Ooof, I get that. My maternal grandmother was born just before the Depression, and the family very definitely never talked about what that was like and the effect it had on her. Almost certainly a factor in a very complicated relationship with food.
I am - certainly culinarily - a barbarian with simple tastes, though, so very plain stuff sounds fine by me. (And industrial tomato ketchup is the Queen of Sauces, no matter what the snobs say. :p )
That said, I do like the idea of cooking, and spices are tons of fun to play with (curries are great!), though indulgent baking is more my thing when I feel like putting any effort in.
Here's the immortal Alkman for any other barbarians in the thread, in Burton Raffel's loose translation:
"And a huge cauldron, hot
With your dinner, soon.
But still cold, until that thick winter soup
For gluttonous Alkman
Comes boiling up.
No fancy slop for Alkman, no.
Like ordinary people he likes real food."
;)
Extra points for the irony that he's most famous (today?) for lovely, intricate poetry written for choruses of young women, back when Sparta was still cool - before they turned into the militaristic dystopia fetishized by generations of real weirdos. :(
What amuses me the most is that this is supposedly a "traditional" Ukrainian recipe from the late 1800s, and it all sounds perfectly legit: crumble a sausage, shred 3 beets, shred 3 carrots, shred half a head of cabbage, dice some potatoes and onions...
...all solid winter root vegetables or larder items that you'd expect to find in any Slavic peasant's winter store...
...then...
..."Dice 1 cup of fresh tomatoes."
Nope. You have broken immersion. -10 points.
Apparently tomatoes were slowly becoming popular in Poland and Ukraine during later parts of 19th century, so if the recipe is from late 1800s, then it is possible, though of course more likely it was a recipe for gentry/middle class than peasants. Coincidentally gentry and bourgeoise were more likely to be writing cookbooks than actual peasants...
"Winter" recipe more likely would be using tomato paste than fresh tomatoes, of course, but it is another matter.
My family's recipe calls only for juice, not fresh tomatoes. Though "recipe" is being generous - in practice, it was a kludge from three separate ones until I insisted on finally sitting down and writing out how we actually do it instead of scrambling around the kitchen at the last minute after remembering, "Oh, right, but Baba would always add..."
My dad's side of the family has been urban for at least as long as it's been on this side of the Atlantic, but my mum's has roots homesteading in Saskatchewan, so we have some peasant cred there. The most personal layer of our recipe - that doesn't come straight out of a cookbook that we know of - does start with, "Take a bucket of beets," at least, and other quantities are similarly generous and approximate.
Making borscht for Impus Major today, and I'm convinced that the requirement to shred all the root vegetables was invented just to give the cooks something to do during those long, cold winter days. Pretty sure dicing would work just as well...
EDIT: Fortunately, I have a pre-ensh*ttification Cuisinart so the shredding is pretty darned quick.
Some of us just ... like knives, ok? ;)
But even so, borscht is a nuisance. I'm trying to plan ahead for an occasion in the next few weeks to motivate me, because it's a production and a half, as you're clearly all too aware.
I made "lazy varenyky" yesterday to use up some ingredients in the fridge yesterday, but, again, I'll have to make the real deal soon when I can find the energy.
For her additional “campaign trait” I’m thinking of Trap Finder: occultists get Disable Device natively, and Tsia’s magical enough (and been in enough scrapes! – I’m thinking gothic heroine stuff, needing to open locked caskets, escape being locked into rooms by villains, and so on) that her skills in that vein might extend beyond the mundane. As a needlewoman, precise and delicate hand movements come easily to her, and she always has various useful pins and needles and whatnot to hand. :)
For the generous starting gold, there are a few masterwork items that I’d like to think Tsia could reasonably get her hands on, as she’s gentry and a trained crafter: her thieves’ and artisans’ tools, and her (silk) armour, the benefit of which latter is glam and readiness for magical enhancement rather than anything else, since it has no armour check penalty anyway. Other than that, the weirdest thing she might start out with is a cheat sheath: she’s not a wizard, and it’s a sore spot that she mainly deals with by not dealing with/thinking about it. (It’s not great, as coping strategy. :/ )
As I noodle about thinking about courtier's outfits and suitable jewelry to match, and how my character's some sort of helper figure like a fairy godmother, running into the realization that there's a bit more of "wicked queen" Modthryth or The Thirteen Clocks' Cold Duke Duchess in her than I might have thought. Don't worry, I'm sure it's fine to admire her gloves. ;)
Like several folks' characters so far, mine will probably have some connection to the fey: given various implement powers for occultists, she'll be communing with familiar spirits that, with her background in an elven court far, far away, probably make the most sense as some sort of fairies.
