Rapture, a staff from Wow, shaped like a tree branch with a glowing orb at its head
The Vinewrapped Staff from World of Warcraft, with a green gem at its head from which branches emerge
Glad you found it! I was about to say, at least for WoW, the Vinewrapped Staff/Kihrawr's Scratching Post and Rapture have that viibe:
www.wowdb.com/items/116504
www.wowdb.com/items/45234-...
It probably helped that a lot of those lawmakers are old enough to remember Korea under autocratic rule. That was 1987! They remember the massacres, protests, police/mil refusing orders that it took to democratize and refused to go back.
Meanwhile the US is just waking up to its autocratic reality.
I hate how mfers use the phrase "dark humor" to mean "being shitty to people."
The best dark comedy is gallows humor. But you can't go around saying "I'm into gallows humor" without reminding people we're the ones at the gallows.
My favorite holiday vibes. Merry merry, Space Cowboy.
I’M LOSING MY SHIT THIS IS SO FUNNY
As a fellow short, I too appreciate this kind sentiment from the tallfolks.
Yeah, I kind of died a little when I realized that these being 4th ed means they're still almost 20 years old...
More recently, Shadowrun's Japanese Publisher, RoleandRoll, also put out a series of "Replays" (リプレイ): which are basically TTRPG Actual Plays, transcribed and cleaned up into a sort of light novel, often with illustrations.
It's taking ALL my willpower not to grab a stack of these off Mercari.
My magnum opus, roughly to the tune of Waltzing Matilda:
"Wrex has a stinky butt, stinky butt, stinky butt! Wrex has a stinky butt! Stinky butt-butt!"
Tell me about the silly little songs you sing to your pets.
Whenever I travel to a country where I can't speak the local language well, I imagine the narrators from Old Enough/はじめてのおつかい narrating my life.
"Today's task is to take the train and buy lunch at the store."
"She said hello to the clerk!"
"Ah! She's not good with numbers yet!"
"Oh no, don't cry!"
Tell people when you like their work.
No, they really don't know.
No, you can't assume others are telling them.
Yes, it means the world.
People keep telling me I need to watch K-Pop Demon Hunters. If I did, I'd want to drunk live-skeet it.
...problem is, I'm dry for the next few months, (or at least dry-curious, since it's just a health/diet thing.) Maybe I'll make it a reward for getting caught up on all my overdue projects. >>
Slightly diminished a band: They're Probably Not Giants
“I’m an equal opportunity offender. I make fun of everybody.” - Guy whose identities all align with the systemically dominant power groups in his cultural and geographic context
Or maybe "Alibi" for the catchy matrix app version. :>
"Partners in Crime"
In my ajumma era. 🧑🏻🦱
In Alpha Complex, citizens are judged not by the color of their skin but by the color of their clearances. 🌈
Yep! They're a metavariant of orks.
One of my favorite things about this drop is that it introduces Dokkaebi, AKA Korean Goblins, into the Sixth World as playable Shadowrunners.
Hopefully, they'll be an exciting option for those who've wanted more impish/goblin-like metas without the HMHVV baggage.
[My best Bialystock voice]
Step 1! We find the worst game ever designed!
Step 2! We fire the dev team!
Step 3! I kickstart 2 million dollars!
Step 4! We shit out AI slop graphics and code and launch early access!
And before you can say Step 5, we drop support, take our 2 million and go... to RIO!
Omg, absolutely incredible reason for AO3 to have been down hachyderm.io/@vashti/1147... (alt text at original)
If you have anxious dogs, a helpful trick I learned is that playing Taiko drum music can help cover up fireworks or construction sounds.
It probably won't work for everyone, but it helps my nervous little dudes get down to a manageable threshold when meds and distracting treats aren't enough.
Sure, I assume most people will miss it. But if even one person reads a story about, for example, organ harvesting or secret human experiments or something, and it makes them reflect on the importance of bodily autonomy in a new way, I think that's important.
It's also an interesting and important challenge, to see if I can take something very personal and make the topic resonate with readers from a very different background.
Sure, sometimes I weave stuff into metaphor. I'm actually SUPER privileged to not fear censorship on the level many creatives do. (Not that I haven't had content edited out before.)
Often it's just because it's more interesting artistically not being restricted by the limits of literal reality.
I do think there's value in both realistic, complex depictions and escapist fashie-bashing power fantasies, especially for audiences who are themselves oppressed.
I just hope that I'm providing enough tools for people to safely explore those facets and tell the stories they need to tell right now.
Evil can wear the faces of concerned, "well-intentioned" neighbors and your own worst lizard-brain impulses. But sometimes it wears stupid pointy hoods.
When I fill that toy box, I do try to include exaggeration, comedy, and absurdity, as well as subtlety and nuance, realism and metaphor.
Because sometimes evil is mundane, insidious in how pervasive it is and the cruelty it inflicts. It can also be galling in its stupidity and incompetence.
