saesama reblogged
Has a worm ever gotten struck by lightning
I’m so shook amazing :0
Man, talk about fuck that one guy in particular.
saesama reblogged
Saw this post about straight dudes feeling emasculated at the thought of taking their wife’s last name, and it gave me a sudden craving for fantasy media where some dude is called Leopold THE DESTROYER or some shit and there are all these rumors going around about how he got his moniker, all these made up stories about how he must have razed a village to the ground or slayed 12 dragons or some shit and it turns out he just took his wife’s last name.
“What was your name before?”
“Meadowalker.”
“…”
“I miss it sometimes y’know, but eh,” he smiles wistfully as he looks over to where his wife is sharpening her sword. “What can you do when you marry for love.”
I'm a big fan of wizards-as-programmers, but I think it's so much better when you lean into programming tropes.
- A spell the wizard uses to light the group's campfire has an error somewhere in its depths, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. The wizard spends a lot of his time trying to track down the exact conditions that cause the failure.
- The wizard is attempting to create a new spell that marries two older spells together, but while they were both written within the context of Zephyrus the Starweaver's foundational work, they each used a slightly different version, and untangling the collisions make a short project take months of work.
- The wizard has grown too comfortable reusing old spells, and in particular, his teleportation spell keeps finding its components rearranged and remixed, its parts copied into a dozen different places in the spellbook. This is overall not actually a problem per se, but the party's rogue grows a bit concerned when the wizard's "drying spell" seems to just be a special case of teleportation where you teleport five feet to the left and leave the wetness behind.
- A wizard is constantly fiddling with his spells, making minor tweaks and changes, getting them easier to cast, with better effects, adding bells and whistles. The "shelter for the night" spell includes a tea kettle that brings itself to a boil at dawn, which the wizard is inordinately pleased with. He reports on efficiency improvements to the indifference of anyone listening.
- A different wizard immediately forgets all details of his spells after he's written them. He could not begin to tell you how any of it works, at least not without sitting down for a few hours or days to figure out how he set things up. The point is that it works, and once it does, the wizard can safely stop thinking about it.
- Wizards enjoy each other's company, but you must be circumspect about spellwork. Having another wizard look through your spellbook makes you aware of every minor flaw, and you might not be able to answer questions about why a spell was written in a certain way, if you remember at all.
- Wizards all have their own preferences as far as which scripts they write in, the formatting of their spellbook, its dimensions and material quality, and of course which famous wizards they've taken the most foundational knowledge from. The enlightened view is that all approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, but this has never stopped anyone from getting into a protracted argument.
- Sometimes a wizard will sit down with an ancient tome attempting to find answers to a complicated problem, and finally find someone from across time who was trying to do the same thing, only for the final note to be "nevermind, fixed it".
- "This spell causes the hair to fall off cats." "It works with my tome"
- "This spell causes the hair to fall off cats." "That's fixed in Xaranthius' latest publication, you just have to rewrite your entire spellbook for compatibility."
- "This spell causes the hair to fall of cats." "Magister Olaus of Writhington uses it to help with his allergies. WORKING AS INTENDED."
I want to see wizards snarking at each other over different magical languages/scripts, the same way programmers do it over different languages.
- Sure, "High Tower is a powerful language, but it's such a pain to write. I just use Unity* as it's simple to write and can do nearly everything I need" "cranky because you can't memorize all the conjugations and declensions, aren't you?" "LOOK MAN, I CAN MEMORIZE ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACE OF YOUR MOTHER IN ECSTASY. IN FACT, BEHOLD!" *a little time window appears between them, demonstrating exactly that. The first wizard (seen through the window) turns around and winks at the "camera".
- "you kids today with your lizardman. How can you get anything done in a language without gendered pronouns? It's like fingerpainting. Sure you can learn on it but once you've got the basics you should switch over to a REAL language"
- "the Kalic have been here already. We better get out before the rest of their army marches in." "how can you be sure?" "you see that teleport?" "no" "well, if you COULD see it, you'd see it's written in Adevic Yevi. That's the Kalic magic language." "couldn't it be someone else? We saw those Monon traders, maybe one of them..." "no. No one writes Adevic Yevi unless they're being paid to. It's a language written by committee."
- Wizards going on a quest to get the spellbooks for a lost spell, only to find out that it was written in skydove cant. No one can read that shit! The creator must have been one of those weird "functional wizards". (They're obsessed with making sure their spells have no side effects)
- There's a small library on the outskirts of Freeport which tries to collect versions of basic spells in every language. The Adevic Yevi version of "fireball" takes up 7 pages, mostly boilerplate setting up the interfaces with fire and explosions and ExplodingMagicalBallFactorySingletons. The Lizardman version is basically "AHAHAHA, YOU GO BOOM!"
- There's a bunch of wizard apprentices working on porting an old "Summon Bread and Fishes" spell from the absolutely archaic language it was written in. Once it's in Unity, it'll be easy to modify and teach to more wizards, which'll obviously be good for disaster areas. It's just too expensive to keep paying the ancient guys who can still do magic in TRAN-FOR.
