NonsensiCat

Those of you who like to prepare in advance, it's coming up quick! Wulian Week begins July 5th!

This is the other part of the manga that Brotherhood absolutely truncated. Most volumes get 2 or 2.5 episodes to cover them. Volume 15 only got one episode (with a few short scenes moved elsewhere). And I suspect highly it had nothing to do with timing or pacing.

Because this is in fact the entire recount of the Amestrian military's involvement in Ishval and--for reasons I'd have loved to listen in behind closed doors to learn--the Brotherhood adaptation neutered quite a lot of it. And I specifically mean removing or toning down the more heinous things the military did, or offloading them to some nameless hegemony of 'horde of Amestrian soldiers' instead of how the manga actually handles it.

That's one of those question where the answer hovers somewhere between "no, with a couple of massive caveats" and "yes, but not in the way most people think".

A lot of AD&D 1st Edition's GMing practices are pretty hardass by modern standards; however, they need to be understood in the context that the game's authors were writing for a target audience who mainly played the game in college wargaming clubs, where players would frequently transfer between groups and group sizes tended to be very large – six players per GM was considered a bare minimum, and up to a dozen player characters in a single party was by no means unheard of!

In particular, players would often bring their character sheets with them when hopping between groups, and it was considered a faux pas for a GM to reject an incoming player's existing character or request any substantive changes be made, so managing expectations could be quite challenging; even as late as 2nd Edition, the Dungeon Master's Guide contains extensive discussion of how to gracefully handle players bringing existing characters with them who aren't necessarily a good fit for the present game's tone or resource economy.

The upshot is that the culture of play these iterations of Dungeons & Dragons are targeting inherently obliges the GM to take a much firmer hand to keep things on track than a pickup game that draws players exclusively from within the GM's established friend group might – and to be sure, some GMs abused these expectations to act like petty tyrants, but some contemporary GMs do that, too.

A big part of the modern perception that 1E and 2E were extraordinarily player hostile, meanwhile, has nothing to do with the previously discussed GMing practices; rather, it emerges from the transition away from that culture of play in a slightly unexpected way.

In brief, back when D&D was mainly played by wargaming clubs, it was fashionable to run pre-written adventure modules competitively at conventions; the competition wasn't between players, but between parties, with multiple groups running the same adventure in parallel to contend for prizes. Tournament play sometimes chose its winners based on the fastest real-time completion of the module in question, or set specific objectives within the module which would award points when completed, a bit like speed-running or achievement-hunting in a video game (though neither practice existed yet at the time).

It was the survival module, however, that quickly emerged as the most popular tournament format. In a survival tournament, each player would provide or was furnished with a binder containing a fixed number of pre-generated character sheets, switching to the next character sheet in the set as each preceding character died; the winning group was the one whose last surviving character's corpse hit the dirt furthest from the dungeon entrance.

Many of 1E's most popular adventure modules, including the infamous Tomb of Horrors, were originally written as survival modules to be run at tournaments in conventions. As such, they were designed to kill off player characters both quickly and efficiently, so as to reduce the likelihood that the tournament would run overtime and get kicked out of the convention venue. When they were later cleanup and repackaged as commercial adventure modules, their text rarely bothered to explain any of this – who doesn't recognise a survival module when they see one?

The answer to that question, of course, is kids who didn't come up through the mentorship system of the college wargaming clubs, but taught themselves how to play D&D from first principles using books they bought at their local hobby stores – and when D&D's popularity unexpectedly exploded in the early 1980s, there were suddenly rather a lot of them!

Why publish survival modules as your primary format of published adventure?

"Because that's what we had -- they were already laid out for publication. Why not publish them and make some money off it?"

Did it ever occur to you at the time that publishing adventures like these would shape the larger D&D culture's expectations of what play was supposed to look like?

"It’s hard to get that context just from reading the original Dungeons and Dragons books. If nine groups learned D&D from the books, they’d end up playing nine different games.

