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It's a little less, well, momentous? here, but Durkula's accent slipped again on this update before the end. "Unnerstand" rather than "understand".
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Jul 27, 2018 16:38
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ikanreed posted:Actual Norse legends are always fun to read. Is there anything I could search to find these? An illustrated version of Norse mythology was hands-down my favorite book in the library at my elementary school. I must've signed that thing out at least a dozen times.
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Aug 10, 2018 16:25
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Ho ho! Here it is! https://throwbackthorsday.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/norse-gods.jpg?w=1024 The title of said book being "Norse Gods and Giants" or, apparently retitled but still identical (and the cover art is the one I remember, but with the new title past time my time), "D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths". Fun read, nice art, doesn't leave much out in the way of details despite being for children, other than the really explicit stuff (which was mostly only somewhat euphemised (and didn't include the PILES OF SEVERED BODY PARTS AND HEADS on the fields of Valhalla before they were gathered, reattached, and the partying re-commenced). Dang evocative http://booksofwonder.com/images/products/detail/DOC595.jpg and metal https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net...fix=protagonist stuff. Aoi fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Aug 10, 2018 |
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Aug 10, 2018 17:21
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Manic_Misanthrope posted:Upon which the autopsy changes the murder weapon from dagger to housecat. Could you murder someone with an earthquake? With a tsunami? No wizard jokes. Attempting to assert that a housecat could be a murder weapon is just as ridiculous.
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Aug 30, 2018 21:18
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Just speaking as a (crappy) writer, I have so much respect for this page. The one passage, the one page in a book that throws the entire story on a tilt, that really does potentially change everything, but in a better way, rather than flushing away whatever good qualities it had, touching the reader in a way that really takes their breath away, is kind of the holy grail for writers, it's always there as a goal in the back of our minds, even when we actively try to keep it there for all the negative ramifications tied up with it, too. This page really does change everything about what we know of the Gods, their relationship(s) with the world(s) and the mortals that live on it(them). The entire Godsmoot, the arguments they made for whether to stick with this world or just hit the reset button, it's all completely recontextualized now. The Gods arguing for ending the world and sending all the mortals therein to their afterlives early are suddenly not a bunch of callous dicks operating out of dispassionate laziness, they're genuinely making an attempt at saving the souls of their worshippers, when they've lost so many others, forever, to events just like this in the past. Those Gods making the other argument aren't just being brave and showing faith in the world they made, they're being almost recklessly foolhardy in a gamble that's been lost countless times up until now, but they're also not just being brave, they're being insanely brave, breathtakingly so, in the faith they're showing to these mortals and this world, considering the risk. Really, really, good...page.
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Sep 5, 2018 18:47
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Whybird posted:Yeah, that's what gets me -- it seems like such a waste. A lot of the time I hear from people writing fantasy settings how having Raise Dead easily available takes the fear of death away as a dramatic hook. And in a way that's true, but I've always found problems that you can't just solve by killing a dude to make for more entertaining RPG plot anyway. Dungeon Meshi has explored the consequences of (relatively) easy resurrection magic making death (relatively) cheap and the effects this has on the people involved to some degree. Because it's a very good series. Aoi fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 07:22
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ikanreed posted:Real best place name is Head Smashed In Buffalo Run It's Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. That last word is fairly important, given, well, the entire purpose of the site in history and all. Source: Living nearby and visiting the on-site museum ( https://headsmashedin.ca/ ) multiple times in my life because it's totally rad.
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Jun 8, 2019 19:46
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The Question IRL posted:Didn’t Dune become incredibly Islamophobic in later books? Well, they used the term "Jihad" for the first book's protagonist's war to conquer/subdue the rest of the inhabited universe, using his army of super-warriors from the desert planet, who had fanatical loyalty and beliefs in their messiah. So, there may have been a few things that you could call...undertones...but I never got a direct hint of Islamophobia when I read it. ...of course, the last time I read it (the whole series, even) was...the end of 2000. So I was somewhat less informed about certain things way back when, to be sure. I never read any of the later post-Herbert books past the first, which was strictly prequel territory, and I don't remember virtually anything about it, so I can't comment there. The only odd islamophobic-adjacent cultural weirdness that actually stood out to me, really, was the weird tangent of the jeeeeeeeeeeeews and how that one culture totally hadn't changed or died out like all the other ones in the thousands of years since humanity left Earth. It just struck me as...odd? Not even, like, hateful, or anything, just...odd. That was dumb 20 year old me, though, so who knows what dumb...not 20 years old me of today would think if I re-read it now.
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Jun 22, 2019 14:05
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ultrafilter posted:That's a hit right in the middle of the dome, which is the part that makes it stable. It's just like the keystone in an arch, but 3D. That ceiling is coming down in short order. This just goes to show how lovely the vampire spirit inhabiting the Exarch is, frankly. If it had done its job properly, it would have realized exactly what was going on, because I guarantee the Exarch had some pretty impressive Architecture knowledge ranks.
