parenthetical @parenthetical@monads.online

when i see a good post you know i smash PRINT and mail a physical copy directly to God

frater...thou hast illuminated cringe. thou'llt lose patronage, forsooth.

this fool has set out to key an area the size of wales for his fun casual d&d game (it's me, i'm the fool)

ok i've filled in terrain types (but no key entries) for 52 big hexes which covers...

8476 square miles?? fUck

did you know that sexualities don't apply on halloween? you can hook up with whoever and it doesn't count. sounds like a major loophole but it's true.

anyway anyone know whether mark's dad is coming to the halloween party at his place?

my senior advisor: o prince, to develop your powers for strategy, perhaps you should learn the game of chess

me: what nonsense. i am constantly engaged in battles with my foes who live in a palace opposite mine across a perfectly straight river. how could the game of chess teach me to account for those complexities?

my junior advisor, who has been to japan: o prince, i have good news for you...

also thinking about these quotes from Haris Durrari on dune:

"One hypothesis is that the reason the white savior narrative has dominated the mainstream reading of the text is that this is how white boys have read it...This is purely anecdotal, but almost every Muslim I’ve met in person who has read Dune is a huge fan, and it impacted their lives positively just on representation alone. In these conversations with fellow Muslims, even if they thought of it as a white savior story, they were reticent to dismiss it entirely because it is so detailed and specific with its Islamic and MENA references, because it took religion seriously and wasn’t secular, and because, in our experience of the text, we never sat comfortably dismissing it as merely another savior narrative. There was something familiar and layered that we couldn’t quite place, even if we hadn’t grasped all of the themes at a young age."

apparently herbert said in interviews that he wrote dune messiah to refute the classical hero's journey reading of dune, showing that reading something as a hero's journey depends on how you choose to frame it, where you place the beginning and end, because when you step back from dune even a little bit it just completely falls apart

i remember the book so loosely, and the sequels almost exclusively as like my emotional response to them (i liked dune messiah, which i later discovered most people didnt, and i didnt like children of dune) but i bet they'd make more of an impression on me now

might fuck around and reread dune

probably the last chance i'll have to post this before it gets spoilery but it's coming together

the hypothetical, ideal ttrpg would have
* rules that can be explained in and character creation that takes less than 5 min each
* include optional subsystems that provide depth for longer term play
* come with a substantial, simple-to-run setting/adventure containing lots of stuff you wouldn't think of on your own
* have extensive random tables to support improvisation—

it has been pointed out to me that i'm just describing into the odd again

i believe morgan is 30 or 40 years old

just gonna make a fun simple hexcrawl and run an open table game, not going to get carried—

couples counselor: your wife says you have never bought her flowers, why is that?

spouse: to be honest, i did not know she sold flowers.

thinking about how fucking good the into the odd remaster is and getting mad about it

comsidering confusing my comrades and jewish friends alike by describing myself as a "torah leninist"