[Does anyone have a list (or better, a gif set?) of all the silliest lines from Voyager over the years? You know, like “get the cheese to sickbay” and “I feel like we’re being pecked to death by ducks” and “there’s coffee in that nebula!” so on and so forth? Cause I need such. Because of reasons.]
Concept: an immortal who doesn’t shy away from photos or paintings. Draws self portraits on cave walls. Photobombs everything with a pout and a suave pose. Commissions numerous portraits of themself as a literary Romantic before faking their death. Tries to be at least slightly famous every time they have a new identity. Creates a conspiracy blog linking all their past photos together before mysteriously disappearing in mysterious circumstances. Mysteriously. Usually only disappears for 10 to 20 years after “”dying”“ before making another appearance. Everyone else in the immortal community lowkey hates them. “Ah, fuck. You’ll never guess who’s resurfaced again.” “Fucking… Dave?” “Fucking Dave.”
Once upon a time, I was running a DnD game for some friends. The player characters were checking out reports that a local town had been having trouble with monsters. They’re informed that it was true, a few years ago, but a copper dragon set up a lair in the mountains and chased all the awful creatures out. A dragon slayer showed up shortly thereafter and neither dragon nor slayer were heard from again. Players are disappointed at first, but then quickly perk up when some other plot threads become apparent.
A few sessions later, the place they were staying burned down (their fault), forcing them to check out the more expensive tavern in town. There, they meet Allie Cohol, a half-elf woman with red hair that owned and ran the tavern. She was cheerfully greedy, but still helpful and always ready with a cheesey joke… And after only the third joke, one of the players, Bill, froze and locked eyes with me. “You fucker. She’s the copper dragon,” Bill says.
That reveal was supposed to be a big thing later, so I’m kinda on the spot. Fortunately, another player, Fran, pipes up and says, “nah, that’s stupid. The dragon in the mountain is a red herring. We’re here for the cultists.” The cultists were in the sewer and the PCs were actually working for the cleric Big Bad without them knowing.
“No, listen,” Bill continued. “Red hair. Greedy. Bad jokes… Her name is Allie Cohol.”
Everyone around the table gives him a fairly blank look, but I’m sweating bullets. Threads that I had spun oh so carefully were half a heartbeat away from unraveling. Bill is getting this real wild look in his eyes and pounds a fist against the table. “Allie Cohol. HER NAME IS ALCOHOL.”
Fran then slowly pans over and looks me dead in the eyes. “The deadly joke ability. She’s a goddamn dragon.”
this is beautiful
Tags:
#I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog
Emotion Infusion, which is apparently a combination of “ability to enchant weapons”, “innate energy weapon”, and “ability to alter others’ emotions”.
I suppose that if this were fiction, the character archetype I’d be shoehorned into is “well-intentioned extremist trying to wirehead the world”. In reality, I don’t think I would go that far, although I could maybe hook up @wirehead-wannabe. (And you never know when an energy weapon will come in handy, even if I might very well end up reflexively stunning someone who startles me with a blast of paralysing terror. Oops.)
This is a place for aces, graces, and demis to talk about those things that you might feel uncomfortable bringing up in other ace circles. Masturbation. Kink. Sex toys. Partnered sex as an ace. Things sex ed didn’t teach you, but you’re curious about. Sexual activities, non-sexual intimacies, and so on. If it’s inappropriate somewhere else, it’s probably appropriate here.
This space is for aces, by aces, and about aces. There are other places on the Internet that talk about these topics, but very few that explore them from an asexual perspective, in language that makes sense to aces. If you’re not ace, you’re welcome to read what’s here, and may respectfully ask questions or engage in conversations, but always keep in mind that this place is not about you. If you’re disrespectful, intrusive, invasive, or offensive, we will show you the door.
Leave your shame and embarrassment and judgement at the door. No question too weird, no topic too icky. We’ll talk about anything that’s safe and respectful.
That means some of these topics might be outside of your comfort zone. And that’s okay. If it’s not your thing, it’s not your thing, but maybe the next topic will be more your speed. We have a “Don’t yuck my yum” policy around here. That means that it’s uncool to slam someone else for liking something you don’t like. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to say anything about it. You might think some of these things are “weird”, but keep in mind that someone else probably thinks something you like to do is “weird”, too.
