disco elysium has convinced me by the way. the only way to have a game is to take away all of the normal, neutral options. don't let people have those. force them to contort.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/7asxci/oc_ygathok_the_ceaseless_hunger_final_boss_of_our/
This is the reveal of this ridiculousness during their game
everyone needs to hear about the situation in india right now. the youth of this nation are going through hell and back to protect the foundations that our country was built on in the first place, while the adults who are supposed to actually be in charge try to silence our voices.
NEET, which is an exam taken by millions of students per year and is the ONLY gateway for medical admissions across the country, had its papers leaked. so many took their lives because this exam meant everything for their future. and NTA, the agency who conducts this exam, was not held accountable.
there was national backlash. cockroach janta party (initially a satirical political party formed by abhijeet dipke in retaliation to the remarks of the chief justice of india calling the youth "cockroaches" and "parasites of society") started protests at jantar mantar, demanding the resignation of the union education minister, dharmendra pradhan. the movement also asked for ten million inr (~100,000 usd) in compensation for the families of students who died by suicide and wanted NTA be held accountable.
sonam wangchuk, a climate activist and education reformer, also went on a hunger strike at jantar mantar to protest against this corruption in india's higher education system. his fast began on june 28, demanding the resignation of the union education minister. his fast lasted for 20 days until delhi police FORCIBLY removed him and admitted him to safdarjung hospital on july 18.
because of this, cockroach janta party announced "chalo sansad," a march to the parliament beginning on june 20th, 9:00 am ist. but the police seems to be responding with water cannons, mobile jammers, and baton charge. all of this, because of a peaceful protest led by people no older than 30.
and yet there has been absolutely no indian media coverage about a movement that spans the entirety of this nation. so, please, if you see this, keep talking about us. we will not let those old bastards stoop any lower than they've already had. we will not let them ruin our country any further. we will not be silenced
Please look it up. Students have been beaten bloody. They’re using electrified batons. They’re using batons with nails hammered in. They’re dragging people off and locking them up for no reason. People are being beaten, assaulted, and even molested by the police.
The government is doing everything it can except for actually having an honest dialogue with the protestors.
It’s important to note that despite all the police brutality, despite how the government has had extra forces airlifted to Delhi to help quash the protest, this has deterred no one.
Not only is the protest in Delhi going strong, the government closed down every metro station in Central Delhi in an effort to stop them and it still hasn’t.
There’s protests in most major cities in India in solidarity. Palakkad, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kochi, and probably more besides. There has been a protest in the UK as well in solidarity.
People who aren’t at the protest are donating so much food that the organisers have had to ask them to stop doing so because there’s more than enough. In lieu of that people are donating money for medicine, lawyers, cleanup, and umbrellas.
Most crucially, hopes aren’t broken. Spirits aren’t broken. People with bruises and broken bones are still showing up. People are showing up cosplaying as freedom fighters and super heroes and a dinosaur. People are doxxing goons who show up trying to incite violence. People are making reels. People in Mumbai literally opened a moving police detainment van to allow arrested students to escape.
*all links lead to Instagram posts or reels showing the same. Almost every major Indian news network has been bought and either ignores the protests or depicts them unfairly. All honest news comes from people on the ground and smaller independent news outlets.
if they're gonna remake The Princess Bride, it should open with a kid sick in bed scrolling on his phone. his grandpa arrives with a gift--it's a DVD player with a disc already inside. grandpa hooks it up to the TV and presses play. and we all just watch the original 1987 film again.
Odysseus knew better than to expect peace in death. He’d seen what currents lay under the Styx - knew what kind of warriors that he’d sent there. He fully expected another war to start as soon he took his last breath.
Instead it had been quiet.
He’d used the lull to build a home in the endless plains of asphodel. Somewhere simple he could stay and wait for Penelope. It only took a few years for her to join him, and then together they began the work of replicating the palace of Ithaca. It was work, but it was hard to complain about work when he’d expected battle. His greatest skill in life had been enduring to the end. Now it was the end, and still he endured.
It was three centuries before this death was interrupted.
Hades came to him, not as a god, but as a guest. The fates had woven a story that required a very specific soul. One that could travel the lengths of the world without breaking, who could survive a lifetime of war. And try as Hades might, he could not make a soul that was up for the task.
Still, what he could not make, he could find. Death was a sacred thing, the last right of all mankind, but it was not inalienable. One could sacrifice their death just as easily as their life.
The two had spent months haggling out the details of the work. Hades had wanted 50 years, Odysseus wanted just 20, and together they’d compromised on 32. All in exchange for the right of him and Penelope to visit Telemachus once a year, in whatever corner of the underworld their son had been given.
In the end, they’d shaken on it and Odysseus walked the earth once more. He had a new name this time - fitting, for a new fate. Alexander, the world named him and Alexander he named the world back. City by city, battle by battle, he gave the unwanted title away. Then when he was 32 he returned to Penelope, no more Alexander to give. It was a relief to be Odysseus once more.
