I feel like this is pretty important to realize: the cops are becoming exhausted, and there’s a limited supply of them. NYPD has every cop on duty working full days every day. We have an unlimited capacity to rotate in fresh fighters that they simply do not have. We can take shifts. They can’t.
This is also why we’re starting to see bare minimum concessions now. The powers that be have realized they’ve made a grave miscalculation. A week into it, and ideas that seemed utterly impossible even a month ago are on the table- LA is talking about a hundred and fifty million dollar budget cut for the LAPD, every cop directly involved in George Floyd’s murder has been arrested and Chauvin’s charge has been raised to second degree murder, parts of the Minneapolis city council is pushing to permanently disband the Minneapolis police department.
What could we win with two weeks? Three? An organized general strike that brings the entire economy to a crashing halt? It is difficult to feel hopeful in such brutal times, but there is profound hope to be had in the realization that a week of getting our asses kicked has advanced the mainstream narrative around police so much further than electoralism would’ve dared to dream in 100 years.
ppl love to talk about how zuko radiates warmth like a space heater without ever mentioning the crucial factor which is this: if he controls his body temperature, then he is clearly doing that on purpose, because he knows that it means people will cuddle him. everyone thinks they are taking advantage of his body heat without ever stopping to consider that he is the one on the receiving end of all of this affection. you fools. you stepped right into his diabolical plan to maximize hugs. oh, you dimwits. his scheme worked perfectly and you’re all none the wiser.
So in Goblin Squad D&D yesterday, our Barbarian had just… the stupidest, DUMBEST, most terrifying, absolutely godlike thing happen to him.
This is a story of numbers, but it’s still beautiful.
We were fighting a dragon.
The dragon is hopping around while the Barbarian is just racing around trying to catch up to her
Dragon finally decides, no, really, fuck specifically THAT ranger and goes hog fucking wild on me (I LIVED!) but holds still long enough for the Barbarian to finally rage and LEAP ONTO HER BACK and go STAB
Dragon sees this and goes, “Oh. Sick.”
and just goes VERT
Pro: I am not tanking anymore
Con: She instantly moves FOUR HUNDRED FEET STRAIGHT UP INTO THE AIR…. with our raging Barbarian holding on for dear gottdamn life
One round later, she’s another 160 feet up, still getting stabbed by a Barbarian who has somehow held on, now getting attacked by ballistae and we’re all starting to get CONCERNED
Because if they take that dragon down, that is 560 feet our Barbarian is also falling out of the sky, and he is not attuned to the ONLY THING WE HAVE that can save his fucking life from that height
I’m sitting there doing math, trying to determine if 560′ is enough to kill him outright, silently being very grateful we still have exactly ONE diamond to rez his ass
and the dragon just goes VERT again, ANOTHER four hundred feet in the air
The Barbarian, now finally free from any potential collateral, cackles, as he is at long last, unshackled by the restraints of his conscience.
He has a tattoo, you see, which allows him to cast Fireball once per day
centered on himself
with a save which he autofails
But he is a tiefling.
And this fucker still has 160 hit points by the time it’s done exploding. But the explosion sends him backward as he fails the Athletics check to continue holding on and he begins to fall.
He falls for 3 fucking rounds and we can only watch our friend fall to his certain death.
The DM… has to roll ninety six d6s
let that number sink in for you
NINETY. SIX. D6s. They normally roll with real dice, you can hear the clickety clack through the discord, but they had to get out a fucking app for this because they do not OWN ninety. fucking. six. d6s.
It comes out to 402 fucking bludgeoning damage he takes on impact as he leaves a Barbarian shaped crater in the center of the forum, 10 feet wide, 5 feet deep, a cloud of dust and broken brick shooting out as he lands.
And do you know what happens next?
Do you know what the fuck we see as the dust settles?
We hear a cough, and a see a thumbs up come out of the crater. 1 hit point left.
402 damage. Raging as he landed, halved to 201. He had 160HP left, it only brought him down to -41, not enough to kill him outright (you have to get equal to negative your max HP), AND HE’S LEVEL 12, which means he has access to Relentless Rage: the first time you’d drop below 0 HP, if it doesn’t outright kill you, you have to roll a Con save of 10 or higher to instead drop to 1 HP. He rolled an 11.
He fell almost a THOUSAND feet from the air off the back of a fucking dragon, took NINETY SIX D6 FALL DAMAGE, AND LIVED.
His arena name lived up to the hubris of this fucking swan dive. All hail ALTANIN, THE UN-FUCKING-BREAKABLE
I wonder what kind of symbolism they’re trying to get at
“There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us. Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious. None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians. There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool. If we had known the show would get distributed in the US and Europe we might have rethought that choice.” -Kazuya Tsurumaki, assistant director/art director on Neon Genesis Evangelion
