it took me a while to find again but that goblin market list pulled up a memory of a collective game people were doing in san francisco, oh, some years back. i don’t remember how i found it originally.

but anyway the idea of getting a group in costumes and different stalls to put on a REAL LIFE goblin market and sell bits and trinkets in exchange for dreams and stories (imagine it at night! yes!) is still 100% brilliant. 

my personal favorite from the various attempts:

“She asked to buy some of my physical masks, which, as they are very nice masks (and were on loan from Reed) were not for sale. So she offered me her son in payment. He looked to be about four or five, and was rather shy. I leaned forward, sniffing at him with my mask’s long beak. He hid behind his mother’s legs in terror, but she shoved him forward again, promising me that he was a hard worker and would grow up to be tall and strong like his father. Unfortunately, as the child refused to tell me his Name, I couldn’t accept him. Smart kid. Got off lucky.”

Oh hey, this was me! I organized that particular Goblin Market and am the one quoted here. A thoroughly memorable moment, and a near-miss on an excellent deal.

But not to worry, I’ve claimed plenty of firstborns in the near-decade since then.

Perhaps it’s time the Goblin Market began to travel again...

i found this picture of guillermo del toro with a gun and i don’t have a good caption so i am passing it on to you, the consumer

this is my oc gunillermo del toro

In an excerpt from Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes recounts the origins of love. According to his Greek mythology, humans were once four-legged, four-armed, and double-sexed. Fearing human beings were becoming too powerful, the deity Zeus sliced them in half, leaving their heads facing inward so they could eternally measure their bodies’ absences. They were thus doomed to feel incomplete until they found their other halves. And when they did, they would throw their arms around each other and weave their flesh in an attempt to become one again.

In the Bible’s Genesis, after creating Adam (the prototype), God realizes that he requires a mate. He rips a rib from Adam’s body and begets Eve, a built-in lifelong partner.

Many of the origin stories about the inception of our species establish this blueprint for coexistence – that every body has an equal and opposite body, a destined companion without which we are incomplete. Our modern construct of romance still upholds this paradigm; romantic love is the paramount prize of existence. But what if I can’t access that prize?

In response to this construct, Aromanticism is a concept album about lovelessness as a sonic dreamscape. It seeks to interrogate the idea that romance is normative and necessary.

This isn’t protest music, however, as much as it is process music. It’s the 2am sweat you wake up in, processing that lonesomeness might not just be a transitory hallway you’re passing through en route to inevitable partnership. It’s recognizing statelessness as stasis. It’s admitting that you still desperately crave affection, even if you’re not fully capable of returning it. It’s admitting that your favorite self-empowerment chorus, “I may be alone but I’m not lonely!” is, often, bullshit. It’s wondering why, as a first grader, you would unbox your markers and couple them into personified pairs. It’s wondering why every restaurant you take yourself to has each table pre-set for two. It’s wondering how privileged people can feel love interpersonally but still adhere to systems of social hierarchy that cause them to treat othered groups with loveless indifference. It’s wondering if our urgent fear of dying alone is cellularly inherent or socially inherited. It’s wondering – if God is love, but you don’t feel love, are you a godless being?

Alternative titles for Aromanticism could be: Narcissus; Don’t Touch Me; Please Touch Me; Sure, Let’s Touch Each Other but Please Leave Right After We Cum; Grey A; It’s Not You, It’s Me; It’s Not You – Actually, It’s Not Anyone; It’s Not Me, It’s My Childhood.

The not-yet-dictionary definition of an “aromantic” is someone who doesn’t experience romantic love, or does to a diminished, abnormal degree. I’m just trying to get it out from over the squiggly red line.

baffling how much of this site is just conservative protestantism with a gay hat

you know what i’m in just enough of a bad mood that i’m ready to nail my grievances to the church door so let’s fucking go

Thank you for breaking it down like that because so many of us have been saying it but to see a play by play breakdown comparison is just…Thank you.

