked my mom if we would eat the sheep since they were dying anyway.

No, she said, she didn’t like mutton and didn’t like the idea that we might eat sheep cancer. The sheep remained unslaughtered.

So the first sheep died, after a year of languishing in the grassy fields, weighed down with unshorn wool. Maybe it was a nice year, we have no way of knowing how the sheep felt.

Now here into the narrative enters my father. A man allergic to literally every animal. A man married to a woman who was just constantly bringing animals home. Cats, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, horses, goats, cows, and finally sheep.

He yelled, he fumed, he raged and when his fury was spent the betumoréd sheep were still quietly chewing cud in the pasture and my mom won again.

Now my dad worked in IT. So one morning, my mom called him. A sheep has died, she said. My dad waited. We have to bury it, she informed him. My dad was dressed in his work clothes, a button up and slacks. So he called work and told them he’ll be late. Because he has to dig a sheep grave. His coworkers do not know what to say but agree that he can come in late.

So he went down to dig a sheep grave with my mom.

My mom was not there. I no longer remember what task she abandoned him for but the long and the short was that my father was alone with the dead sheep he didn’t want.

The property we lived on was about two acres. We had the lower pasture and the upper pasture. We also had a beautiful little stream that cut across the property. This beautiful little stream was home to frogs, salamanders, and all manner tiny little things and all those little creatures meant there were strict rules about where we could dig or develop.

The sheep had died in the lower pasture. But he could only be buried in the upper pasture, roughly 2 acres away. Which meant my dad needed to get the sheep from point A to point B alone. In his work clothes for some reason, he didn’t change.

So first my dad dug the sheep grave in a gentle drizzling rain, spattering his work pants with mud. Why didn’t he change. That part was pretty easy. Then he got a tarp and set about grabbing the dead betumoréd ram. Getting it on the tarp was also pretty easy, rolling it from left to right.

This sheep. Was about 300lbs under the wool. But with a few years of unshorn wool that was slowly filling with rain that sheep corpse was much too heavy for a single beleaguered man.

When he related this story to me I was incoherent with laughter. My dad at no point thought that this was a funny story, not his wet muddy work clothes, nor his wayward spouse, or the extremely dead farm animal.

I had tears rolling down my eyes and I asked, did you give up and wait for mom?

No.

My dad is not a quitter.

He, still in his work clothes, dragged that corpse a foot at a time, uphill, in the rain, to its final resting place, all by himself.

And then he went to work. In his wet muddy clothes.

[ashallter]

a world without trans people has never existed and never will

prints

[ashallter]

a very special friend. maybe good boy can has one. promise to feed and walk them

[ashallter]

seventeen years old kaidan alenko cutting loose with a full biotic kick, almost as strong as an adult, and not even because of something that was done to him, but to protect someone else

the man has always been the embodiment of the phrase “fuck around and find out”

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silly rabbit. is that what hecalls you, no.

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I think he likes strawberries

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I think it was about a month into dating my betrothed that I first turned to them and said, “You smell hungry, want to get some lunch?”

“I what? I smell hungry?”

“Yeah, like, the empty smell. Aren’t you hungry?”

They were, but it was hard for them to accept smelling a state of being. After a few weeks of me pointing it out right before they realized it themself though they asked, “What does hunger smell like?”

“Bad.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“It’s like… an emptiness that goes past the mouth? Bad breath is more upfront but hunger is like you’re smelling stomach acid, it’s all the way from an empty belly.”

They started smelling my mouth in exaggerated silly fashion but eventually they did start to recognize it.

They’re now very smug when they get to use the skill back at me and inform me that I’m hungry.

