storytime

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

glumshoe:

I had a dream that I lived in a town on the edge of reality. There was a map showing the location of the town in spacetime, and it was depicted as teetering on the edge of the event horizon of a funnel-shaped warp in reality. Like light a certain distance away from a black hole, we were unable to escape the influence of the warp, but not drawn in by it completely, either.

Our proximity to Unreality conferred many advantages, and we were able to do things in our town that weren’t actually possible. We could survive fatal accidents and walk away without a scratch. Things that were lost forever were found again, and sometimes, if you didn’t think about it too directly, failures transformed into successes just like that. It was as though thought itself was a physical substance that could bend the shape of the world in our favor. Life was good in the little town of Event Horizon, where things always seemed to work out and Lady Luck lived on our side.

But Event Horizon also experienced “reality-quakes”. Now and then the fabric of spacetime would ripple, and shockwaves would rock our little town violently. Sometimes things would shake loose and get drawn in to the Unreality, and even people could be lost this way. They quakes weren’t common, but they seemed to be occurring with more frequency, leading to fears that we were becoming unmoored in spacetime and might lose the equilibrium that allowed us to survive and take advantage of the flexibility of reality.

Thought could stabilize things, if we projected our minds as physical forces to hold things in place. You could cast your thoughts out as a net and pull against the draw of Unreality. But that only worked if we were prepared and braced ourselves against the quake ahead of time, and people needed to work and eat and sleep and go to school. There was no way that everyone could be on anchoring duty all the time.

That’s why we had a lottery. Every twenty years, one among us would be selected to by the community to be the Achor for the entire town—a full-time psychic resistance against entropy. The Anchor would enter a trance state and project their mind out to touch every structure, every tree, every pebble, every person in Event Horizon, and hold them there. Constantly. For twenty years.

People would come to tend to the Anchor, to feed and bathe them and keep them comfortable, but the Anchor rarely became lucid enough to recognize them. It was a vital, respected, honorable position, but there was no glory in it. If you found out you had been selected to be the next Anchor, your family would grieve for you as though you had died. If you had children, they would be taken care of in a princely fashion as wards of the state, and your family would be honored and want for nothing, because even though your assignment was only twenty years, former Anchors did not tend to live for very long. They’d be made comfortable and lavished with good things, but their life energy would be sapped, and they’d fade away quickly.

My dream was 90% exposition and very little in-the-moment action, but I had just discovered that I would be the new Anchor, and I was not happy about it. The most vivid action scene I remember was standing in my kitchen staring at breakfast cereal boxes on a shelf and touching them with my mind, feeling every grain of cereal within and thinking, “Even this? Even this?”

Anyway, thanks brain, that was cool.

 

sillywafflefries:

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c9360c8ef70c1a7bd014f08a57a09db5533a59f4

 

glumshoe:

Oh shit!!!

Tags:

#dreams #storytime #apocalypse cw #death tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

gallusrostromegalus:

So one of my neighbors has a lawn Roomba or whatever they’re called, and this thing trundles around looking like a background robot in the background of the original trilogy, and ABSOLUTELY BAFFLING THE DOGS.

They have concluded, I think, that it’s some kind of prey animal because right after this video ended they decided to crouch down and stalk it, which means I’m 90% sure I’m going to have to stop Arwen from eating it at some point.

 

theodorepython:

Of course it’s a prey animal it fucking eats GRASS

 

gallusrostromegalus:

While I can’t fault your reasoning on robot taxonomy, apparently we’re both wrong:  Arwen, as much as she is a high-prey-drive animal, is foremost, a herding dog, and has decided that the Lawn Roomba is a SHEEP.

What happened is the lawn roomba belongs to the guy that does most of the maintainence on the neighborhood park, and he had it out grazing on a different section of lawn when my parents came down for a walk and Arwen was siezed by 200 years worth fo Kelpie Instincts, rolled out of her Harness and proceded to herd the shit out of this tiny, oblivious robot.  

Everything was on display- mock-stalking, intimidating eye contact, barking, running in front of it to try to get it to balk, the scariest barking she can muster (which is actually.  pretty scary if you’re not used to Loud Dogs), looking back at my parents for directions.  or rather, looking at my Mom while Dad tried unsuccessuflly to capture her.

