#Conan is great fun

[klikkat]

I like this analysis and it's very clever, but I think there might be some way in which it's incomplete - and it clicked when I thought about some of the other influences that characterized D&D's nascence. Namely, Robert E. Howard, author of Conan the Barbarian and Solomon Kane.

I think the problem with D&D orcs isn't that they're a poorly done take of LotR's Orcs, but rather that they're an uncritically straight translation of the barbaric savage from Conan, painted over with an orc-colored brush. And likewise, a lot of the seemingly-odd D&D choices, which don't emulate LOTR very well, can lead to a Conan, or Zothique, or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, or Elric story practically by accident.

The OD&D progression from "wandering ne'er-do-well" to "leader of men" to "local lord" is exactly what Conan does - from a thief in Zamora exploring the spider-haunted Tower of the Elephant to a leader of a tribe of Afghuli bandits in People of the Black Circle all the way to king of Aquilonia in The Phoenix on the Sword.

The random wandering monster reaction chart can lead to incidents like The Scarlet Citadel, where Conan unexpectedly stumbles on an evil wizard trapped in the same dungeon that he is, and who helps him escape (a "12 - helpful" reaction) because the evil wizard hates the same guy who trapped Conan down there.

Red Nails is basically Conan and Valeria teaming up with one faction in a dungeon to help wipe out another faction basically because they ran into the first faction first, and because trying to eliminate either faction by themselves would be suicide.

His adventure to Darfar in Jewels of Gwahlur has no greater motivation than "I hear there's treasure in that dungeon and I want it," a purpose to which a great many D&D parties can relate.

And of course Conan isn't a man to shy away from a good scrap. In Pool of the Black Ones he starts by murdering a pirate to earn a place on their crew (and showcase how effortlessly badass he is), while Black Colossus' third act is clearly where the GM breaks out the mass combat rules to fight the assembled forces of the sorcerer Thugra Khotan.

So like, I think seeing D&D as an LOTR emulator is getting it a little off-target: D&D is a Sword & Sorcery emulator with elves tacked on and the savage cannibals replaced with orcs, and the disjoint this caused has haunted the series ever since. It's not that Gygax was aiming at High Fantasy and missed, it's that he hit Sword & Sorcery right on the mark - and kept all the unpleasant baggage of the genre at the same time.

(Solomon Kane, being set in a more modern world, is a lot less subtle during Kane's wanderings through Africa; The Moon of Skulls has a particularly solid demonstration of the "fast-breeding savage race overthrowing the superior dynastic ruling race and crudely aping their religion while descending into vicious barbarism and cruel parodies of civilization" in the descendants of the Atlantean colony of Negari. The presumption that some peoples are just generally evil and hostile and can be gotten rid of without guilt is dyed deep into the source material.)

I've talked a lot about the specific types expectations that post-TSR D&D encodes in its players and I do think it's funny how some of the stuff I talk about sometimes seems to feel, like, huge and revelatory to people.

"What do you mean not all RPGs assume the player characters to be an adventuring party that goes on adventures together? What are they even supposed to do if there's no adventure?" Assume that D&D is like an Avengers film, about a group of heroes assembling and going up against adversity to save the day. A lot of games are soap operas, where the players create the central characters, pro and ant agonist alike, and then they're thrown into a powderkeg together.

"If there is no challenge rating or similar mechanic, how is the GM supposed to know if a given combat encounter is something the player characters can overcome?" A lot of games don't have combat encoded into the game as an activity that characters are expected to partake in just to demonstrate their strength. In fact, if combat does happen in lots of games it's usually as a last resort and something that requires an active player choice for it to happen. You won't get ambushed by bandits who are willing to fight to the death for no discernible reason just so your characters can demonstrate their strength and get one of their daily intake of five combat encounters a day (or whatever number games assume these days idk).

"Wait, there are modes of play besides combat that can have deep and granular rules? How can such a thing even work?" It can and it rules.

[akai-anna]

Round 1

Round: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

[marshmallowgoop]

I combined footage from my Detektiv Conan Blu-ray with audio from my Case Closed FUNimation DVD and made an HD English dub clip compilation for Episodes 57-58, "The Holmes Freak Murder Case."

[yumedoca]

HOLY SHIT, WHY IS THERE A DETCO REFERENCE IN MY URUSEI YATSURA??

