I bet you never thought you’d hear those words together.
While I love how overpowered the FPRSoD is, I felt that the original description and mechanics of the sword were out of line with those of D&D 5e. What is “Melee Damage”? Does it even actually do Fire Damage? Or Poison Damage for that matter?
So, I took it upon myself to remake the sword following the same structure of magic items in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. I still wanted it to feel like a very powerful sword, while also actually incorporating the adjectives in its name. So without further adieu:
This longsword features a gigantic blade wreathed in flames with a crooked, oozing scorpion’s stinger affixed to its point.
You gain a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. On your turn before taking the attack action, you can use a bonus action to speak a command word to activate an effect, choosing one of the options below.
Flaming. Fire erupts from the blade and deals an additional 3d10 Fire Damage per attack until the beginning of your next round.
Poisoning. The blade becomes coated in poison and deals an additional 3d10 Poison Damage per attack until the beginning of your next round.
Raging. A wave of fury washes over you. You gain one use of a Barbarian’s Rage. This command word cannot be used again until the next dawn.
They find a book written in Latin… one guy doesn’t take Latin and doesn’t want to mess up the pronunciation. The girl is studying Mandarin. Another guy recommends sticking it into Google Translate but that’s likely to land them with gibberish. They leave it alone.
The car won’t start. They call an Uber.
The vampire captures the girl and insists that she wears the gown to dinner. The gown is actually hella cute. Only problem is it’s not in her size. Oh, it only comes in 2’s and 4’s? Sorry, vamp, you want me in that dress you contact the goddamn company and tell them to get their shit together.
“How did you possibly know that? It saved our lives!” “I’ve got two degrees and I spend way too much time on Wikipedia.”
They encounter a spirit that gains power the more people believe in it. One girl makes a vine and uploads with, “fakest ghost ever!!! Right??” Twenty minutes later the spirit is destroyed.
The circus is in town tonight. Except she’s lived her whole life here and the circus has never come before… it’s also in a pretty sketchy part of town, not somewhere you’d want to walk alone at night. She goes to a movie instead.
“You’d need an ARMY to fight this evil!” “Okay. I’ve got 20,000 followers, lets see how many can make it.”
The Evil Whispery Voice of Doom tells the jock that it’s going to kill his pretty blonde girlfriend. The jock gets offended because, excuse me, Cindy and I are just friends. However, Marty over there is my boyfriend and I’m not saying you should kill him, just stop making assumptions yeah?
“This spirit tried to convince me it was Jerry when it texted but its texting style is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT so yeah that didn’t work.”
We could have easily gotten lost and ended up at some creepy cabin in the woods, but luckily we all had functioning GPSs. Beach party, we’ve arrived!
“We have to find a way to destroy it! We—what are you doing?” “Looking up ‘exorcising demons’ on Google. Oh look, first hit.”
The child she bares will be the devil’s spawn. Good thing she doesn’t want kids. Or if she changes her mind she can always adopt.
“How can we possibly outwit this serial killer…” “… There’s gotta be an app for that. Lemme look.”
Only the virgin will survive… Turns out they’re all virgins. One is asexual. One wants to wait until marriage. Two just haven’t found the right person yet. One is meh about sex. So we all survive, yeah?
The girl does not fall. She was on varsity track.
“Quick! We need someplace to hide the artifact. And then decoys to confuse the beast! What have we got?” “… I’ve got a hundred plastic bags stuffed into another plastic bag.” “PERFECT.”
i would pay to read a book of a collection of modern horror stories
They’re trapped in a haunted cabin one of them inherited from a Weird UncleTM. Mysterious figures, things going flying, screams and drumbeats and chanting, blood pouring down the walls, the whole bit. They pull out the Ouija Board.
“BRO, WHAT IS YOUR DEAL?”
S…A…C…R…E…D…L…A…N…D
“Oh.”
“Oh geez. Oh no. This is Native American land. Oh goodness I am SO sorry.”
“Um so, like I inherited this property and a couple acres, can I like…donate it?”
W…H…A…T
“Yeah man like, what tribe are you? I don’t want to live here, this cabin is grody and Uncle Tim was a fuckin’ weirdo. It’s your guys’ land, just like, what tribe?”
C..H…U…M…A…S…H
“Cool. Uh, I guess we’ll…call them…in the morning?”
T…H…A…N…K…Y…O…U GOODBYE
“Oh. Well fuck, like, that was easy.”
I was all set to dislike this when I saw the title, thinking it was gonna be another bashing of my generation post… then boom! Talk about saving the day!
When I was younger I was very right-wing. I mean…very right-wing. I won’t go into detail, because I’m very deeply ashamed of it, but whatever you’re imagining, it’s probably at least that bad. I’ve taken out a lot of pain on others; I’ve acted in ignorance and waved hate like a flag; I’ve said and did things that hurt a lot of people.
There are artefacts of my past selves online – some of which I’ve locked down and keep around to remind me of my past sins, some of which I’ve scrubbed out, some of which are out of my grasp. If I were ever to become famous, people could find shit on me that would turn your stomach.