After about ten minutes they realized she wasn’t biting it, and decided to let her play Sheep Simulator 5000 for a while. She eventually figured out that 

  • It  doesn’t respond to Yelling, Posturing or Aggressive Eye Contact
  • It does respond to having it’s wheels or bump hazards hit 
  • It would respond to its side being nosed or slapped by moving in a different direction

Conent that this was apparently some kind of blind, deaf and particularly stupid sheep, she could now manage the robot by smacking it if it got too close to the creek bed or fence for her liking, and was eventually content to sit on the highest point of the field and Supervise ™ it.

“Hey.” Said Roger, owner of the robot. “Do you think if I put the ramp down she’ll herd it into the back of my pickup?”

Arwen was mostly asleep in the afternoon sun as roger put the ramp down but woke right up when mom Whistled, then pointed at the truck.  She immediately went after the robot and did something that wouldn’t have occured to me, an allegedly more intelligent being: the robot is roughly triangular, and when it hits an obstacle, will change direction so that one of its other sides (rather than points) is now the ‘front’.  So to get it to move in a straight line in the direction she wanted, Arwen would smack the two sides of the robot that she didn’t want it to go in in quick sucession, and got it across the field, over a small hill and up the ramp as fast as it’s clumsy little wheels could go.

“I didn’t know you had a fully-trained sheepdog!” Said Roger

“Me either.” said Mom.

So Arwen now has a Semi-Weekly Appointment to play with Sheepbot.

Tags:

#dog #storytime #adorable #robot

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

motheatenscarf:

So in Goblin Squad D&D yesterday, our Barbarian had just… the stupidest, DUMBEST, most terrifying, absolutely godlike thing happen to him.

This is a story of numbers, but it’s still beautiful.

We were fighting a dragon.

The dragon is hopping around while the Barbarian is just racing around trying to catch up to her

Dragon finally decides, no, really, fuck specifically THAT ranger and goes hog fucking wild on me (I LIVED!) but holds still long enough for the Barbarian to finally rage and LEAP ONTO HER BACK and go STAB

Dragon sees this and goes, “Oh. Sick.” 

and just goes VERT

Pro: I am not tanking anymore

Con: She instantly moves FOUR HUNDRED FEET STRAIGHT UP INTO THE AIR…. with our  raging Barbarian holding on for dear gottdamn life

One round later, she’s another 160 feet up, still getting stabbed by a Barbarian who has somehow held on, now getting attacked by ballistae and we’re all starting to get CONCERNED

Because if they take that dragon down, that is 560 feet our Barbarian is also falling out of the sky, and he is not attuned to the ONLY THING WE HAVE that can save his fucking life from that height

I’m sitting there doing math, trying to determine if 560′ is enough to kill him outright, silently being very grateful we still have exactly ONE diamond to rez his ass

and the dragon just goes VERT again, ANOTHER four hundred feet in the air

The Barbarian, now finally free from any potential collateral, cackles, as he is at long last, unshackled by the restraints of his conscience.

He has a tattoo, you see, which allows him to cast Fireball once per day

centered on himself

with a save which he autofails

But he is a tiefling.

And this fucker still has 160 hit points by the time it’s done exploding. But the explosion sends him backward as he fails the Athletics check to continue holding on and he begins to fall.

He falls for 3 fucking rounds and we can only watch our friend fall to his certain death.

The DM… has to roll ninety six d6s

let that number sink in for you

NINETY. SIX. D6s. They normally roll with real dice, you can hear the clickety clack through the discord, but  they had to get out a fucking app for this because they do not OWN ninety. fucking. six. d6s.

It comes out to 402 fucking bludgeoning damage he takes on impact as he leaves a Barbarian shaped crater in the center of the forum, 10 feet wide, 5 feet deep, a cloud of dust and broken brick shooting out as he lands.

And do you know what happens next?

Do you know what the fuck we see as the dust settles?

We hear a cough, and a see a thumbs up come out of the crater. 1 hit point left.

