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Listen if the study of ancient humans doesn’t make you at least a little bit emotional idk what to say.

I started crying today at the museum because they had reconstructed the shoes of Otzi the iceman.

Either he or someone he knew who cared about him made these shoes out of grass and bear skin and twine and he was wearing them when he died over five thousand years ago.

And a Czech researcher and his students did reconstructions of these shoes and wore them to the same place where he died to test them out and they were like yep! These shoes are really cozy and comfy and didn’t give us blisters while hiking!

Is that not just the coolest shit ever????

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One thing I’ve never understood about D&D druids is how they’re so often imagined as stationary. They’re found ‘guarding sacred sites or watching over regions of unspoiled nature’. And, I know. This is mainly because of the imagery and popular imagination around sites like Stonehenge. But.

If I had the druid spell list? I would take Create Bonfire, and I would take Goodberry, and I would take Create or Destroy Water, and I would pack up a sleeping bag, and I would just start walking. Where? Everywhere! What’s down that road? What’s over that hill? What’s up this river? What’s past this forest? What’s over those dunes? Let’s go see! I can’t starve. I can’t parch. I can’t freeze. I can go forever. So I’m gonna.

Honestly, the druid should be the picture of the wandering vagabond. They have everything they need. You can just walk and keep walking, wherever the wanderlust takes you. You wanna go across an ocean? You can make drinking water. Ships should pay to carry you. You wanna go across a desert? A baby druid with one level and 2 measly spell slots under their belt can still make food and a gallon of water a day for 10 people. Druids should be the explorers, the navigators, the pathfinders. They can travel endlessly, without hurting that which they pass through, the very picture of ‘leave nothing but your footprints’. They can walk the earth, stopping here or there along the way to help where they need to help, and fight what they need to fight, and then they can move on again.

Yes, some druids get tired and settle down. Circles are formed, and that’s how baby druids get their starts, finding a circle. And some areas do need a permanent circle to defend or watch over them. But I do think there should be more of a picture, more of an image, more of an option, for the druid as the wanderer, the rover, the vagabond. A pocket full of berries and a wave of a hand for some rain. Just head out and follow your feet. What could stop you?

(Particularly the Stars druid, my beloved. Could there be a better picture of a navigator? That’s where a Stars druid belongs, at the prow of a ship, or guiding their people across trackless dunes, or carrying news across vast ice fields under an endless polar night to keep tiny isolated hamlets connected. Follow the stars, follow your feet. Yes, accomplish things in the process, but the journey itself is also enough. Just walk. Go. The stars will guide you).

Sorry. In real life, so often, I just really want to see what’s down that road, or over that hill. And, like. As a druid you could just go. You have all you need from a standing start. Well. You’ll have to get clothes and good boots and shit, but you can totally feed and water yourself for completely free and regardless of natural resources out there.

More druid wanderers, is my point here. Yes, still some druids guarding henges and forests, but more druids just walking about, poking their noses into things. There is no better spell list to indulge your wanderlust and curiosity. And that’s without getting into wildshape and the eventual ability to explore under the oceans and into the air. There’s a whole world full of nature. You don’t have to tie yourself to one little bit, unless you want to.

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Sigrun my dear Sigrun

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Calamity really was completely on another level. I wish I could go back and experience it for the first time. I wish I could re-experience “Patia, are you weakest, do you feel, at the elbow or the shoulder?” “Because I didn’t do anything WRONG!” “You solve the mystery of who your children were.” “I am the last dragon of Avalir, and you will do as I command.” “My best.”

Fuck, man.

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I cannot overstate how much I love Tom Lehrer's story. It sounds so fake but is entirely real.

He's a goddamn genius- he started studying mathematics at Harvard when he was 15 and graduated magna cum laude. He worked at Los Alamos for a few years before being drafted and working for the NSA, where he claims to have invented jello shots to get around alcohol bans.

He then went back to Harvard for a couple years before starting to teach political science at MIT.

Through all of that, he was writing and performing both some of the funniest shit you'll ever hear (Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, Masochism Tango) and absolutely scathing political satire (Who's Next, Wernher von Braun, Send the Marines). Until the mid/late 60s counterculture gained momentum. He didn't like their aesthetic, so he stopped making music.

Shortly after, he moved to California and started teaching math and musical theater history at the UC Santa Cruz for the next 30 years.

I don't know if non-Californians understand just how goddamn funny that is. It's where stoners and math (and now computer science) kids who couldn't get into Berkeley go. Leaving Harvard/MIT for UCSC is peak academic phoning it in. And by all accounts he had a blast.

Plus the whole putting all of his music in the public domain thing. That fucked.

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The one bizarre thing to me about textiles is that warp-weighted weaving is at least 6500 years old, but our oldest knitted artifacts are only ~1000 years old, and crochet 200 years old. Even though you need less equipment to knit (two sticks) or crochet (one hook) compared to warp-weighted weaving (frame, loom weights, batting, heddles). Why the big gaps between these inventions? And why did each one appear and spread when it did?

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People might bring up Vincent van Gogh as an example of a painter who did great work in spite of, or because of, his suffering. I like to think that van Gogh would have been even more prolific and even greater if he wasn't so restricted by the things tormenting him. I don't think it was pain that made him so great, I think painting brought him whatever happiness he had.

—David Lynch

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do you think the iron bull ever looked at the shit the rest of the party got away with and was like man i didnt even need to say all that

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This is great! I'm so glad you've tracked down so many of these dialogues and added to this project. Some of them I definitely remember from the game, I just hadn't been able to track down video when I originally did these transcripts.

I think your commentary is right on the money, too. All the non-human characters have dialogue which is meant to convey information about their species and attitudes, and Garrus, in particular, says a lot of stereotypical-turian stuff that is pretty unappealing. It's interesting that Ashley and Kaidan have so much dialogue, especially considering they can't be used together for the last section of the game.

Mass Effect 1 Elevator Dialogues

All right, here it is!

First, some disclaimers:

I believe these transcripts to be accurate, but some errors may have crept in.

I do not believe these transcripts to be complete. You can see for yourselves that some pairs of characters have more dialogues than others; I’m fairly sure some exchanges are missing, in spite of my attempts to find them on youtube.

If you know of exchanges that I have missed, I would be happy to know about transcripts or video of them so I can add them to this post. I am not, however, in a position to play the game endlessly to get particular exchanges to fire.

I could not resist adding brief commentary, which represents only my own opinions.

You will notice that there is some repeated dialogue – some characters’ lines can occur in combination with several other characters. I would guess this is partly an economy on Bioware’s part, and partly to increase the probability that certain information comes across.

Thank you to @hoarous, @syzara, and @thelastunicorg for helping point me toward relevant video. Also for @jadesabre301 and @omegastation, who expressed interest in seeing transcripts.

The following post is long, about 3600 words, and is after the cut, with exchanges sorted by pair of characters. The numbers are just for reference; I don’t think the dialogue necessarily triggers in that order.

Keep reading

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Quick study of Garrus Vakarian

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Help I love them in my simple style

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so don’t get me wrong because a lot of arthurian stuff is super misogynistic. but it’s never really in the damsel in distress way you expect. like the most helpless damsel is lancelot trapped and crying in a tower, completely useless, until this random girl who made him behead a guy in front of her fifty pages ago rolls up with a pickax and rope and is like “ok I’m minecrafting you out of here.” and this works.

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fiber crafts is like oh you think you know how to count? think again. also count again.

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title cards in The Green Knight