"Mornard told us about an early D&D tournament game – possibly in the first Gen Con in Parkside in 1978? Gary Gygax was DMing nine tournament teams successively through the same module, and whoever got the furthest in the dungeon would win. You’d expect this to take all day, and so Mike was surprised to see Gary, looking shaken, wandering through the hallways at about 2 PM. Mike bought Gary a beer and asked him what had happened – wasn’t he supposed to be DMing right now?

“It’s over!” replied a stunned Gary Gygax.

"Gary described how the first group had fared. Walking down the first staircase into the dungeon, the first rank of fighters suddenly disappeared through a black wall. There was a quiet whoosh, and a quiet thud. The players conferred, and then they sent the second rank forward, who disappeared too. The rest of the players followed.

"The same thing happened to the next tournament team, and the next. Players filed into the unknown, one after another. And they were all killed. The wall was an illusion, and behind it was a pit. Eight out of the nine groups had thrown themselves like lemmings over a cliff; only one group had thought to tap around with a ten foot pole. That group passed the first obstacle, so they won the tournament.

There's nothing that makes a joke unfunnier than over-explaining it, but because of this post I feel obligated to explain why Quan Yizhen stuffing gold bars in Xie Lian's donation box is so funny from a Chinese reader's perspective.

Quan Yizhen & his gold bars happened at a time of the story full of tragic and tumultuous events. He Xuan just killed Shi Wudu and the entire heavenly court was reeling from his death. Soon after, Xie Lian uncovered Ling Wen's role in the Brocade Immortal fiasco. While everyone else was embroiled in these serious and momentous incidents, Quan Yizhen was on his equally important and serious side quest to stuff XL's donation box full of gold bars.

I think an important rule of comedy is that once the comedian shows that he is aware of himself being comical, once it becomes obvious that he's trying to make people laugh, the joke stops being as funny. A good comedy should be performed with serious and sincere intention. And that's why Quan Yizhen stuffing gold bars in XL's donation box is so funny - because he's so incredibly serious about it.

Quan Yizhen didn't just dump a whole sack of gold bars into the donation box - which would be the quickest and easiest way - he actually took the time to stack them up inside the box one by one (“一根一根地塞”, chapter 128). Actually he stacked the gold bars so neatly and tightly that they clogged up the donation box (chapter 133). So you see how seriously Quan Yizhen took this task; he showed the same amount of attention and dedication that a 10-year-old would show to his beloved lego toys. In chapter 128, when MXTX describes Quan Yizhen finishing up with the gold bars, she uses the verb 收工, which means clock out/finish a day's work. So again you see this is by no means frivolous for Quan Yizhen - this is actual important hard work for him!

I think it goes without saying that the situation is funny also because Quan Yizhen's so persistent about it. The heavenly court may have turned topsy turvy and everyone else may have very grown-up and life-and-death stuff to worry about, but Quan Yizhen will get these gold bars into Xie Lian's donation box (come to think of it he reminds me of the squirrel in Ice Age, they're both so locked in).

The problem is that, due also to being a professional hater, whenever he encounters something he doesn't understand, he has a tendency to simply immediately denounce it as 'absurd' or 'stupid', or simply 'incomprehensible', without updating his mental model or trying to figure out if there's something he's missing.

He's the guy who thinks he already knows better than anyone else - the one who doesn't hesitate for a second to call a character's actions 'OOC' even when the author himself says otherwise. Who doesn't hesitate to declare that he understands a character better than even the author does. And he's not entirely wrong (at least, when it comes to Luo Binghe and PIDW as a whole), but he's also unbelievably stubborn and has shut off his brain to any possibility of new development. He's also the guy who says that a character is acting 'OOC' after an extended period of thematic improvement and growth, because he doesn't like the fact that the story has gone in this direction but only knows how to express his opinions as objective fact.