I'm having fun seeing everyone spinning out their character ideas! Lots of neat stuff!
What was used traditionally for fixing dyes (alum?)? Whatever it is, it may well be horribly toxic and/or extracted painfully from an endangered species...
Traditionally? I'm not sure, since I was faffing about with modern recipes, some of which try to be gentler. For woad, I think lime and ammonia from "aged" urine might have been involved, and apparently that way of doing things takes forever, to boot. One of the recipes I saw suggested fermenting with yeast instead, but mostly these days I think it is mostly stuff that is even less recommended for use indoors.
So, faking it with some woad was a mitigated disaster. Too many variables left uncontrolled, so I only got a very pale greenish-khaki out of it, but this year was just a first try to see if I could grow it at all, so we'll wait until next season to try to do things properly.
Not least, apparently dabbling in dyeing is so very niche that even in quite a large city by Canadian standards, it would take either a road trip or an exorbitant sum in postage to acquire the materials for the simplest mordanting or whatnot. Like I said, this year was just a first stab at growing the stuff at all, so I really didn't need kilos of supplies to lay up in storage, and anything less than that tends to be more in shipping than the actual materials or more complicated than being as casual as I was this time around.
This sounds really neat! Count me among the other English majors whose attention you’ve snagged so far. :)
I really like the shared storytelling aspect you’re stressing, and the flashbacks and behind-the-scenes, er, scenes to reduce “latency,” as you put it, and let the players see some of the background to various plots that might not be as clear from their side of the GM screen in other games. That said, what sort of pacing do you have in mind in terms of posting expectations and the like? Layering on multiple scenes representing different layers of time sounds like it might exceed my current bandwidth, to be honest, but if the aim is a more or less standard pace while allowing different layers to pick up the slack when one slows, that’s less daunting, I think.
Like DeathQuaker, I’m very keen on player agency, so thanks to both of you for raising and clarifying how that’s intended to interact with the collaborative layer and narrative tokens.
A quick question about house rules: you mentioned not faffing around with AoOs, which sounds fine for the character I have in mind, but how strict a “not doing” are we talking about, for things like casting spells and whatnot? Not that there aren’t many other reasons why a mage might not want to cast a spell right next to a baddie with a huge sword, but still. :) It’s a calculation that might factor into how some classes play, I think.
In any case, I’ve had a silkworn occultist rattling around my head for a bit, whose profile is here. She ended up being a bit different, in my imagination, from an ordinary Avistani elf (among other things, my ideas for her silks tend towards something closer to Eastern European (Ukrainian) embroidery and Scythian archaeological textiles), so I thought it might be fun to imagine what it might be like if the canonical rumours about an elven court in Fangard Forest were true, and there was an offshoot of the snowcasters living there. As an elf from Iobaria, she would have another perspective on the history of Brevoy (including Choral and his line) and the Stolen Lands, and I hope her stake would be compatible with many others’. In particular, while she’d happily rebuild an elven presence in a suitable bit of forest, if one turns up, she’d also happily take a supporting role as fairy godmother / lady of the court rather than the eventual leader of the incipient kingdom or one of the more obvious movers and shakers. Sort of a Merlin, and potentially happy to return back over the mountains following her Vivien once it looks like the situation in the Stolen Lands isn’t about to blow up in ways counter to her sense of elven interests. “Celtic myth, Greek myth and dramatic tradition, Shakespearean romance and tragedy, Machiavellian court politics, faerie tales, dragon tales, Arthurian legend, and Game of Thrones?” Oooh, that sounds very much like her jam. ;)
Where does white chocolate fall in that consideration?
Do any U.S. companies actually make white chocolate? I think Hershey's produces... something... but I'm not sure what it is.
Probably fewer than one might think, I guess? In my neck of the woods, we import most of our chocolate from all y'all, and even before - *gestures vaguely at politics* - it's been surprisingly difficult to find even white chocolate chips for baking. For the past year or so most supermarkets near me have been stocking some abomination ("white creme," apparently) whose composition doesn't bear thinking about, I'm sure.