- Eccentric wizards keep inventing new languages for spells. You look at them and they're neat, but it'll never catch on. And either you're right, or the next time you're applying to be a court wizard, the advisors want to know if you have at least 5 years experience in Tilted Runic and you're like "it only came out 2 years ago!" "aren't you a chronomancer?" "oh good point. Yeah I've been using it for 20-30 years."
- There's wizards who will spend incredible amounts of time doing silly things with spells in strange ways. There's this guy (Vorth) who made his own language where there's only one basic spell: fireball. Everything else is basic magic glue tying multiple fireballs together. So like, he's got a breakfast spell. Stand back (good advice for all his spells), and you'll see a fish get knocked out of the local pond, flung through the air by successive explosions, and eventually it lands on his plate, nicely cooked and deboned, if slightly charred (the glass of milk is harder to explain). His magical door locks involve a quicksilver sphere and molten lead changing shape when heated... It's tricky but it seems to work. He's working on a teleport spell, but so far it's mainly just killed test subjects (primarily sheep from a nearby farm).
* so the funny thing here is that this isn't a reference to the unity game engine. The main country in my One Hundred and One Magical Pistols setting is called "the union" and their language is called "unity".
It's wands vs staves vs bare hands.
Wanders are like "they're available everywhere and once you learn how to do it it's so powerful!"
Staffguys always talk about how you can do ANYTHING with a staff. Wanders claim it's a pain to carry around an overpowered device that can do ANYTHING when you just need to cast fireball or a simple one man teleport.
Meanwhile the bare wizards are showing off how they don't need any magical tools and can just do hand motions.
Wanders and staffguys retort that when a spell goes wrong, THEY need to go to store for a new magical tool. YOU need new hands.
saesama reblogged
dril and xkcd are at opposite ends of a spectrum slowly working to collaboratively post about every possible topic
xkcd-coded response:
dril-coded response:
to be perfectly honest i think that ghosts being transluscent and faded is kind of antithetical to what they represent. they're an echo that cannot move on, cannot fade out - they should be oversaturated and stiff and strangely out of place and unchanging, like something preserved in clear glass.
LIKE TOUCHING A HOT STOVE EXACTLY you understand me. and even when you refuse to look at them directly, you still register their presence in the periphery of your vision, burning bright enough to make your eyes water.
jkasjdkasjksajfdasfdsafd goodbye
“there are two types of americans:
1) i am from bumfuckville south pennsylbumfuckia, you of course know this great city
2) im not sure if you’ve heard of this place called miami?”
saesama reblogged
It always makes me wonder when I bump into a really serious Homestuck fan who's under the age of 25, because that means either you were reading it when you were eight years old, or you got into it when it was well past its peak and you're still Like This, and both options raise fascinating questions.
Anonymous asked:
I dont know if you still fr post but we just had an epic fat dragon win
yeah I've been having fun reading the forum's extremely sane response to being exposed to a cartoon dragon that looks like a caterpillar, lol
saesama reblogged
There are four types of fish scales!
saesama reblogged
Cannot FUCKING stand when my loose leaf tea says to add tea in tablespoons instead of teaspoons. I'm sorry, bitch. Am I making tea or am I making a table. Let me double fucking check.
saesama reblogged
Computer show me busty fish lesbian
holy shit
Conversation that Tumblr is not ready for:
- A Vampire's fangs are also it's reproductive organs
I scrolled past that before realizing op was being literal and not just making some kind of weird joke
Oh please, "the penetration of the vampire's bite as metaphor for sexual penetration" is like, horny classic vampire symbolism 101 🙄 Taking this to the next level of "vampire bite as literal reproductive penetration" is a conversation Tumblr is thoroughly and uniquely prepared for and one that we will all severely regret very shortly
Oh, I’m ready to be a spectator for this conversation. I’m ready.
So, when a vampire doesn’t want to become a vaddy, they use a set of these, right?
MA'AM.
[something, something] … practicing safe sucks.
saesama reblogged
There’s a theory that early Europeans started saying “brown one” or “honey-eater” instead of “bear” to avoid summoning them, and similarly my friend has started calling Alexa “the faceless woman” because saying her true name awakens her from her slumber
English has an avoidance register used in the presence of certain respected animals, which sounds fancy until you realize it’s spelling out w-a-l-k and t-r-e-a-t in front of the dog.
Mx. Leah Velleman on twitter
Icelandic folklore requires you avoid saying the names of evil whales, otherwise you’ll draw their attention.
Yall have evil whales?
Iceland does! They are the illhveli, literally “evil whales”, and they live to kill you. They love nothing more than killing and eating humans and sinking their ships. Their greatest enemy is the steypireydur (that’s blue whale to you), which is the greatest of the good whales and the protector of sailors.
All evil whales are, well, evil. So evil that if you speak their name at sea, they will hear it and home in on you. So instead you use all sorts of euphemisms for their names. Also if you try to cook their meat it literally disappears from the pot. That’s right, they’re so evil, you can’t even eat them.