He's intelligent, and loves to learn when it comes to certain subjects of interest (mainly monsters), but when it comes to other people, he's destructively incurious. If someone acts in a way he didn't expect from them - such as Luo Binghe openly flirting with him, or Liu Qingge acting protective, or either expressing anger when he gets too close to the other - he picks up on it immediately, and remarks on in inwardly, and then... immediately dismisses it. It's just 'strange behaviour', that's all. People behaving 'against their interests'. It's all just part of this ridiculous world Shen Yuan has been unceremoniously shoved into, and he can't possibly be expected to understand it all, right? It was all merely badly-written lowest-common-denominator porn, anyway. It is simply Not That Deep.

(And well: obviously this is all also a very good way to avoid confronting anything he might ever not wish to acknowledge. In the broad sense, that thing is 'I might sometimes be wrong about PIDW'. But more specifically... it is much easier simply to complain that Luo Binghe is messing things up for no reason than to acknowledge that he might be a little less straight than Shen Yuan believes him to be, or that Shen Yuan might not entirely mind when he makes these 'mistakes'.)

yess exactly, I think Shen Yuan’s biggest issue is that he is actually very smart (particularly with lateral/creative thinking, but analytically too!) and can be very good at reading people! but as soon as the reading has anything to do with himself those skills fall apart. Because this is a deeply closeted man who spent years in parts of the internet where being a real human being and not Ideal Man is cause to be mocked if not outright kicked out. So Shen Yuan, a notoriously adaptable person, has adapted so well to that environment that he becomes allergic to showing or admitting any vulnerability or emotion.

But Shen Yuan is good at reading people! He can tell when Luo Binghe is being manipulative and lying, but often flounders when it’s directed at him because he can’t admit to being weak to the spots Luo Binghe pokes at. He figures out Tianlang-jun almost immediately, and continues to suspect that Tianlang-jun is just heartbroken over Su Xiyan even while Tianlang-jun gives him a pretty good runaround of pretending not to care. He’s able to call out red flags in people’s stories—Qiu Haitang and Wu Chen, specifically—as being suspicious. He even knows almost immediately on meeting Yue Qingyuan that there is something deeper behind his relationship with Shen Jiu that never made it onto the page.

So like he's this humanoid armored warrior guy (weirdly snatched waist and cool features for an animated suit of armor etc etc), and he spawns in this abandoned ruin/castle where, if he follows the script, he's bound to just wait around this empty throne with a whole bunch of other haunted armors and cloaks and shit until Luo Binghe shows up to rip them apart with his bare hands and claim the power upgrade under the throne. Including metaphorically poignant scene of Binghe "resting" on the throne all blood soaked and so forth, Shen Yuan's wrecked body slumped artfully nearby.

Obviously, this is not ideal. Shen Yuan doesn't particularly want to be peeled like a tin can. But good news, the whole reason that the system has stuck him here is because it ran some numbers, and it turns out that as he currently is, Binghe has like a zero percent chance of actually surviving to reach Xin Mo. Logistical errors with making Airplane's slapdash world-building actually work have run cropped up, and they're so severe that unless he has someone helping him, odds are like 98% that Binghe's gonna die before he ever reaches the sword.

So Shen Yuan's role has been tweaked somewhat, and instead of just being a throwaway boss, he's got to help Luo Binghe unlock the new Heavenly Demon "summoning" ability and also become the like, primary target-slash-commander for the subsequent summoned minions. If he does it right, he will survive the encounter with Luo Binghe -- technically, the armor he's animating will still get ripped to shreds, but, when Luo Binghe uses his powers to experiment and re-summons him, Shen Yuan will come back. And the difference between animating a lifeless suit of armor and animating a badly dented suit of armor is... pretty negligible. There might also be a skeleton or mummy inside the suit of armor, but Shen Yuan's been too squeamish to take off his helmet and check.

Anyway, Luo Binghe arrives, the fight meets the system's requirements, and Shen Yuan gets rebooted into what is essentially Luo Binghe's first ever magically summoned minion. Like an edgy pokemon spliced with Wen Ning from MDZS. With this respawn he gains in-depth access to all of the system's menus and files on Luo Binghe and his stats and abilities, as well as the potential to command other minions that Binghe creates as long as A) Binghe promotes him to commander, B) he doesn't use them against Binghe himself, and C) those minions are a weaker level than Shen Yuan.