Rations for various RPG Races

[[ Source. Original creator: wats6831. Additional information and images linked under each one. ]]

Universal:

Homemade artisan herb bread, home grown and dried apples and prunes, uncured beef sausage, munster cheese. Made a small bag from cheesecloth and tied it closed.

Discussion thread here.

Dwarf:

Garlic chicken livers, smoked and peppered cheese, spiced pork sausages, hard tack, dried vegetables, dried wild mushrooms.

Discussion thread here.

Elf:

Top left to right: Evereskan Honey Comb, Elven Travel Bread (Amaretto Liquer Cake with custom swirls), Lurien Spring Cheese (goat cheese with garlic, salt, spices and shallots), Delimbyr Vale Smoked Silverfin (Salmon), Honey Spiced Lichen (Kale Chips), and Silverwood Pine Nuts.

Discussion thread here.

Halfling:

From upper left: “Honeytack” Hard tack honey cakes, beef sausage, pork sausage mini links, mini whole wheat toast, cranberry cheddar cheese mini wedge, mini pickles, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, lower right is my homemade “travel cake” muesli with raisins, golden prunes, honey, eggs and cream.

Discussion thread here.

Half-Orc:

Wrapped in cheesecloth and tied in burlap package. Forest strider drumsticks, molasses sweet wheat bread “black strap”, aged Munster, hard boiled eggs, mixed wild nuts.

Discussion thread here.

Orc:

Orcs aren’t known for their great cuisine. Orcs prefer foods that are readily available (whatever can be had by raiding), and portable with little preparation, though they have a few racial delicacies. Toughs strips of lean meat, bones scavenged from recent kills, and dark coarse bread make up the bulk of common orc rations.Fire roasted rothe femur (marrow is a rare treat) [beef femur], Strips of dried meat (of unknown origin) [homemade goose jerky], foraged nuts, only edible by orcs….nut cracker tusks [brazil nuts], coarse black bread, made with whatever grains can be pillaged [black sesame bread], Pungent peppers [Habanero peppers stuffed with smoked fish and olives].

More images here. Discussion thread here.

Gnome:

Pan fried Delimbyr smelt, spiced goat cheese (paprika crusted hand pressed Fontina), Gnome shortbread (savory pistachio), glass travel jar filled with Secomber Red (wine), hard boiled quail eggs packed in rolled oats (to keep safe), dried figs from Calimshan, and Southwood smoked goat sausage (blood sausage).

More images here. Discussion thread here.

Lizardfolk:

Lizardfolk are known to be omnivores, forage for a surprising variety of foods found within the confines of their marshy environs, in this case the Lizard Marsh near Daggerford. Fresh caught boiled Delimbyr Crayfish on wild chives, coastal carrageen moss entrapping estuary brine shrimp (irish moss, dried brine shrimp), Brackish-Berries (blackberries), Blackened Dart-Frog legs (frog legs) on spring sprouts (clover sprouts), roasted bog bugs on a stick!

More images here. Discussion thread here.

Drow:

From top left: Menzoberranzan black truffle rothe cheese (Black Knight Tilsit), Donigarten Moss Snails (Escargot in shallot butter sauce), Blind cave fish caviar in mushroom caps (Lumpfish caviar), faerzress infused duck egg imported from the surface Realms (Century egg), Black velvet ear fungus (Auricularia Black Fungus Mushroom).

More images here. Discussion thread here.

Drow will also eat A Fucking Rock if it’s goth enough

#this rules to such a ridiculous degree im aghast

you know what im gonna reblog this to my main as well as my aesthetic blog because this post kicked my ass

There’s never enough culinary posts regarding fantasy worlds.  Here you go.  You are welcome :3~

Wtf…

holy SHIT

Do not doubt a god.

I don’t get it

The original Twitch plays pokemon was a Twitch based event from a few years back where users of the Twitch Chat could submit button presses based on the layout of an old Game Boy to play Pokemon Red.

