Future Grandkid: Grandpa, what was it like when Obama was president?

Me: Aah, yes… the Homestuck President.

what the shit does that mean

I see all of you people who had this post queue’d for 4/13. Good job.

AO3 Subscribers Poll

(please reblog and share for a bigger reach <3)

rachel animorphs is literally three seconds away from turning into a grizzly bear at all times but like that was true before she got the ability to literally do that

one fun thing about being a teacher in march 2023 is that chess is a literal epidemic among teens. we are starting to have meetings about how we can STOP teenagers from playing too much chess which is like if we were trying to figure out how to stop them from reading for fun. When i was in high school five years ago chess was nerd shit only but now it is transcending every social and language barrier and is absolutely rampant. kids aren’t on their phone texting in class anymore it’s ONLY chess.com. kids are playing chess on their phones while playing chess in real life. this is still better than tiktok because at least the kids are developing an attention span from this

the worst part of this is that they’re on chess dot com instead of getting an education. but the BEST part of this is watching high schoolers develop the weirdest goddamn strategies I’ve ever seen. One of my students invented something he calls the “evil advisor gambit” where he gets a third person to give out constant terrible advice to both teams hoping that his opponent falls for it straight-up or that his opponent thinks HE fell for it and will act accordingly thus worsening their own strategy. he has won every game he has been able to pull off a coordinated evil advisor gambit in. this is chess innovation never before seen in its 700 years on earth

Play Royal Affairs - Out Now!

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As the middle child of the Queen of Westerlin, you’ve led a sheltered life in the palace, but now you must spread your wings and prepare for your royal responsibilities with a year at the exclusive Archambault Academy.

Everyone knows your name, everyone has an opinion on what you do, and everyone views you as the face of the new generation of royalty. Your every move is reported in the press, a word from you could make or break a teacher’s career–or the fate of the school itself. You’re being courted by every club and social group on campus; and there are countless students who would love to be in your orbit.

In luxurious armchairs behind ivy-covered walls, you and your fellow students debate political theory—but outside, real trouble simmers across the realm. There are activists fighting to open voting rights beyond the aristocracy, and you can use your influence to sway the government’s decision in either direction. Relations are growing increasingly uneasy with your country’s neighbors, and there are conspiracies around every corner. Why is your mother whispering behind closed doors with the Prime Minister? Have the leaders of the protests really disappeared? Which allies can you trust? There are some secrets that only your royal authority can uncover.

Will you honor centuries of royal tradition and follow the path that your mother the Queen has laid out for you? Or will you be a force of change, leading your country in a new direction as you break free of a lifetime of expectations?

Oh, and speaking of expectations—there’s also the foreign royal that your mother wants you to marry. Who is in your class. And who happens to hate you.

When this tumultuous year ends, will you be Archambault Academy’s crowning glory?

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jason todd poses in photos like men on tindr pose with fish except instead of a fish it’s a gun

you guys are funnier than i am just take my blog

If you like the word “queer” reblog.

#fun umbrella. we r all sitting under it like the big rainbow thing in elementary school gym class

What Cursed DPXDC Ship Are You? uquiz

Take a gander at this funky uquiz I made. It took me over 5 hours and you can actively see my sanity wane as the questions go on.

WHY

NOOOOOOOOO

this sounds cute tbh. i was hoping for a hateship though!

also what the fuck is the sea people thing that the quiz mentioned. now i gotta do homework!

hey. what do a selkie and a ziploc bag have in common

resealable

Two-Face, brass knuckles dripping blood, black and white satin shirt with three buttons popped, sleeves rolled up to his elbow, golden rings stained with gore, announcing he's gonna kidnap Bruce Wayne

Bruce: Harv, this isn't you, come to your senses.

