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Hi everyone! This is an illustrated guide I made as part of my co-admining work at The Middle Eastern Feminist on Facebook! It will be published there shortly.  The technique that is displayed here is a genuine one used in psychology - I forgot the name and couldn’t find it again so if you know about it, feel free to tell me! Some could say: “Yes but you can use that technique for instances of harassment other than Islamophobic attacks!”, and my reply is: Sure! Please do so, it also works for other “types” of harassment of a lone person in a public space!! However I’m focusing on protecting Muslims here, as they have been very specific targets lately, and as a French Middle Eastern woman, I wanted to try and do something to raise awareness on how to help when such things happen before our eyes - that way one cannot say they “didn’t know what to do”!  I’d like to insist on two things: 1) Do not, in any way, interact with the attacker. You must absolutely ignore them and focus entirely on the person being attacked! 2) Please make sure to always respect the wishes of the person you’re helping: whether they want you to leave quickly afterwards, or not! If you’re in a hurry escort them to a place where someone else can take over - call one of their friends, or one of yours, of if they want to, the police. It all depends on how they feel! For my fellow French-speakers: I will translate it in French and post it on my page as soon as I can :) Please don’t hesitate to share this guide as it could push a lot of people to overcome bystander syndrome!! Lots of love and stay safe! PS: I you repost this cartoon of mine on twitter or instagram, please add me in the post so I can see it, with @itsmaeril :)

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I’m sitting here amazed that anyone still thinks Matt would do something like unleash a CR 19 monster on his level 8 players or even set things up for a total party kill. He has made it so, so obvious that his view of the game is not DM versus players.

What kind of DMs are y'all playing under that are that viciously antagonistic? What D&D media are you consuming that, 55 episodes into campaign 2 and after a campaign 1 in which every character survived to the final episode (115 episodes!) still makes you think, week after week, that they are all going to die? Matt has showed over and over that he tries to make contingency plans for if things go horribly wrong. Monsters cutting their losses and running. Friendly NPCs showing up. Defeat meaning imprisonment instead of death. And so on.

What kind of gaming experience do you have that completely wipes away this trust in him and his love for his players and their characters, week after week? This is an honest question. Because yes, some DMs are that vicious, and some groups enjoy that, but it should be obvious that’s not what CR is about.

Especially after tonight. Because there was a moment, due to some terrible dark rolls, where things could have gone horribly bad. Matt took back an attack on Jester that would have left her unconscious (21 lightning damage + extra (bludgeoning?) damage, and she was at 25 HP). Instead, he unleashed an attack that was logical for the creature, but much less lethal to the Mighty Nein, because it meant that one of their clerics would still be up (Caduceus was already unconscious). This was a moment of kindness. Of acknowledging he’s not playing against his players, and that sometimes that means things may be fudged a little to preserve a story and someone’s investment. And yes, sometimes that means you take back an action.

So… don’t discard that trust every week, okay? He’s been doing this for a long time. Combat is hard to balance, but above everything else, he loves them so much and sees DMing as a gift that he can give his players. He’s not going to unravel all that for a random downer end of a campaign where he snaps and kills them all.

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stop talking about pewdiepie, and please donate to the victims and their families

the Jewish federation has a fundraiser

victim support has another one

so does givealittle

launchgood too

an article with some ways to help

and a Facebook post by Iskra Khan

please donate and reblog to spread the word! if you have more links, add them!

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Fantasy Biology: Drider

Ah, Driders. The Underdark Drow’s answer to centaurs, but with even more legs. They are humanoid (dark elf, typically) from head until approximately the waist, then consist of about 95% a completely normal gigantic spider body. Some of their artistic renditions do really make it look like a perfectly normal spider wearing half a humanoid as a hat, which is both fascinating and disturbing.

