irregularjohnnywiggins

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

i'm sorry but this is the only submission to this trend that i'll consider giving any thought to

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

Finished reading Star Wars Visions: Ronin today, and genuinely The Ronin/The Traveller may be the peak of Star Wars romance now.

#star wars #star wars visions #star wars visions ronin #sw ronin #sw traveller #ronin/traveller #fellas is it queer to arrange a situation so that the guy you barely know but feel like you've known forever can stab your abusive dad? #like just immediately trusting that he'll do it for you despite it not benefitting him at all? And is it queer if you immediately do it? #no questions asked just trusting them completely? #fellas is it queer to give a heartfelt speech about how this man has given you a reason to exist again to be more than Jedi or Ghost #to press your face so close to his you can feel each other's breath... and then steal his lightsaber and hold it to his throat? #is it queer to be the one with the lightsaber to his throat and not be angry at them at all? #(easy answer and spoilers: fellas is it queer to have been co-parenting a child this whole time?) #it's a fucking great book is what I'm getting at

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

I lowkey want a fic where Palpatine gets exposed because he’s in a bad mood, not paying much attention, and accidentally answers a holocom from somebody looking for the Supreme Chancellor as Darth Sidious. Example: *Separatists have just suffered a major defeat and everyone in the CIS keeps calling him for advice* *incoming call* Sidious: “Tyrannus if you cannot resolve this situation on your own then perhaps you are not worthy to be my Apprentice!” “…Master Yoda, this is.”

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

TIL In an epilogue at the end of the original 1931 Dracula film, Dracula breaks the fourth wall and taunts the audience, saying vampires are real and to be afraid. In a 1936 re-release, this was censored by the Hays Code, out of fear it would encourage belief in the occult.

via reddit.com

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

The following is not my idea; it was the original brainchild of a friend of mine named Omicron, with help from various others including EarthScorpion, TenfoldShields, @havocfett and ShintheNinja:

So, you know what I want to do one day? Run (or play in) a D&D campaign in which the Big Bad Super Dragon that is fuckoff ancient and unfathomably powerful and whose actions have shaped history and bent the course of nations and had repercussions on the whole culture and society in the region where it's set; the Bonus Special Boss for some endgame optional quest after you defeat the direct BBEG and win the campaign...

... is a white dragon.

To explain this for people not deep into 5e monster lore; D&D dragons are sapient beings, and known for their instincts and tendencies, and whenever you meet an big evil dragon that's really old it's usually this ancient creature of terrible intellect Smaug-ing it up all over the place.

Except white dragons are fucking stupid. Like, they're still capable of speech and thought! They're just… feral, hungry morons. And you almost never see them portrayed as ancient wyrms for that reason; they lack majesty. Critical Role did it, yes, but even then, Vorugal is explicitly the most bestial member of the Chroma Conclave, and the others are the more intelligent planners and long-term threats. An ancient white as a nation-defining endboss, though; not a thug for a smarter master but as the strongest and biggest threat around is just not the sort of thing you tend to see.

Adventurers: "Oh wise Therunax the Munificent, gold dragon of Law and Good, what can you tell us adventurers of the evil dragons which rule this land?" Therunax the Munificent, 500-year old Gold Dragon: "Good adventurers, know this: this land is torn apart by the evil of Tiamat's spawn. The eastern marches are the dwelling of Furinar the Plague-Bringer, black dragoness whose hoard is a thousand sicknesses contained in the body of her tributes. The southern volcanic mountains are the roosting of Angrar the Wrathful, the fiery red dragon, who brings magmatic fury on all who do not worship him. And the northern peaks are home to Face-Biter Mike, the oldest and most powerful of all, of whom I dread to speak." Adventurers: "F-Face-Biter Mike???" Therunax: "Oh yes, verily indeed; two thousand years has Mike lived, and his eyes have seen the rise and fall of five empires, and a hundred and score champions have sought to slay him; and each and every one he bit their fucking face off."

Like... I want to see a campaign where Face-Biter Mike is genuinely the most powerful dragon in the region, if not the entire world. Where sometimes he descends on a city to grab himself some meatsicles and causes a localised ice age by the beat of his vast wings and the frigid wastes of his mighty breath and by the chill his mere presence brings to everything for miles around him, and everyone just has to deal with that for the next decade. An entire era of civilization comes to an end, an empire falls, tens of thousands starve in the winter, all because Mike wanted a snack. Where his hoard is an unfathomably vast mass of jewels and artefacts and precious stones frozen in an unmelting glacier, except he is a nouveau riche idiot with fuckall appraising skill, so half of his hoard is coloured glass or worthless knicknacks, and he doesn't give a shit.

"Your Draconic Majesty, this crown is… It's pyrite." "Yeah, well, it's brighter than this dusty old thing made out of real gold, it's my new best treasure. Throw the other one away." "…throw the Burnished Tiara of Bahamut, forged in the First Age of Man, your majesty???" "See? I can't even remember its fucking name." "But my lord-" "DO YOU WANT TO BE A MEATSICLE" "…I will fetch a trash bag, your majesty."

