Walked by Husky

(I nearly just typed "Shipping for heating oil", which would be something else entirely... Never mind. 😅 )

Some of you will have noticed that the geopolitical temperature has risen abruptly today. I'm still working to pull enough cash together to do a heating oil order today so that I can (pretty much nearly) fill the house's tank... and then [theoretically] go back to paying attention to what I need to be doing, which is working, and not freaking out about a house it's too cold to write in.*

I've only got a couple of hours left today (till around 5:30 PM Irish time) to get an order in before the price goes sky high, tomorrow, secondary to whatever tragic crap is apparently about to bust loose (and will doubtless adversely affect the markets even if it doesn't).

Want to assist? This would be a REALLY good time to buy some ebooks.

The 9-volume Young Wizards revised editions bundle is here.

The Whole Store bundle, if you're feeling goofy enough to buy the whole shebang, is here. (And the price remains goofy too. Seriously, I should have my head felt.)

Otherwise... already got too many ebooks, but want to assist in some other way? There's always my Ko-Fi. (And many thanks in advance to those who go for this option. It's really useful...)

In any case: thanks to everybody who wants to lend a hand with getting this particular chronic worry off the table. ...And thanks, too, to those of you who can't assist, but will be thinking Good Thoughts. I know you're out there.

(sighing) And now back to the werewolf recipes...

In 2017, American film researchers recovered “Something Good – Negro Kiss,” a short film depicting a playful kiss between a Black couple which had not seen the light of day for more than a century. A long-forgotten artifact from the earliest years of American film, the sweet, humanizing vignette, produced by the Selig Polyscope Company, makes a startling contrast to the overwhelmingly racist and blackface-ridden contempory portrayals of African Americans. Four years later in 2021, archivists in Norway, halfway across the world, identified a sister short in their collections—an extended alternate cut which reveals more of Chicago stage performers Gertie Brown and Saint Suttle’s vaudeville-like routine, a theatrical, hot-and-cold romantic dynamic between two lovers which parodies the popular and controversial short “The Kiss” (1896). Both films, which had previously been lost, were known from entries in old motion picture catalogs but had been assumed to be era-typical, anti-Black “race films” until their rediscovery in the 21st century. Together with its more famous sibling, which has since been inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, this alternate version of “Something Good” represents the first-known instance of Black intimacy ever captured on-screen.

etalkctv: Dreams are coming true on the Met Gala red carpet! 🤍

Zendaya had a fangirl moment while posing for photos at the Met Gala when she turned around to find the entire carpet consumed by THE Diana Ross’s train. This is the first time Ross has attended the Met Gala in over 20 years. Always the multi-hyphenate, Miss Ross designed her own outfit for the occasion.

What makes this sighting even better is that Zendaya appeared to be paying tribute to Diana Ross’s look in the 1975 film ‘Mahogany’ with her all-white Louis Vuitton silk suit and hat (of course, accessorizing with her diamond engagement ring from Tom Holland).

Zendaya’s suit itself could be paying homage to actress and actress Bianca Jagger who wore an all-white suit to the Kenneth Jay Lane party the year before ‘Mahogany’ in 1974.

What do you think?

‘La Baker’ in Voilà, 1933 

D&D writing, by and large, encourages a lack of questions. The surface runs deep. "Go into a cave and chop up goblins." Why are we doing this? "Goblins are bad." All goblins? "Yes."

I think the question of "why are there players comfortable siding with fascist factions and wondering why they're called 'lawful evil'" is pretty easily answered with... because D&D itself is inherently kind of fascist. And it's the most insidious kind of fascist, too- its villains are fascists, so how could you point fingers at the book?

Fire Giants are dwarf slavers. Drow are a megalomaniacal theocracy who hate men. Orcs are violent tribes of marauding killers. Illithids want to destroy all life and keep an entire civilization to scrub their floors. But these narratives still push the idea that "evil" is a racial trait. The players are not only justified in their campaign to destroy these cultures, they're encouraged to do it.

I had an intro to my campaign that involved a mad scientist kidnapping someone and turning them into a wererat. I didn't think much of it and I spent way more time fleshing out the other NPCs, I just wanted to use that wererat as a boss fight.

Once the party encountered him though they immediately saw what I totally missed: the guy who became the wererat was absolutely the victim of this story. I did my best at thinking on my feet and made the wererat this defeated guy who only followed the mad scientist because he felt like his life was ruined. So they, through good rolls, convinced him to help them fight the mad scientist and it made for such a better story.

anyone interested in the subject should definitely also check out the whole Three Black Halflings podcast, which talks about being black in nerdy spaces. a lot of times they’ll have on guests talking about their intersections and experiences in nerdy spaces. they have an episode with the author of the articles above.

they’ve also played a ttrpg based on african mythologies rather than mostly european ones like most mainstream fantasy.

Like I'm sorry to tell you, but if you keep playing shit that tells you some races are inherently evil and deserving of eradication, then yea. That will absolutely seep into your subconscious beliefs and worldview.

"Sometimes people are born and girl and feel they should have been a boy, so they decide to live as a boy". My four year old understood that instinctively.

"Sex is when people touch each other's bodies and it feels good, but it's usually something you don't get interested in until you become a teenager. Masturbation is when you touch your own body and it feels good. " That was how I explained sex to a 6 year old.

"Some people are having a hard time with drugs or have a mental illness that needs treatment. If you see someone acting weird in public but they aren't hurting anyone or themselves, you can just give them space." A classic city neighborhood lesson.