Also Bruce:

imagine if ur parents had to name u by the combination of their two names together

Reading through the Tortall books in publication order is funny because you start with Alanna “the village healing woman taught me all she knew” going off to become a knight, and end with Numair “world’s most powerful mage” as young Arram Draper first learning magic at the Carthaki university. Because of the 40 intervening years and five(?) different series further developing the Tortall universe, the magic system is now SO much more complex.  Arram is learning an elementally-based, heavily theory-dependent form of magic where conceptual power is applied to physical objects or energy constructs. His teachers make him develop skills in non-magical areas like juggling, jewelry making, and gardening so eventually they can safely guide him through complicated applications of magic. In comparison, Alanna complains that Duke Roger is spending too much time on theory in order to prevent her and her peers from learning “actual magic” and becoming his rivals. And then she throws purple light at things until they explode or she passes out! We also learn from Arram’s misadventures that most of “magic” is creating methods of applying, storing, and accessing power so the user doesn’t drain their own life force and pass out or die. Alanna uses NONE of these techniques; instead, she pulls her magic directly out of her own life force, thinks about what she wants it to do, and hopes she reaches that goal before draining herself. She even (sometimes) factors in the impact of magically draining herself of energy while attempting tasks that require both magical and physical endurance (such as when deciding how much magic to spend warming herself when making her blizzard hike to claim the Dominion Jewel.)

For one thing, this makes Alanna insanely powerful. In In the Hand of The Goddess, she breaks open Roger’s magically locked door (presumably designed by Roger himself– an immensely strong and well-trained sorcerer) by shoving her own magic into it until it MELTS. This builds an Alanna who decided magical theory was useless at age 12 because she has an immense access to magical potential energy, and who never learns the basic life-preserving models of magic usage that are taught in intro-level classes. She doesn’t have an interest in learning more sophisticated forms of magic, except in healing, which she cared about enough to learn non-magically. So when she heals, she uses magic as a guide or a supplement, rather than depending on it and then draining herself.  Since she isn’t attempting complex magic, most of the time the limitations of drawing directly from her own life force doesn’t impact her that much. The things she does magically all have much more efficient alternatives, but they require an understanding of magical theory and ability to store energy that Alanna never learned! If she wants to do larger spells, she just keeps feeding energy into it until it breaks or she does. 

The intervening series and Numair’s story makes Alanna’s simultaneously more and less believable. It now makes sense why everyone with even a slight understanding of Alanna’s type of Gift gets angry at times and tells her she’s using magic irresponsibly. (Before, we only understood Alanna’s side of the argument: “Well, I didn’t die and it worked, so calm down.” !!!) The fact that she never actually dies and only rarely is seriously harmed through her own magic use now requires some suspension of disbelief!

So you know which cryptid is at the top of my personal list for “most delightfully ridiculous cryptid?” The Slide-rock Bolter. It’s a lesser known cryptid that seems to have originated from miner/trapper folklore in 19th century Colorado, and…it’s a land whale.

It hooks onto the peak of a mountain with its tail and when it sees something it wants to eat, it lets go and zooms down the slope, swallowing everything in its path whole.

It is not clear how it gets back up a mountain once it’s done this, but I suspect it can manage.

Oh hey, this is the version from William T. Cox's Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods. Way before 'cryptid' got currency as a result of people trying to convince everyone that no hey Nessie is totally real i know a guy who saw her but the photograph got destroyed by MIBs, "fearsome critter" and variations thereupon was the preferred English term to describe imaginary bullshit animals and monsters of anglophone North America. You can see the source of the image above and other books reproduced at http://www.lib.lumberwoods.org/

For example, C.E. Brown's account of one of my favorites:

Or Cox's recounting of the Snow Wasset, a concept that delighted my college friends—a predatory mustelid that would shed its legs in winter to swim through the snow and ambush prey on the surface:

Fearsome Critters/Creatures are a properly untapped source of folkloric monsters and the like, and i dearly hope they someday have the cultural cache that youkai do in Japanese media.

sometimes i say things on twitter and then make a little graph about it

So you know which cryptid is at the top of my personal list for “most delightfully ridiculous cryptid?” The Slide-rock Bolter. It’s a lesser known cryptid that seems to have originated from miner/trapper folklore in 19th century Colorado, and…it’s a land whale.

It hooks onto the peak of a mountain with its tail and when it sees something it wants to eat, it lets go and zooms down the slope, swallowing everything in its path whole.

It is not clear how it gets back up a mountain once it’s done this, but I suspect it can manage.

Jason, fighting back tears: And then you went and replaced me with that perfect angel genius boy who does nothing wrong and always does as he’s told!

Bruce, already having war flashbacks to the time Tim created a fake family to avoid getting adopted, and one of the seven or eight times he dropped out of school: I can hear my stroke developing.

Tim, scrubbing soot off his face from the most recent den of assassins he blew up: Anyone want pizza?