402 damage. Raging as he landed, halved to 201. He had 160HP left, it only brought him down to -41, not enough to kill him outright (you have to get equal to negative your max HP), AND HE’S LEVEL 12, which means he has access to Relentless Rage: the first time you’d drop below 0 HP, if it doesn’t outright kill you, you have to roll a Con save of 10 or higher to instead drop to 1 HP. He rolled an 11.

He fell almost a THOUSAND feet from the air off the back of a fucking dragon, took NINETY SIX D6 FALL DAMAGE, AND LIVED.

His arena name lived up to the hubris of this fucking swan dive. All hail ALTANIN, THE UN-FUCKING-BREAKABLE

Tags:

#D&D #storytime #death tw? #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

poemsingreenink:

musings-of-a-monster:

Before COVID shut the library down, I was helping a little boy and his mom find books.

“What do you like to read about?” I asked.
“Dinosaurs!”
This is common request, but can mean different things, “Okay. Do you want a story about dinosaurs, or facts about dinosaurs?”
“Facts.”
I took him to the dinosaur section (567.9) of the juvenile nonfiction. He picked out a couple books, and I asked him if there was anything else he was looking for.
“Do you have anything on DNA?”
I had to think about that for a second. “I think so…but I’ll have to look it up.”
The boy beamed, “I want to find out how DNA works, so I can bring them back!”
“We just saw Jurassic Park,” his mom explained with a smile that did not waver when she added, “We didn’t learn anything.”

@northstarfan

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #storytime #dinosaurs #Jurassic Park #libraries #covid19

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

liliium:

almost-always-eventually-right:

one-time-i-dreamt:

I was drawing a bunch of pentagrams in my notebook during math class because I was bored and I think I drew 150 pentagrams in total before a devilish-looking guy wearing a red suit broke down the door of the classroom and yelled “wHAT the fUCK do you wANT?!”

this username escapes me every single time
16d5d4d947b8220ccf94d6b542126ef372539bef

i cant stop thinking about this post

Tags:

#dreams #demons #unreality cw #storytime #art #fanart #tbh I was completely willing to believe that this had happened #like not an *actual* demon #but if you drew like 150 pentagrams that gives a classmate time to notice #and quietly arrange a prank over some wireless communication method with an assistant

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

dimespin:

captaindibbzy replied to your post “Hey, I don’t know if this has been asked before, and I’m really sorry…”
Me being semi-face blind, useless with my left and right, AND unable to remember names would mean I stand there just sweating profusely with anxiety as I try to not be rude.
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fc0745f62590e51c2e6cc6d737a7ce7dc75f836c
26116a373efb8834e704e254e9efd95cc158304f

Mr. Fisher’s daughter showing you how to definitely not be rude at all

Tags:

#art #prosopagnosia #storytime #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

kuttithevangu:

The last time I left my house was 17 days ago and on that day I walked past a man who was sitting in his car with the windows open and as I walked past, someone on his radio said “now sports! sports is, there are no sports”

That was the last day of Massachusetts

 

kuttithevangu:

Why are people commenting like “this is night vale” or “I can’t tell if this really happened or it’s an apocalyptic vision” like are you all not aware that there’s an unprecedented international disaster happening? What is not normal life in March 2020 about this post

 

pteapotdactyl:

The radio channel I listen to has a guy who does the traffic report every morning and he got so fed up of saying basically “theres no traffic because everyone is at home” that he started getting listeners to message him with the traffic that’s in their home. like “in Steve’s house in Surrey today theres a massive delay between the bedroom and the dining room table that is where Steve is working because the dog is lying in the doorway. the current recommended diversion is via the kitchen for a cup of tea.”

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #storytime #my home away from home #covid19 #illness mention

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

prokopetz:

Bad: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, but nobody picks up on it for various implausible reasons.

Good: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, and everybody “knows”, but in spite of countless people’s best efforts nobody can actually prove it.

 

yudkowsky:

“Literally everyone knows that Bruce Kent is the Masculine Mongoose,” said the woman sitting across from me in our candlelit dinner. “The superheroes know it. The villains know it. The guy on the street knows it. Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon know it. The Enquirer doesn’t break the mask code when they print your picture because they don’t even bother mentioning who you are. If I need to have conversations with you pretending not to know that Bruce is the ‘Goose, we’re going to be the only two people on the planet pretending that.”