Eventually they did manage to beat the game. But along the way it had sparked a huge following and somehow developed it’s own lore based on the pokemon caught and the names they were given. However, at Mount Moon, Twitch decided to take the Helix Fossil, an item that could be used to acquire an Omanyte later in the game. 

Due to the nature of the system, a lot of the time the character just would walk around in circles for hours on end, and one thing that would happen constantly would be that they would open their item menu and try to ‘use’ the Helix Fossil. Since the item had no function, people adopted the idea that they were ‘consulting’ the Helix Fossil for advice, and that it was their lord and saviour.

What makes this Lady Helix so incredible is that, there was an incredibly small chance that they would get to Wonder Trade. And knowing wonder trade, the pokemon you’ll get in return is impossible to predetermine. So for not only them to get an Omanyte, is amazing. But the fact that that Omanyte references explicitly the events of he previous TPP, is nuts 

I knew that Twitch plays Pokémon was wild I had no idea that the lore ran this deep. Haha that’s amazing

Oh it gets way better. Due to the random arse nicknames the pokemon got, they adopted monikers to go with it. I’ll run through a couple

ABBBBBBBK( was the starter pokemon, Charmander and was nicknamed Abby. However was released.

JLVWNNOOOO was the player’s Ratata, nicknamed Jay Leno. It was released with Abby, following due to loyalty

aaabaaajss was the TPP Pidgeot, the strongest pkemon on the team, and was chosen by the Helix Fossile. It was nicknamed Bird Jesus. 

Eevee the false prophet, sent by the Dome Fossil. Evolved into Flareon and was released

AATTVVV was the team’s Venomoth, lovingly nicknamed the All Terrain Venomoth. One of the final party.

AA-j was the team’s Zapdos, caught with a masterball and was dubbed Battery Jesus. however, he was a false prophet. Only a short time after it’s capture on the 11th day were a great deal of pokemon were released. It did, however, make it to the end of the game.

AAAAAAAAAA or also known as The Fonz was also one of the last members in the party. A Nidoking that helped leave the team to victory.

I only saw a little bit of the actual stream, but I followed the whole thing. it was amazing. 

Full disclosure: this was what got me back into Pokemon after having not played a single new game since Sapphire. This goddamn fucking infinite-monkeys-at-infinite-keyboards-actually-producing-the-complete-works-of-shakespeare: the video game. B l e s s.

“You know it doesn’t always have to be ‘goof, goof, dildo’, okay?! I’m traveling around with the Boner Squad, and I never get to just say what I’m FEELING. I have emotions! It’s not all ‘abracafuckyou’ and what have you. I HAVE A BEATING HEART! I’m multidimensional! I’m a fully realized creation, FUCK!”

Taako Taaco || Photographer taken at Zenkaikon 2017

I just want to give another shout-out to Failbetter Games for the way they’ve dealt with gender in Sunless Sea, because it is truly a breath of fresh air for this particular gamer of mysterious and indeterminate gender, and I want these people to be drowned in praise for having finally fucking done the thing so maybe the rest of the industry will sit up and take notice.

Basically in Sunless Sea you don’t actually choose your gender, ever, at any point. You can choose from several forms of address that are both gendered and non-gendered, and that’s it. Whatever’s in your captain’s pants is up to you, whatever they identify as is up to you, the only information the game asks you to submit is how you want other characters to address you.

You can then romance any of the available characters regardless of what you put down. You can make a family with any of these characters, either via sexual reproduction or adoption, and if you do choose to have your own biological child you get to decide which partner gives birth, meaning any player character and any romanceable NPC can be canonically trans. Set it up right and you can both be!

On top of that, several NPCs have ambiguous or completely absent pronouns, lending another layer of realism to the possibility of a nonbinary captain. Those people just exist casually in the game, doing their thing, and their gender or lack thereof is not a Teachable Moment or a big important deal, it’s just a thing about them which you are told.

Incorporating queerness in video games, especially ones with romance options, is not particularly new. Bioware is well known for it, and gets both a lot of praise and a lot of pushback about the ways they’ve done it in their own games. However, Sunless Sea has blown everyone else out of the water here, as far as I’m concerned, and they’ve demonstrated just how simple it really is.