But at the same time, he's not stupid, he's just simple, and in some ways that makes him more dangerous than the usual kinds of scheming Big Bad you see in these things, while simultaneously justifying why Orcus remains on his throne (because he's lazy). Face-Biter Mike doesn't make convoluted plans or run labyrinthine schemes; he just has a talent for violence and a pragmatic, straightforward approach to turning any kind of problem he struggles with into a problem that can be resolved with violence. Face-Biter Mike has one talent and it's horrifying physical power, so his approach to any complicated problem is "how do I turn this into a situation where I can fly down and bite this dude's face off?" with absolutely no regard for the collateral damage or consequences of doing so, because those are also things he can turn into face-bitable problems.

"My lord, the dread necromancer Nikodemion is using his undead dragons to attempt a conquest of the eastern kingdom; his agents are everywhere, his plans are centuries in the making, what can we do against such a mastermind?" "I'm gonna fly over the capital and eat the eastern king." "M-my lord???" "The kingdom will collapse without leadership, Nikodemion will win his war, he'll take the capital and crown himself king." "And that helps us… how?" "Once he does I'll fly over to the capital and eat him." "…" "This is why you advisors all suck. You're all about convoluted plans when the only thing I need to win is know where my enemy is so I can fly down there and eat him. Stop overthinking things."

And, like, yeah, it's a simplistic plan, but when you're several hundred tons of nigh invincible magical death, you don't need brilliant strategy; the smartest way to win a war is, in this case, the simplest. He's not even all that clever at figuring out the consequences of face-biting, he's just memorised the common consequences of doing so.

(If you want to go all in on Mike being the major mover and shaker in the region; Nikodemion only even has a pet zombie dragon because Mike killed the last dragon to show up and contest his turf but wasn't going to eat a whole dragon by himself. Nikodemion got to stick around and amass that much power because Mike ate the Hero of the Realm while he was adventuring because he figured the Hero would come and try to slay him at some point. Nikodemion got started because Mike ate half the leadership of the Academy of High Magic who typically keep evil wizards and necromancers in check. And then eventually this product of Mike's casual, careless actions becomes a big enough problem to bother Mike personally, at which point Mike eats him too.)

He doesn't even really fail upwards, either! He is regularly reduced to nothing but the glacier he stores his hoard in, but he's Face-Biter Mike so nobody wants to commit to actually ending him forever lest they get their faces bitten the fuck off. And his hoard's in a huge-ass magical glacier so nobody can get to it without running into the Invading Russia problem; it's hard to wage war when everything is frozen over and you're both starving and freezing to death. Once he's been beaten back to his central lair and has lost all his holdings… I mean, he's still a problem, but he's a far away problem. So he loses his assets and spends a decade in a cave brooding it up while no one dares risk trying to actually kill him, and then a generation or two later he flies down to a kobold colony and gets himself some minions, or a dragon-worshipping mage comes to offer his service against a pittance from his hoard, or a particularly stupid cult starts thinking they can get in good with him and leech off his power, and then he's (hah) snowballing again.

He's also got a very… well, the kind of weird Charisma that Grineer bosses do. Like Sargas Ruk, who's a malformed idiot, but oddly charismatic. As he's a dragon, that makes him a natural sorcerer and thus Charisma is all he needs. He's pretty relaxed when he isn't in a face-biting mood, and he's kind of infectiously optimistic, because his life has taught him that he will succeed as long as he perseveres. So he just believes it.

And sometimes that's really refreshing to work for, as an evil minion of darkness! It's like, you're coming to your Evil Dragon Lord with terrible news; you've worked for evil overlords before, you know how it goes. You fall to your knees weeping and tell him that you've failed to seize the incredibly powerful magical artifact, you think your life is forfeit. And he's just like "Eh, it's okay, these things are all over the place. Better luck next time. You remember the guy who took it, right?" and you go "Y-yes, oh great lord!" and he's like "Sweet tell me his name later and I'll grab it" and then eats a frozen adventurer he kept around as a snack.

His followers tend to quickly realise that if they fail him, bringing some temple's silver or a sack of brightly coloured beads or a couple of dead cows means he's super forgiving because at least he's got something out of the day. "Oh boy, cows? It's been forever since I had those, ever since the Orc Steppe Nomads took over it's all about goats and onions. Today is a good day." He's a master of delegation by dragon standards, in that he just tells you "Just go get it done, I don't care how" rather than micromanaging you and constantly appearing as an image in smoke or taking over your campfire.

The key part of Face-Biter Mike as a threat to players (because he exists in the context of a D&D campaign) works well in that you can rely on several known quantities:

He will not pull sneaky shit that you don't see coming

He will not make convoluted plans that you must work to unravel

He will consistently attempt to come down and wreck you personally if he finds the opportunity and you are a threat to him

You cannot fight him head-on (at least not until the last leg of the campaign, and ideally as an optional boss rather than mandatory)

So as long as you are good at staying under the radar, thwarting his minions (whom he gives broad orders to with almost zero oversight) and not putting yourself in face-biting range, you can deal with him. If you succeed, it won't be the first time Mike has lost his assets and had to go brood in his glacier for a decade or two before rebuilding. It happens; he can deal with it. And that's a win for you within the context of a single campaign, so take the win.