Shen Yuan figures that at some point, Binghe will inevitably create a stronger commander, as that's how these things tend to go, but as he's not sure what would happen to him in that case, he plans to postpone it for as long as possible by making himself as useful as he can. Only, Luo Binghe is now firmly in his era of experiencing deep suspicion towards everyone and everything, so he doesn't promote Shen Yuan right away. This leaves Shen Yuan with only partial access to his abilities, and Binghe himself struggling to master his new abilities and also command his new minions, whenever he summons them, himself. A division of his attention that frequently causes a lot of his fights to go south, and Shen Yuan is wincing as Binghe keeps suffering very violent injuries and barely pulling out by the skin of his teeth, trapped by the fact that his actions are severely limited unless Binghe explicitly orders him to do something.

Much as Shen Yuan would love to try and persuade Luo Binghe that the only thing he'd do with more autonomy would be to use it to get them both out of the Abyss faster, he can't talk. So it's a very frustrating situation for a while. He thinks he could probably write something, like there's no paper and ink but he could perhaps claw a passable symbol onto a nearby wall or something, but everything he wants to convey seems to complicated for that style of communication anyway. So he's stuck.

At least until Binghe finally gets into a fight that nearly kills him -- one of those encounters that the system had very grim projections about -- and Shen Yuan bends the rules on his constrained conduct to swoop in and rescue Binghe just in the nick of time. Despite this being necessary to prevent Binghe's death, the system blares at him for violating his story-based limitations, and Shen Yuan endures a "punishment protocol" which almost annihilates him, until Meng Mo interferes to keep his spirit from dissipating at the last minute (Meng Mo has figured out that he has his own consciousness, thinks he's like the ghost of some ancient demon warrior or other, and is aware that they're probably toast without his continued assistance).

Luo Binghe is then able to re-summon/respawn a form for him, and Shen Yuan wipes the metaphorical sweat off of his brow and decides to repress that whole incident as much as possible going forward.

Except, afterwards, he gets several updates from the system. Binghe promoted him! And Shen Yuan finds that he can fight under his own autonomy now, no longer as tightly restricted as before. Luo Binghe also begins summoning him a lot more, and keeping him around for longer. He starts talking to Shen Yuan as well, even though the conversation is distinctly one-sided. It's still a hell of a slog through the Abyss, but it's a major improvement on before. Shen Yuan tentatively takes it that he's earned a bit of trust, and vows not to violate it.

Battles begin to go much more smoothly with Shen Yuan commanding Luo Binghe's minions, freeing Binghe up to fight, and also less conspicuously managing and tweaking things in Binghe's favor via the system's windows. He can earn points to spend to help Binghe or himself unlock new abilities, upgrade the other summoned creatures, even buy small quests for Binghe and himself to go on in order to locate special items as rewards. One of the most expensive features SY is able to purchase is a map, which he can then use to begin directing Luo Binghe towards Xin Mo. The first time Binghe asks if he has any thoughts on where they should go next, Shen Yuan only has to point his sword determinedly in the right direction. After that, Binghe checks in with him pretty regularly, though even Binghe himself seems a bit bemused and wonders at times where Shen Yuan is really leading him.

Eventually they actually do reach Xin Mo, surviving the trials along the way, and Luo Binghe uses it to open a portal to the demon realms. The sword does horrific things to Binghe's status windows according to the system, however, and even the subsequent hookups Binghe has with some random demon ladies they happen upon afterwards (stupid stallion novel logic) doesn't do as much to mitigate the effects as Shen Yuan expected. He's especially concerned with the way the sword is eating at the "sanity" and "wisdom" points. He spends a lot to bulk those stats up to try and compensate.