You don’t need vast labyrinthine directories of every neo-pronoun ever coined, you don’t need a drop-down menu of three hundred available genders and six hundred available sexual-and-romantic-orientation options, and you don’t need to go out of your way to explicitly establish that every single character is bisexual. All you need to do is let the player choose their form of address, let the player choose who to romance, and let the player choose how child-having works, and voila! you’ve just included literally everyone possible.

I really can’t overstate how important this is. There are plenty of people who don’t and never will give a shit, and I’m glad that those people don’t care, but it’s important to a lot of us.

I’ve been playing games since literally before I can remember. Along with reading, video games have been one of my main methods of escapism and entertainment, because when my life and my family were all going to hell and everything was bullshit and I felt like I would never amount to anything and couldn’t imagine being alive in six more months, I could open my computer or turn on my Gameboy or boot up the Playstation and travel to a beautiful fantastical world where I was the hero and I could accomplish anything and everything and if anyone was a dick to me I could probably set them on fire. Possibly I even had to set them on fire, for the plot!

So video games have been a vitally important part of my life for a very long time, but I haven’t been an important part of video games. I don’t exist in video games, for the most part, except maybe as a nasty joke or possibly a villain. For those of you who haven’t been in this position, try to imagine it. Imagine that no one acknowledges that you exist, not your parents or your teachers or your classmates or pop media or television or movies or any of the books you read or any video game you play or anyone. Imagine how that would feel, to literally never be allowed to be yourself or have your identity acknowledged, even when you’re killing dragons with magic in a pixelated fantasy world where you are the chosen one of prophecy, destined to save the realm blah blah blah.

Imagine how exhausting and isolating and sad that would be. Now imagine that’s your entire life, and whenever you try to say, hey, I exist and I would really like to be able to play in a game as myself, maybe? everyone else who plays games gets really mad at you and says that acknowledging your existence would be too hard and unrealistic and also it just makes them feel kind of icky for reasons that definitely don’t have to do with being a bigot.

This is what being a queer, nonbinary gamer has been like for me. I’m completely invisible, and anytime my existence gets brought up the response is a chorus of yelling and cruel jokes.

It’s hard to explain and hard to understand if you don’t have this experience, but “Are you a boy or a girl?” is usually the hardest and most frustrating part of any game for me. It legitimately upsets me to be asked this question and not be able to play the game until I answer it. 

It means that I can never, ever play a game as myself, because my answer to that question is “no”. If I pick a female sprite and put my name on it I generally have to quit within minutes because it triggers my dysphoria so badly, and if I pick a male sprite and put my name on it I just feel vaguely uncomfortable throughout the entire game, I feel like I’m lying, because I am, because I’m not allowed to tell the truth.

But in Sunless Sea, I am. The developers made a very simple choice not to actively exclude me and every other nonbinary person in existence from the game, and the relief I feel cannot be overstated. It’s like a breath of fresh air. It’s like dying in the desert, and then suddenly I trip and fall into a spring of pure clean water. Failbetter Games is doin it rite here, and I want them to know it.

Yo did you miss your Hogwarts letter?  Wanna go to wizard school?

If you’re 11-17 (rising 6th-12th grade), you should check out Magischola Prep!  It’s a week-long summer camp where you get to act out the life of a young mage at magic school, complete with wands, sorting, houses (called “courts” at this school), crazy professors, and all manner of magical beasts.  You get to live with your house, eat meals in a great hall, go to magical classes, and maybe even sneak off into the forbidden forest.  Check it out at https://magischolaprep.com/

It’s by the same people who run New World Magischola, if you’ve heard of that, and oh my goodness the world building makes me want to cry tears of joy.  

It’s also held at Swarthmore College this summer, which seriously looks like a magic school.  There’s a giant amphitheater in the woods that looks like fairies were just there a second ago

A huge belltower that feels like you could do an illicit dragon trade there at midnight

And a courtyard where I can just see a wizard duel happening

Seriously those of you who are 11-17, I am jelly, I wish I could be a camper here.  If you, like me, are feeling elderly at age 21, please pass this on to anyone you know who might have their dreams come true at this camp!