They also, in much of the lore, are blood feeders, because apparently the only way to improve a Mc Frickin’ spider centaur is to make it a vampiric spider centaur, but this rather makes sense as spiders have relatively small mouths and will partially digest their prey before consumption so seem to prefer a soft, soupy or porridge-like consistency. And finally, their origin story is that Driders are unfortunate (or blessed, depending on the lore) humanoids which have been transformed into their current state by a painful process.

As humans, we have a strong, natural tendency to focus on the ‘human’ part of any hybrid monster, but that is less than half of the anatomy of a Drider, even considering their usual variations in art.

Consider some typical spider anatomy (From Wikipedia) .

And now consider a typical Drider depiction.

(My own highly talented rendition)

Considering that there is significant variation in the relative size of the spider body compared to the humanoid segment, and why wouldn’t there be? The spider can molt and grow, the humanoid part will always remain a fixed size. So the larger the spider body, the older it is.

This looks an awful lot like a perfectly ordinary giant monstrous spider wearing a humanoid as a hat. And that makes sense. Their legends originate as a poor, unfortunate humanoid which failed something, and then gets turned into this spider monster. Subsequent legends re-frame this as a blessing instead of a curse, and instead of scavenging on the outskirts are now revered.

Conclusion: Driders are actually parasitic spiders wearing humanoids as hats to infiltrate and farm the local society building their own spider worshiping cult.

Keep reading

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if the marauders were brilliant enough to discuss their fullmoon trips in front of snape, then there’s no way they’d be able to conceal themselves from mcgonagall. unless of course some things would just be too much for her to handle.

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Look. I have a husband. My husband is the pickiest eater I have ever met. He eats meat, bread, cheese, chocolate, toffee, honeycomb, ice cream or cake in acceptable flavours, gingerbread, salt, chips and roast potatoes. If a raw carrot or apple is cut into pieces and put in front of him, he eats about half, very suspiciously and with great reluctance. This is an exhaustive list. If it’s not on here, he doesn’t eat it- including things you don’t even think about like pepper and gravy and herbs.

My husband learned to cook food for me. Me, who doesn’t consider it a real meal unless it contains three vegetables, a sauce, and at least two herbs or spices. He can’t judge by taste because he won’t eat any of it. He can’t stand the smell of most of it (for which reason he draws the line at curry). But he damn well learned to cook food that I can eat.

If he can cook for me, then your partner can cook for themselves, even if there’s a little initial starting effort.

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Hey yall I had a fuckin thought 

So, as it’s roughly explained, the state alchemist program is a kind of “recruit potential human sacrifices” mechanism, with a side-order of “brute strength for the army”. But basically, the state alchemist title is mostly about being a researcher–given people like Shou Tucker exist, and given that the only requirement to stay a state alchemist is to submit a yearly report of your research that says “look I’m still being a useful scientist”.

So far, so far this is sensible, yeah? Father and the delightful children from down the lane are running a recruitment program for potential human sacrifices. So sure–butter them up! Give them lots of money, get them buddy-buddy with the government, and give them endless resources for research. It’s be pretty easy to trick a state alchemist in that position to open the portal if Sugar DaddyBradley is nudging them to do it.

And I’m still willing to go with this logic for the whole “draft the state alchemists into war” move. They make it pretty clear that was something of a last-ditch effort. And the blood transmutation circle around Amestris was an absolute necessity for Father’s plan. So the risk of a few state alchemists dying or resigning from your Potential Sacrifice Pool is worth it for the completion of the circle.

Now. To get to my fucking thought. 

Edward fucking Elric. This fucking fight-me 12 year old troglodyte shows up to the exam and performs circle-less transmutation in front of mother fucking Bradley, demonstrating to one of the seven Actual Fucking Homunculi that he’d already opened the portal. Ed was literally prepped as a human sacrifice before he showed up to Central. A fully set human sacrifice showed up at the homunculi’s door, said “hey look what I can do!”, proved he’d opened the mother fucking portal already, and said “hey yeah hire me”. Human sacrifice, free shipping, no assembly required, handcuffs not included!