Anyway, this reference is really funny and cute (and I think some episodes ago there was another reference but I'm not entirely sure for that one) since Detco also has a bunch of references to UY as well (this how I discovered Detco in the first place btw), so it's kind of like the UY remake is returning the favor :)

This is only one of them, there's a whole section in the UY wiki which lists most of them (which you can find here).

[marivanilla05]

My preview for the @conanredraw project!

It was so much fun participating in this project with everyone! I really can't wait until the full thing releases! Please look forward to it!

[lesbianjodie]

Ok folks here's a game:

The black organization is having a secret santa... what little gifts are our dear codenamed agents getting, and from whom?

Send me an ask and in some time (depends on like how many I'm getting at once) I will pick the best ones for each character and draw them with it!! Then a poll may be made for people to guess which agent made the gift 👀

[soratsuart]

Does anyone understand my vision?

[conanmythbusting]

That moment when your billionaire friend makes you buy their lunch.

[miyano-shiho4869]

I watched movie 27! it was very fun I had a great time

[shirleykarasuma]

Quick closet cosplay for Ai-chan!

I wore this to a local cosplay meet-up!

[hopelesslyprosaic]

A Different Kind of Queen of Crime- five ways that Dorothy L Sayers changed the way we see Sherlock Holmes

For my first Holmesian post- a crossover with one of my more usual subjects on my other blog! For when one is talking about Sherlock Holmes, in particular Sherlock Holmes scholarship, there are nor many more pivotal names than Dorothy L Sayers. Sure, Christopher Morley may have had a greater impact on Sherlockian culture, and Richard Lancelyn Green on Holmesian scholarship, to name only a few- but Sayers's contributions to scholarship and "the game" were early and underratedly pivotal.

If you're a Sherlock Holmes fan who is unfamiliar with Sayers's influence, or a Sayers fan who had no idea she had any interest in Holmes, keep reading! (And if you're a Sherlock Holmes fan who wants to know what I think about Sayers, check out her tag on my main blog, @o-uncle-newt. Or, more to the point, just read her fantastic books.)

There's a great compilation of Sayers's writing and lecturing on the topic of Holmes called Sayers on Holmes (published by the Mythopoeic Press in 2001), though some of her essays are also available in her collection Unpopular Opinions, which is where I first encountered them. It's not THAT extensive, and it's from an era in which Sherlock Holmes scholarship, such as it was, was still very much nascent. While a lot may have happened since Sayers was writing and talking about Holmes, she got there early and she made an immediate impact- and here's how:

She helped create and define Sherlockian scholarship: Don't take this from me, take it from the legendary Richard Lancelyn Green! At a joint conference of the Sherlock Holmes Society and Dorothy L Sayers Society, he said that "Dorothy L. Sayers understood better than anyone before her the way of playing the game and her Sherlockian scholarship gave credibility and humor to this intellectual pursuit. Her standing as an authority on the art of detective fiction and as a major practitioner invigorated the scholarship, and her...Holmesian research is the benchmark by which other works are judged. It would be fair to say, as Watson said of Irene Adler, that for Sherlockians she is the woman and that …she 'eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.'" We'll go into a bit more detail on some specific examples below, but one important one is that, as Green notes, Sayers was not only a mystery writer but an acknowledged authority on mystery fiction, whose (magisterial) introduction to The Omnibus of Crime, a then-groundbreaking history of the genre of mystery fiction, included a highly regarded section on the influence of Holmes on mystery fiction. She was able to write not just literate detective stories but literate critiques of others' stories and the genre (as collected in the excellent volume Taking Detective Stories Seriously), and as such, the writing she did on Holmes was well received.

She cofounded the (original iteration of) the Sherlock Holmes Society of London: While the current iteration of the Society lists itself as having been founded in 1951, a previous iteration existed through the 1930s, founded as a response to the creation of the Baker Street Irregulars in New York and run by a similar concept- the meeting of Sherlock Holmes fans every so often for dinner at a restaurant. Sayers, who seems to have been much more clubbable than Mycroft Holmes, helped run the Detection Club on corresponding lines as well. (Fun fact, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was invited to be the first president of the Detection Club! However, he refused on grounds of poor health and, either right before or right after he died, the Detection Club met for the first time with GK Chesterton as president.) While the 1930s society didn't last, and Sayers didn't decide to join the newly reconstituted club in 1951, her presence from the beginning was key to the establishment of Holmesian scholarship.

