Month: January 2020

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

prokopetz:

Inadvisable D&D campaign premise #137: the Old Republic’s code of laws is unique in that it binds the natural world as well as human society. While these laws don’t always work in humanity’s favour, they establish a web of obligations that can be leveraged for humanity’s advantage; thus it’s possible to bargain with a storm, make contract with a river, or take the seasons to court. As the the features of the natural world have no particular ability to communicate or assert their needs, they’re assigned human advocates, who swear fearsome (and magically binding) oaths to represent the best interests of their “clients”.

Of course, nothing lasts forever. The Old Republic fell apart centuries ago, dissolving into a loose affiliation of sporadically warring provinces that each claim to be the Republic’s only legitimate successor. Even in this fractured state, the old laws retain their temporal power, but they can’t be modified or repealed, as no valid legislative body can be convened. In the campaign’s present day, those laws are nearly four hundred years out of date, which often places them considerably out of step with the needs and concerns of contemporary society – but any province that tries to simply discard them loses the protections they afford and is promptly ravaged by natural disasters.

The player characters in this campaign are a roving team of lawyer-adventurers who specialise in devising and implementing solutions to the bizarre legal conundrums that emerge from this state of affairs.

Tags:

#story ideas I will never write #fun with loopholes

The Animorphs Play a Party Game

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

tomberensonsghost:

           Marco lounged in the shady side of the clearing. From where he sat he could see Rachel practicing back handsprings, her hair tied back in a neat bun. Ax was on the far side of the clearing, grazing. Jake was holed up in one of the huts, probably thinking of their next big move. Cassie was inspecting a baby bird that Tobias had spotted on the ground earlier that day, and was preparing to return it to its tree. Tobias was perched in the tree above Marco, searching for a new meal, since his had been taken by the law of Cassie’s eminent domain.

           Marco was BORED.

           “Okay bird-boy, gather everyone up. I have an idea.”

           <It is a good idea?> Tobias asked.

           “All of my ideas are good. It’s the execution that sometimes goes awry.”

           <Alright, I’ll tell everyone they’re wanted for an execution,> Tobias said, swooping over Marco’s head as he flew off.

Keep reading

Tags:

#Animorphs #fanfic #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #fun with shapeshifting

fanfic

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

seacreaturefeature:

poison ivy wearing muddy overalls n rubber gloves on the set of a gardening show w the hosts tied up n gagged behind her stroking a genetically modified carnivorous plant like a lapdog: hello fume-spewers of gotham city. its your hostess with the most…the mostess…its me, poison ivy. sorry to interrupt your resource-guzzling evening’s entertainment by taking over every channel of your worthless old-media network. oh wait. i’m not. at this very moment the bouquet of roses i sent to strangle the mayor will be

heavy static followed by sudden cut 2 the penguin, drinking straight vodka and crunching icecubes wearing a feather boa and a velvet dressing gown covered in grease-strains and reclining in the hosts chair on a talk show set, which is being visibly smashed by themed muscleboys in th background: GOTHAM CITY YOU FUCKERS, YOU ABSOLUTE SWINE, HERES THE DEAL I WANT (crunch) A BILLION DOLLARS LEGAL TENDER TRANSFERRED TO MY PAYPAL AT vintage_cloaca_1937@icberglounge.com.org OR YOU CAN (slurp) SAY GOODBYE TO-

sudden cut back 2 poison ivy, furiously gesturing to the hypnotised crew to do whatever damnable technological things they do to unfuck the broadcast: (high pitched screeching)

sudden cut to the penguin: -YOUR PRECIOUS “SUN”. I-

the penguin: (hears phone ringing) OH WAIT UH HOLD ON A SECOND

the penguin: (pullS a gold rotary telephone out of his purse) HWEH?

poison ivy, shreiking thru reciever: fuck off oswald im doing a Bit!!