[ashallter]

Bubble boop

[ashallter]

there is space within dragon age for some really interesting discussions on gender and gender roles: why priests, who fulfil a specific, nonviolent, mediator role, are women, vs templars who tend to be men; why, when andraste's claim to fame in thedas is literally waging war, is violence considered the man's remit? if it's because women are considered too important, above it, made sacred by andraste's sacrifice, sure- men as cannon fodder, as bodies for the machine, men as the frontline because women can't be thrown away like that (and there's space in here for some tasty conversations about what it means to transition, to be nonbinary, what role intersex people might play in this society), but then you do absolutely have to consider your mythology. because andraste's fate is to become The Wife, and while she's not quite consigned to eternal holy motherhood, she's very much positioned as an agent of the male god. so where does that leave her? and where does that leave women as a class, in a world with bloodline-dependent heredity - because if you're going to do prestige and status passing through the bloodline, you have to consider what that means for the women and those capable of pregnancy in your setting, because control of that is a means of power.

like, it's not as simple as saying "women can fight" and calling it a day, and even if bioware did manage to follow through on this, without having random npcs comment on what a shocker it is for you to be carrying a sword around, it wouldn't be a successful "matriarchal" society, because the devs are wearing horse blinders labelled MISOGYNY

[ashallter]

We were friends once

[ashallter]

Remember calming cat? Remember when tumblr was this color? If you don’t that’s fine. I just feel old and alone.

[ashallter]

A group of friends and I did a one shot recently in 5e. The catch is that they play something called “Dude Squad” where the only play “dudes” (not exclusively male people, just dude mentality) and they hate all magic and magic users. They think true strength is muscles and only muscles, and have in the past encountered magic users who they then convince to give up magic.

We got told to build a level 17 character for this one shot, most of the other folks had previous Dude Squad characters to resurrect. But I didn’t really want to play a straight martial class. In my heart, spellcasters are my true class, and I didn’t really have a strong idea of what kind of character to make.

So I approached the DM and said, “Hey, I have this idea to play a character that pretends to be a martial class but is actually a magic caster?” My girlfriends character is an aasimar who thinks he’s Thor and my backstory was that after meeting him and falling for him she decided to invest heavily in deceptive magic so as not to alienate him.

And my DM. Loved it. So he helped me build an extremely custom character. Two levels in Hexblade warlock gave her a good weapon and the ability to cast disguise self pretty much nonstop to appear buffer than she actually was.

Then there was four levels in Stone sorcerer in order to get 4 sorcery points, the ability to use those points to cast using Subtle Spell and no one could tell she’s casting, and to buff her AC.

Finally there was 11 Bladesong wizard levels in order to get some attack bonuses, even more AC, extra attacks, and the ability to burn spells to take less damage. We had a secret code we made up to cover my casting.

So the whole time I was burning spell slots to recharge my sorcery points every time I cast things like Haste and Spider Climb and use my Bladesong powers. We busted through walls and smashed our way through puzzles. We lied and said my character was a Barbarian/Monk so they didn’t bat and eye when she ran on walls with spider climb, but no one noticed when even after dashing she “held onto the stone wall” without any kind of check.

The final battle: the goblin wizard boss we were fighting had cast invulnerability on himself and had our friend mind controlled. So I’m trying to cover for not attacking as I try to dispel his invulnerability. I can no longer run on walls, or make the jumps my party is making on floating platforms over a spike pit so I try to use my actions on other helpful things like tying ropes for friends in the pit. I manage to dispel the magic on our friend but I burned almost all my spells trying to secretly dispel the boss’ spell and finally we just ended up grappling and suffocating him then pummeling him to death.

But at the last moment as we’re running out of this horrible goblin mansion I’m running down a wall and my friends are climbing down. The building says there’s 6 seconds left and my very injured love interest is not gonna make it so my character shouted “Fuckfuckfuck!” Ran over and cast dimension door to bring them both to safety. (Two people got left in the blast but both survived cause Dude Power). Then I critically failed my deception about how I had used magic and came clean and everyone lost their shit when they heard what we’d done. Her final confession, after dropping her buff disguise self, was, “When I met Kathor I really liked him and he freakin’ hates magic so I just kinda figured out how to hide that I was castin’ magic cause I though we might go to pound town.”

Kathor then declared, “I’ve never had someone try so hard to get in my pants!” And swept her up and they messily made out. It was deeply satisfying the wonders that DnD can create, like making a whole class based on the lie that you’re not spellcasting.

[ashallter]