Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

A bright spot today: I work a truly awful job at a juice bar (I hate people who come up and try to convince me to, say, drink things with raw eggs in them, and vegetable juice has vitamins and shit but I POINT BLANK REFUSE to tell people blatant lies about magnetized water et al), but today.  Oh god.  Today I had my FAVORITE CUSTOMER EVER, oh my god I want him to be a regular, he was amazing, I want to be him when I grow up.

So it’s me and @twistedangelsays killing time and pretending like we aren’t slowly building up the Leaning Tower of Dishware next to the wash sink when an older gentleman in a very fine hat (elderly but spry, you know the type) walks in with his wife and granddaughter.  He strides up to the counter, and we give our usual creepily-peppy greeting and brace ourselves for another crazy in a long line (someone earlier informed us that she does wheatgrass enemas, and…I just really didn’t want to know that, okay?).

“So,” he says, leaning on the counter and observing us with the kind of wry nothing-is-funny-but-if-I-show-fear-the-bad-guys-win smile I’ve been seeing a lot lately.  I decide I maybe like this guy enough to drop the creepy pep.  He looks us dead in the eye and says, “What juice do you have to get me through the next four years.”

And of course I’m me, so I laugh a little and go, “Trust me, if we had something I’d be hooked up to an IV of it right now.”  I am not a professional soul.

He nods very solemnly and sighs and goes, “Well, all right, then what do you have that will give me the strength to fight?”

Adler and I just stand there in this state of delighted awe for a moment before she manages to recommend a juice.  We start making his juice and he asks if we’re “a pair” and we tell him that no, we’re not a couple, everyone asks, don’t feel bad, we’re just best friends.  And he kind of humphs and nods and goes “Well, that’s still a pair,” and tells us about his best friend of sixty years who he texts every day after meeting in college (meaning that ABSOLUTE MINIMUM this guy is 78).  

So we hand him his juice, he takes it, and without further ado tells us the time, date, and location of a protest in our town.  And he and his lovely wife swan right on out with their adorable granddaughter with her froyo, and he tells us he’ll see us at the protest.

I feel like I’ve been visited by the Angel of Revolution, I want to be that guy when I’m 78.

curriebelle:

farashasilver:

karrius:

D&D players will always come up with the most bizarre, workable solutions to problems when you least expect it.

In one game I ran, the party needed to find a magical artifact and didn’t have any idea where it was at all. So they decided to use Commune to figure it out - but Commune as a spell only lets you ask yes or no questions, and get an answer out of it. So they took a map of the continent, drew a line down half of it, and asked “Is the artifact on this half of the map?”. They then continued, narrowing the artifact’s location down further and further, until they were able to pinpoint the exact building in question.

This reminds me of the last campaign I was in, when my husband played a Telepathic Psion. When we were coming up with our inventories at the beginning of the game, everyone else is putting down normal shit like horses, packs, travel provisions, money.

My husband asked for a bear trap.

The DM (who happened to be coolkidmitch) asked him what the hell he could possibly need a bear trap for, to which my husband only said, “You’ll see.” After about twenty minutes of figuring out what this bear trap would weigh, the skill my husband would have to roll in order to use it, and a bunch of other minutiae, my husband had a bear trap in his inventory.

Now, all of us kind of forgot about the bear trap while we were adventuring along on our escort quest (during which my husband’s Psion regularly tried to convince one of our employers that there was a golden acorn/tree of life/fountain of youth/whatever the fuck in the forest so she would wander off and get herself eaten by bears - she was really rude) until we run into a situation where we’ve been surprised by the locals and nobody can draw a weapon without causing a real problem.

My husband pulls the bear trap out of his saddlebag, holds it out to the nearest goon, and says the goon needs to roll a will check. When asked why the goon needs to roll a will check, my husband calmly replies, “He’s being offered the fanciest hat he’s ever seen in his life, and he really wants to put it on.”

Moment of silence around the gaming table as all of us realize that my husband is trying to end the encounter by convincing a goon to put a bear trap on his head like a hat.

The goon failed the will check.

I gotta share The Grand Show story now.

So my D&D campaign is comprised of four newbies, one guy with a lot of tabletop experience, and me, the newbie DM. The crew is trying to break into a walled manor, in part to find out if the Lord inside had anything to do with some culty plot shenanigans (P.S: he was dead the whole time, so no one would have detected them from inside the wall regardless).

I am very explicit to them about the fact that they are trying to break into the Lord’s manor, in the middle of the day, across from the main thoroughfare of the town, with no cover or disguise of any kind, and they are all level 2 - so no teleportation, invisibility, illusions - nothing. They do not heed my warnings, and our gnome paladin and halfling rogue toss a grappling hook over the wall and start to climb it. Meanwhile the other three in the party - a totally inconspicuous group consisting of a dragonborn with a cat, a tiefling in a chainmail bikini, a half-vampire warlock with a mask and a swordcane, and an NPC satyr who was along for the ride - are just hanging out below the wall watching.

After a minute I say, “behind you, you notice that a crowd of about ten or twelve peasants have gathered and are whispering in worried voices. You notice two guards approaching from down the road.”

Halfling rogue - one of the more-or-less newbies of the crew - whips around and immediately shouts “WELCOME TO THE GRAND SHOW!”, and scores an excellent deception roll. Dragonborn starts making his cat do tricks and rolls a sick animal handling check. Tiefling cleric begins pole-dancing on her spear and also rolls high. The warlock starts doing special effects with Minor Illusion and rolls ok. They nudge the satyr into playing music for them, who crits his performance check and charms half the audience as a result. The paladin, from the top of the wall, starts juggling his hammers and midway through throws one at the window of the Lord’s manor, breaking it so they can get in.

