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Heartwarming story: Little girl doesn’t have to do anything to fund her dad’s surgery because his expenses are covered by his country’s universal healthcare.

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Monster Stand-Up Comedy by Lee Gatlin

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I dont think there's any iteration of any tf that can bring more explicitly gay than their idw1 counterpart because it's written into the lore than tfs at their default are gay. Like it's originally a single gendered culture (before they started interstellar colonizing and travel) and by default they are all gay unless explicitly stated otherwise. You can't say tf//a Megatron is more gay because he's British or whatever (id argue that makes him less gay even) it just straight up doesn't math out

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Ed and Mustang’s relationship is really funny because Ed thinks they’re in an equally-matched battle of wills and it’s a matter of time until his inevitable victory and Mustang thinks that it’s an unfair contest and also that he’s the winner and the truth of it is that both of them are losers because one of them is a thirty year old man in a years long feud with a teenager and the other one is a teenager whose second biggest preoccupation in life is getting one over on his boss

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i love truck stops in winter bc i love a little good old fashioned reconnaissance. i’m at a wyoming truck stop eating taco bell with a bunch of random truckers discussing road conditions like we’re in a high fantasy tavern & inn and we’re warning each other about monsters and highway men. everyone talking about where we’re coming from and going to and how bad it’ll be getting there.

THE tallest man i’ve ever seen in real life just stopped me in the hallway by the coin operated laundry apropos of nothing and asked “which direction are you going?” i said east and he said “good” and walked away.

i caught up with him and asked why and he said “west’s no good right now. i just came from there.”

apparently a truck jackknifed and has traffic backed up ten miles but he sounded for all the world like he just found his village raised to the ground by an evil mage’s army

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“The Driver” by Jordan Bolton

My first book ‘Blue Sky Through the Window of a Moving Car’ is out now! Order it here - https://smarturl.it/BlueSky

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brother what

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Play a warlock character who calls himself Vithimorex or something like that. Always mention how grateful you are to your patron, Frank, for the wondrous powers he gives you.

Slowly reveal that the powers you get from Frank are things like “sense of smell” and “verbal communication”. As it turns out, Vithimorex is an extradimensional Thing possessing the person formerly known as Frank. All the eldritch blasts and shadow conjurations are boring powers according to Vithimorex. He can’t wait for the level 14 ability to understand and appreciate music.

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The Kingdom of Tiger-Men

A very long time ago and a very far way away there was a small kingdom. Like all kingdoms it had a king, and like all kings he had all manner of lesser nobles and knights and other such important people at his service.

The kingdom, however, was not just like all the other kingdoms. It was small and peaceful and prosperous, but the cathedrals were modest and the borders had not moved in centuries.

The King and his nobles looked at the empires around them with envy, but there was little they could do about it. Until, that is, they had a visitor.

One day in autumn, there was a knock at the great castle door. Before the guards could give so much as a "Who goes there?", the doors flew open, splintering the crossbar and sending the guards to slam into opposite walls.

There, pleased as could be, was a demon, dressed head to toe in a fine silk suit and carrying an iron walking stick.

"What, Oh King, is the matter, that I may aid thee?" The demon sang.

"Why would you aid me at all." The King replied, though he did not order his knights to attack.

"For I was nursed by your grandmother in hell, and that makes us cousins." The demon replied i with a bow in her sing-song voice. "For I am a demon and you are royalty and we know our own."

"Half the things a demon tells you are true." Said the King. It was an adage his grandmother had told him once upon a time.

"And the other half are true as well, though I'd rather you not check." The demon sang back. "What troubles you, sire?"

"It is my people." The King said, warily. "When there are crops to bring in or barns to raise they do not tire but when I ask for monuments they are sluggards to the last one. They rise to defend our borders but are cowards when sent to expand them, and when asked for alms their pockets seem bottomless, but for splendor to impress our rivals they are always penniless."

"Oh, is that all?" The Demon replied. "That is but a trifling little thing, I shan't even lie for the rest of our meeting because of it."

The King could not believe his luck. He knew whipping his sluggish kingdom to action was no trifle. And wouldn't the demon assume he was impressed with her entrance and think any such action easy for her? She expected him to be a rube, not a learned regent. He knew the half-lie game and so she was changing it, to give him whole truths so he'd go mad dismissing half of them. But he was more clever than that.

"How?"

"I will awaken in them a nameless hunger, for which there is no sating. Their hunger will drive them to dance to your tune, and their loyalty to you will be absolute."

"I will accept, but you must not inflict this curse on my line or any of the ruling classes. We must of course see clearly."

"I hadn't planned on that, but you may have it."

And the demon was gone as quick as she came, if not quicker.

It took only weeks for the change to be in the air. Every man, woman and child felt a need, as strong as hunger or thirst yet with no obvious route to satisfy it. Soon the king had no difficulty pushing his people to invade their neighbors, for perhaps the needed thing was in those foreign lands? He had no difficulty getting them to build his monuments, for accolades could distract from the hunger for a time. They built him splendorous palaces in the hopes that the completion of the project or its momentary use would break the curse.

