Across The Multiverse!!

ANDOR | 2.01 - 2.03 + TEXT POSTS

i’m kinda obsessed with ben stillers bluesky

So, roughly 20 years ago, I got really into FMA bc of my older sibling, and we watched the original anime on adult swim together and I always liked it but I never read the entire manga series so I never knew how the actual story was meant to progress, let alone end.

All this is just to say that after 15 years, I finally sat down and watched the entirety of Brotherhood and I just… I want to scream at the top of my lungs bc I don’t know how else to express all of this emotion lmao. Like I’m going insane does anyone need anything!!!!

When I return a library book, I make sure to walk there holding it in my hands instead of in my bag. This is enrichment before it gets returned to the cold limbo of the stacks

okay so i finished checking if we were friends in every universe and, uh, it turns out we're only friends in 6 of them. but look, i need you to understand these universes vary like crazy, okay? like 6 is actually insanely high, like way higher than most. and one of those is the universe where i accidentally killed the actor who played Dipsy from Teletubbies when i was 7 and my life went completely differently as a result. and we still ended up friends! also you were a girl in that universe for some reason. what? oh, uh, yeah, you were cute as hell. like really cute. did you just fucking giggle

I apologise if you've already answered this, but I tried searching your blog and I'm unsure if you haven't or if it's another example of Tumblr's amazing search system.

I was talking with a friend recently about how much of a culture clash the Monk Class is compared to the rest of Dungeons & Dragons and was wondering if there is a coherent reason for their original inclusion. I'm aware that they're largely influenced by Shaolin monks as depicted in Hong Kong cinema in the 70's/80's as compared to the Sword and Sorcery stuff most of the rest of D&D takes influence from.

Basically, my question ultimately boils down to, "Is the Monk Class there purely because of an original player wanting to rule of cool their way into playing something wildly out of genre, or is there a stronger link between Sword and Sorcery and Hong Kong cinema that could have organically resulted in the Monk Class joining the rest of the classes?"

A lot of the link between the two was simply a matter of time and place. The kung fu craze hit North America at just about exactly the same time as the sword and sorcery revival that gave us films like Clash of the Titans and Beastmaster and The Sword and the Sorcerer and Dragonslayer and Krull – not to mention the Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan adaptation, which revived popular interest in first-wave sword and sorcery literature – so there was a lot of it going around. Analysis of early Dungeons & Dragons as a product of its media influences often overlooks that it was largely drawing on what was trendy in American popular media in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Even the tonally incongruous Lord of the Rings references weren't a deep cut; while the books were originally published in the 1950s, they'd experienced a strong resurgence in the 1970s, putting them firmly in the popular consciousness at the time that D&D was being developed. All this being the case, it's not surprising that early D&D was also substantially influenced by Hong Kong action cinema.

That said, the reason the monk character class in particular (i.e., as opposed to kung fu media influences more generally) is there is allegedly because one specific guy in one of the game's early playtest groups really, really wanted to play as Remo Williams from Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir's The Destroyer; several of the class's signature abilities are direct references to powers Williams exhibits in the course of the novels. Remarks from folks who worked at TSR at the time have pointed the finger at Brian Blume as the Remo Williams fan in question, though accounts are conflicted whether Blume was actually an uncredited contributor to Dave Arneson's Blackmoor (1975), in which the class makes its first proper appearance, or whether Blume's interest merely prompted its inclusion.

This is the case for the character archetypes in a lot tabletop RPGs of that era; instead of trying to work out what classes "ought" be be present, authors would simply start with the types of characters their playtesters actually wanted to play, often based on specific popular media characters, then work backwards to derive an IC rationale for why those were the setting's standard adventuring professions. Other examples from D&D in particular most obviously include the Ranger (based on Tolkien's Aragon, naturally), but also the Paladin (principally inspired by Holger Carlsen from Poul Anderson's 1961 isekai novel Three Hearts and Three Lions, also the source of D&D's goofy regenerating trolls), the Assassin, back when it was still a separate character class (probably mainly based on the Assassin Caste from John Norman's Gor), and even the Wizard to a large extent (less Gandalf than you'd think: a large portion of D&D's iconic wizard spell list is lifted directly from the 1963 Vincent Price film The Raven).

(I often think that modern indie RPGs could benefit from reviving this approach. Like, fuck textual consistency – just pick half a dozen of your favourite popular media characters without regard for the compatibility of the source material and work backwards to explain why these six random assholes are your game's playable archetypes!)

Never forget when a nerd from my high school when I was 17 and he was 16 or so said "women can't write shonen" and then two minutes later he said his favorite anime/manga was Fullmetal Alchemist. Never forget his face when my friend and I told him to check out who the author of that manga was. Never forget

WHY DIDN’T I SEE THIS A WEEK AGO

I would like all Americans (and everyone else) who are excited for the Superbowl to know: Before the actual Superbowl there's a live tournament on TV, here in Germany, called "American Ice Football".

It is exactly what it sounds like: American Football but played on Ice, in shoes with entirely smooth soles.

It's a tournament with 4 teams and they are called Eastside Ossis, Westside Wessis, Northcoast Naughties and Southside Smoothies and it's just hilariously entertaining.

Here's a video to show you how stupid it looks:

Kind of crabby. Not sure why