She helped define The Game: Sayers didn't invent The Game, as the use of Higher Criticism in the study of Sherlock Holmes came to be called. (The Game now often refers to something a bit broader than that, but it's a pretty solid working definition to say that it is the study of Holmes stories as though they took place in, and can be reconciled with, our world.) Her friend Father Ronald Knox largely invented it almost by accident- as Sayers described it, he wrote that first essay "with the aim of showing that, by those methods [Higher Criticism], one could disintegrate a modern classic as speciously as a certain school of critics have endeavoured to disintegrate the Bible." This exercise backfired, as instead of finding this analysis of Holmes stories silly, people found it compelling and engaging- and this style of Sherlockian writing lives on to this day in multiple journals. Sayers, with her interest in religious scholarship as well as Holmes, was well equipped to both understand Knox's original motivations as well as to carry on in the spirit in which further Game players would take his work, as we'll see. She also wrote the line that would come to define the tone used in The Game- that it "must be played as solemnly as a county cricket match at Lord's; the slightest touch of extravagance or burlesque ruins the atmosphere." While comedic takes on The Game would never vanish, her establishment of tone has lingered, and pretty much any in-depth explanation of The Game will include her insightful comment.

Some of Sayers's ideas became definitional: Here's a question- what's John Watson's middle name? If you said "Hamish," guess what- you should be thanking Dorothy L Sayers. (When this middle name was used for Watson in the BBC Sherlock episode The Sign of Three, articles explaining its use generally didn't bother to credit her, instead saying that "some believe" or a variation on that.) She was the one who speculated that the reason why a) Watson's middle initial is H and b) Mary Morstan Watson calls Watson "James" instead of "John" in one story is because Watson's middle name is Hamish, a Scottish variant of James, with Mary's use of James being an intimate pet name based on this nickname. It's as credible as any other explanation for that question, but more than that it became by far the most popular middle name for Watson used in fan media. Others of Sayers's ideas include that Watson only ever married twice, with his comments about experience with women over four continents being just a lot of bluster and him really being a faithful romantic who married the first woman he really fell for (the aim of this essay being to demolish HW Bell's theory of a marriage to an unknown woman between Mary Morstan and the unnamed woman Watson married in 1903, mentioned by Holmes in The Blanched Soldier); that Holmes attended Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (she denied that he could have attended Oxford, having gone there herself- fascinatingly, Holmesians who went to Cambridge usually assert that he attended Oxford! Conan Doyle of course attended neither school); and reconciling dates in canon (making the case that one cannot base a claim for Watson's mixing up on dates on poor handwriting as demonstrated in canonical documents, as it is clear from the similarity of different handwriting samples from different people/stories that they were written, presumably transcribed for publication purposes, by a copyist).

She wrote one of the only good Holmes pastiches: Okay, fine, I'm unusually anti-pastiche, and genuinely do like very few of them, but this is one that I love- and even more than that, it's even a Wimsey crossover! On January 8 1954, to commemorate the occasion of Holmes's 100th birthday (because, of course, he was born on January 6 1854- Sayers was more in favor of an 1853 birthdate but thought 1854 was acceptable), the BBC commissioned a bunch of pieces for the radio, including one by Sayers. You can read it here (with thanks to @copperbadge for posting it, it's shockingly hard to find online), and I think you'll agree it's adorable. The idea of Holmes and Wimsey living in the same world is wonderful, the way she makes it work is impeccable, and it's clearly done with so much love. Also you get baby Peter, which is just incredibly sweet!

I got into Dorothy L Sayers, in the long run, because I loved Sherlock Holmes from childhood and that later launched me into early and golden age mysteries- but it was discovering Sayers that brought me back full force into the world of Holmes. Just an awesome lady.

[doe-eye-oswald]

Despite its faults, Movie 27 was actually really fun and it might just be one of my favourites now. And it's hilarious that the two big reveals that upset everyone happened in the end credits. Like, if you don't watch the last two minutes of the movie, heizuha had a successful confession, kaito and shinichi aren't cousins and kuroba toichi stays dead (as he fucking should)

Also:

The soundtrack was fire

Kaito was just great in this movie

Heiji was out for blood when he went after Kid, like chill dude you don't show this much fervour when there's an actual murderer

Momijis only purpose in the movie was to be a rich nuisance and good for her

I'm glad heiji found conan's M.O. of doing incredibly unrealistic dangerous stunts by having a swordfight on an airplane

Ran saw the plot happen and was like 'I have no time for this shit I need to help heiji confess!!!' and she was so real for this

I don't know if this is actual canon or just movie canon but I really love how kazuha has really good hearing

They made such a huge deal in the beginning that Kid looks like shinichi but then didn't acknowledge how aoko looks just like ran

Aoko, my beloved!!!!