But that’s not me anymore. I’ve learned so much in the last ten years. I’ve become more open to seeing things through others’ eyes, and reforged my anger to turn on those who harm others rather than on those who simply want to exist. I’ve learned patience and compassion. I’ve learned how to recognise my privileges and listen to others’ perspectives. I’ve learned to stand up for others, how to hear, how to help, how to correct myself. And I learned some startling shit about myself along the way – with all due irony, some of the things I used to lash out at others for are intrinsic parts of myself.
You wouldn’t know what I am now from what I was then. You wouldn’t know what I was then from what I am now.
It distresses me deeply to think of someone dredging up my dark, awful past and treating me as though that furiously hateful person is still me. It distresses me to see others dredging up the past for anyone who has made efforts to become a better person, out of some sick obsession with proving they’re “problematic.”
Purity culture tells you that once someone says or does something, they can never go back on it. That’s a goddamn lie. While it’s true that some remain unrepentant and never change their ways and continue to harm others, it’s important to allow everyone the chance to learn from their mistakes. Saying something ignorant isn’t murder. Please stop treating it that way. Let people grow.
Still call it out and question it ….
Bruh. No. Listen. Call out what people do now, absolutely. If they haven’t changed, call them out on their record. This post is explicitly not about people who HAVEN’T changed. What this post IS saying is, if someone is making an effort to be a good person, don’t go digging around in their past for evidence that they were once for what they’re now against, or once against what they’re now for, as “proof” of what they “really think,” because people’s opinions and beliefs can change.
The obsession with finding shit in someone’s past and then claiming that a questionable or even sordid past negates all possibility of a good present needs to become extinct. Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.
If someone has changed for the better, don’t harass them about what they were like before they fuckin’ changed. That’s shitty and it needs to stop.
Iridescent clouds, looking like a rainbow in the clouds.
A diffraction phenomenon caused by small water droplets or small ice crystals individually scattering light. Larger ice crystals do not produce iridescence, but can cause halos, a different phenomenon.
So today pulling into Stop and Shop, this lady cut me off and nearly drove into me, and then, when I tried to pass her, she swung to the right and nearly hit me again, and then flipped me off.
So somebody is having a bad day and taking it out on me. That’s fine. It’s harmless, and I don’t know what’s going on in this woman’s life. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt she’s not just a piece of shit and is just having a bad day.
But then I park and she follows me, and gets out of the car and starts swearing at me and getting in my face.
Now I go from “indifferent” to “I’m gonna fuck with this woman’s head.” Now I would say I’m a gentleman of size, and in all black and bemohawked I probably look spookier than I actually am, so props to this lady for getting in my face. Now of course I’m not going to hit her, or even threaten violence. That’s shitty. Nobody should get threatened with violence.
Instead, I take a step back, narrowing my eyes like I’m studying her face really closely, and then I touch one of the several piece of “occulty” jewelry I’m wearing (none of which, by the way, are magicked in any way at all). Then I mumble some nonsense under my breath, and then make the fig gesture and the horns at her.
She stops, wide-eyed.
“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO TO ME?”
I chuckled, and shake my head. “Nothing at all.” I say in a not-terrible convincing voice. “But every time something bad happens to you today, you’re gonna be thinking of me.”
Colin Firth is really out here living his best life in 2018, swinging around on a boat to Dancing Queen and Titanic posing with Stellan Skarsgard on the prow and still ending up drenched in a body of water while wearing a white shirt because he respects his own legacy.
My favorite quote from him is something like “I’m well aware that if I changed careers today, became an astronaut, and was the first human to go to another planet, the headline would read ‘Mr. Darcy Goes to Mars.’”
modern greek mythology adaptation where hades and persephone are played by john mulaney and his wife
She’s hades, he’s Persephone
Oh no, no. John Mulaney is 100% Hades.
Loves his wife
Is actually pretty chill except when it comes to stupid people
Can’t stand up for himself when others try to do him wrong
And from what we hear about her, she’s very Persephone.
Easy to underestimate
Knows her own mind
Will cut you
“So, I meet this wonderful lady. Just fantastic, my heart does that thing where it’s skipping beats, and I – all of you think I’m going to talk about how I suavely asked her out, and that is not what happened.
“I ride up in my chariot, and the first – this is literally the first thing I say to her is ‘do you want to meet my dog’?
“And this – I – this is a sign that this woman is my soul mate – she looks at her friends hanging around and says, ‘sure, catch you later, guys’.
“I’m going to skip forward here a couple of dates – no, don’t – this is not the story of how my wife met my dog – and her mom – her mom – finds out she’s seeing me. Now I know everyone jokes about how a girl’s dad is this big, hulking – going to hunt you down if you’re dating his daughter and he doesn’t like you. But if you say that, it’s because you’ve never had some girl’s mom glaring up at you from like – her mom’s like two inches taller than her, so this little furious glare from around my chin area, saying her daughter’s not allowed to come see me anymore.
“And this – okay, this is when I knew I was going to marry this girl, she looks at her mom and, cool as anything, says, ‘Too late, mom. I met his dog, ate dinner over here. I’m staying’.”