My expectations for this date’s viability were starting to sink. She was saying intelligent things, and saying them with remarkable confidence and self-possession for somebody who thought she was talking to the Masculine Mongoose himself. It was impressing me and more than slightly turning me on. But the conversation had taken a turn I’d been down before, and not a promising one. “I don’t want to get into a relationship under false pretenses,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Like if I slept with you under the impression that you were just an ordinary playboy millionaire, instead of a superhero.” She sipped from her champagne glass, visibly trying not to smile.

“Look,” I said, trying to make my voice as persuasive as I could. “Just like you say, everyone knows that Bruce Kent is the Masculine Mongoose. People have believed that for eight years. And in all that time, nobody has ever managed to prove anything – never mind suggestive evidence, nobody has ever shown it for certain. Shouldn’t that give you pause?”

Keep reading

 

mirasorastone:

I would read an entire novel series about this concept. 

 

yudkowsky:

To her dying day, reporter Terri Green would remember the look on Bruce Kent’s face as the assassin stepped out of the crowd, holding the gun.

Keep reading

 

yudkowsky:

(5000 words.  This story takes place chronologically before the first two Bruce Kent fics, but should be read afterwards.)

There was no warning. One moment I was waiting in line at the Gothic Cityville branch of the First Financial Bank to get a cashier’s check made out, trying to ignore the whispers coming from before me and behind me. Bruce Kent is very rigorous about pretending to not be the Masculine Mongoose, as everyone knows by now. Bruce Kent acts uncomfortable around people who whisper when they recognize him, just like he would if he was a normal human being who’d gotten mistaken for the Mongoose somehow. Keeping up the act at all times, yeah, that’s me all right.

The next moment, the glassed front door of the bank shattered into pieces around a woman stomping through in giant flaming power armor.  She was followed shortly after by ten other goons in smaller suits of flaming power armor.  When I say ‘flaming’ I don’t mean that it was decorated in red and orange, I mean that the powered suits were emitting gouts of fire from built-in spouts.

Professor Pyrofessor had somehow, God help her and both of us, managed to pick that exact moment to rob this particular bank branch.

Keep reading

Tags:

#storytime #oh look an update #embarrassment squick? #superheroes #death tw?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

thestuffedalligator:

On a small farm outside of a small town in Canada, a horde of four-hundred thirteenth-century Mongol soldiers on horseback rode out through a hole in time and space.

One of them had a thick leather glove, on which a golden eagle perched. Its handler reached up, slipped the little hood off the eagle’s head, and flicked his wrist. It took off, caught a thermal, soared in a lazy arc, dove, spread its talons forward, and then hit a window with a thunk.

Daniel DiSebastian, who was fifteen and on the other side of the window, stared. The eagle had managed to sink its talons into the mesh of the window screen before it stunned itself. It was hanging upside down. Over it, Dan saw a horde of four-hundred thirteenth-century Mongol soldiers standing in formation in his neighbour’s field.

He stared for a moment longer. Curiosity won over self-preservation, and he walked out onto the porch of the house for a better view.

There was a ripping noise, the sound of panicked flapping, and something huge and tawny swooped low over Dan’s head. He ducked and only just managed to see the golden eagle fly in a wide circle back towards the horde of waiting soldiers. He heard a distant shout. Then two-hundred-and-forty of the soldiers drew their bows and fired into the air, creating a screaming cloud of arrows that blotted out the sun before raining down in a lethal shower.

Eighty-seven of these arrows hit Dan.

Dan died instantly.

He got better. When he did, the horde was already gone.

*

Eleven months later, Dan was mostly sure that whatever had happened that day eleven months ago had not, in fact, happened.

He was very happy to accept that it hadn’t happened until he walked into a Tim Hortons for a coffee and a donut and walked out to find a golden eagle perched on the sign for the drive-through.

