pheonix199

[pheonix199]

who up dragoning their dungeon

[pheonix199]

Such magnificent horror!

I yearn to look away, yet I dare not!

2027: Wizards of the Coast and the American Psychological Association collaborate on the D&DSM, 6th Edition, widely regarded as the worst thing ever published

[pheonix199]

"We're living through the ongoing fascist collapse of the United States but I still gotta clean the kitchen and go to work tomorrow" sure is the mood right now, huh.

[pheonix199]

[pheonix199]

I love that I share my house with one of the most efficient apex predators millions of years of evolution could produce. I love that two of nature’s most prolific machines met and were like “hmmm. We should lay around and do nothing together”. Now we’re both fat and happy and full of meat. The hedonism of it all

[pheonix199]

[pheonix199]

if you ever find yourself thinking “wow I scraped the bottom of the barrel with my energy with that and came out okay!” that’s the devil talking. you did not come out okay. you borrowed energy from the future. you will repay it if you don’t rest and replenish the borrowed energy first.

[pheonix199]

[pheonix199]

It is almost five centuries ago, and the girl who will one day be a swordswoman is lying in the red-tinged mud. She can't get up—broken bone? severed tendon? She can't tell. She's yet to cultivate her palate for pain. Her enemy towers over her, a cataphract mailed in screaming steel and poisoned light. His warhammer falls, and it is death, forever death, death unconquered and unconquerable.

"No," says a part of her. She is not even seventeen years old. Her body is mangled and broken, wound piled upon wound piled upon wound. A dull kitchen knife is her only weapon, though she lost that in the mud the second her grip faltered. Her enemy is no thing of this earth. And yet—

"No. It is not death, forever death, death unconquered and unconquerable. It is only a hammer, falling. It is only 'an attack.'"

And the girl understood.

~~~

It is the better part of three centuries ago, as best the swordswoman can reckon, and she is beset on all sides by foes. They are not monsters—just mountain bandits, or highland rebels, as one cares to see it. But they outnumber her by dozens, and even an exceptional swordswoman might struggle against but two opponents of lesser skill.

From in front of her, beside her, behind her they advance, striking from every angle with spears and blades and axes. Others fill the air with arrows, sling stones, firepots. It would be effortless, to parry any single blow. It would be impossible, physically impossible, to defend against them all.

"No," says a part of her.

"You are not outnumbered. You do not face 'multiple' foes. It would be impossible to defend against every attack — but there is no 'every' attack. Only one."

"Oh," the swordswoman said. And it was, in fact, effortless.

~~~

It is eighty years ago, or thereabouts. A coiling spire of stony flesh and verdigrised copper throbs like a tumor on the horizon, coaxed from the earth by spell and sacrifice. It is the tower of a sorcerer-prince, and a birthing place of abominations.

Seven locks of rune-etched metal are opened with her single key. Wretched shapeling beasts, grown by sorcery in vitreous nodules, flee wailing from her, absconding before she even draws her blade. Demons sworn to thousand-year pacts of service find the binding provisions of their agreements unexpectedly severed.

These things dissatisfy the sorcerer-prince. He waxes wroth. He makes signs of power and chants incantations. With a flask of godling's blood, he draws the binding sigil inscribed upon the moon's dark face. With cold fire burning in his eyes, he speaks the secret name of Death. It is a king among curses, all-corrupting, all-consuming, and it falls from his lips upon the swordswoman.

"No," she says, and she turns it aside with her blade.

The sorcerer-prince's brow furrows. How did she even do that?

"Parried it."

But—

"With my sword."

No—

"See, like this."

Stop—

"Well," the swordswoman finally says, "I figured that if I just...looked at it right, and thought about it, and construed your curse as a kind of attack...then I could block it."

That's not how it works at all!

