Say Нет to the het

manically yappin (23 they/them)

[haaarpb]

a bar comic

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Visiting family for the weekend, including my seven year old niece, who is obviously the most special and incredible child on the planet

Anyway, she really, really loves it when I tell her stories. She loves stories anyway, and at first this manifested as "stories about Tad-Cu Bryn", aka my father (her grandfather) who died before she was born. This has been a lovely way to keep his memory alive, and she adores every story - she has her favourites, which she will request.

Then it became apparent that she specifically loves me telling her stories. She'll happily ask others for them too, but from me she just wants any anecdote at all; which of course is wonderful and demonstrates that she is a child of impeccable taste and wisdom and brilliance, but also she has ADHD and the energy reserves of a seven year old and so this gets Tiring very quickly

Yesterday, in the car on the way back from the wildlife centre, she asked for one of my longer stories, and I was like hey, how about we try something different?

And she was like, no, tell me a story about Tad-Cu Bryn

And I was like, this will be a brand new story and you get to play it and help me tell it

And she was like, explain

So I gave her three characters to choose from. The first was a warrior with a sword she could name, who was nonetheless dyspraxic. The second was a gymnastic elf who could commune with trees but was afraid of heights. The third was a dyslexic witch whose spells sometimes go wrong when she spells the words wrong.

She picked the witch. I pulled up an online d20 on my phone. I went to start, and she insisted my mother had to play as the elf.

So I told them that the new queen of the kingdom had called for them, because their palace treasury had been robbed - specifically, a single enchanted coin that brings luck and wealth to a ruler's reign had been stolen. And tales of enchanted coins were suddenly emanating from across the land, so each one needed investigating until the right coin was found.

It turns out kids who like stories will absolutely lap this shit up. She was enthralled. It was the simplest story - they had to get into a bank, revive some unconscious gnomes, then enter the vault, find the coin that had been deposited into it, then get back to the queen. Enough to fill a half hour car ride, basically, but she managed to fill it with all the wacky hijinks you get from a ttrpg, particularly when she tried to smash a door down with a hammer but rolled a 1.

We finished with the queen saying it wasn't the right coin, and then my niece demanded we go again, this time with her playing as a sapient reticulated python. That time we made it all the way to the final boss fight, which was a sorcerer who created a big coin monster out of loads of coins; I asked my niece what she wanted to do, and she described graphically how she wanted to constrict and eat the sorcerer and immediately rolled a 19. So, sure! Okay. The sorcerer is now very dead. The coin monster, though, was still there, and as my niece tried to say she would do the same thing, I was like, no, you're a snake and you just ate. You're now immobile.

At this point, my sister advised her to regurgitate the sorcerer.

Great! said my niece. I'm going to do it at the coin monster.

And rolled a 20.

So she projectile vomited a dead sorcerer into the coin monster, and won the day.

Anyway, today she immediately demanded we play "the game with the story where we choose", and my brother in law is now asking me how he can do this with her ("Are you making it all up as you go along??"). But yeah, turns out, this is a fantastic way to entertain a seven year old. Vague ongoing quest, then three steps: get into (place), resolve (minor puzzle), boss fight to finish. Boom. Easy.

So far I've done a bank, a tavern, and an art gallery (it featured an exhibit that was just a room full of slippery banana skins). I'm going to do a pirate ship next

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

A few people have asked so. The best bits:

The aforementioned snake regurgitation bit. What I didn't mention was that at first, when I said she now needed to lie down and digest, her attempt to resolve it was "Nana, you need to find me a heat lamp" and I had to be like, "Nana has bigger problems right now because she is fighting the coin monster, and also you're both trapped down here." Why were they both trapped? Because rather than finding the stairs down to the basement, they chose to hack a hole in the floor and drop through

When they found their first enchanted coin, Niece picked it up with her bare hand. This made her hand swell up to five times the size and turn blue with orange polka dots. Her response? To immediately pick up the coin with the other hand so they could match

