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[theboombutton]

That's not spooky, that's just the insurance industry.

#tmagp vague #tmagp 13

[theboombutton]

The Dwarven Hour was originally based on the interval between drips at a designated stalactite. This worked well enough for local matters, but as each Dwarven city* has their own timekeeping stalactite, merchants and other travelers had a hard time meeting time-based commitments.

The solution was The Book of Hours: a ledger of how long it takes to traverse each road between cities both ways, with times given in the hours of each city. King Kaghri Ironheel is usually credited as the originator of this system, although it would probably be more accurate to give the credit to the small army of couriers he employed**.

When dwarves from different settlements talk time, a commonly-used unit of time is the "greatroad," the time it takes to traverse the Great Chasm Road between Mekki and Narathrûk - a unit of time equivalent to a workday, with a full sleep/wake cycle taking 2 greatroads. In light of this custom, the Great Chasm Road entry in the Book of Hours now contains conversions for all the major cities' hours, not only those of Mekki and Narathrûk - although the estimates for far-flung settlements are unreliable, as they've been converted through multiple intermediate settlements' hours.

* A dwarven settlement isn't considered a city until it has an official stalactite clock. Settlements delved in dryer areas or with less porous stone types generally craft an artificial drip clock once they're large enough.

** Kaghri Ironheel was a notorious rake, with a lover in every settlement.

You know what fantasy stories don't use enough? Different measuring scales, and confusion caused by them. Because before the metric system, practically every place and culture had their own measures for weights, lengths and distances. It would be fun to add that into a story for added realistic cultural confusion.

The average dwarf is four or five feet tall, but not in human measures. Yeah they're still shorter than humans but the dwarf foot (and the namesake measure of length) is bigger in proportion to their body. "Is that in dwarf feet or human feet?" is a common question to hear on construction sites, wherever human carpenters and dwarf masons are working together.

A dedicated local Common Misconception Historian has a pet peeve about the whole "princess Featherblade was only 12 years old when she led the attack on Marshland Halls" -myth, because the historical recordings on the human side are off. While she was remarkably young, that myth came about back in the day when humans were still trying to apply "dog years" to elves, and in an elven life span, 120 years is not a direct equivalent to a 12-year-old human.

A whole culture whose smallest unit of weight loosely translates to "about as much as an apple", and varies from region to region depending on the size of local apples. These people are famed for their alchemists, whose uncanny ability to simply measure their ingredients by heart, making their recipes essentially impossible to replicate. This famed skill is a matter of survivor bias - the ones that don't have that knack ten to explode into fine mist.

#dwarves #time #timekeeping #worldbuilding

[theboombutton]

hey here's a website for downloading any video or image from any website.

works w/ youtube, soundcloud, twitch, twitter (gifs and videos), tumblr (video and audio), and most other websites you're probably lookin to download stuff off of.

#button's bookmarks #the high seas

[theboombutton]

@monstersandmaw

In the monster tumblrverse, would being horny about bloodfeeding be considered ableist to vampires

it was considered unilaterally vampire ableist until... about 2019, I think, then discourse about it went quiet for a few years until a mutual circle of kinky vampires got popular for their general posts and they were all of a very "you think bloodsuckers are sexy? you are correct, we are :)" disposition, so it got more socially acceptable to be horny about it. occasionally someone posts a "am I taking crazy pills? did we all forget that this is sexualizing a minority group's dietary restrictions and romanticizing very real unhealthy relationship dynamics?" take and gets the underwater screenshot treatment. some people are deeefinitely weird about how their bloodfeeding kinks make them approach and view random vampires not involved in those scenes, but none of those people ever get called out, it's pretty much only content creators on vampire onlyfans (which is an audio based platform due to the whole "can't show up in pictures or videos" thing).

the topic that does remain more contentious is humans playing vampires in visual erotica, again mostly due vampires not being visible in film. it's a fairly accepted practice in mainstream movies and tv but a lot of people feel really weird about it being done for porny purposes, you get a lot of "my life is not a sexy cosplay" vs "why are we going after erotica when people get oscars for inaccurately portrayed vampire roles all the time" loops.