I'm hoping it won't take the collapse of the cocoa market, or a generation for whom even the worst North American chocolate is beyond the wildest dreams of the proletariat, to bring climate troubles home, but that would probably be much kinder than what it's actually going to be. :(
On a happier note, although weird supply chain nonsense still applies, I'm trying to fit running around getting materials to play with hippie witch foragings and whatnot into my schedule this week, but I've been faking it terribly, so results will probably be indifferent at best. :/
Hmm. Let's throw some dice, for the heck of it, though the newest character I have in mind is not very Core. (Changeling spirit whisperer wizard.)
[Rolls omitted.]
Yikes. I think opting for the point-buy option would be wise, though I can see my way to trying to approximate a fairly smooth distribution across the six abilities, maybe.
After thinking it over a bit, realized I probably won't have the bandwidth and would probably be pining for too many spells beyond Core to really be in the spirit of what the GM is aiming for, so I'll bow out. Good luck to everyone still working on characters, and have fun! :)
Yikes. I think opting for the point-buy option would be wise, though I can see my way to trying to approximate a fairly smooth distribution across the six abilities, maybe.
That sounds really frustrating and scuzzy. Just how much better is Linux than Windows that even borking one's system trying to load the former isn't going to drive one back into the arms of Microsoft, if one wants to be cynical about it? ;)
I really need to upgrade from my old computer soon, but when I do, the plan is to convert the ancient of days to a Linux box to play around with, until she gives up the ghost. It's been a very long time since I last had one, and maybe this time I can actually stick with it long enough to learn something and get comfortable.
Popping in to express interest! I've got a new baby character that I'd be happy to find a campaign for. :)
She's an elven silksworn occultist, aiming for a party role somewhere between support and arcane, leaning a bit towards the former: with a bit of investment, I think she could do a fair bit of healing, with the right focus powers, as well as trapfinding.
I'll post with some backstory with an alias for her in the next few days, certainly by the end of the weekend. Part of the general concept, though, is an outsider perspective and unexpected ally, in a fairy-tale sort of way: basically, having something quite close to a fairy godmother or other helper figure adventuring alongside the more prominent heroes. I've always been fascinated by the hints teased about what's going on in Iobaria, so she'll be from the northeasterly parts of there, originally.
I have been in a Kingmaker game before, but it fizzled out just after we reached 5th level or so: my character for that game somehow found herself the Baroness, and while that would be fine for the new one I'm working on, if no one else feels called to it, she'd be happier with a counselor role for now. (Long-term, she'd be hoping to use the experience to build a power-base and found a realm of her own that she could ally with the party's barony as formed under the auspices of Jamandi Aldori, but that would be well after the party finds its footing. Something along the lines of Caesar's scheme for the Triumvirate, only without the evil, hopefully.)
(Great minds think alike, it seems - the party looks like a neat mash-up of two of the potential groups I came up with when I idly imagined how I might choose, if I were in the GM's place. :) )
Have fun! Maybe we'll get a chance to game together in some other combination some other time.
This sounds interesting! It's an excuse to start fleshing out a character that's been lurking a bit in the back of my head for a while, certainly.
I'm thinking an elven silksworn occultist, an Iobarian ilverani/snowcaster interested in the Mordant Spire and Azlant, but perhaps almost incidentally, for what they would let her glean about what was going on in the world around the time of Earthfall that might have influenced doings closer to home. She wouldn't be stepping on the toes of folks working on Spiresworn characters, I hope - it would be fun to imagine quite different elven cultures meeting! :)
Details to follow as they take shape, but for now I'm thinking of a rather witchy type of occultist who looks mostly like an innocent embroiderer and crafty society lady to those who aren't paying attention, but is (perhaps unfortunately) an elf of the fairy tale sort. "You shall go to the ball!" Or, uh, maybe be cursed, if she takes great umbrage at being passed over for an invitation to your daughter's name-day. XD
Ugh. Access to my institutional email this evening is wonky because Microsoft (gah!), and, as far as I can figure out, the silly beggars they're playing with Office, or whatever they're calling it these days.
The succubus on my shoulder / in my head / heart wonders, if the Yanks have left a bunch of ... characters in charge (trying not to get too political here) anyway, if we could convince them that "M365" is clearly some sort of cartel shenanigans, and needs deeply obstreperous scrutiny. Hey, if conspiracy theories are in these days, why not let a bunch of them chase each other and maybe distract the tech weirdos away from making everything else worse? >:(
I'm a young crone, and that nonsense drives me crazy too, although I've never had anyone complain about being expected to leave a message, at least.