"If you insist," says the swordswoman, shrugging, and decapitates him.

~~~

It is now. It is the end. Death couldn't take the swordswoman, not when she'd spent all her life cutting it up. At times, Death might sidle up to one of her friends, or peer down into a grandchild's crib, and she'd just give it a look. That's all it took, by then.

Heartache couldn't take her, either. Bad things happened to her, and they hurt, and she lived in that hurt, but if it was ever more than she could take...she'd just, move her sword in a way that's difficult to describe. And she'd keep going.

Kingdoms fell, and she kept going. Continents crumbled and sank into the sea. Her planet's star faded and froze. She started carrying a lantern. Universes were torn apart and scattered, until all that had been matter was redistributed in thermodynamic equilibrium. With one exception.

But now it is the end. There is no time left; time is already dead. The swordswoman has outlived reality, but there is simply no further she can go. This is not a thing that can be blocked. This is the absence of anything further to block.

"No," says the girl who will one day be a swordswoman. "This isn't the ending. And even if it was, it's not the ending that matters."

The swordswoman looks back at who she was, at the countless selves she's been between them. She looks forward, at the rapidly contracting point that remains of the future. She grasps the all of linear time in her mind, and sees that it is shaped like a spear.

[pheonix199]

People who actually want to protect kids will give you detailed and exacting explanations, usually with stats and studies, of how and exactly why what they're doing will help kids.

People who want to shout down opposition with THINK OF THE CHILDREN can't.

KOSA supporters can't because it's just panic over kids being exposed to a wide range of information.

When I meet KOSA supporters who claim to be “protecting the children,” I have to ask: Which children are we talking about? Because the children I know, the teenagers who email me every day with worries about KOSA, they live in fear of the future KOSA would create.

The Kids Online Safety Act Would Harm LGBTQ+ Youth, Restrict Access to Information and Community

[pheonix199]

i support universal free healthcare for one simple reason: if you are diagnosed with a terminal illness you should quit your job. quitting your job is the correct response to terminal illness. but you can’t do that if your healthcare is tied to your job

[pheonix199]

If I can recommend you do 1 low-effort thing for the love of God it is this:

Keep 5 cards in your pocket. One will say "yes", the second will say "no."

If you lose your voice, or lose speech, or want to make a dramatic embellishment at the right time, it is an elegant and efficient solution that is right there at hand.

But what if people question you from there? "Why do you have that card? Why would you do this? How long have you had that in your pocket?" For this, or whatever else they say, the third card: "I don't have a card for that."

"What the fuck," they ask. They laugh. They are bemused. You bring the energy back down with the fourth card: "I have laryngitis. I've lost speech. My throat hurts". Whatever you expect to occur.

The joke is over. Rule of threes. Now they are curious. They wonder about logistics. "How did you know I would say that? Is everyone so predictable?"

As a three-part bit, nobody ever sees the fifth card coming.

"I have powerful wizard magics."

Gets them every time

[pheonix199]

thinking about when my professor told me how the boards of companies/orgs/etc. will sometimes hire on a CEO/whatever who they know will basically take a chainsaw to existing infrastructure, let them fuck as much shit up as possible, and then promptly fire them as soon as they've accomplished what the board wanted them to do. then they can point the finger at that guy & look like they're the heroes and the problem is resolved because he's gone now. and they still get to keep all the changes they wanted that nobody else did.

anyway I think it's fun and all to watch the two most divorced men on the planet publicly divorce each other. and also. maybe keep that in mind, is all.

[pheonix199]

It's important to remember that Luigi Mangione is being framed for murder. The "evidence" they have on him is absolute clown shoes absurd.

They're trying to win this by swaying public opinion. That's why they're doing movie deals about it and staging ridiculous photo ops.

They're gonna try to give this kid the death penalty to cover up for their own gross incompetence and in the hopes that they scare the working class out of trying to fight back.

Please don't help them do this by using his name as a synonym for political assassinations. Please do not perpetuate the idea that he's guilty.

[pheonix199]

“Well Harris was pro-fracking!” As a redirection to a post about all the ways leftist policy goals have not been remotely helped by Trump’s election and that they would be easier to achieve under Kamala is so nonsensical too. I wish the biggest topic of our current presidency was environmental issues. Imagine a world where people could be organizing against big oil instead of the having to fight on all fronts against the stripping away of trans rights, women’s rights, racial equality, humanitarian aid, and oh yeah, environmental protections, because let’s not forget that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is taking away the tax incentives to switch to EVs by 2030.

There is not a single issue on which it would not have been preferable to have Kamala Harris in office, lying and screaming in the replies of bargain bin political blogs like my own would assuage your guilt at having convinced yourself and your followers to let that man back in office to punish the Democrats for being imperfect.

[pheonix199]

[pheonix199]

Nature being fucked up as always!

very cool but also kind of a dick move