Another thing I really liked was how it wasn't solely conan who saved the day bc this annoys me sometimes so much

[livmadart]

Hiya to @californiaispurple my giftee for @dcmk-exchange ! It’s been great chatting with you over the past few weeks, much like we were talking about, here is an unshrunk Shiho hanging out with the girls! I realized the four of them would make the worlds most effective detective agency—Sera’s got deductions covered, Shiho could basically be her own forensic team, Ran can get people to open up and also very much chase down and stop the culprit, and Sonoko has the connections to get them anywhere they need to go!

This is based off a shot of the Detective Boys from the first opening! Many thanks to @dcmk-exchange for putting this together!! I had a lot of fun!

And to answer your last two questions from the most recent ask:

Who is my favorite member of the police force?

Sato and Takagi of course! He is the most guy of all time

What go me into Detective Conan in the first place?

I saw the name floating around online and i am a hugeeeee mystery nerd so of course i gave it a try! And then i watched the first episode and my brain rewired itself and the rest is history!

[vintagetvstars]

Jeremy Brett Vs. Jonathan Frid

Propaganda

Jeremy Brett - (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Three Musketeers, BBC Play of the Month) - "Listen, I fell in love with One Man when I was 16 and have never regretted it. Jeremy Brett is Everything. Handsome, charming, sweet, amazing voice, delightfully eccentric. Shakespearean actor best known for playing Sherlock Holmes in the 80s, he is widely considered the definitive Holmes and for good reason. Bisexual and bipolar, devoted husband, he was known to serenade friends at restraunts and hold scavenger hunts in his home, where he hid the plunger in a chandelier. Often pigeonholed into period pieces, he owned them. He was a pretty young man who became not just handsome but arresting. He was one of those people who walked into a room and instantly commanded attention, and I for one have never regretted giving him my attention." Full text propaganda included below the cut

Jonathan Frid - (Dark Shadows) - the man who brought the first sympathetic vampire in pop culture to life! he was so hot that they sent him on a ten-city tour. he was so hot that teen magazines auctioned off dates with him. he was so hot that allegedly women would mail him love letters and/or nude pictures of themselves! he gave what should have been a quickly-killed-off soap opera villain/dracula knockoff a sense of gravitas, intrigue, and humanity that ultimately made him the star of the show. watching him act is always a treat. I've also met several people who knew him, and overall he just seems like a great guy. there's a documentary about him free on tubi, i recommend checking it out! (fun fact, he was also gay. who on tumblr doesn't love gay vampires).

- No Negative Propaganda Please -

Master Poll List | How to submit propaganda | What is vintage? (FAQ)

Additional propaganda below the cut

Jeremy Brett:

“The superbly handsome Jeremy Brett, the regularity of his features made dramatic by a broken nose, the mellifluousness of his voice made arresting by a slight vocal impediment, presented a ravaged and romantic Holmes, a man who had suffered deeply and whose recourse to the syringe was the compulsion of a self-destroying temperament. His relationship with Edward Hardwicke’s transparently decent Watson was that of a drowning man clinging to a raft. The authenticity of the performance was unmistakable.” — “The man who created a monster; Conan Doyle hated the fame of his suave hero, but he couldn’t kill him”, Simon Callow, The Times, 18 December 2009.

Listen, I fell in love with One Man when I was 16 and have never regretted it. Jeremy Brett is Everything. Handsome, charming, sweet, amazing voice, delightfully eccentric. Shakespearean actor best known for playing Sherlock Holmes in the 80s, he is widely considered the definitive Holmes and for good reason. Bisexual and bipolar, devoted husband, he was known to serenade friends at restraunts and hold scavenger hunts in his home, where he hid the plunger in a chandelier. He also practiced archery in the middle of London. He could sing, he acted alongside Audrey Hepburn twice. He wanted to be a jockey when he was young but then grew a foot too tall. He had rheumatic fever as a child and was told he would never climb stairs. Dear Reader, he jumped over couches on film. In War and Peace he is very clearly the only actor riding a real horse, and is one of few actors who played both Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Often pigeonholed into period pieces, he owned them. He was a pretty young man who became not just handsome but arresting. He was one of those people who walked into a room and instantly commanded attention, and I for one have never regretted giving him my attention.