As to kittens, it turns out I have allergies, so apart from an all too brief, shining moment, when I was six, I have never had a cat. :(
Getting a bit better at being a plant mum, though. One of my recently transplanted babies that I thought wouldn't make it seems to be bouncing back, slowly. Probably a bit cramped in a crowded planter.
For Grumbaki’s half-minotaur, maybe some sort of magic shenanigans without experimentation could work to lightly tweak the backstory? I’m thinking along the lines of the OG son of Minos minotaur, only sort of backwards?
I think way back when in the v. 3.5 days, there were rules for monster cults which involved a certain amount of transformation, and it’s definitely canon in Pathfinder that there are rituals for that sort of thing. Maybe Ghur’s father is a reformed ex-Baphomet cultist, who had, at one point, advanced an alarming degree in the mysteries and acquired horrifying profane blessings – but when he turned away from the demon lord, those were taken away from him, but not without leaving a mark. (Which would, meta-wise, account for why, even as a non-minotaur, Ghur’s non-orc parent can’t ease the family’s integration into ordinary society.) But, because demons are warped and evilly cunning things, when Ghur was in the womb, he was cursed/blessed with full (as it were) half-minotaur “ancestry,” so that every time his father looked upon his progeny he would be reminded of his shame or (as Baphomet might see it) all that he threw away. (With the potential for all sorts of toxicity stewing as a result.) And with an implicit promise that the child might have potential that his father lost…
Something like that? A fun bit of angst that retains a bunch of the grim, but lets Ghur’s parents be trying to be better? Especially, if we're setting this in the River Kingdoms, which I gather is in some ways Golarion's Island of Misfit Toys, where all sorts of odd outcasts can pop out of the rural woodwork, compared to all the weirdos that a large metropolis can explain just by sheer numbers.
Apparently, the biblical "land of milk and honey" is also more like "yogourt and fruit syrup," but accuracy on that point is rather low on the list of ongoing problems for exegesis to the laity, for scriptural scholars.
Gah! Right, I forgot which gods were included in Ultimate Campaign’s traits.
Taking a look, nymph-touched sounds really great for what I had in mind, so I’ll put something together using the 20-point rolls in my last post. Sketching it out, it will be something like:
Paladin (Sacred Servant) 1
Stats:
Rolls: Elf: Nymph-touched: Final
Str 15 +0 +0 = 15
Dex 10 +2 +2 = 14
Con 14 -2 +0 = 12
Int 13 +2 +0 = 15
Wis 10 +0 +2 = 12
Cha 14 +0 +2 = 16
On the elf side of things, I will avail myself of a couple of non-core racial traits: swapping out Elven Immunities for Perfect, and Keen Senses for Fey Magic.
For Traits-traits, let’s go with: Tireless Logic (Social), River Rat (Regional), Dangerously Curious (Magic)
If I've got that right, I'll start trying to put that all into an alias, and choose some skills and equipment.
Traditionally, beer was brewed with hops and ale wasn't, though I don't think that's the case any more. Back in t'day, people drank small beer as a kind of soft drink, which was far weaker than modern beers (around 2%, maybe?) - you'd get a buzz out of it if you were guzzling it down by the quart all day, but it wouldn't enliven your morning as much as LM's 6% plus Leffe would if you had some first thing.
Huh. I wondered if it might be something like that. And lighter brews to start the day make sense, much in the same way that how much wine the ancients drank is less alarming when one remembers that they didn't have it neat. One learns something every day!
I got to hear a fun presentation once, trying to pin down Greco-Roman prejudices against beer. If I remember correctly, part of if was that when the Greeks first encountered it, it was in cultures that used such unmanly devices as *straws* to avoids bits of chaff and whatnot that might be floating in less-than-ideally-filtered drinks.
Thanks! For some reason, my brain decided to overthink the feat thing.
The trait I was hoping for was Gemstone Collector - it wouldn't come online from the outset, but I'd like to think it has potential for steering my character in interesting directions.
In anticipation of seeing how nymph-touched might work out, I'll roll another set of stats, and decide tomorrow whether I'm feeling a template or not.