the penguin: TO FUCK WITH YOUR BIT I BOUGHT OUT ALL THE NETWORKS FOR 1 HALF HOUR SLOT AND NOW I HAVE MINUS A BILLION DOLLARS AND I NEED A BILLION DOLLARS

poison ivy: these airwaves arent big enough for the both of us you horrendous little animal. i swear to piss i will

sudden cut to the riddler, sitting atop a giant rubix cube w the squares flashing neon at intervals wearing 2 pairs of 3D glasses and a coquettish mod ensemble w so many sequins on it that the studio lights reflecting off it cause at least 3 lens flares a second: GREEEEEEEETINGS CITIZENS OF GOTHAM CITTTYYYYYY! i, the RIDDLER, have interrupted your intellectually unstimulating broadcast to bring you some entertainment you’ll hopefully find a little more…challenging. a new game show….with a DEADLY TWIST. for you see

the riddler: (hears his 2001 nokia beeping) uh…well, it seems we have our FIRST CALLER of the evening

the riddler: …and our SECOND CALLER. um

poison ivy: (garbled screaming)

the penguin: (choking on an ice cube in pure rage)

the riddler: woah now hey now hey there woah there just a second

the penguin:-THE SUN

poison ivy:-THE MAYOR-

the penguin: -A BILLION DOLLARS

poison ivy: -A TRILLION DOLLARS-

sudden cut to harley quinn, sitting at home on the couch in front of her webcam wearing a sweaty sports bra and loony toons pajama pants and eating a hotdog: whats up folks! just wanted to hang out

Tags:

#Batman #fanfic #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #my past self has good taste #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #death tw?

A Real Grammar Quiz (version 2) | Polysyllabic

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=node/349 }}

house-carpenter:

I had a productive day at work today browsing through the website of Karl Hagen, who seems like a pretty erudite and knowledgeable person. He has this very nice quiz, which is a “real grammar quiz”, in that it tests your understanding of morphosyntactic concepts (nouns, verbs, agreement, phrase structure, etc.) rather than the memorization of arbitrary rules about spelling, punctuation and word choice. It does suffer a little from the problem of a lot of morphosyntactic concepts not having particularly widely agreed-upon precise definitions, but I think most of the questions were reasonably unambiguous. I got 32/35 (you can see my marked results here).

 

nathanielbuildsatesseract:

12/35

I would post the I-am-below-average gif but I don’t actually know that that is below average.

 

evolution-is-just-a-theorem:

I got bored and didn’t finish but @ghostofasecretary you should do this

 

sigmaleph:

23/35

gonna pull the “this is not my native language” card

Tags:

#interesting #language #(22/35) #(there were a few where I tried and got it wrong) #(and there were *also* a few where I was just like #”I have never heard that jargon before in my life‚ how the hell should I know which of these answers fits it”) #(if I had no idea whatsoever I skipped the question rather than trying to guess) #(it’s not like a school exam where having a high grade is instrumentally useful in itself) #(so my grade here should purely reflect how much I know and not how lucky I am)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

itsbenedict:

you know what’s really good is Worth the Candle. it’s… the premise is that a sadistic DM has been isekai’d into a mashup of all his own D&D campaign settings, and has to confront those things and what they say about him. it’s also the good kind of rationalfic- the protagonist is smart and questions the things you’d expect him to question and puts appropriate effort into creative problem-solving.

what especially makes it appeal to me is that the protagonist, Joon… is me? i get this uncanny sensation from reading it, in that he keeps anticipating my next question and my next idea and my next reaction, so reliably that i can go long stretches feeling like i’m the one dealing with his problems and making decisions, and only rarely have to remember that, oh, right, this is a different person with his own life experiences and i’m not literally playing this like a videogame. i don’t know if i’ve ever been so on the same wavelength as a fictional character, and that enhances the stuff where it deconstructs and plays with self-insert isekai tropes.

anyway, apart from that, i can highly recommend it on the strength of its character writing, humor, and worldbuilding- though be aware it is long, over one million words broken up into multiple books. it’s not quite Worm length yet, but it’s getting there.

Oh hey, Alexander Wales moved to AO3! I enjoyed his fanfiction.net works [link], and now I have a bunch more to read.

(And when I googled him to find the URL for his fanfiction.net profile, I found he also has a website with some *more* things on it [link].)

Tags:

#recs #reply via reblog