#vampires #discourse #fake discourse #annabelle--cane

[theboombutton]

You might think that I'm joking when I say that we need cyborg rights to be codified into law, but I honestly think that, given the pace of development of medical implants and the rights issues raised by having proprietary technologies becoming part of a human body, I think that this is absolutely essential for bodily autonomy, disability rights, and human rights more generally. This has already become an issue, and it will only become a larger issue moving forwards.

#cyborg #cyborgs #cyborg rights #abandonware #cyberpunk

[theboombutton]

A group of friends and I did a one shot recently in 5e. The catch is that they play something called “Dude Squad” where the only play “dudes” (not exclusively male people, just dude mentality) and they hate all magic and magic users. They think true strength is muscles and only muscles, and have in the past encountered magic users who they then convince to give up magic.

We got told to build a level 17 character for this one shot, most of the other folks had previous Dude Squad characters to resurrect. But I didn’t really want to play a straight martial class. In my heart, spellcasters are my true class, and I didn’t really have a strong idea of what kind of character to make.

So I approached the DM and said, “Hey, I have this idea to play a character that pretends to be a martial class but is actually a magic caster?” My girlfriends character is an aasimar who thinks he’s Thor and my backstory was that after meeting him and falling for him she decided to invest heavily in deceptive magic so as not to alienate him.

And my DM. Loved it. So he helped me build an extremely custom character. Two levels in Hexblade warlock gave her a good weapon and the ability to cast disguise self pretty much nonstop to appear buffer than she actually was.

Then there was four levels in Stone sorcerer in order to get 4 sorcery points, the ability to use those points to cast using Subtle Spell and no one could tell she’s casting, and to buff her AC.

Finally there was 11 Bladesong wizard levels in order to get some attack bonuses, even more AC, extra attacks, and the ability to burn spells to take less damage.

So the whole time I was burning spell slots to recharge my sorcery points every time I cast things like Haste and Spider Climb and use my Bladesong powers. We busted through walls and smashed our way through puzzles. We lied and said my character was a Barbarian/Monk so they didn’t bat and eye when she ran on walls with spider climb, but no one noticed when even after dashing she “held onto the stone wall” without any kind of check.

The final battle: the goblin wizard boss we were fighting had cast invulnerability on himself and had our friend mind controlled. So I’m trying to cover for not attacking as I try to dispel his invulnerability. I can no longer run on walls, or make the jumps my party is making on floating platforms over a spike pit so I try to use my actions on other helpful things like tying ropes for friends in the pit. I manage to dispel the magic on our friend but I burned almost all my spells trying to secretly dispel the boss’ spell and finally we just ended up grappling and suffocating him then pummeling him to death.

But at the last moment as we’re running out of this horrible goblin mansion I’m running down a wall and my friends are climbing down. The building says there’s 6 seconds left and my very injured love interest is not gonna make it so my character shouted “Fuckfuckfuck!” Ran over and cast dimension door to bring them both to safety. (Two people got left in the blast but both survived cause Dude Power). Then I critically failed my deception about how I had used magic and came clean and everyone lost their shit when they heard what we’d done. Her final confession, after dropping her buff disguise self, was, “When I met Kathor I really liked him and he freakin’ hates magic so I just kinda figured out how to hide that I was castin’ magic cause I though we might go to pound town.”

Kathor then declared, “I’ve never had someone try so hard to get in my pants!” And swept her up and they messily made out. It was deeply satisfying the wonders that DnD can create, like making a whole class based on the lie that you’re not spellcasting.

#ttrpg #dnd #d&d #dnd 5e #d&d 5e #5e #dude squad #bro squad #ttrpgs

[theboombutton]

You ever just think about how tsv did a slasher episode but one of their protags was the slasher? I'm obsessed with this moment as an expression of the of the slasher genre as insurrectionist incursion into the nuclear family/heterosexual status quo/state hegemony (< latter is most predominant here obviously, but in general). Will you flee into the hills, and dodge their patrols, live off the lichen and the hares, abandon career and citizenship alike for the sake of putting an end to this life that you've made? If they won't let you, will you be the one that makes it stop??

#tsv #slashers #the silt verses #slasher

[theboombutton]

I've been thinking about the reception Watcher Entertainment is getting for paywalling their shit, and how it compares to the Dropout situation back in 2020, and how completely different the receptions between those two things were.