20 point rolls:
2d4 + 10 ⇒ (2, 3) + 10 = 15 1d8 + 10 ⇒ (4) + 10 = 14 1d6 - 1d3 + 10 ⇒ (5) - (2) + 10 = 13 1d6 - 1d6 + 10 ⇒ (4) - (4) + 10 = 10 1d6 - 1d6 + 10 ⇒ (5) - (6) + 10 = 9
So 6 points left over: last stat goes to 14, bump 9 back to 10?
Final array: 15, 14, 13, 10, 10, 14. Not bad.
Hi, Azure_Zero! I've got a character idea or two that might work with the character creation guidelines you've set.
Just a couple of quick questions:
Could I take a Faith trait and two others, instead of a Social?
Could I combine Combat Reflexes with Iron Will with your BOGO feat scheme, or am I misunderstanding how that works?
In any case, let's roll stats! Ordered Chaos, for reasons that will soon become apparent. ;)
I'll try for an elf paladin, hybrid point-buy. I'm a bit intrigued by the fey-touched or nymph-touched templates. Should I re-roll for those, or just reduce from the results set by the 25 point roll?
For now: 25 PB
Roll 1:2d3 + 12 ⇒ (2, 2) + 12 = 16 Roll 2:1d8 + 10 ⇒ (5) + 10 = 15 Roll 3:1d6 - 1d3 + 10 ⇒ (4) - (3) + 10 = 11 Roll 4:1d6 - 1d3 + 10 ⇒ (6) - (3) + 10 = 13 Roll 5:1d6 - 1d6 + 10 ⇒ (2) - (2) + 10 = 10
I think that leaves me with 4 points? So that nets me another 13, and probably boosting that 11?
So 16, 15, 12, 13, 10, 13? A bit more evenly-balanced than I might like, but probably workable.
Just out of curiosity, though it's not a huge thing, given that it's a low-level one-shot, but given some of the character ideas I've got in the back of my head at the moment, would you be willing to consider opening up the classes to allow arcanists, GM?
No worries if not; Core+ as originally stipulated is plenty to work with.
Wait, is that how we got tea? Part of boiling water to make it safe?
Pretty much.
Tea, the original health food drink for the fashionable set! :)
The Oracle of Wiki collects a few fun factoids from various sources in their article on “Tea in the United Kingdom,” including a paper that argues for the importance of tea to help account for falling mortality rates in the mid-18th century, although in 1731 tea was still suspiciously foreign stuff. I'm not really surprised, but I know less about the earlier bit of the century than I ought to.
And about a hundred years earlier, apparently, a traveler living down to any stereotypes the Chinese might have been pleased to hold about far western barbarians called it “only water with a kind of herb boyled in it” – which, I’d like to think I’m not a snob about tea (though in my better moments I can be honest with myself), but really!*Feels the vapours coming on.* :)
The fact that it was called 'breakfast stout' should have been a warning sign, since nobody but the most abandoned rakehell actually drinks stout for breakfast, and Heaven hides its face in shame and anguish from someone who voluntarily drinks beer that tastes of jam - jam! - at any time. Revolting, but I shall still finish it, since it cost me £4.90.
I gather that in the days when water was a health risk people did drink beer at breakfast, so, out of morbid curiosity, what sort of beer should one drink for breakfast, if not stout? Ale? Or is "ale" synonymous with "beer" in the most generic sense?
(I have, with great reluctance, had two beers in my life: the first with some school friends because at the time I wasn't brave enough to try my luck ordering something I would actually care for, and then the second and last with my father, who had had his heart set on having one with his firstborn once I was of age for it.
The next time I had a drink with my father, I had come out, and a fantastic (and fabulous!) raspberry martini helped clarify what sort of daughter he had had all along. :) )
Gender is a mess; an interesting mess, to some of us, but another one of those things that really highlights how humans are a weird bunch of social primates, I guess.
To NobodysHome’s last:
Just to elaborate a bit on what Drejk and Orthos were saying, as I understood it, it strikes me, incidentally, that one thing that didn’t come up in your post is identity as such, as opposed to role. Given that you report all the things you do that fit in the gender box labelled “woman stuff,” and your suggestion that – and I appreciate that your glibness is tongue-in-cheek here – “if you don’t like your gender role, ignore it,” why don’t you consider yourself a woman? Especially since various formulations under the trans umbrella (and beyond) let folks find gender roles that better speak to their sense of themselves?