And the King and his priests and nobles dangled every form of bait to pull the people this way or that. Each day they got hungrier and hungrier, and that hunger made them powerful and violent. They were like tigers in the shapes of men, ever-devouring every form of meat and experience in the vain hope of feeling full.

Decades passed, and the small kingdom was now a medium empire. The Emperor's grandson returned from the front, two mighty tiger-men flanking him on either side. He was drunk with victory, having watched his nation's warriors tear apart the enemy with little resistance.

In his haste to embrace his grandfather, the young prince whipped off his bronze helmet and tossed it aside. The nose-guard cut his cheek, sending a splash of crimson across the face of one of his bodyguards.

He hadn't meant to. The bodyguard was a favored soldier, one of the few of his class able to walk among the upper crust. He would never have done something so unbecoming on purpose. Intention did not matter.

He tasted his young master's blood.

And he knew.

The Emperor was too horrified to scream when the tiger-man's teeth sank into his grandson's throat before him him. He could see the metaphor peeling away, and for the first time he saw the truth in its fangs and claw and fur. The smell and sight of it awoke the understanding in the other bodyguard and he too shed his metaphors for the literal.

The Prince tried to beg, but he could not tell the one that annoyed him from the one that he made warm him on the front through the pain and growling and the crunching of bones.

The knights, of course, sprang to their lords' defense, but they were not tiger-men and were barely more than ornamental to begin with. The Emperor fled to his bedroom and bolted the door behind him. All around him, he could hear the roars of tiger-men, and the screams of nobles in their jaws.

And at the window sat the demon, smiling as she looked over the city below.

"You tricked me!" The Emperor said. "Into tricking myself! The bargain was under false pretext! I demand you fix this!"

"I'd love to help you, but I didn't trick you."

The demon sat there, pointedly not helping, so the Emperor knew which part was the lie.

"There is something that sates the hunger, the loyalty isn't absolute, and you planned it all."

"Aw, you're a smart one." She sang. "And I can hardly be blamed. I gave you everything you wanted..."

The door splintered. The Emperor looked through the frame at his subjects, every last one of them a tiger.

"And no one ever eats the rich, literally."

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i had a dream that time travel was invented and too many people choose to travel back in time to save the titanic from sinking (the question of whether unsinking of the titanic deserved so much attention in the face of human history was the subject of both heavy academic and online discourse), which caused a rift in the space-time-continuum that led to the titanic showing up indiscriminately all over the world’s oceans and sea in various states of sinking.

this caused a lot of issues both in terms of fixing said space-time-continuum and in terms of nautical navigation, and after a long and heavy battle in the international maritime organization it was decided that the bureaucratic burden of dealing with this was to be upon Ireland, much to their dismay. the Irish Government then released an app for all sailors and seafarers so they could report titanic sightings during their journeys, even though they heavily dissuaded you from reporting them given the paperwork it caused.

anyway i woke up with a clear image of the app in my head and needed to recreate it for all of you:

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Harrison Wood Hsiang

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the angle we didn't get to see. very ✨shiny.✨

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jesus, okay. bigb's fourth wild life session goes as follows:

bigb schemes with mumbo and grian to lure scott into their trap

cleo overhears. she rightfully gets mad at him

bigb tells her he was lying. cleo (RIGHTFULLY) does not believe him.

he says (TO HER FACE) that he's never done something like that.

SHE RIGHTFULLY REMINDS HIM OTHERWISE.

he goes crying to ren (wholesome box boys reunion!!!).

the way he explains the situation sounds like he deadass was going to help mumbo and grian and lied to cleo about lying. which is. hysterical.

ren ropes bigb along in his plan to kill and trap grian

while planning, bigb sees grian in the distance.

bigb lies about killing a pig for food, sneaks off and TELLS GRIAN. ABOUT THE PLAN TO KILL HIM.

bigb still ends the session allied with ren and martyn, neither of them knowing he snitched.

by the way both plots are executed about a million miles away from bigb. he doesn't even get actually involved with either scheme he's roped into. he literally misses the grian kill because he was too busy cooking.

and then he still meets with the Gs after all that, saying sorry to scott

and then he shoots pearl. which ends in him running away as she and cleo shoot after him.

all this to say: bigb is a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. in the WORST WAY POSSIBLE. this man is not as bound to the world of roleplay and alliances which means he does whatever the fuck he wants. i stand by my theory that this man thrives best when he's a lone wolf. he does not fucking care about anyone else, the only reason he has allies is for survival!! he's just a silly guy who does what he wants!! his principles are unknowable!!! his moral compass is spinning!!! he thinks consequences don't apply to him and he's wrong but he's not going to act otherwise!!! all he knows is eat hot chip and lie. and he drives me crazy

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mumbo thinks he could beat most the irl hermits in a fistfight. okay. let's see. welcome back, my name is grian and today we're all gathered here to kick off a brand new life series in the middle of this actual forest

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There is a weight to Skizz that Grian simply doesn't have.

