there’s a lot of evidence that the iliad and the odyssey were actually composed by a variety of poets through an oral tradition rather than just by one poet, so what if the homeric texts are actually just a very long game of D&D
homer, the dm: okay achilles, agamemnon has just taken away your war prize, what do you want to do achilles’ player: i roll to have a diplomatic conversation with agamemnon achilles’ player: *rolls a 1* homer: you throw the staff of speaking at agamemnon’s face and storm off to sulk with your boyfriend
Homer, the DM: Your beautiful Patroclus is dead. What do you do? Achilles’ player: I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: You can’t fight everyone. How would you even– Achilles’ player: *rolls a 20* I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: *sighs* Fine. You cut a path through the Trojan army, enemy dead strewn in your wake. Achilles’ player: How many? Homer, the DM: …lots. Enough to clog the friggin’ river with bodies. Achilles’ player: I fight the river. Homer, the DM: You. can. not. fight. the. river. Achilles’ player: *reaches for dice*
Homer, the DM: Okay guys, so the war’s over, you had a bunch of losses but you won in the end. Time to go home, let’s roll to see who gets there firs—
Odysseus’s player: I got a critical failure.
Homer: The cyclops asks you who you are. What do you do?
Odysseus’s player: I say, “Who me? I’m nobody.”
Homer: Roll for deception.
Odysseus’s player: I got a natural 20.
Homer: The cyclops now completely believes that your name is Nobody. He shouts for help from the other cyclops but they ignore him because he’s telling them that “Nobody hurt him.”
Our party—a bard, a fighter, and a ranger—were on a one-off side quest to deliver a letter to somebody. He wasn’t at his house (learned after breaking in, to the DM’s dismay), so we found out the general area he was in and went there, confusion in our wake and a spring in our steps. I, the bard, had decided that I would funnel every ounce of skill I possessed into charisma, and at level 5 had a +6 modifier. I had been using that power at every opportunity that arose. We wander through the foothills full of caves, looking for this guy, when our fighter rolls a nat 20 perception trying to look for any signs of life.
DM: You—okay, so. Yeah. With that, you actually notice about fifty feet away that a particular cluster of bushes is rustling just slightly, but not with the breeze.
Fighter: Oh. Cool. “Hey guys, I think there are some folks in those bushes over there.”
Me: “Cool beans! HELLOOOOOOO, MY DUDES!”
DM: There’s a few seconds of silence before four guys come slowly forward from the bushes. They look pretty rough and tough, and uh—
Ranger: Can I roll perception? Uh… that’s a 15.
DM: You deduce that they’re probably bandits or something. They’re walking forward and one of the guys says, “Who are you little pests, and what’re ya doing in these here foothills of ours?”
Me: “We’re just hanging out, traveling, and actually it seems like a good time to break for breakfast if you lovely gents would like to join us! I can brew us up some chamomile, I have like a thousand mushrooms I got earlier—”
Fighter: “I got that chicken, too, and jerky.”
Me: “Oh hell yeah, we’re gonna chow down if y’all want in on that action.”
DM: That’s, uh… that’s persuasion, advantage because you’re offering them food and seem too dumb to be dangerous.
Me: Thanks man. Uh… 14 total.
DM: *head in his hands* I just—okay, they join you for breakfast I guess. And yet again you avoid a fight I planned for you. One of the dudes breaks out some eggs from somewhere.
DM: ………<i>all of them???</i> I mean… sure?? I guess??
Me: Hells yeah. Rolling.
Proceeds to roll: 16, 19, and <i>two natural 20s</i>.
DM: *head on the table* Like. You—you make your fellow party members super uncomfortable. You are piled under boys, it’s kinda gross but super chill for you. Kent wasn’t super into the whole group thing before, but now he would straight up die for you. He’s learning a lot about himself today.
Me: I’m gonna write those names down for later. Can I put “a boys harem” in my items list?
once every few weeks i remember exactly how bad the narrator of fight club wanted tyler durden to raw him and wake up in a cold sweat haunted by the hordes of straight dudes who thought that this character was heterosexual
straight dudes: boy, fight club sure does speak to our specific, heterosexual form of masculinity! what a classic!
fight club’s actual narrator: i am in love with a man
Slammed In the Ass By The Alternate Personality I Created to Vent My Frustration With Consumer Culture and My Confused Sense of Masculinity by Chuck Tingle
Palahniuk is openly gay as fuck and the idea that str8 boys see this incredibly homoerotic book by an incredibly homosexual man as Peak Het is forever hilarious to me
in all honesty this is the most unreal, surreal, unimaginably magical thing i’ve ever seen in my life. they make sounds and i never knew. these things are gigantic. i’m so awed.
So ,I’m a music teacher and every year we have what are called “walk through observations”. Basically, this means that 4 times a year the principal or vice principal comes into my class to assess my teaching. Fine. Sure. No problem.
Well, today I was doing an activity with my 1st graders called “Musical Groceries”. Basically, they make up a fake shopping list and then together we figure out what the rhythm of the words on the list is. To do that, a small group of students plays the beat on the conga drum while the rest of the students move around the room while chanting the word. It sounds weird but it’s a great way for the kids to figure out the relationship between syllables and rhythm.
They quickly get bored of walking the rhythm so I let them come up with their own ways of moving around the room.( skipping, hopping, etc) One student suggested they hop around the room like frogs, way down low to the ground. Okay fine.
Or it was fine until my vice principal walked in to do my observation only to find 20 seven year olds hopping around the room like a hoard of little hob-goblins, rhythmically chanting “BREAD! BREAD! BREAD!” while five other kids played ominous beats in a drum circle.
I have never seen anyone look so confused in my life and I really don’t want to know the rating I got on my observation.
That sums up first graders decently enough in my experience. This is brilliant
just moving along like everyone else 