Also, here’s a video, with more fun aerial footage of Swarthmore:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B56xvLpJWAw

If you sign up by March 31 you get the best deal!

@sunshineduk !!!!!!

Oh hey look, it's my camp! I run this thing! Everyone come to my wizard school!

These maps show the regional prevalences of the words ‘bro’, ‘buddy’, ‘dude’, ‘fella’, and ‘pal’ in the contiguous United States.

there are no friends in florida

i think from now on when I answer the phone it’s going to be with YOU HAVE SUMMONED ME, MORTAL. WHAT PALTRY GIFT DO YOU TENDER UNTO ME TO BARTER FOR MY SERVICES?

DID SOMEONE SAY #THE BARTER SYSTEM

Today I learned that the university of Coimbra in Portugal has a great 18th-century library, the Biblioteca Joanina, that maintains a colony of bats to effectively control the population of paper-eating insects called papirófagos. These bats are less than an inch long. They roost during the day behind the bookcases and come out at night. There doesn’t seem to be any English word for papirófago, a cursory search turns up no details about what sort of insect they are, and ngl I am slightly concerned about them as a phenomenon. But I think my overarching point here is clear: 

This library keeps tiny bats that look after the books.

I’m here for tiny bats saving books.

Aaaahhh!!

What good and noble tiny flitters!!!! <3

My nayme is Batt And wen its nite On sylente wings I flye to fite

The lybrarie’s My battlefielde Papir’fagoes Haffe to be killed

My foes emerge From payper nooks I eate them all

I sayve the books

4ft 8.5"

Why 4 FEET 8.5 Inches is Very Important

Fascinating Stuff …

Railroad Tracks The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.

That’s an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used?

Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the U.S. Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular Odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So, who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.

Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

In other words, bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, ‘What horse’s ass came up with this?’, you may be exactly right.

Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.

The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.

The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.

The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass.

And you thought being a horse’s ass wasn’t important!

Now you know, Horses’ Asses control almost everything.

Explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn’t it?

This is the single most mind blowing fact I’ve read on tumblr, every day is a school day-thank you.

Nice history lesson!

My daughter and I were just discussing this very subject.

one time my husband mentioned a cold war larp and while i later realized he meant spy vs spy shit, i initially thought that he meant a larp where people stand on opposite sides of a field and wave increasingly large foam weapons threateningly at each other without ever actually doing anything

@sunshineduk have you done this?

I have absolutely done both of these kinds of cold war larps

One of the most iconic moments in TFA is when Finn tells Han “Solo, don’t worry. We’ll use the Force”. To which Han immediately replies “that’s not how the Force works”.

But I’m wondering. Not only does Finn seem to have a better grasp of how the Force does work, the exchange I think is also used to not so subtly underscore that it seems that the rules of the Force have changed. (And perhaps are going back to how they originally - prior to the Jedi and the Sith - were.)

The title of the movie is literally The Force Awakens. Awakens from what? Some sort of dormancy, otherwise why use the word ‘awakens’.

But for how long and why was it asleep?

Before I go there, let’s talk about the Force as a divine force and how it is portrayed in the OT and PT.

George meant the Force to be the “god” of the Star Wars universe, that ineffable and indescribable something that almost all of us feels now and again, that which is much larger than ourselves and that many take to call god in lack of a better word for it.

While we in our world can and do discuss the reality of the existence of the divine, the Force is very much a reality in the GFFA universe. But in the OT and PT only to the few.

Because in the first two trilogies the Force is viewed and portrayed as being transcendent, that is separate from the physical world and also by the Jedi considered superior (and more important) than the crude material form.

There are some hints that there may once have been an immanent compound in the Force the way Obi-Wan presents it in ANH, but the further along we get in canon the clearer it is that the Force is transcendent, or at least viewed as such.