The first time they fly together- he and Skizz, showing the new guy the skies above their ever-changing homeland- Grian can feel it. It's not just in the wings- he'd known well enough to expect the three sets, getting consecutively smaller down Skizz's back. From one angle they're just as white as any other angel Grian has met in the multiverse.

Yet they don't stay that way.

As light and shadow play across Skizz's wings they flash in colors Grian isn't sure even Scar could name, there and gone in less than a breath. It's a display, then it's camouflage, then it's just white feathers.

Then there's the sensation.

It's like- the air itself becomes solid around Skizz, a piece of armor. He doesn't let the wind carry him, rather he drags the wind, creating an updraft that Grian is more than happy to bounce around on with outraged laughter as the angel cackles below him, doing loops to send his smaller companion higher.

When their flight concludes Grian lands gently, with hardly a breath.

Skizz lands like he is the last locking piece the earth was forgetting, and when his feet touch the rock there's the barest little tremor as if something immense has come to rest.

-

Grian knows, of course, they all KNOW. Tango had been in those ancient wars, as well, and Etho and Doc- well.

Yet with Skizz it's- hard to remember, in a way it isn't hard to remember with Doc or Tango or even Impulse, cheerful as he is. Occasionally, there's a slip. A Moment. A flash in his eyes that's a bit too red, a word that comes out a touch too rough, a swing of a sword that bites through a post instead of just into it.

Skizz- he doesn't have those reminders. It sometimes surprises whoever might be around when the wings appear, normally just the two great primaries, far larger in span than Grian's and more flexible besides (since he's not, as Grian had taken pains to point out, ACTUALLY an avian, so it's not like his wings need to function scientifically; they're more there because angels fly and angels fly because they have wings, done and dusted.)

There's always a moment. Oh, that's right. Skizz has wings. Skizz is an angel. Skizz once powered the God Beacons in the early server wars, a living battery that kept the Holy on their crusade until the first great Crashes brought about the Dark.

Skizz is older than their server, than redstone, than time.

Skizz knows Impulse's full, true name, and Impulse has seen Skizz with all of his Eyes open.

Oh, that's right.

Skizz is something more.

-

Skizz doesn't make it hard to remember on purpose, any more than Impulse or Tango or Doc make it easy to remember on purpose. He just is what he is- goofy, excitable, ready to lend a hand or a suggestion or just be there as a silent warmth on which you can lean and cry.

That's why it's so jarring when the zombie horde happens.

It's a combination of things- the day has just wound down to night, Scar and Grian are near a village, everyone else has gone to bed and Scar just needs one more poppy for the red dye for his new tents. Easy.

Until there's fifteen zombies pouring out of the spaces between the houses, groaning and reaching, mouths open and eyes- where applicable- vacant.

It's a run and gun scenario if Grian ever saw one and that's what he's doing, half-hauling Scar along, his larger companion firing with that frighteningly accurate bow even as he's yelping in alarm.

Still there's too many, and their respawns are so far, and damn it one stupid poppy-

There's a sound that's an absence of sound.

Grian will realize later that it was a concentrated sonic boom, the sound barrier shattering and then coming together again in a single moment as a whitehot streak comes down from the sky.

This time Skizz does not land like a locking piece of earth.

This time Skizz lands like the end of all things, like the cold iron of space that fills the void between stars, like an angel who was once so feared that his name became a prayer and a curse and a plea until he couldn't bear the sound of it and begged his only friend to give him another.

The zombie he landed on is less than ash.

The three who had been closest are bisected laterally, their top halves burning into nothing and their bottom halves becoming moist slag on the ground.

Scar has already covered his eyes but Grian can see the halo, a writhing spike of golden fire that screams as it circles Skizz's head, its points blurred to a single singing line daring anything to come within reach.

Oh, Grian thinks to himself, not all of the scars are scars.

Some of them are Eyes.

Then he closes his own eyes, behind which he sees nothing but spots as he hears the sound of zombies dying a second time, though presumably it is their first death by holy fire.

-

"So that was. Overkill."

"You think?" Scar wheezes. Skizz laughs awkwardly as he helps the other man up, offering a regen potion. "Sorry, buddy. I was coming back from the mangrove farm and I looked down and- well. Some habits die hard."

Grian could say something. Could gently goad Skizz into talking more, do that thing he is so very good at doing.

Only Grian, despite what some might say, does know when to let the sleeping dog lie. So he only says, "How did you not break your face?" and laugh at the appropriate time when Skizz says with that lopsided grin, his eyes still shining a little too brightly, "Practice, G. Practice!"

-

No one on the Hermitcraft server is a clueless innocent. There are skeletons in every closet and that's part and parcel of belonging- there is no perfection here.

Like Cleo's state of perpetual paused decay, like Gem's refusal to be far from water long, like Doc's long hours and Etho's red stained fingers, Mumbo's sudden quick jerks towards a voice only he can hear and Cub's careful symmetry, they are all of them followed by stories and ghosts.

If Skizz's ghosts howl like lost souls, well.

Grian figures his friend has come to the right place, like Impulse all those years ago.

There's plenty of sky for them and their demons- the kind that don't wait for them patiently to roost.