We accept submissions and asks (Including anonymous), so if you want to share what you do, how you do it and why you do it, or if you’re just curious about something, please feel free to write in. I see this space as mostly submission driven. It’s about what YOU want to talk about and what YOU want to know. A few ground rules, though:
18+ only for submissions and asks. If you’re under 18, someplace like Scarleteen would be a much better place to discuss these issues (Scarleteen is ace-friendly, too!).
This is not an advice site. We can answer general questions about general things, but I really can’t help with your specific scenario.
This is not a doctor’s office. If you have a genuine, pressing medical concern, talk to someone qualified about it. I’m not even pretending to play a doctor on the Internet, so what would I know?
Be open, be truthful, don’t be embarrassed or ashamed.
Assume positive intent. If someone says something offensive or exclusionary or otherwise troublesome, assume it wasn’t done maliciously. Correct them gently instead of launching a thermonuclear flame war.
No wankfodder. You can certainly be explicit (In fact, you’re encouraged to be as open and direct as you want), but avoid being deliberately pornographic for prurience sake. You can talk about porn, but don’t be porn. This isn’t Letters to Penthouse or the Lemon tag of AO3.
Content warnings would be appreciated! They allow you to get as detailed as you like without worrying about who’s reading, while at the same time, give people who aren’t interested a chance to turn away.
And so, with that, the ask box is ready for your questions and the submission box is ready for your posts!
(And one final note, if you are not comfortable with the topics which are being discussed here, I have flagged the entire blog as NSFW and I encourage you to block this so it won’t show up at all (I won’t be offended!). I will try to put appropriate content tags in the posts, and put potentially objectionable images behind a Read More.)
Tags:
#asexuality #sexuality and lack thereof #oh look an update
I wasn’t going to reblog this, but it’s the first tag-yourself meme I’ve seen that’s actually accurate. (Which is saying something, considering how many tag-yourself memes I’ve seen.)
Tags:
#lawful/neutral ace #I have no idea where I would even *get* flamingo feathers but other than that #asexuality #meme #there is probably some warning tag I should put on this but I am not sure what #homophobia?
In Life’s name, and for Life’s sake, I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system in which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so—till Universe’s end.
The Wizard’s Oath, So You Want to Be a Wizard. Diane Duane.
I bet you every kid who’s ever read this book stood in the middle of their room, paused, took a breath, and then read this part out loud. Just in case. I vaguely remember what that moment felt like, feeling a little silly but a little apprehensive too. Probably similar to how kids in the late 90s and earlier 2000s felt when their 11th birthdays came and they secretly all waited for the letter from Hogwarts.
This post brought to you by my currently reading the New Millenium Edition of So You Want to Be a Wizard and enjoying myself immensely. I have the old edition open so I can go back and refer to it when I think I spot a change. I was a little sad to see that Kit’s first ever line of dialogue in the book is no longer “balls.” Balls are always funnier than not balls.
I, too, avoided reciting the Wizard’s Oath specifically because of “just in case”. I make no oaths lightly; I make no oaths I am unsure whether I would even want to uphold, let alone whether I could; I make no oaths that would be enforced by the same entities that enforced Nita’s oath regarding the Song of the Twelve, despite the fact that she did not give informed consent.
(The Sea fed the words of the oath into her mind. It could have fed her what they meant. But no, she recited the words in ignorance of the full nature of what they entailed, and everyone, including Nita herself, blamed her for not realising she needed to do more research.
(And since the Sea is an alternate form of the wizard’s manual, explicitly asking the Sea to feed her the meaning (or a manual-based equivalent action) would be the research she would do. Whenever conversations of the form “You didn’t tell me that!” “You didn’t ask.” happen, we generally conclude that the “You didn’t ask” person is a pedantic asshole trying to obey the letter of what is right while subverting the spirit. Yet this is pretty much what happens, and nobody seems to have any issue with it.))