I was already going to give them that, and then nearly every last fucking NPC rolled an insight check of less than 10.  So the group also made 10 gold for their “busking” and got into the manor completely unhindered. \o/ goddamnit.

(via johanirae)

thewinterotter:

constant-instigator:

audsbot:

thewinterotter:

dominawritesthings:

rainnecassidy:

sinfullucifer:

the-negotiator:

sinfullucifer:

generallyhuxurious:

sinfullucifer:

tinfoil-on-the-windows:

sinfullucifer:

tinfoil-on-the-windows:

sinfullucifer:

actualtrashbag:

sinfullucifer:

so you know the rule in fairylands where you cant eat or drink anything or you’ll have to stay there forever? does like.. .eating out/sucking dick count

holy f uck jane

its a serious question

well like, the whole thing is that you cannot have consumed anything belonging to the fey realm. so, yes, probably, you would be stuck there. the same would apply if you just straight up ate a fairy.

new question: would deepthroating count in this case even w/o swallowing

no. temporary doesn’t count, otherwise fairies would all be running about sticking their hands in your mouth to get human servants.

you gotta digest it.

so like??? if you puke afterwards?? maybe it doesn’t count?

huh! i wonder how long is enough time for it to be legit. like whatever goes through your stomach immediately condemns you no matter if you throw it up later?

Well Persephone only ate 6 seeds so she only stayed 6 months, so maybe if you spat out most of it you’d just be condemned to the occasional day “BRB got go pay the two day toll for fellating a fairy.”

“you wanna come over for the weekend?”

“oh man im so sorry i sucked some fairy dick once and now i have to keep coming back to do it again– its a long story”

“you what now”

i can hardly believe this isn’t already the plot of an Oglaf comic

now that u said it im really surprised as well

what the fuck did i just read

Why ISN’T this an Oglaf comic yet?

I’m so happy that i’m not the only person who thinks of questions like these. I love you all so much.

I’m not convinced by this, actually!

Like, this analysis treats it as a substance problem, i.e. “edible matter from fairyland has properties that, if ingested, physically prevent you from being able to return to the real world.”

But OTOH, a recurring theme throughout fairy stories is that they’re all about…rules and exchanges and agreements with really steep interest rates:

• “I’ll do you this favor, but if you don’t guess my name you’ll have to give me your first-born child.”
  
• “You’re gonna be real good at everything but when you’re 16 you’re gonna prick your finger and die.”
  
• “You loaned me $2 for the bus when I looked like a beggar, so now here’s a literal pile of gold and shit.”
  

Not to mention that in Childe Rowland, one of the central “if you eat food from fairyland you’re stuck there” stories, Rowland manages to retrieve his siblings despite them all presumably having chowed down on fairy food – all it took was beating the Fairy King in a swordfight and threatening to chop his head off.

---

The takeaway, I think, is that the food thing a matter of implicit exchange: if you get your grub on in fairyland, you’re accepting their hospitality and eating food that they own. This means you owe them, which the fairies can magically leverage to prevent you from leaving.

(You can probably get around this by explicitly agreeing to pay for your meal before you sit down to eat. From what I remember, fairies don’t seem capable of pulling a “Haha, we had an agreement but you’re fucked anyways!” maneuver, so if they agree to let you leave they might even be forced to help you leave.)

---

Which brings us to the matter at hand: if you blow a fairy you’re doing them a favor! They owe you.

And…they’re a fairy, so if you didn’t agree to terms beforehand they might not repay you in a way that’s ultimately helpful or safe, but it certainly doesn’t seem like they’d be able to, like, pat you on the head and be like “Thanks, you’re really good at this buuuuuuut also you’re stuck here forever now.”

Instead, what seems more likely is…I dunno, showing up to your wedding years later and giving you a beautiful white horse that always comes when called, while loudly praising you as truly deserving it for giving them them simply the best oral they’ve had in years. 

Or they feel obligated to show up at your house a couple days a year. So, like

“you wanna come over for the weekend?”

“oh man I’m so sorry i sucked some fairy dick once and now he always comes by over memorial day weekend and helps me out with minor home repairs.”

“you what now”

This is my favorite act of intellectual bugfuckery on this entire website, when I die I want someone to print this out and place it in my grave with me so I can cherish it forever.

(Source: coffeetwosugars, via johanirae)

fujoshicabal:

my fave overheard on campus moment of all time was the two guys who sat behind me in pop culture theory

as class was starting one of them was like “so… do you want a blowjob after this” in a rly bored voice, and then the second guy was like [pause][dejected sigh] “yes”

(Source: chlostars, via itsybittle)

whatbethsays:

the other night i tried to make a curry and i got chilli burns all over my face, so i thought to myself ‘hang on, doesn’t milk soothe chilli burns? it does’ and i couldn’t google because i couldn’t see so i just had to blindly feel my way to the fridge and pour out a bowl of milk, and then plant my face in the bowl of milk, anyway at that point the rice cooker went off and triggered a power surge which turned my electricity off, which i didn’t notice at first because i had my face in a bowl of milk and when i did emerge from the dairy prison i thought i had gone blind with chilli burns. so no i don’t really cook much.

(Source: devilrie, via lifeguardinthesharktank)