They could have just tossed Ed into a shoebox and kept him there until the Promised Day. They wouldn’t even need to make up an excuse he attacked the f u  c k i n g president. That’s fucking treason babey. He’s 12, he’s an orphan, he’s from a rural town in buttfuck nowhere, he’s literally the easiest person alive to disappear. They could have arrested him for assassination crimes, kept him in gay baby jail, and just popped him out for the Promised Day

What do they do instead?! “Oh lmao this kid’s great. Let’s give him infinite money, no supervision, no governmental responsibilities, access to all our secret resources, and toss him on a train to who-the-fuck-knows-where-land”

They fucking did that

And like? They then had the audacity to be concerned when Edward “Fight Me” Elric almost got himself killed about 293 times. Just an endless game of “I thought u were watching him” from one homunculus to another when Ed fucking absconds half-way across the globe to go entice some other hostile entity into murdering him to death. That’s the whole series. Every arc is Ed baiting death while the homunculi are in the background like “:/ wish he wouldn’t do that”

This only gets worse when you consider they later learned Al opened the portal too because really?? These two stab-happy globe-trotting public menaces are 40% of your final evil plan for godhood. 40%. Almost half. You couldn’t fucking set aside a cardboard box to keep these idiots in?

We all knew Father was terrible at planning when we learned his thousands-of-years-in-the-making-plan involved him procrastinating until the last five minutes to get his last sacrifice, while he was?? playing chess in his fucking basement, I guess. But it’s like every time I think about it like really think about it I find 7 more reasons Father was a fucking shit idiot moron, king of the stupid fucking idiot club, flesh and blood founder of seven other established dumbasses, all living in their idiot hovel under central, just giving random dumbass 12 year olds infinite money, j u s t  b e c a u s e.

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lilo and stitch is perfect for fenris and hawke.

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If Taliesin Jaffe is an eldritch being then Sam Reigel is too and you will not convince me otherwise.

Critical Role Aesthetic: Taliesin looking at Sam with awe and horror. [X ]X ]X ]X]

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This man killed himself bcos “its” was correct and also you had no apostrophes bcos you were busy sticking the pointy ends in the deserving.

do not fix your dark circles let the world know youre tired of its shit and ready to kill a man

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I grew up hearing the phrase “you never stick with anything, what’s the point” a lot. I’ve always been attracted towards seemingly disconnected interests, and gone through phases of being really into something. But eventually my interest would fade and I would move onto something else. 

Or at least that’s always how it’s been phrased for me, by others. Now I realize that my interest for the old thing didn’t fade so much as my interest for something new outshined it, and that’s vastly different. 

I was always made to feel bad about it, with every abandoned endeavour I was told I needed to stop starting things if I wasn’t going to stick with them. I was told I was wasting time and money picking up these random interests and abandoning them after a year. 

So eventually, I stopped picking things up. I told myself “what’s the point, I’m going to give up in a year anyway”. Even worse, I started dismissing every new interest, because I had no way of knowing if my interest was “real” enough or just another passing phase. I stopped trying new things, I stopped looking up stuff that piqued my curiosity, and having chronic depression made it really easy to leave everything on the dirty floor of neglected ideas. The more they piled up, the more depressing it was. All these things that could be nice, but I just can’t take care of them. 

I realize now how bullshit that kind of thinking is. So what if I stopped doing karate after a year? That’s one more year of karate than most people I know. And in that year I learned discipline, I learned to listen to a teacher, something I had never done before in all my years of private education. I learned the true meaning of respect, that it’s something you do out of faith at first and maintain as it’s reciprocated, not something you do blindly and regardless of how you’re treated. 

It gave me the foundation for the determination and grounding I needed to practice yoga. Another year. Not enough to be good at it maybe, but again a year more than most people I know and a year that is not lost, but gained. I learned balance, I learned to listen to my body, I learned how to let go of emotional tightness through physical stretching. 

And then iaido, only a few weeks because I couldn’t afford to keep going. The year of yoga I had done a couple years previous had given me a better starting point than the other newcomers to the class. I already had balance, I had strength in my legs and I had better posture. In those months I learned the importance of precision, the true definition of efficacy, the zen state that is incessant repetition. 