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#also #*given* that Nita has ended up in this situation #going through with the Twelvesong is not a noble sacrifice #because you see #if she doesn’t do it they wipe large chunks of her memory #and if she does do it she goes to heaven #this is one of those edge cases #where *strictly in terms of maximising self-preservation* #it is actually better to commit suicide than to not commit suicide #(once your continued existence is assured the next thing on the self-preservation list is preserving your memories) #as you can see I have Issues with that book #Young Wizards #rants
Is “identifying foreign words by phoneme cluster” a thing that many/most people have trouble with? It’s something I’ve been instinctively able to do for as long as I can remember, but quite a few people have told me lately what an uncanny ability it is.
I’ve studied only a couple of foreign languages, and both of them were Romance-based. I pick up languages and grammatical rules very quickly, though. Even when I don’t understand the language being used, I can almost always pick out which language it is, or at least which language family.
This comes so naturally to me that I’ve never thought of it as weird, but recently people have been downright awed that I can, say, pick out the Thai dishes from the Vietnamese ones on a pan-Asian menu. Even though Thai and Vietnamese have totally different phonemic structures! It’s not that hard! People are often frequently baffled when I identify someone’s ethnic extraction by their surname, which, like – I dunno, all I can say is it’s not that hard!
I swear this isn’t me humblebragging – I am legitimately confused that this does not seem to be a common thing.
I too do the thing. I always figured most people’s lack of ability to do the thing was primarily related to most people’s disinterest in learning even the tiniest bit of foreign languages unless the language in question is going to be directly useful to them in a way they can quantify. But also I’m hyperlexic so, maybe that’s a factor too.
In my case people have more frequently expressed surprise at my ability to pronounce surnames, but that’s directly tied to recognizing their derivation – when you know what language a name derives from, and have a vague idea of the pronunciation rules of that language, it’s generally not too hard to at least come really close to correct pronunciation of the name.
Hyperlexia nation checking in! @ozymandias271 is the only other hyperlexic I know off the top of my head; do they also do the thing?
Same re: pronunciation. Weirdly enough, though, that often leads to me pronouncing it incorrectly, or at least what the person in question considers incorrectly. French names are very common where I live, but most of them have been Anglicized to the point where the original pronunciation becomes wrong.
I’m hyperlexic and okay but not great at this? (I can’t distinguish Swedish and Norwegian, and I can tell the difference between Korean and {Chinese, Japanese} but I can’t tell Chinese and Japanese apart, etc.)
I am pretty good at doing the thing, because I pick up linguistics rules really easily. (My project for the past two days has been teaching myself the grammar of Classical Sanskrit (hence the Bhagavad-Gita blogging), which I expect to take about a week to get mostly-down. I’m not planning to memorise Panini’s entire generative grammar, though.)
However, I am really awful at remembering vocabulary, which is why I’m monolingual. Give me the words, and I’ll successfully make sentences in half a dozen languages. If I’m allowed to make the sentences really simple, I could probably do two dozen languages. However, expecting me to remember any of those words the next day is a lost cause.
Despite hyperlexia, I’m not all that good at distinguishing languages by phoneme usage.
I’m a lot better at picking up vocabulary than grammar. I mentioned “read[ing] okay Packaging French, but don’t expect me to write it” recently: when presented with an everyday French sentence of the sort one might see on a sign or a bag of food, there’s a fair chance I’ll be able to work out the gist of it. If you ask me what the French word for [insert thing here] is, a significant-though-still-fairly-small amount of the time I will be able to answer. (As long as I am allowed to submit my answer in writing.) I cannot predict the grammatical structure of a sentence that isn’t currently staring me in the face, and I might not recognise it in a sentence that is currently staring me in the face.
Ingredient lists, which have almost no grammar and consist mostly or entirely of terms that any Canadian who doesn’t grow all their own food would be naturally exposed to†, are easiest. I am frequently able to read entire French ingredient lists without any guessing at all.
(One time, I actually understood the French side of the package better than the English.
Me, in grocery store: *looks at chocolate bar*
Me: “Chocolate with marzipan”. What is marzipan, anyway?
Me: *reads French side* “Chocolate with almond paste”. Oh.)
†Though I can’t promise how much attention other people pay.
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#combine me and Alison and you get someone who almost knows what they’re doing #language #reply via reblog #food mention #our home and cherished land
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