There’s a weird recursive thing to gender that I don’t think I’ve seen discussed much at all (except, for a bit, by Sophie Grace Chappell in her book Trans Figured), about how gender is as gender does, or what one does/feels, and which ideally gets accepted by society at large. She compares it – noting the limitations of the analogy but not working them out in detail – to how hard it is to separate at least some more or less prestigious jobs / social functions from the doing of them. Judges, I think, and possibly priests and legislators. It’s been a while since I read it.
“You doing you,” for gender, for most people, I think, is something that feeds into their sense of who they are, even if that is driven to an uncertain extent by how many societies have made gender such a big deal. I find it neat that you went from “if you don't like your gender role, ignore it,” to “if you don't like your gender, you do you.” There’s something there, I think, beyond just the delight of a bit of rhetorical variety. :) Culture’s a nasty piece of work. ;)
Could you elaborate on what you meant by the cooption of “transsexual?” I think I know what you mean, but… Anyway, for what it’s worth, I’ve seen a French writer try to float “transsexuation” in a way similar to how we might say something is “sexed,” and to distinguish between biology and “kicks below the waistline” (or above, let’s not dictate what anyone counts as sexy times), but it never took off.
It's actually a really interesting read -- I've never seen that site before, but the short version of the famous quote's history ("The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco") is:
James Quin, London, attributed to him in 1789 even though he died in 1766(When asked about a cold winter) Yes, just such an one last summer!"
Huh. Neat!
Coincidentally, last night I was just revisiting where I first encountered the quip, in the elliptical reference in Sleater-Kinney's "Jumpers." :/ (Love the song, but it's a bit grim.)
Yeah, yeah, I know. "Griping about what once was" and all that, but seriously?
As of Windows 11 I noticed that my Word documents are now always opening in 2-page, side-by-side format. I hate it. So I Googled how to fix it. And learned that Microsoft removed that functionality from Word: You can no longer save your preferred view, adding two extra button clicks to every doc I ever open.
Hate you so much, Microsoft!
This is why I still use 10.
Which is no longer being supported in October.
Yeah, I'm probably going to get a new computer early this fall. My current is nearing the end of its natural life anyway, but I'm not happy about it. :/
If I knew more about Linux ... but I'm not sure I have the time right now to get a good enough grip on it not to drive myself bonkers.
"Tragic. If they were a little bit more organized and supported each other, they could work together to get out."
Kudos to Elan for actually using tragic properly (in the classic sense).
Ah, an optimist. ;)
It’s been a while since I’ve dabbled in Aristotle, but wouldn’t it depend on their original capacity to cooperate? If they’re the sorts of jerks whose first instinct was always to pull down anyone who got ahead, and not folks who’ve had some faint glimmer of altruism, fellow-feeling, and imagination crushed out of them, does it really count? To paraphrase the Stagirite, “Bad stuff happening to bad people isn’t really all that tragic, is it?”
… I may be feeling a bit more misanthropic than usual today. Sorry, occupational hazard with cantankerous Calistrian crones. :)
Quite. How anyone thought that was reasonable is mind-boggling. Then again, this is the country that doesn't let environmental protesters mention climate crises in their defense in court, so not expecting anything better in relation to other subjects conservatives freak out about is probably the deeply distressing right call.
As I understand it, there's a great deal of cross-fertilization between anti-trans groups on either side of the pond and various far-right nutjobs both singly and organizationally, and I'm not sure what we can do to amplify and support the good but - I can only imagine - heart-breaking work folks do tracking and revealing those links.
Going to try to hold on to the spaces I know that are enthusiastically trans-friendly, and see what I can do to encourage them.
Oh, I know. I was/am trying to cling desperately to a shred of silver lining, because it was driving me frantic all day. I wasn't seeing anything in the usual spaces I hang out online calling out this - words to describe this obscene parody fail me. Some of us are shell-shocked, and our supporters and allies, that we rely on for a bit of breathing room and space to be heard...?
As to the bloody court, like I said, "naive" is putting it much too kindly: mealy-mouthed, rank cowardice and capitulation to hateful nonsense is closer to it, and hardly exhausts my reserve of invective.
At least I see that Autostraddle's got a short essay by Morgan M. Page now, working through her feelings on being declared, de facto, "Illegally Female," that hits way too close to home.