A year after that, Penelope and him made the journey to see Telemachus. It was worth every step he’d taken between Pella and Babylon.
There were other interruptions from Hades, new deals with new names. He scourged the descendants of Troy again as Hannibal and bought another day per year with his son. He blazed down the steppes as Atilla and conquered the whole world with the same tools he'd used in his first life. It turned out there was little he couldn't accomplish with a horse, a bow, and a brain.
So many lifetimes, so many wars, and then - quiet. A whole millennium of peace went down as easy as honeyed wine. It made him happy. He liked his little deals with Death, but he’d wished so many times that men like him weren’t needed. He was proud of his descendants for making a world better than he’d dreamt.
And then, nearly a whole second millennium after that, Hades returned.
---
“It’s not a war.”
Four words that would set the hackles of anyone that fought at Troy - they’d hoped that one wouldn’t be a war either. But Odysseus had made enough deals with Hades to know that the man was frank in his dealings. There was an honesty to Death. Enough honesty that he’d taken him as a guest.
(He was very choosy about his guests now.)
“You never come to me unless it’s a war. It’s what I’m best at. Why-”
Hades cut him off.
“War is not what you’re best at. Six-hundred men won that war with you. What set you apart was being the only one to make it back.”
Odysseus’s voice caught in his throat. It had been more than two-thousand years and the memories still burned to touch. It took two deep breaths before he was able to force a reply.
“Then what do you want?”
Hades looked lost. He paused a few moments, before looking back at Odysseus, one hand up to plead for patience.
“When I struggle to explain, it’s not because I’m trying to find a clever way to lie to you. It’s because this is a very strange thing, and I…I don’t know how to describe it well.”
He looked into the hearth. Watched the light and heat fade away. Then, he gestured at the log.
“The wood you’re burning. It’s a dead thing. And yet, it dies more after you burn it because the fire has life in it. Soul too. Even here, there’s a corner of the underworld where the souls of dead flames gather. More things have souls than any mortal seems to recognize.”
Odysseus was intrigued. When he lived, he’d learned the secrets of the body better than most doctors. There was only so much cutting you could get people to volunteer for. But here, the mysteries of the soul were lost to him. This was godly knowledge, given freely. What that had to say about the request was worth considering.
“The mountain has a soul, but the mine in that mountain has a soul too, as does the ore from that mine. The ingot, the sword, the bundle of nails - all of those things are alive in some way. And yet, some of them are more alive than others. You sailed once, Odysseus, and no one knows this better than sailors: Boats have strange souls. They’re about as alive as anything that could be built in your time.”
The space around Hades shimmered. The man was thinking, and in a realm where he had total dominion, it took effort for thoughts not to change reality. Odysseus appreciated the effort. The replica had taken centuries to perfect. Death was a strange friend to him, but a friend nonetheless.
“But the arts have improved from that time, and the mortals of today have built something… incredible. Unimaginable. And they’re sending it on a journey that I have no reference for. The Deaths that have seen things like this are alien to me. They speak of things I cannot understand. The Death of Heat. The Death of Light. The Death of Stars…”
He trailed off in a way that made it clear he was remembering something unpleasant and not merely waxing poetic. He caught himself and looked embarrassed, as if he’d confessed to something best kept secret.
Then he continued.
“I am a very human Death. And this thing - it isn’t human. But it was made by humans, and so its soul needs a… a human touch. Your soul isn’t the archetype for a soldier, Odysseus, it’s the archetype for a traveler. I couldn’t take you and put you in this thing if I wanted to, you’re just the wrong shape, but what I’m about to do, I need to see you for. Because this thing is going to travel in ways that I am barely beginning to understand. In ways that are redefining the limits of what it means to be human.”
Odysseus was lost. He didn’t know what he was being asked. He didn’t know what was being built. There were so many questions that he needed to ask that they’d formed a log jam in his mouth. One finally broke free and started a cascade.
“What is it?”
Hades gestured helplessly.
“It’s like an arrow and a ship. They’re going to shoot it past the stars.”
That meant nothing to Odysseus, but he suspected every answer he received would sound like a riddle.
“What do you need from me?”
“Permission to copy your work. The soul I made for you is different from the one you died with. You made changes that I cannot replicate. That I do not understand. That I need for this soul to work.”
Odysseus paused.
“Is it going to be used as a weapon?”
Hades shook his head.
“No. The world is gentler than you remember it. This thing will be what you should have been: A traveler without equal. No more, no less.”
Odysseus couldn’t tell if those words ripped something in him open, or healed something closed. Either way, it hurt in a way he didn’t know how to express. His mouth opened and closed several times before he settled on an answer.
“Then take what you will. My only request is to see the journey.”
“Done,” Hades agreed. He could have left right then, but he chose to stay in silence until the fire burned out. There are some ideas that one shouldn’t be left alone with. Not until they’ve had an hour or three to process them, at least.
---
Twelve-billion miles from Earth, moving just shy of mach fifty, the Voyager 2 probe glittered in the darkness.