Niece decided very suddenly and randomly that slipping on banana skins was funny, and periodically she would competently enter a new room and she'd interrupt me to say "And then I stand on a banana skin!" This is why I made the banana skin modern art installation. Purely for her to enjoy getting through the room

At one point as the witch they decided to jointly fly on the broom to a new location. "You don't need to roll for that," I said, but Niece was enjoying rolling by then, and so did anyway, and somehow rolled a 20. It was the world's greatest broom ride. They had in-flight entertainment, free snacks each, they napped, and they landed 20 seconds before they took off

The morning I left, she saw me and asked if we could play "Dungeons and Dragons", so her father has definitely been discussing playing with her because I never used that name. Delighted to have offered this new past time into their lives, and next time I'll try and write a little detective campaign, I think

[dailycatsblog]

[ramshacklefey]

Recently managed to activate the most amazing infodump trap card.

I was driving through Vermont with a friend, and we pulled over at a tiny shop offering Maple Items. We were on the state highway, not the interstate, so "pulling over" meant "squeezing my tiny car into a parking bay the size of a broad highway shoulder."

As we got out of the car, an older woman emerged from behind the building where she had been pruning her roses. She introduced herself as Tammy.

Her shop offered the promised variety of Maple, but also a number of small antiques and a plethora of dog figurines, plaques, and clearly-hand-stitched garden flags.

A huge purple ribbon hung on the wall behind the register, along with many pictures of small dogs. This was no county fair ribbon. It was the size of my torso. The material had the soft sheen of actual silk.

As I placed my purchases on the counter, I asked, "Do you... Breed dogs?"

Yes. She does. She has bred Yorkies for the last 40 years. Her mother bred Yorkies before her. The purple ribbon was from her national championship winning Yorkie.

You may be expecting that the infodump was going to be about Yorkies.

It was not.

It was about 40 years of drama in the Yorkie breeding community. Where – you must understand – the judging at shows is often about who you're in with, not about the dogs. This is especially true when Tammy's opponents win anything.

And Tammy's mother! Well. Phyllis has been on the Yorkie scene since Yorkies were invented. Because of this, many women of equally venerable age hold deep grudges against Phyllis. The sort of grudges that result in episodes of Midsommar Murders.

This led to deep injustices against Phyllis on the part of judges and prevented her dogs from winning so often she retired from the scene. Judging is all about who you're friends with, after all.

After 20 years in hiding, Phyllis – the One True Queen of Yorkie Breeding – hatched a plot. She may have been out of the show circuit, but she was still breeding dogs. She entered an absolutely perfect bitch in the national competition, but sent her with a handler rather than go in person.

None of the usurpers knew who this dog belonged to, and in dog-breeding circles this Does Not Happen. This could have resulted in further injustices, but Phyllis was crafty. She knew this tournament was being judged by a man from the UK, who knew naught of the drama in the US Yorkie Empire.

With these advantages – and being the best dog there – Phyllis's bitch won the highest honor at the show.

Incensed by this insult to their ill-gotten supremacy, the other owners descended on the handler after the show, demanding to know for whom he was working.

"Phyllis," said he.

The name of the overthrown queen evoked horror in the usurpers.

"PHYLLIS!? She's still ALIVE!???"

Yes, Phyllis yet lived, and this bitch – the dog, not the woman – went on to mother Tammy's current dogs. One of whom, Lucy-Fur, is the reincarnation of Tammy's sister (also Lucy). This is certain for two reasons.

Firstly, Sister Lucy absolutely went straight to Hell upon her death, and Lucy-Fur the dog is positively as evil as Sister Lucy was.

Secondly, Sister Lucy always said when she died she wanted to come back as one of Phyllis's dogs because "mom treated the dogs better than us."