I wish I had something happier to share with the thread.
Digging just a tiny bit deeper, it looks like it was a narrow ruling and poorly worded for its stated intentions - which are, arguably, frightfully naive even if one were inclined to read them more generously than I am.
Nought to do but keep an eye open and not let it take up too much room in my thoughts.
Goddesses dammit, I hardly needed more bad news from the world these days. >:(
If I could find a way to retreat to a cottage in the woods with a Maleficent-style wall of thorns, I would, but that's sadly not a realistic option for my foreseeable. Gah!
*Take breath, tries to set shoulders back, chin up.* The struggle continues; stay safe out there, everyone.
I think I'd love to visit China at some point, but I have no idea when I'll make the time to even think about learning a relevant language, and I'm far too much of a weird barbarian to ever think of settling there.
I suspect they would take one look at me and conclude, "OK, so she's not a Mongol, but (her people are) from the far western steppes on the other side - but still. Steppe nomads. Didn't we build a wall about these people?" XD
*Penny drops, years after the fact, thanks to the Referotron.* (In one of my old play-by-post games, I now understand the GM was making an allusion, it seems.)
Because what I really needed this morning was a reminder of how detached I am from much of pop culture. :)
Major premise: Round, flat, bready things – e.g., laganes, naan, parantha – are easy, fun, and tasty.
Minor premise: Tortillas are also round, flat, bready things.
Conclusion: Therefore, preparing tortillas like any other round flat breads should be fine. >:)
If there isn’t already a Demon Lord of Wilfully Flawed Syllogisms, there should be one. :)
And now I’ll need to add paranthas to my grocery list this week, for some deliberately uber-floofy bread goodness.
I’m sorry to hear that your tortillas have been corrupted. Could you salvage some amusement by trying to style it out as some sort of fusion experiment? I’ve always found that culinary disappointments sting a bit less if I pretend I meant to do it that way all along. (Memorably, once, with a rather unorthodox take on lobster thermidor when substitutions proved necessary.)
*FugitiveJedi™ thousand-yard stare.* “Now, there’s a name I haven’t heard in … a very long time.” :)
Either the tides of pop culture have eddied with some weird currents lately, or a bunch of the FAWTLies here are likely to be part of a particular generation, I guess? (Not that that’s remotely surprising.)
Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m keen enough on anthropomorphized fuzzy critters (even if I have recently seen some really cute embroidery patterns that are very RedwallXSword&SorceryRPG) or at all likely to have the bandwidth for the foreseeable future, but I am interested in how you might end up adapting and re-skinning Pathfinder rules for the setting.
No badgers, I’m guessing, unless heavily re-balanced for ease of group play? (So much fun barbarian/skald potential, I can’t help but think.) :D
A very long time ago, the first Redwall book that found its way to me was Mossflower, I think? With the quest to Salamandastron by river? I'm not too proud to admit I was mainly swayed by the very leafy UK cover. (So sue me, I'm a tree-hugging elf hippie. What did you expect? ;) )
So, I'm desperately putting off making some travel plans partly because I'm feeling under the weather after getting my seasonal illness shots, but on the off-chance that the good folks of FAWTtL-dom can inspire me, does anyone know about anything absolutely thrilling that should encourage me to visit Philadelphia?
A conference for work is going to be held there, but it's at least half hybrid and I can get away with Zooming in, and it's happening just at the start of the new year, the first weekend of January.
I would be more excited about it if I wasn't a bit out of it and at the end of a very busy couple of weeks. It doesn't help that I'm enough of a goody-two-shoes that I'm not likely to blow off early to explore before the evenings, if I attend my conference in person.
Idk, visiting the Liberty Bell? Otherwise all I've heard about the place is that evidently their football fans climb utility poles or something.
I think according to CY you kill the fans with the utility poles then disrupt the network by destroying their utilities with Polish fans.
Yes, the Philadelphia sports scene is truly a magical sight to see! One of the few cities where you can go to a game and watch the fans of a team beat the shit out of other fans of the same team.
In Philadelphia you ain't family unless you're throwing hands at each other.
o.O “The minstrel’s uncertainty increased,” as The Thirteen Clocks puts it. Good to know, I guess?
I gather the art museum is pretty neat, so if I end up going in person, there’s probably that. And wandering around the old town. *Shrugs.* I’m not really much of a traveller, so I probably should go, just because.