They include such types as the hrosshvalur (horsewhale), with big eyes and a red mane and tail. This is probably the best known and most feared of the lot.
The raudkembingur (redcomb) is especially cruel and bloodthirsty even by illhveli standards. If you manage to escape it, it will die of frustration.
Good luck escaping the mushveli (mousewhale) though, it has legs! And will clamber onto the beach in pursuit!
Or what about death from above? The stökkull (jumper) leaps high into the air and pile-drives boats to pieces.
Meanwhile the skeljungur (shellwhale) sits in the path of boats and lets them get wrecked on its shelly hide…
… while the sverdhvalur (swordwhale) slices through boats with its dorsal fin.
The katthveli (catwhale) is relatively harmless though. It meows.
The same can’t be said of the lyngbakur (heatherback), a classic island fish that lets sailors get on its back and then dives, taking them to a watery grave.
The nauthveli (oxwhale) on the other hand specially targets cattle, attracting them into the sea with its bellow before tearing them apart.
How can you avoid all these murderous whales, like the taumafiskur (bridlefish) here? Any of a number of ways, including getting a steypireydur to help. There are substances, ranging from angelica to sheep dung and chopped fox testicles, that they find abhorrent. And you can distract them with loud noises and barrels.
For more, I assure you this link will answer all your questions.
This is also why fairies were referred to as the ‘Good Neighbors’ and why there are so many nicknames for Satan.
The concept of avoidance speech is endlessly fascinating and rife with plot points for writing, but honestly I’m just thrilled about the EVIL WHALES.
Some songs don’t fit the vibe 🎥
The first one is what will happen when Shrek enters the public domain
The first one is what
will happen when Shrek enters
the public domain
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
types of nap, ranked by me (an experienced napper)
the siesta: the oldest and most reliable form of nap! you go to sleep around noon. you wake up an hour or two later feeling well-rested and prepared to face the rest of the day. this is the pinnacle of nap perfection. 10/10
the businessman’s nap: you have a limited amount of time on your hands, so you schedule a nap into your packed timetable and set an alarm. you spend half the duration of the nap worrying that you’re wasting valuable nap time by lying awake, and the other half sunk into a torpor so deep that when your alarm rings, it takes you a good few minutes to remember your own name. once you’ve splashed some cold water on your face you feel much better. 7/10
EW STICKY: you were cold at first, so you piled on the blankets and wriggled into your favourite comfy sweater. this was nice. now you are awake and trapped in a horrible sweaty gordian knot of your own devising. this is not nice. when you peel off the sweater you find to your horror that you have left an actual damp patch behind on the bed, like some sort of giant dead fish that can’t stop leaking its gross fish juice everywhere. 5/10 it was at least cosy to start with
the interrupted nap: someone barges into your room and starts talking to you. “wtsfhggl?” you enquire. they give you a judgemental look, and ask why you are sleeping in the middle of the day. “ghhfshsxkls,” you reply, graciously. they tell you to get up. you get up. the rest of the day feels like an extension of whatever dream you are having before you were disturbed. you boil with quiet resentment and shame. 4/10
the unsuccessful nap: you are tired. you want to take a nap. you lie down. you wait. you wait. time moves sluggishly forwards. you wait. your brain feels like a cup of mushy porridge but your eyes refuse to close. the noise of your fan is infuriating. you wait. eventually, you are forced to accept that this nap is simply not going to happen, and you have wasted 45 minutes doing absolutely nothing. god fucking dammit. 2/10
the handy-dandy fast-forward button: you really just want this day to be over as soon as possible, and the best way you can think of to do that is to take a nap. you only meant to sleep for an hour, but when you wake up it is already evening. the day is over. you glean no satisfaction from this. you kill time until you feel justified in going back to bed again, and spend the rest of the night tossing and turning, unable to sink back into the blissful stupor from which you so recently emerged. 0/10
The Unpleasantness: when you fall asleep, it is dark. when you awaken, it is light. this is the natural order of sleep, but perverted into a form that is frightening and wrong. you feel deeply unsettled and do not know why. are you sick? what does time mean? what does anything mean? maximum despair. -1000/10.
saesama reblogged
what he means: my first girlfriend sacrificed herself for the good of her people, and she didn't think twice about it. i saw firsthand what it meant to truly protect those you love, and in that moment i also experienced what it meant to be loved enough to be protected. but i wasn't ready. i didn't have enough time to say goodbye. she was gone before she fell back to me, and i knew it even before i looked for a pulse that wasn't there. she was heavy, until she wasn't, because i saw death happen in a way i never thought it could when her body vanished from my arms. i now know what it feels like to kiss a spirit, and it's the last touch i have of her. she sacrificed herself because she believed it was her duty, an expectation she felt she needed to face, and it should never have happened. but she got dragged into a war that we brought to her home. there was nothing i could do to protect her from its devastation, and i blame myself for her death.
what he says: my first girlfriend turned into the moon