Fast forward to the ST.

Here we see something different, namely the hints that the Force is immanent. i.e. part of the physical world.

Not only that it now have a religious side it very much lacked before in the creation of the Church of the Force and the Guardians of the Whills. That is, the divine in Star Wars is now not only confined to a clergy (the Jedi, the Sith) but have ordinary adherents.

But there’s more than that.

Here I think it’s important to jump out of universe for a second.

Star Wars was created by George Lucas, a man who identifies as Methodist/Buddhist and in Christianity God is usually seen as transcendent. That is, the divine is out there, separate from our mortal existence.

Not so in Judaism. In Jewish belief G-d is very much part of our world (yes G-d is also transcendent at the same time but I’m trying to keep this as simple as I can). This is relevant because the story of the ST and much of the foundation for the new canon were made by JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan, two Jewish men.

Now as I said the Force being immanent makes everything different. Where a transcendent Force was only really relevant to those who could interact with it through their special training (the “clergy”) when the Force is immanent everyone interacts with it every time they interact with the world.

There is support in the new canon that this is what is happening. 

If we take the Aftermath novels there are several examples of where both Norra Wexley and her son Temmin seems to interact with the Force. Same hold true for Ciena Ree in Lost Stars. And then of course there’s Chirrut Imwe in Rogue One who is no Jedi, yet seems to utilize the Force but in a very different fashion than the Jedi did. There’s Maz Kanata who herself says that though she is no Jedi she knows the Force and then goes on to describe it as a light that touches and permeates everything (but without Yoda’s caveats to it).

So what does this mean for Star Wars and the Force further and what was that awakening?

If I address the latter first.

In Judaism the divine is in some ways trapped inside physical matter and the whole point of Judaism is to awaken the divine sparks to transform the physical world. Note here that the point is not to make the immanent transcendent, but to reconnect the two. To mend what was once broken. This is really the core concept - Tikkun Olam, that literally means “heal the world”. Fix what was broken.

So it’s possible that in Star Wars the immanent part of the Force has been dormant and difficult to access. Exactly how long and what happened we don’t know, but I think that the fact that Luke probably went looking for the first Jedi Temple indicates that it predates the PT.

In The Force Awakens, this immanent part of the Force reawakens. And it is reawakened by Finn. His refusal to obey orders, his rejection of The First Order and what it stands for, changed something in the world. This is also noteworthy because in Judaism emphasis is on acting right, while beliefs are secondary.

And if that is true, if what awoke is the immanent part of the Force? It changes things immensely.

The difference between Force users and non-Force users would not just come down to training, but the difference between Force sensitives and non-Force sensitives would be eliminated. In having the Force as an active part of the world that everyone can interact with, influence and even - with the right training - use, this divide is no longer pertinent.

Here’s an interesting sidenote. One of the questions asked for the story of the ST (and the foundation of the new EU) was “what relevance does the Force have in the modern world?”. And for a transcendent Force, a transcendent divinity, the answer is as much or little as people want it to have for them. Those who don’t believe can safely go about their lives not really caring, but an immanent divinity, one that as the Force is very much real, now that suddenly becomes everyone’s concern.

And this leads me to my final point in this long meta, the balance in the Force.

Lor San Tekka says at the beginning of The Force Awakens “without the Jedi there can be no balance to the Force”. Many have taken this to mean the balance between the Light and the Dark, but I think it might mean a balance between the immanent Force and the transcendent Force.  And that the Jedi are important because they stand in both worlds, the transcendent and the immanent, they span the bridge.

They are the focal points that can fix what was broken.

So when Han Solo says “that’s not how the Force works” he is partially right, it’s not how it used to work. But the rules changed when Finn’s actions awoke the immanent part and Finn, the new generation, have a much better grasp at how things work now.

So I’m sorry Han, but that is how the Force works. Now.

I would like to thank @hauntedfalcon for our brief talk. It sparked some thoughts without which this had been a much poorer meta, albeit also a much shorter one.

Awesome meta