[teaboot]

Can I be honest with yall I don't want to hear SHIT against cishets at pride this year

[teaboot]

"But it's not FOR them!!!" The biggest military power in the world belongs to a christofascist nation overseen by a felon found guilty of 34 federal crimes and has greenlit a gestapo with more direct funding than the entire military of Canada for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. Let Hetero Jessica throw some biodegradable glitter at a municipal parade

[teaboot]

At this point if anyone is trying to exclude anyone benignly pro-queer from a pro-queer space I'm just going to assume you're a fed or something idk like something something destabilize the movement from within or whatever

[weirdvintage]

An early 20th century postcard against the coercion of motherhood and promoting the usage of contraception.

[tr-p-antoninvs-pivs]

She is going to hit that Christian baby for a home run.

[afurioushawk]

[afurioushawk]

[frustratedasatruar]

Real and growing possibility of him dying live on tv and nobody in the room noticing for minutes on end.

Likes charge, reblogs cast.

[syphaa]

tb to this absolutely amazing review

[bill-blake-fans-anonymous]

I think strange horrible things should stop befalling my friends

[catastrophespouse]

I think strange wonderful things should start befalling my friends

[scooter-witch]

rb to give prev strange wonderful things

[lovertm]

pins by Abprallen

[anarchistmemedistro]

AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt

Attackers explain how an anti-spam defense became an AI weapon.

[megaceros]

love that energy

[orion-archives]

"I want to be a dragon."

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

In my opinion it's a lot more healthy to be able to own that you dislike someone for petty reasons than to do all kinds of mental gymnastics to make everyone you don't really vibe with out to be a bad person actually

[sage-nebula]

[mousidy]

the state does not need to assign you a sex, nor does it need to keep inalterable record of it btw

[mousidy]

a very interesting terf objection to this one boils down to "but how would the state know who to protect?" because it speaks to the incredible privilege of being in a class the state actually ever remotely wants to protect. most oppressed groups do not want the state to have a registry of them, lol

[mousidy]

the patriarchy has done a great job convincing white cisgender women that it's in their best interests to maintain it

[mousidy]

[weirdtranssexual]

call me crazy but i think public transportation should explicitly also be for actively drunk/high people. so they don’t, you know, drive under the influence.

[weirdtranssexual]

i literally don’t care how afraid you are of drunk people. if they’re behaving well enough then there’s no reason to kick them off the bus.

if you can’t recognize it’s better for society for drunk people to have a way home that doesn’t involve them driving and potentially getting people killed then you just kind of suck actually.

[teaboot]

My mom likes to tell me about how when I was a little kid riding public transport with her I'd always smile and giggle and chat with weird old ladies who smelled like cat pee and homeless folks and strangers dressed in bizarre outfits but any time a tidy and respectable businessman in a suit and tie waved at me I'd immediately clam up, and she takes a great deal of pride in my supposed inherentability to clock personalities but the truth is I do vaguely remember those bus rides, and it was never about the clothes or the hair or the smell, but more because everyone "strange" asked interesting questions and listened to what I had to say and seemed to think about what I said while the neat and tidy and rigid folks only ever acted like they were going through the motions, which was boring as hell and also pretty annoying

[teaboot]

Well-to-do finance manager with tidy shoes: "Why hello, sweetheart. Can you say 'hi'? Aren't you cute. Are you on a trip with your mom?"

4 year old me: why must we do this

Fantastic old woman in the leopard print coat: "Why yes, my tooth IS real silver! Nobody ever asks me that. Do you like cats?"

4 year old me, suddenly paying attention: Finally, A Person Of Intellect

[momoboyds]

white europeans love to pretend like the united states and europe aren’t two cheeks of the same ass

[hiimneptune]

Listen, nobody who's ever opened a history book says we didn't do that shit first. Pick an atrocity and chances are there was a time europeans did it on mass to someone for the sake of profit. The difference, is that we have for the most part put that behind us, while the US is just sinking deeper and deeper into it. We're not perfect, and we were a lot worse in the past. But it has been a while since we were the problem

[momoboyds]

so the racism, antiblackness, islamophobia, and hatred for immigrants just disappeared huh

[creatingblackcharacters]

"its been a while since we were the problem" someone Black was murdered by police violence in Ireland last month