Posts made by Aria

@Lain The Night King rides the Night Dragon, obv.

Any word on a potential opening?

I also tried the new FFG dice system for several sessions. While I do generally like the idea of 'succeeding but with interesting narrative complications' (see: my general love for all things Burning Wheel), I really, truly hate the fact that -- as @Sunny said -- they elected to be gimmicky with their dice. Worse, they elected to be gimmicky with their dice in a way that actively slows down gameplay as you sit there trying to figure out what cancels out what and then looking it up on some chart to determine what happens. Like, way to add to the most annoying bullshit from D&D and find a way to charge me more money for it, guys.

@Ganymede -- You're forgetting that what most of these people mean by oppression is "I'm no longer allowed to force my beliefs onto other people."

@Faceless said in RL things I love:

I love that quicksand isn't as prevalent a threat to my daily existence as pop culture tried to make me believe, while I was growing up. Pretty thankful for that.

Edit to include: I'm also thankful that having your young child piss on you while changing them is either easily avoided with good reflexes or simply not as common as pop culture in the '80s and '90s would have lead one to believe.

Yeah, if we believe 80s pop culture, apparently it's perfectly normal for teenage bullies to try to permanently cripple you and/or commit vehicular homicide. I'm glad that wasn't a 'thing' when I was in high school.

The Best Internet Quiz Ever -- What Garden of Earthly Delights Abomination are You?

I‘m Guy Who's Just Trying To Jerk Off But There's A Bird Lizard Yelling At Him!

You're almost there! You're almost there! Nope.

It's your fault, really, for trying to grab a piece of happiness in this nightmare hellscape. Even if the metaphorical bird lizards in your life didn't have to yell in your face, why wouldn't they? Why should you escape this biochemical quagmire even for a few seconds when you could be on the receiving end of a self-absorbed story, a political rant, or a fusilade of demands?

Keep on tugging. Maybe you'll get there. But probably not.

@Lain -- American Gods is fabulous in every possible way and I highly recommend sticking through the entire season. So, so, so good.

As for the "Why country music?" question, the setting of middle-of-nowhere middle-America is incredibly important to the plotline, particularly the end-game that is the entire purpose behind the insane journey that Shadow is on. I can't really explain more without giving away massive spoilers to the (novel) ending, but I strongly suspect that the showrunners did it to establish setting.

@surreality said in RL things I love:

@Sunny OK, peacock feathers are truly magnificent as well. I didn't even think of that as an option!

(Family dinners with the dude who was a resistance guy must have been amazing after that, what I wouldn't have given to be a fly on that wall. An Italian-speaking fly. Unless I could just read all the hand gestures? Possible.)

One day, if you all do your chores and eat your vegetables, I will tell the story of "The Time Aria Accidentally Had Dinner at a Nazi's House."

(And no, I don't mean a neo-Nazi. I mean a Nazi-Nazi.)

@fatefan It is!

If someone actually intends to do this and needs help with source material, let me know. I can point you to my favorite site for lazy Viking research which looks like it was made by a 16 year old with a Geocities account -- probably because it's about that old -- but is maintained by a woman who does fabulous work distilling an enormous amount of documentation into short, easily readable articles with clearly noted references. While I use it for SCA reenactment nerding, you could probably use it to flesh out a wiki with all the cultural information players would need.

Man, if you read the sagas of the Icelanders -- the actual sagas, not the game, I mean -- 'someone stole my goat' is pretty much cause for three hundred pages of "And then for the next fifteen years, these three families regularly decided to BURN THIS MOTHERFUCKER AND HIS ENTIRE LIFE TO THE GROUND."

Do not steal a man's goat, bro.

@Arkandel And irony that gets missed in text.

Like, yeah, man. I'm a white girl that likes fall and pumpkin spice. I know. I know.

PS - It apparently weirds out even Walmart people if you whisper "Pumpkin Spice is people" and then gleefully throw the Cheerios in your cart.

...Walmart has the pumpkin spice cereals in already. ^_^

(Fuck you, you do not get to judge me!!!)

@Faceless OMG, you are the RL equivalent of "Girl, get you a man who looks at you like Tormund looks at Brienne."

I approve.

@tragedyjones

.....I'm bored but I'm also too lazy to read 73 pages of this thread.

I finished Marco Polo. And the Last Kingdom. And Vikings. And Versailles. Someone recommend something vaguely historical-ish to me. whines and maybe flails and points feebly at her Netflix/Amazon Prime

@Auspice -- It doesn't hit me super hard on its own, fortunately. Like, it's pretty much just enough to make my brain stop working quadruple time in its attempt to race toward panic and be generally acceptable levels of nervous about things that should make me nervous. (Like job interviews.)

In this case, I was on klonopin, my usual allergy meds, AND some kind of Sudafed-Nyquil-make-my-nose-work-again medicine because I had a cold. The three combined pretty much made me epic levels of out-of-it stupid. It was terrifying at the time because I was convinced I had somehow ruined my entire life, but looking back on what I do remember of my conversations in the security office.... it was honestly pretty funny. Those poor employees were probably nine kinds of o_0 at my rambling, and even more so when I just gave up on trying to make sense and started ugly snot-crying.

@Cupcake said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Gingerlily I'm actually on Zoloft, but I'm wondering if I either need to consider a dosage increase, or ask for a medication specifically for when I get an anxiety spike.

^ Same thing I'm on, albeit in generic form. The 'purse Xanax' I have is clonazepam, which is marketed under the brand name Klonopin. It's pretty awesome, I gotta admit, but be careful about a) taking it in public until you know how you react and b) taking it with cold meds. I learned that second one the hard way after being so zonked out I accidentally walked out of a store holding a bag full of stuff I paid for and a handful of stuff I somehow literally forgot I was carrying. Security was not amused.

@Tinuviel -- Ohh, believe me, I know. I come from a family that -- with the exception of one branch that had money many decades before even my parents were born -- consisted almost entirely of generation after generation of white working class that did all the things they were supposed to do to get by in America and somehow never did. They've since descended into being, frankly, what even my parents will admit are evangelical Rust Belt white trash. (See: the dipshit Ohio cousin who named his kid 'Eevee' earlier in the thread.)

Sure, my dad's white and straight and native-born and male, but he's far from well-off. He's broken his whole body down working himself to death by corporations who screwed him for profit from day one. And well-off? That's his only concept of privilege. He doesn't, and will never, consider how much harder it would be to even has what he does if he'd been... I dunno. Black. Or gay. Or even just one of his own sisters. It makes him easy prey for the old "That fucker is trying to take your cookie!" rhetoric tossed about by the guys who grabbed the other nine cookies before everyone else even got to the table.

@surreality It's actually kind of amazing how many people I've converted by literally looking them dead in the eye and explaining, like...

"Dude. 'Privilege' does not mean you haven't worked hard. It doesn't mean that you somehow don't deserve the things you have. Literally all it means is that because of some random demographic you were fortunate enough to be born with, you are unlikely to have ever experienced this particular shitty thing and are therefore more likely to underestimate how much of a problem it is. That's it. That's literally it. If someone is suggesting you examine your privilege on a subject, all that means is 'you should maybe consider how much harder someone who doesn't have said random demographic trait would have to work to get to where you are now before you dismiss the thing that they're saying sucks' rather than opening your mouth and saying something stupid about it."

I said that to my friend Justin once and it was like the sky opened up and baby Jesus smacked him on the forehead and went, "Listen up, bitch!" in a sassy voice or something.