I think it comes down to the fact that Sam was open about paywalling being a last ditch effort to save CollegeHumor, after their parent company was just gonna fire all the staff and keep collecting youtube residuals. And then they (Dropout) acted like it. They kept on less than a dozen staff, most of whom played double roles (as both actors and staff); and they pivoted to relatively inexpensive content. Everyone could tell that they were desperately treading water, and so the paywall didn't feel greedy - it felt like a last-ditch effort to stay afloat.

The gamble worked out for them in a big way, but at the time, the desperation was palpable.

In contrast, the Watcher announcement didn't mention them being hard up for money. It only mentioned wanting more. They're not acting like Watcher is in a tight spot - they're starting an expensive travel show, taking Ghost Files international, and talking about how they want to use the additional money to improve production values on their (already overproduced) shows.

That's why this seems so much sleazier than Dropout did: because Dropout was fighting for its existence, while all Watcher is fighting for is. Sending whole teams of employees abroad, I guess?

#watcher #watcher entertainment #dropout #watcher tv

[theboombutton]

Do tell anesthesiologists about any drugs you take though. That's literally a matter of life and death.

i wrote this in the notes of another post originally and am copy + pasting it here because im right but "tell the cops nothing, tell the doctors everything" is such a stupid ass fucking abled take. doctors engage in policing idk how to explain to yall that some people cannot in fact just tell doctors everything without it putting them at risk

like im not gonna go into the myriad of ways this is bs but like a quick example is i cant tell my doctors about my substance use issues because if i get that listed on my medical records it will actively endanger me. It will impact how I'm treated in emergency situations and will get me labeled as "drug seeking" when i try to get other issues dealt with.

i dont say this to scare people but because this is actually important information for people to have. if a medical professional claims this isnt an issue, they are NOT "one of the good ones". they are either straight up lying or theyre utterly unaware, which is frankly not better. doctors are cops. never forget it

like YES tell ur doctor abt being sexually active but stop saying "tell the cops nothing and the doctor everything" before i start killing in cold blood

[theboombutton]

#tmagp #tmagp spoilers #tmagp 12 #tmagp s1e12 #celia ripley #terrible writing advice #terrible writing advice (youtube) #love triangle #the love triangle #the love triangle™

[theboombutton]

yeah thats accurate

#tmagp #the magnus protocol #tmagp 12 #tmagp s1e12 #tmagp vague

[theboombutton]

I think the music summons him

Today’s incident was from march 9 2024.

The ep 10 incident had march 9 2024 as the current date.

Which means bonzo bonzo’d over there and bonzo’d all over the place the same day? Which seems rather fast.

How does he even move? Surely he can’t drive. Does Nigel drive him? Probably not since then Nigel would be given the address, right?

I can’t imagine he’d be patient enough for public transport

#nigel turned it on to bring him downstairs #the bachelor party played it too #mr bonzo #mr. bonzo #tmagp #tmagp 12 #tmagp s1e12 #tmagp spoilers #the magnus protocol

[theboombutton]

in the oiar office. straight up "getting off". and by "off", haha, well. let's justr say. My armns.

#tmagp #tmagp spoilers #the magnus protocol #the magnus protocol spoilers #tmagp 12 #tmagp s1e12

[theboombutton]

Wait i wanna see something.

If you have multiple fursonas, answer yes if any of them share your name.

#furry #fursona #poll #furries #polls #fursonas

[theboombutton]

Nicaragua's case against Germany in the International Court of Justice

#if you're wondering why they're going after germany and not the us #it's because the us hasn't joined the icc #bill clinton signed the treaty but congress wouldn't ratify it #and in international law if you haven't signed on to an international body you can't be governed by it #palestine #israel #genocide #germany #gaza #west bank

[theboombutton]

i’ve just started listening to the podcast: “the magnus archives” and the narrator is hilarious because with some of the stories he’s like “well obviously we have no real evidence to support the witness’s crazy story of a murderous clock, the fact that they were found dead with a minute hand buried in their sternum is pure coincidence i’m sure” but then some times he’s just like “it’s that fucking bug woman again”

#tma heritage post #tma #the magnus archives #tma s1 #jane prentiss

[theboombutton]

#blackout poetry #blackout poem #shakespeare