Fandom and Feeling

Private Equity: Pestilence (they are parasites that voraciously strip the value out of a healthy business until it withers and dies)

Workforce Optimization: Famine (cutting hours and employees until the business is starved of staff, barely functioning)

The Swedes have these adorable cakes called Prinsesstårta aka Princess Cakes.

When I saw this I thought “Oh! I know those! We have the same thing here in Denmark!”

The same thing? These beauties.

I persent to you, the Kajkage aka Kaj Cake. They’re smaller but pretty much made of the same ingredients and they have fan clubs dedicated to finding the ugliest versions at bakeries. They’re named after the frog Kaj from an old children’s show.

This is actually so funny to me. I hope puritans who migrated from Wattpad are so shocked and terrified by the fact AO3 is actually against censorship that they come crawling back to Wattpad and leave AO3 alone forever.

Like why are you surprised that the site that was created specifically to host dark/taboo/fucked up fics—that were banned on pro censorship platforms—because the founders are proships who got tired of censorship, actually hosts and allows dark/taboo/fucked up fics that were banned on pro censorship platforms 😭 Your report will do nothing because AO3 EXPLICITLY ALLOWS AND WELCOMES DARK/TABOO/FUCKED UP FICS. AO3 IS THE PLATFORM THAT WAS CREATED FOR DARK/TABOO/FUCKED UP FICS.

Customer: I have welcomed Jesus into my heart and so I am well today and every day.

Me, a little unnerved: Okay then! Is there something I can help you with?

a professional dragon handler makes the point that you really can't compel a dragon to do something she doesn't want to do because she'll just hospitalize you if you treat her like shit. she also breaks down a bunch of dragon body language in some of the videos the riders are posting: "look at the way her pupils dilate and she taps her claws on the ground when she sees that cargo container. that is the happiest fucking dragon i have ever seen. she wants to work so bad and you all sound insane saying she hates it"

She loved “My Rider”

Of course as an adult she was freed and you can’t stay because what adult would debase themselves in servitude and she had a hoard now to guard and lay on. A red dragon needs a territory to rule.

But she missed “My Rider”. Missed the traveling. New places, new enemies to kill, new flesh to taste. But a Red Dragon is not a vagabond wandering about and it was fun doing those things coordinating with others.

But a red dragon can do as it pleases. Take what it wants. It wouldn’t be right to deny herself anything she wanted even if it’s experiences or someone that is mine.

Wealthy and powerful among lesser species have others surrounding them, living treasures at great courts like jesters and secretaries. If lesser creatures could have people, a red dragon should not be denied having people as well.

Not friends, she wasn’t some silver lowering herself to consider a lower species a friend. But if she wanted to have something, she would have it and she wanted adventure and someone to talk who wasn’t screaming and begging or attacking. ‘Die foul beast’ or ‘please don’t eat me’ isn’t satisfying conversation. Sycophantic kobolds also got boring.

And didn’t the pampered elite of lesser races get vacations? Why should they get to have anything which would be denied to her a great red dragon?

No she would travel and find people to return with along with more wealth.

So she paid to be true polymorphed into a male Githyanki with a tweak on the spell that she will return to her true form only if killed or a powerful enough dispel magic if anyone knew about the spell.

Gender does not matter to dragons. Size matters. Female red dragons are bigger, but not so with Githyanki on average while neither have a lot of meat on them the male look thicker so he went with a male Githyanki form because large and impressive as possible is still important even in a pitiful humanoid form.

The hoard went in a high interest bank account because humanoids can have banks and now the hoard grows!

The dragons name is Larkrathspardon but as a Githyanki he went by simply Lark as he expected most humanoids to be too stupid to pronounce the name correctly.

One of the other players was a Owlin bard that Lark took to calling “my bird” or “my little song bird” and said things like “I wish I could have you perched on my finder or my shoulder right now!”

Despite being an evil aligned character Lark was fiercely protective of the party because “that’s my bird” or “that’s my human magician”

Lark thought his little magic tricks were very amusing and possibly useful. Everyone in the party fell under the category of ‘mine’ and ‘no one touched my things’

Also would buy things for party members because ‘my (insert species or class) should be adorned in the finest things’

Lark once referred to the party as ‘these belong to me” and was lectured about referring to others as lesser creatures was wrong but insisted that he believed he was better than everyone else, but clarified that all Githyanki are not inherently better

One conversation went like this:

Lark: Now that we’ve defeated these elves we should eat them

Human wizard: That’s cannibalism and it’s generally considered wrong

Lark: You are not the same species

Human Wizard: Still wrong because they were people, same species or not that dead elf was just as much a person as me

Lark: Ah, I see, of course. You are prey and the reality that you can be killed and eaten alarms you and you would not be reminded of it by eating a foe who is not different from you because you don’t see yourself as a predator because you’re not one. I understand, seeing others eaten makes prey uncomfortable makes perfect sense.

(Said casually like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. The tone of a conversation with a friend where you’re helping them figure out a problem).

Human Wizard: (long pause). Yeah, you’re right I am prey

No one in the party ever figured out I was secretly an evil dragon and I’m not sure if they thought my character was a weird possibly racist asshole or if Githyanki were just like that

a professional dragon handler makes the point that you really can't compel a dragon to do something she doesn't want to do because she'll just hospitalize you if you treat her like shit. she also breaks down a bunch of dragon body language in some of the videos the riders are posting: "look at the way her pupils dilate and she taps her claws on the ground when she sees that cargo container. that is the happiest fucking dragon i have ever seen. she wants to work so bad and you all sound insane saying she hates it"

found this in one of the news articles

So the owner’s name was Dean Ripa, and he died in May 2017. His wife, Regina Ripa, was found to be unable to distinguish right from wrong at the time of the murder, was ruled not guilty by reason of insanity, and was committed to a psychiatric care facility instead of being convicted. In real life, this is an extremely rare ruling, and from what I read, she had a history of instability where she suffered from delusions and paranoia. When law enforcement had come out to the residence earlier that day because of a call she made, Dean, her husband, did in fact tell the officers she was genuinely unwell and needed to take her medication.

Their child was, at the time, three, and was unharmed in the incident. As the child was the rightful owner of Dean Ripa’s estate, the Serpentarium was unable to remain open legally. Being a child, they were unable to legally hold the necessary permits for the snakes their father had on the premises. A family friend had attempted to keep it going, but it looks like it was legally too complicated.

There was an article written about the site and Dean Ripa himself in the Oxford American that was posted posthumously. It provides a lot of detail and background on Dean Ripa, who was, to put it mildly, an intense man.