And if you're not going to use him as an enemy, he works pretty well as a quest-giver, too! The costs for failure are obvious and straightforward, and "do whatever, just get me mine" means that players have a lot of freedom in accomplishing their goals. As far as evil overlords go he is actually one of the least dangerous to work for; his pride is relatively subdued by draconic standards, his goals are simple and typically achievable, and he is easily pleased.

(There's also a good chance he is the forefather of any draconic sorcerer in your party, because Face Biter Mike is a deadbeat dad.)

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

"In a week, the dog was dead."

Vincent Price - The Last Man On Earth (1964) dir. Sydney Salkow/Ubaldo Ragona

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

If you're going to point out that Albert Einstein was a Zionist, then I'm going to point out that Albert Einstein was against dispossessing Palestinians of their land and also signed an open letter saying that the forerunner of the (now-ruling) Likud Party was basically a bunch of Nazis.

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

In the show Gotham Knights, the characters Harper Row and Stephanie Brown end up in a relationship together, after Stephanie discovers that she is a lesbian and begins dating Harper (who is bi).

Amusingly, while Harper being bi (or at least sapphic) is something that has been consistent with her pretty much since her creation, first getting confirmed in James Tynion IV's Gotham Knights run of Detective Comics...

With her also getting into a relationship with the nonbinary superhero Violet Harper (Halo) in Young Justice's fourth (and so far last) season...

Amusingly though, while Harper and Stephanie were friends and never indicated any attraction between each other in the comics, there did appear to be something going on of a sort between Harper and the newly reintroduced Cassandra Cain in Cass' redebut in Batman and Robin Eternal.

There it's HEAVILY implied that there is some kind of mutual attraction between Harper and Cass, which ends up ultimately not going anywhere due to them discovering that Cass had (as a child, against her will) been forced to murder Harper's mother (it's a whole thing). After this the pair remained close, albeit mostly off-panel, friends, but ultimately nothing was confirmed one way or the other.

This becomes additionally amusing/frustrating when you consider that around the time that Harper was beginning to get phased out of the Bat Family books (sans a back-up feature in Tynion's actually really good Joker solo book), Cass and Stephanie began appearing in more works as a pair, with their shared book Batgirls eventually having Steph admit in a letter intended to be read after her death that she does love Cass...

Only for the book to get cancelled before Cass and Stephanie could have a conversation about said letter and whether their very close friendship could potentially be of the romantic persuasion. Thus far the closest we have to official confirmation of Cass and Steph liking girls came in their alternate future Future State story... which implied that they were a Thing but ultimately split up for Reasons.

So yeah, ironically Harper Row in various universes is confirmed to be in a relationship with one Batgirl, implied to be in a relationship with another, with both Batgirls maybe kinda being an unconfirmed thing in the present but might have been a couple in a dystopian cyberpunk future? With Cass also being a glaring omission from the Gotham Knights show, considering it's a BROAD adaptation of the Detective Comics arc featuring the team called Gotham Knights.

Side Note: While at this point it's unlikely that we'll be seeing any actual progression on this relationship, I'm amused at the idea that, if Violet Harper and Harper Row were to get married, Harper's name could potentially become Harper Harper.

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

play Kingdom Hearts

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

The Borg is the ultimate user. They're unlike any threat your Federation has ever faced. They're not interested in political conquest, wealth or power as you know it. They're simply interested in your ship, its technology. They've identified it as something they can consume. I Star Trek: The Next Generation "Q Who?"

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

They say judas is in hell because he betrayed jesus but thats actualy a misconception, that was gods plan and so he didnt do anything wrong. Judas however IS in hell because god thinks he made his son gay

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

'I didn’t have white hair in those days,’ said Granny. ‘Everything was a different colour in those days.’ ‘That’s true.’ ‘It didn’t rain so much in the summer time.’ ‘The sunsets were redder.’ ‘There were more old people. The world was full of them,’ said the wizard. ‘Yes, I know. And now it’s full of young people. Funny, really. I mean, you’d expect it to be the other way round.' — Equal Rites

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

Neil Gaimain about writing Good Omens with Terry Pratchett (x)

Neil: His line to me when we were writing “Good Omens”, he would phone me up and he’d say, I’ve just done this and it’s made it 17% funnier. I’d written this whole meeting between the International Express man and Pollution and I’d mentioned that, you know, ‘he and his wife went down there sometimes when they were courting to spoon’ and Terry added the line, ‘and on one memorable occason, fork.’

Rob: On one memorable occasion.

Neil: On one memorable occasion, and it‘s made it 17% better. In fact, in that case it may have made it 100% better.