Dan blinked. The eagle blinked. It took off with a heavy thump of wings, and Dan noticed the four-hundred thirteenth-century Mongol soldiers on horseback in the parking lot.

There was a whistling noise. Dan was hit by one-hundred-and-seventy-nine-arrows.

Dan died instantly.

He got better. The horde was gone again. One of them had stolen his donut.

*

It was already dark when Dan and Cameron Burnaby walked out of the theatre.

“God, what a bad movie,” she laughed. Her breath came out in puffs of vapour in the November air.

“Like not even so bad it’s good,” Dan said. “It’s so bad it goes all around the world and crosses back into bad.”

“It’s supposed to be the last one, right?”

“That’s what I heard?”

Another puff of laughter. “Hope,” Cameron Burnaby said, grinning. “That’s what you hope.”

A huge bird took off from the sign over the theatre. Cameron Burnaby oohed at the sight and watched as it flew away.

Dan looked at her. This was nice. It was slow, but it was nice. It was nevertheless slightly spoiled by the little anxious voice that banged around in his hindbrain. It had been a year since his last attack. It was bound to happen eventually, and he had no idea how to bring it up in conversation. ‘So, I see you like the Mongolian beef and broccoli. Speaking of Mongolia, have I ever told you that I’ve been killed by Mongols four times?’

He had to tell her. But maybe he didn’t. Maybe they were done. It had been a whole year. Maybe killing him four times was enough for them. Surely killing somebody once was enough for most people, right?

Cameron Burnaby turned back at him and grinned. “So!” she said. “Was it the worst horror movie you’ve ever seen?”

He shook himself out of a vision of archers on horseback. “Nope, not even,” he said, walking forward again. “There was this one movie that came out last year. It’s about a guy who kidnaps tourists and turns them into walruses, it’s amazingly—”

Dan slipped on the ice. His leg flew up from underneath him. He felt sudden weightlessness and there was a crack as he landed on the sidewalk.

Everything hurt. Stars flashed across his vision. They faded to reveal the face of Cameron Burnaby, mittens clasped over her mouth. “Are you okay?” she asked.

No, Dan thought. “Yep,” Dan groaned. He pulled himself up onto his elbows. “Trust me, I’ve had worse.”

Cameron Burnaby offered him a hand. He took it, she pulled him up to his feet, and the two were suddenly standing much closer than he had expected.

Dan swallowed. He was suddenly aware of a thousand tiny details. The snowflakes that hung in her hair. The freckles on her nose. The shape of her lips. The terror in her eyes which were looking at something just over and past his shoulder.

He was briefly aware of seventeen arrows hitting the back of his skull.

Dan died instantly.

He got better. Cameron Burnaby was retching in the snow.

“What the fuck was that?!” she finally said, wiping the corner of her mouth with a mitten.

Dan considered a variety of responses. He decided that they all sounded stupid. He settled for the only one he knew was accurate. “A horde of four-hundred thirteenth-century Mongol soldiers,” he sighed.

“They – you—” She gestured wildly. “Your face.”

Dan winced and eased himself onto the sidewalk. “I didn’t want you to see that,” he said.

There was a pause. “Has this happened before?” Cameron Burnaby asked.

Dan thought. “Yeah,” he said. “Five times, counting this one.”

“So this is just a thing that happens.”

“It – yeah,” he said. “I think so. It is.”

Cameron Burnaby nodded. “Oh. Okay.”

Another pause. A car drove past. Cameron Burnaby stood up. “I’m going to go.”

Dan nodded. “Right,” he said. “Some other time?”

There was no answer. Dan closed his eyes. He laid down on the sidewalk and listened to the crunch of snow under boots until they died away. Snowflakes landed on his face, tiny pinpricks of cold which stung and faded almost instantly as they melted.

There was a thump. Dan opened his eyes and looked over. There was a golden eagle standing there, twisting its head to glare at Dan.

Dan glared back. “I hate you,” he said. “I really, deeply hate you.”

The eagle, apparently satisfied with the answer, took off.

Another two-hundred-and-forty arrows sprouted from the sky.

Dan died instantly.

He got better. Physically, at least.

Keep reading

Tags:

#storytime #death tw #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #time travel