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Jul 29, 2019 17:21
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Well, yeah, I just wanted to extra-shittalk the spirit itself, too. It's constantly mocking the Exarch for being unimaginative and literal-minded and boring, and if it gets toasted because he managed to lull it into a false sense of architectural security, it'll be the icing on the cake.
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Jul 29, 2019 17:35
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Brainamp posted:Let's not forget about bringing Kudzu into the fight with the vamps instead of leaving him at the temple. Strapped to a high-level cleric covered in abjurations. He was safer than he could be anywhere else.
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Sep 24, 2019 17:46
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Rand Brittain posted:Meta versus Not-Meta. Are bards restricted to Meta only?
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Jan 30, 2020 01:57
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Rand Brittain posted:Durkon walks the walk, but isn't so great at talking the talk. High wisdom, low charisma. Feeling like she's a higher charisma, middling wisdom type cleric that'll put her points into wisdom as she levels, er, progresses in life.
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Mar 5, 2020 20:10
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Absurd Alhazred posted:If you had read only the Dark Elf Trilogy, which was one of the more famous self-contained portions of everything to do with that dark elf who is a credit to his race and has two swords and also a magical companion animal, you would either come to see him as a highly self-unexamined racist, or you yourself would be a self-unexamined racist. The fact that he "corrects" this in future books doesn't override this entirely valid criticism of his older work. It's not something that "didn't happen", he revels in being racist towards goblins or orcs or whatever evil race it was at the end of Sojourn, which I didn't really notice as a child but did stand out when I re-read it as an adult. I actually read the dark elf trilogy as a young adolescent before I did the Icewind Dale trilogy (or any later books with the motley crew), and I was somewhat taken aback by how cheerfully Drizzle massacred huge numbers of goblinoids and orcs (the barghests had it coming), even if it was fairly standard fare for 'heroes'. Another example that really stood out to me was this one dragonlance or forgotten realms novel that had a cheerfully helpful elven ally to the protagonist, who has a really graphic and upbeat torture session with a goblin prisoner for information that was just treated as totally the right thing to do and an indication of how weak and morally degenerate the goblin was for giving in so fast to having his face shoved down eye-first onto a secured point-upright-oriented dagger one at a time, because 'creatures of darkness greatly value their eyes' (the curs!). I think it was my second reading or so, a year or so later (I have a chronic pain condition, and reading (as best I could) during pain flareups was/is one of my ways of taking my mind off it, so I burnt through TSR novels fast back then), reading the chapters with his blind ranger teacher/mentor/sort of adopted father, that I realized he (the teacher) was actually a huge racist, and literally indoctrinated (well, not with that clincal language back then) Drizz't into hating them, too. Like, way more than he had any reason to, given the only goblinoids and orcs he knew in the Underdark were the slaves of the drow, rather than anyone that actually did him wrong. I don't know if Mr. Salvatore intended this, but he managed to do a good job of making such a seemingly benevolent character (the literal blind master who devotes his life to helping other people) into someone with actual (negative) depths. edit: Also, read the post questioning this after writing mine, but, yeah, I did read the dark elf trilogy first, because I was, like, 11, I think, when I read the first of them, because they were owned by a family friend who loaned them to me, and the cover/synopsis looked more interesting to 11 year old me than the more stereotypical-looking Icewind Dale's versions thereof managed to. So there are some of us. Aoi fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Apr 28, 2020 |
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Apr 28, 2020 20:09
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Raenir Salazar posted:I mean, considering the gods chucked a mountain at them, yes we're not supposed to consider them to be "good" anymore. They were the resulting status quo after the forces of "good" banished Queen Takhisis/Tiamat from the mortal realm when she tried to invade the world and were tasked with keep evil from returning. As I recall, the line that was crossed was the Kingpriest saying "Hey, *I* should be a God! Make me a God, fellow Gods!". I'm sure that's just a coincidence, though.
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Sep 15, 2021 18:09
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Aw yeah, Wizard round on SS13.
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Jan 13, 2022 05:23
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:Doesn't the planet Krynn from Dragonlance have three moons and only people who practice the right kind of magic can see them, and then usually only one of them? Krynn does indeed have three moons, lunitari (red), solinari (white), and nuitari (black). They're also the names of and represent/are tied to the three gods of Magic, Neutral, Good, and Evil, respectively. The fact that I still know all this decades later saddens me on some level, but hey. I can't remember only the Mages that swear allegiance to them (since Krynn has that whole red/white/black robed wizards thing) being able to see any of them, but that *might* be the case with Nuitari, the black one?
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Mar 28, 2024 14:31
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