Jonathan Frid:

"HES SO CUNTY" - mutual's reaction to me sharing this photo:

[comicaurora]

Do you have any good-bad movie recommendations?

Pacific Rim is my go-to. In high school it was my default suggestion for movie nights, which one specific friend always justly shot down - until last week when he enthusiastically put it on just to see if it was really as bad as he remembered. It was, but ALSO as soon as the first proper kaiju fight started he was in it, and I consider that a win. Great fun for a movie night with friends, in large part because the dialogue really doesn't stand up to examination, which is always good for riffing. It's all very functional, just there to get across the necessary exposition so we can get back to the giant robot punching.

In terms of "why is this good though" I stand by the live action Scooby Doo movies, especially the second one where Shaggy has a metanarratively aware existential crisis about being comic relief.

I recently watched the 80s Conan the Barbarian movie as nerd homework and oh baby it's bad, it's everything that gave D&D a bad reputation back in the day, but it's bad in such a sincere way that I came out the other side loving it. James Earl Jones fires a snake from a bow. Instant ten out of ten.

[yawujin]

sorry to bother you but just a thought

imagine England , France , America and Russia with a reader who likes to read and LOVES their countries literature and poetry, like, they often catch them on the floor kicking their feet reading their countries classics

maybe even askes them to read a copy in it's native language to her while their cuddling

(just imagine America reading 'the adventures of huckleberry finn' , England reading 'wuthering heights' , France reading some famous french love poems and Russia reading 'anna karenina' in it's native language while cuddling with reader) <3

my book worm heart NEEDS some fluff-

your writing is amazing btw, been here a long time and your posts a comfort, seriously keep your head up , your amazing and beautiful !

love you and your blog

it's not a bother at all!! i think it's a very cute, sweet idea. i used to read books in danish to my ex all the time and it was a lot of fun. he really loved it, as did i :p i really appreciate the encouragement 🤍 i'm really hoping that one day, far farrr in the future, the books i am planning on publishing will be considered "classics" i can't wait :) without further ado, here is your request anon. thank you! and enjoy 🪄✨️

{ request } england , france , america & russia x bookworm! reader

type | cute , fluff , light hearted , russia needs a nap , short read

england ♥︎

his favorite place is home , so he really does not mind at all that they would prefer to just stay in to enjoy each other's company

england could read his novels for hours at a time, focused with no background noise save for the tick-tock sound of the clock. that sound gradually fades as he begins to read aloud.

the two quickly become invested in the story─doesn't matter if it's pride and prejudice by jane austen or one of the very many stories of sherlock holmes by sir arthur conan doyle

england has a really clear, crisp, and modulated voice that would be great for narration tbh.....*clears throat* audiobook is hiring

france ♥︎

france has a sense for beautiful things and there is nothing more beautiful than hearing them read the stranger by albert camus back to him. he really just likes seeing them enjoy books written by people from his country

he once purchased a really pretty bookmark for them, just because he thought perhaps they would like it ? <3

most likely to join a bookclub with them

ask him to read love poems and he will─one after another, until they're content

america ♥︎

might want them to just lay down next to him (or on his lap) (OR vice versa) while he reads.

he is more than happy to carry their books for them when they go to the library/bookstore together

if he finds them reading any classic american literature, he'll get really happy and start asking them: "did you get to the good part yet?" "how're you liking it?" "do you have a favorite character?" he just wants to know all the details

the type to watch the movie adaptation of a book with them so they can compare, just for fun

russia ♥︎

he'll read whatever they ask him to read. after doing it for a prolonged period of time, he'll begin to feel sleepy and rest. i imagine him being the type to feel punchy after reading all those small words on a page

would most likely gift them his copy of the idiot by fyodor dostoevsky

he likes to listen to them go on little rants about any one of the books they had started recently, all while reading the summaries on the back of the books

his favorite thing is when they start to play with his hair as he reads to them....no wonder he feels so sleepy afterwards (˵ ¬ᴗ¬˵)