Thankfully, though, Luo Binghe doesn't use Xin Mo as much as he seemed to in PIDW. Instead he tends to keep the sword sheathed unless they're facing down a truly intimidating foe, instead relying more on his summoning ability and Shen Yuan to clear out annoying opponents (and small armies). Shen Yuan even ends up being the one to duel Mobei Jun, while Luo Binghe just sort of stands back and wordlessly makes a point about how he's so strong, he doesn't even need to dirty his hands. Shen Yuan thinks Binghe is definitely making the right choice, although he misses the chance to watch him fight sometimes. He also wonders if Binghe might be waiting to see if Shen Yuan will falter in his loyalty, because damn if he doesn't watch all of Shen Yuan's fights really closely.

How to unclog a toilet without a plunger

How to fix a blown fuse

How to fix a leaky faucet 

How to clean soap scum from your tub and shower

How to escape from a house fire

How to make a budget and stick to it

How to sharpen a knife

How to clean a self-cleaning oven

How to clean red wine stains from carpet

How to clean blood stains from fabric

How to clean grease stains from fabric

How to do a load of laundry

How to iron your clothes

How to test your smoke detectors

Cooking Skills:

How to tell if produce is ripe

How to know if food is expired 

How to properly sanitize a kitchen

How to cook an egg

How to make rice

How to make pasta

How to put out a kitchen grease fire safely

How to use a gas stove

How to use a convection oven

How to cook meat safely

How to use a stand mixer

How to use kitchen knives properly

How to make mashed potatoes

How to make grilled cheese sandwiches 

Health Skills:

How to stop bleeding

How to treat a burn 

How to do CPR (on an adult)

How to do CPR (on a child)

How to do CPR (on a baby)

How to help someone who is choking

How to save yourself if you are choking alone

How to read a nutrition label

How to treat frostbite

How to recognize when someone is having a stroke

How to maintain a healthy sleep schedule

Mental Health Skills:

How to calm down during a panic attack

How to help someone who is suicidal 

How to meditate 

How to stop self-harming

How to recognize problem drinking

How to choose a therapist

How to deal with disappointment

How to cope with grief

How to raise your self-esteem

Relationship and Social Skills:

How to apologize

How to cope with a breakup 

How to accept criticism 

How to deal with bullying 

How to argue in a healthy way

How to ask someone out

How to break up with someone

How to recognize an abusive relationship

How to rekindle a damaged friendship

How to speak in public

Job Hunting Skills:

How to tie a tie

How to write a resume

How to write a cover letter

How to dress for a job interview (for women/femmes)

How to dress for a job interview (for men/masculines)

How to properly shake hands

How to nail a job interview

Other Skills:

How to sew on a button 

How to hammer a nail

How to change your oil

How to put gas in your car

How to jump-start a car

How to pick a good password

How to back up your files

Research options and talk with your doctor, but I haven't had a period in years thanks to my hormonal IUD. My kind is literally prescribed for heavy/painful periods as well as birth control.

Viva la fuck that bodily shit revolution!

TL;DR: 20% of people stop their periods completely. Everyone else has the joy of having them at least dialed the fuck down, because it literally works by thinning the lining that sheds during your period.

I plan on offering my daughter the option for one of these immediately upon it becoming possible, because why SHOULD she have a period for the majority of her lifespan just because Biology Says So. Naw man, if she wants to unsubscribe from monthly issues I'm 110% behind her.

Also! It reduces some types of uterine cancer!

might there be a reason this post resonates with a lot of women?

can you describe the phenonemon of learned helplessness? give an example.

in what ways might the gender pay gap have influenced this post?

And done! Pattern is Loch Ness Square Shawl (with added beads), on US2 needles with about 2000 yards of mystery wool (2-ply, cobweb-ish, maybe 2/36-ish). Very enjoyable knitting experience but also very glad to be finished.

Can't relate to everyone saying they like knitting lace but won't wear it... #MyGiantSquare

Option one: The murder victim was innocent while the killer was an abusive bastard, see Speckled Band. Conclusion, arrest and have the killer charged (Or in the case of Speckled Band, indirectly murder him yourself then shrug and go home)

they were POPULAR

the Victorians LIKED reading about women who won out over shitty men in their lives, even when that plotline reaffirmed a woman’s power and agency or put an active sexist in his place (ie Irene Adler besting Holmes)