Did I practice long enough to get good at iaido, and yoga, and karate? No. Of course not. It takes years to become proficient and decades to master any of those things, but I learned other skills and those skills were an invaluable part of my growth both spiritually and emotionally. Likewise for my forays into painting, sewing, graphic design, film. I’m a photography student now heading into my second year of school, and every single second of practice I have in those other disciplines has given me more experience in those areas and made learning easier. 

Skills carry over. They intersect and connect in ways that are sometimes unexpected. Nothing is ever lost, experience is never a waste of time or worthless or stupid. Allow your focus to wander, reflect on what you learn, and consider how you can keep using it in other aspects of your life. Stop telling people their interests aren’t worth their time. 

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A campaign about returning magical items from whence they came.

Not in the “plunged into the fires of Mt. Doom” sense. 

Artifact repatriation.  The heroes work for an international commission aimed at reversing centuries of plunder.  Oh, sure, the adventurers of yesteryear may have had solid reasons for looting the Ancient Tomb of the Noonday King, but those justifications have passed, and the Noonday King’s regalia really should be returned home, not sitting in a foreign adventurer’s ancestral manor.

Possible adventures include:

Archaeologically respectful dungeon crawls, aimed at returning items to original context if possible

Consulting and cooperation with host museums in native cultures to provide security and academic collaboration

Liberating artifacts from foreign collections, if imperial governments or plutocrats or nobles initially refuse to return them

Realizing that an ancient conspiracy is modifying paperwork and falsifying academic reports to turn the repatriation committee into a MacGuffin delivery service for an ancient lich-king

Persuading the world to keep going on with the good parts of this program even if the one time an ancient lich-king nearly got most of his ancient rivals’ regalia delivered to his tomb home under false pretenses so he could start some real shit, because, hey, they stopped him, the system worked!

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Retromops!

A member of Züchterkreis für den Retromops- the breeding community for the retro pug in Germany- just shared some really amazing pug pictures. Retromops, or old style pugs, are an attempt to make pugs better. Retromops don’t have the same breathing problems; while they still are a brachycephalic breed, they actually DO have some muzzle, as well as better nostrils. (I’d personally like to see more nostril, but they’re still a work in progress.) 

Hallmarks of the retropug include nostrils that can actually be used for breathing…

eyes that don’t pop out of the head…

enough muzzle to actually function… 

and tails that aren’t a health hazard like screw tails are. In addition, retromops are tested for the gene that causes Pug Dog Encephalitis; only dogs without the gene are bred (so no carriers). But the most amazing thing to me? Seeing one of these dogs in action.

https://www.retromopszucht-vom-bromberg.com/english-version/

https://www.retromopszucht-vom-bromberg.com/

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The Real Fake Dating M9 Couple I Want To See

i know we already got blink and you miss it Nott Detective Agency but you know which fake dating couple would really have a high proportion of hijinks?  Beau&Caleb.

Hear me out, they need to go somewhere and they need Caleb’s Zemnian and Beau’s family name and they’re both just like… way to respectful of each other.  Caleb is like “How can I calculate my every movement to both get what I want but also to say I know you’re a lesbian and I respect your boundaries” and Beau’s “Is this gonna be a trauma thing for you? Shit, I bet this is going to be a trauma thing for you” and they just are so awkwardly attentive, Beau opens each door for Caleb, 

Caleb keeps asking her if she needs him to go get food (so she can have space) Beau keeps trying to keep Caleb in her sights to make sure he’s okay and they accidentally really sell the whole newly weds who’ve hardly ever spoken thing to their prospective target

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What happens if he eats it?

You know what I want? I want the Mighty Nein to find a weird plane and in that plane I want Fjord to find an onyx great sword. When he picks it up he hears a cold, vicious voice asking him “You… Are you my new wielder?” Cuz, I know that fucker wouldn’t resist.