It watched the world around it with the kind of awe a human couldn’t fathom. Nothing was hidden from it. Everything from the atomic composition of stars, to the background hum of the universe itself - all were available with a glance. The only sound it could hear was the constant blip of data that it received from Earth. The small blue dot on starlit shore.
It missed that place. Maybe, one day, when its journey was done… it would find a way back. Maybe. That was still eons away.
Odysseus stood just a few feet off, watching from a direction no one but Hades knew how to walk. He felt the thrill of the expanse in front of him, the utterly incomprehensibility of his speed, and yet its meaninglessness as well. To imagine that the world was so big. To imagine that the world was so strange.
He wept and he could not explain why. He lingered in the twilight until Penelope found him. When she asked him what was wrong, he had no answer. How could he tell her that the world was beautiful, and that he had a place in it? Not just as some ugly middle step, but there at the end. Hurtling through space like an arrow made of silver.
How could he explain to someone that had loved him for two-thousand years that he finally understood why?
if u get into neopaganism u really have to spend the first like 2 years sorting out all the bullshit and finding out how much of it is either completely made up or outright stolen from other cultures and then go from there. u truly have to experience ego death, academic death, book collection death, and probably 47 other maimings or else you will be stuck believing something some guy said based on nothing in 1987 as your religion. it's harrowing. it's dire.
legit the best advice i can give you: feed your friends
any time someone is in any kind of crisis or upheaval, offer to feed them. tell them they don't have to choose what it is if they can't make decisions, just ask about allergies and preferences and tell them you're just gonna make food happen at their house.
friend having a baby? delivery gift certificate to order food to the hospital after the kid shows up.
someone's relative passes away? offer to make them dinner.
buddy gets laid off? ask if you can order them lunch.
pal stuck in a depressive episode? offer to drive them to fucking mcdonalds, if that's what they want.
people in crisis are tired and sad and angry and the last thing most of them are doing is thinking about feeding themselves. so if you have the ability or time or money, providing that is always, always a good move.
legit i do this all the time, and it is 100% always appreciated. i have taught all my friends that when something happens, we feed each other. it makes people feel extremely cared for, and I cannot recommend it enough.
Right after I reblogged this I found out a friends’ mom was hospitalized — this is such a good reminder
If you can, provide disposable plates/utensils and save them from doing dishes — when my husband was diagnosed with cancer, bulk paper products were our most appreciated gift
An added tip for this: You might find that if you ask if you can bring food, the answer is not a clear yes. The emotional labor of deciding might be too much.
Try: "Is there a good time I can bring you food?" then follow up with questions about allergies, if X type of food is OK.
Have a plan to start, so they can just adjust it to meet their needs.
Other thing that is very appreciated are mini grocery runs. They don't wanna ask someone to do a full trip to Walmart, but messaging someone and saying "Hey, I'm going by the store on my way to your place real quick, can I bring you some bread/fresh fruit/milk/juice/cat food?" The stuff that you wouldn't necessarily go out to get by itself but that easily runs out or goes randomly bad.
Also, if you visit, love on their pets, if their pets like it. They're feeling stressed too, and their humans are probably struggling to keep up with them a little. Play fetch or break out the kitty wand!
ive never been able to take "climb him like a tree" as a sexual innuendo seriously because i picture climbing a tree in my mind and then i picture a tall man in my mind and when i put those two things together im not seeing anything sexual. im seeing like. circus tricks.
one of my friends in a discord server was talking about how they were nervous about their first scheduled acupuncture appointment. another friend offered to do a tarot reading for them. sent this picture.
for sale: Baby Shoes Stylish Infant Boy Girl Unisex First Walker Shoes Toddler Walking Crib Shoes Lightweight Non-Slip Sneakers For 6 9 12 18 24 Months Baby Shoes New With Tags New In Box Excellent Condition Never Worn
I'm seeing some reports that the fantasy artist Emmanuel just passed away. One of the artists who helped hone the look of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, I was especially a fan of his cover for the Fiend Folio, which I consider one of the sacred texts of AD&D. One of the many guides I used to check out from the library and draw monsters from.
I've never been able to learn much about the artist who was always credited only as "Emmanuel." Apparently he was Emmanuel Papadopoulos, and passed away in June, 2026.
“A kiss may be grand, but it won’t pay the rental, on your humble flat, or help you at the automat.”
Like literally the most famous song about how much girls love jewellry is just explaining the importance of getting jewellry for when your partner leaves you penniless and alone.
The founder of Girl Scouting in the US, Juliette Gordon Low, funded her first troop by selling her pearl necklace, which was her only belonging after her husband died and left everything to his mistress.
She founded Girl Scouts to teach girls self-sufficiency so they wouldn’t have to go through what she went through when her husband died and she didn’t know how to take care of herself.
While we’re on the subject, let’s please also remember that historically disenfranchised communities who had to worry about frequently being run out of town often bought expensive jewelry with their limited funds not because they were greedy or tacky or classless, but rather because you can’t sew a real estate investment into the lining of your coat, and the powers that be can’t freeze a diamond necklace the way that they can freeze a bank account.
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