Yeah, an ogre union, "onion" for short

This and that embarrassing podcast are cut from the same cloth. It's "mockery" that does nothing to wound Trump. Clinton mocked him at the debates, too.

I don't like quoting people to "dunk" on them, but I also feel exhausted by those who'd go to such lengths to fight for someone who wouldn't pick a fight with a termite for them.

The reason Newsom's strategy "doesn't work" is that he's not fighting Trump, he's fighting the primary. People can tell.

I think Newsom may be aesthetically too far-left--too far-left in a geographical, cardinal-direction-on-the-globe sense. He clearly knows this and hopes to compensate by choosing "safe enemies" on the Left.

I don't know if Democrats care about that, but I do think it makes him look untrustworthy.

The "Thankfully," at the end is what gets me. They really do see two classes of human. It makes me feel nauseous.

He changed a lot after the union fight. All the men like him did. Animation studio heads. He made the wrong friends, got into the hard-right media, and never really clawed his way out.

To be clear, this is a good thing. The reason modern fantasy is bad is half because they've lost the Bombadil Spark and half because they don't have entire chapters arguing about logistics or raving about pretty horses anymore.

Fellowship of the Ring is the template basically half of 2000s fantasy copied off of, and you can tell because every single one of them has at least three Tom Bombadil moments. Eragon has an extended sequence where the author's sister shows up and talks about magic cats.

I love how millers were always the villains back then. It's my favorite old-timey bigotry. Millers were landlords but for wheat.

Gaffer isn't totally comfortable with The Gays and lowkey worries Bilbo is gonna corrupt his son with all this book learning, but y'know what? Bilbo's always been nice to him, he's good to get a beer with, and Gaffer's not gonna stand for any asshole miller's rumormongering. Maybe the gays are okay.

is he... you know... *mimes going on a life-changing adventure and acquiring an ancient forbidden treasure that will destroy his life*

The miller complaining about how that nice eccentric old writer is always having men visit after dark, how he's corrupting the young hobbits with his tales of scandalous, indecorous adventure,

wait this kinda blew up. wait! come back! I need to tell everyone how heavily Bilbo and Frodo are coded as old gay confirmed bachelors and how Gaffer Gamgee is the kind of allyship we need right n

Oh my gosh. I still reference Baman Piderman as my favorite animated webseries, or among my favorites (there are so many new competitors nowadays). I quote it endlessly and nobody knows what I'm talking about. This is amazing. Congratulations on getting it recovered!

Yeah, in my mind, that's a "cozy location" that just doesn't have anything going on! You always need hooks and potential rivals and stuff.

I'd say a great example of a "cozy location" is Pathfinder's Sandpoint, a quaint coastal town with ethical leadership and lovable bartenders. The key is to give the location an overall cozy vibe and then lace it with horrifying problems underneath.

sometimes skaven swarms will skip homes of people who are nice and leave food out for the rats in their walls. house-rats are like little fairy protectors.

but, you know, in a "we have been alongside humanity every step of the way, witnessing and exacerbating every societal ill, and when your cities fall, we will be here, captivated and enlightened by the swarm-mind one final time, to pick the bones clean" sorta way. 🐀

Me and @skcb.bsky.social were doing our own sort of "remaster" of the WHF setting at one point, and one of the big concepts was that skaven are just rats who get cleverer and more humanlike the more of them gather. As a prereq for this, they are, like normal rats, super-duper cute.