Your Obedient Serpent

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277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

The Most Tumblr Punchline

I’ve noted before that my favorite punchline on Tumblr is “hang on, gotta look something up/okay that’s funny.”

Let me explain why:

  • It is a way to say “I don’t get it” without blaming the joke or the teller.
  • It is a tacit admission of ignorance without shame or judgement.
  • It assumes responsibility for acquiring the knowledge the respondent doesn’t already have.
  • It cues other people who Don’t Get It to do the look-up themselves, allowing them to get that full impact of Getting It without derailing the post with explanations.
  • It gives subsequent readers, whether or not THEY got the joke, a little frisson of good feelings when they realize that someone else is now In On The Joke.
  • It not only makes the original joke funnier, it gets funnier the more often it’s used.
Pinned Post gotta look something up okay that's funny
jackironsides
nervebynerve

“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin 

thydungeongal
thydungeongal

Having subjected myself to pre-WotC editions of D&D has robbed me of the ability to appreciate a lot of D&D humor contingent on "wow things were weird in the old days" because people will sometimes just get their references wrong and the anachronism doesn't actually elevate the humor for me. Like, if someone's trying to make a point about how weird old-school D&D was by saying something like "You know how Dwarf and Elf were classes in first edition?" while I do agree that it's funny when Dwarf and Elf are classes (and it also rules) I'm now more concerned about the fact that this statement is not true of any version of D&D that could be reasonably called "first edition." Or when someone makes a reference to THAC0 in the context of the three little brown books edition: THAC0 as a concept didn't even exist back then. Heck, the attack matrixes didn't even account for armor classes lower than 2. I know you're making a joke about how weird the old editions were but this is not the THAC0 edition. In this context you'd be better off talking about how this game relies on Chainmail for its combat system and the more well-known "roll d20 and try to hit a number depending on your character's level and the enemy's Armor Class" was an alternative system should the players not have access to Chainmail.

thydungeongal

I actually think that one thing that contributes to this phenomenon is WotC having dropped the Advanced from (Advanced) Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition. The current "numbered line" of editions of D&D, that is all the WotC editions, are direct successors to the two editions of AD&D published by TSR. Having dropped the Advanced from the title has sort of created this implication that there is one game line with a linear succession of editions, when in fact almost immediately after the release of the first version of D&D (which is popularly not referred to as 1st edition, but either "original D&D," "the three little brown books," or even "0e") the situation became more like. There being two separate game lines in parallel.

The reason I don't think it's reasonable to call the "Dwarf and Elf as classes" edition "first edition" is because 1) it's not first edition in the sense that it's not the original game 2) it's not first edition in the sense of being the first in the "numbered line" of D&Ds, i.e. AD&D 1e, and 3) it's not even the first edition of its parallel game line, being a major revision of Holmes Basic Set, and the differences between Holmes Basic and Moldvay Basic/Expert are to my mind large enough to consider them separate editions in the same way as AD&D 1e and 2e are.

athelind

As someone who started with Holmes Basic, this is all 100% accurate.

People say, “oh, you’re an old school gamer,” and make THAC0 jokes to me … and I just kind of look blankly at them, because THAC0 wasn’t MY D&D. I played AD&D1, but AD&D2 largely passed me by.

(I am pretty sure that the first printings of AD&D2 didn’t use the THAC0 abbreviation, even though it used essentially the same mechanic. I’m working from 35-year-old memories here, though, so forgive me if I’m wrong.)

I spent the ‘90s playing other systems like Champions, GURPS, World of Darkness, and whatever oddball indy game my gaming group thought might be interesting. My social circle treated (A)D&D as the “gateway game” for newbies, but “experienced” gamers looked for something more “sophisticated”.

As hard as it is to believe in this day and age, where D&D has a Chrome-like stranglehold on the market, that was not an unusual attitude in the pre-OGL days. It was not unlike the online gamer culture that dismissed some popular computer and console games as being for “casuals”.

Three or four decades down the road, that seems both condescending and naïve.

I was there at the Dawn of the Nerd Age D&D grognard old dragon is old sword & sorcery D&D3.x also mostly passed me by D&D4 and 5 COMPLETELY passed me by I am playing Pathfinder 2.0 these days it's my first extended excursion into a D&D variant since the mid-'80s other than a long-running Star Wars SAGA campaign which doesn't quite count because it's not sword & sorcery
jackironsides
depsidase

image
laurenkmoody

This is the kind of thing I respond with when my conservative relatives (several of whom are cops) complain about movements to defund the police.

If you frame it as "police are supposed to protect us, doing all this other work isn't their job" then it sounds like you are actually on the police's side--like, all the good copaganda shows have cops who want to defend the innocent and put bad guys away, but how can they do that if they're busy doing wellness checks or wrangling stray dogs?

It's a foot in the door, it makes them think, and that's where you have to start with the blue lives matter crowd.

ali3nboyfriend
ispyspookymansion

first they made it mandatory to log in everywhere. create an account to download your free template Log in to access resource give us your email nowwwww. Now the humble password is being killed too. open your magic email link! type your 6 digit code that we texted you because we required your email and your phone number! we’re gonna call you and whisper a code sweetly in your ear so you can log in to your account. yes it has a password but you cant use that anymore. okay? poob is gonna call you. now poob is just gonna call you.

ali3nboyfriend
sentimentalslut

trying to explain to tumblr that the Middle Class in not their enemy

sentimentalslut

saw someone say that someone complaining about only having 7k in savings makes them contemplate “doing something bad”

you know that 7k covers like. one hospital visit WITH insurance, right?

sentimentalslut

“people who make six figures shouldn’t be allowed to complain —“ most people who make six figures are, these days, solidly middle class. where i live, a combined household income of $110k is *lower middle class*.


“people who can afford homes —“ are typically 400-600k in debt for them. also if “can own your own home” is your threshold for the rich you are contemplating eating, i think you are genuinely stupid

“boohoo your investments dropped, stop complaining rich boy” idk how to tell you this but. most of us have a retirement account. you should probably open one