Fantasy Heartbreaker is now accumulating spam at about the same rate as actual comments. I’m amused by some of the subjects.
Ren Faire garb
Henry VIII, local version
This is kind of funny, because one of my favorite genres of fantasy gaming is what I call “ren faire fantasy.” The main characteristics of ren faire fantasy are a large, somewhat inexplicable middle class, pirates, lots of specialty shoppes, colorful clothing, and a lot of “cheeky wenches.”
Honestly, it’s kind of Warhammer FRP with less fantasy races and less James Wallis.1
Anyway, the odd bit here is that I’ve been meaning to do a discussion of ren faire fantasy and why it’s actually quite a lovely thing, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. So it’s rather as if I’m getting spam from the future.2 Complete with wenches!
Christian Dating
It’s nice to know that robots don’t believe all those Jack Chick stereotypes.3 A Christian Dating web site stopped by to tell me just how much they enjoyed “Dudes of Legend: How to be Fucking Awesome,” which I thought was sweet.
Unfortunately, I still have very little use for Christian dating, which if you believe this particular robot is very hard to do without the aid of their web site. I don’t want to put too fine a point on this, but my involvement with Christianity has led me to believe that it’s the easiest way to meet people ever. There are weekly events packed with people looking for meaning in their lives. It does not take a fiendish time-traveling android intelligence to see the dating possibilities.
Someone Who Mistook the “Red Box” for a very different reference
I’m backing away quietly.
Pretentious Book Reviews
This book cover is actually titled "To Pick a Rose," which I think we can all agree is pretentious. It hangs outside my office.
It was hard to figure out if this one was spam, because it pointed to an entirely innocent-seeming web site of some guy reading a lot of minor European novels in translation. The site had a decent theme, relevant comments, discussion… all pretty normal, right?
Well, except for the fact that it left repeated comments about discount motor scooters. Which, well, I can sort of imagine the guy who runs that web site riding one (Ben does, after all), but don’t really believe he’s trying to sell them on my Dungeons & Dragons blog.
I figure what actually happened is that the robot was trying to disguise itself by pointing at a legitimate web site, but it kinda fails in that it then didn’t leave any way of reaching wherever it was going to try and sell me the dodgy scooters.4
Hate
This is what hate does to you.
“This is about everything I have ever hated since creating my blog.”
Given that this site is, explicitly, about love and pain, I initially figured this was some kind of threat from my arch-nemesis. But it’s actually a sort of stock scam that you’d probably have to understand something about finance to even fall for.
So, let me state two things I don’t have time for here, for the edification of future bots:
- Hate
- Math more complicated than THAC0.5
“Justin Bieber would be my top! He is extremely sweet!”
I’ve been too busy wondering about a sword fight between Lady Gaga and Ziggy Stardust to really keep track of who Justin Bieber is, but I know he frequently trends on Twitter.
It’s nice to know that he’s a sweet top, though. I’ve always thought kindness was underrated in some BDSM circles.6
Those Margaret Weis Novels that aren’t Dragonlance
Aside from the link, all this one said was “I am not good at posting comments.”
Sexual Harassment Lawyers
Which of them needs the lawyer?
Sexual harassment — in the workplace, at school, and, yes, even in the gaming group — is a serious issue. We all have a responsibility to make the world a better place by stepping up and saying something about it. And yeah, we should sue the shit out of some folks along the way, agreed.
But… uhm… that post was about The Legend of Zelda.
_____
- While Wallis probably wouldn’t want to be credited solely with the tone of the game, he’s the WFRP developer who declared that “If you find yourself in a WFRP adventure and not knee-deep in shit then duck, because another load is past due.” I tend to credit him with the interpretation of “grim” as “poop-covered gore-soaked farce,” which is certainly not what “grim” means in Warhammer 40k. Believe it or not, I mean this in an entirely complimentary fashion. ↩
- Primary objective: Kill Sarah Connor. Secondary objective: Sell you Nigerian v1agra. ↩
- Hopefully, they don’t believe in abstinence, either. Just saying. ↩
- “Dodgy Scooter” is not a polite name for a halfling. ↩
- THAC0 is kind of the cunnilingus of AD&D. People who don’t do it talk about what a ridiculous process it is, how they shouldn’t have to go through it to get at the “fun,” and so on. People who actually do it regard it as a necessary skill for growing up, and brag about it a lot without realizing that most everyone else is perfectly comfortable with it already. ↩
- And all Warhammer circles. ↩
Here’s what I know about Justin Bieber.
A lot of lesbians look like him.
http://lesbianswholooklikejustinbieber.tumblr.com/
I’m rather fond of Warhammer FRP. It always amazes me, though, how few people remember that Warhamer 40K was a parody.
I don’t know… everyone has always told me that kindness is extremely important in BDSM circles. I mean, who else are you going to trust to tie you up, beat you, and humiliate you but someone who’s nice to you?
And Warhammer 40k was a parody? That explains more than it doesn’t.
I love this post. Particularly the line about hate and math.
“I don’t know… everyone has always told me that kindness is extremely important in BDSM circles.”
True, and the DM isn’t the players’ adversary.
“And Warhammer 40k was a parody? That explains more than it doesn’t.”
Some writers have viewed it that way. Others haven’t. There’s ample evidence of clashing perspectives here:
http://www.vectormagazine.co.uk/article.asp?articleID=42
Having worked on an IP involving a fanatical, theocratic space empire, I could write a lot on the subject. There are certain people who think the “spiky space wombles” are identical to mainstream Americans. And then there are those who see them as a sort of a parody, and those who see them as a “but for the grace of God” moral lesson. There are one or two, perhaps, who see them as fully developed human beings.
I played a lot of Space Hulk at one point, and we didn’t really know anything about the 40k backstory. (Although some of the people I played with definitely played the game.) We tended to roleplay the marines as pretty much the guys from Aliens, gifted somehow with the armor from Starship Troopers.
We didn’t have any particularly deep insights into those characters, or at least I didn’t, but I think we generally assumed they were all just people doing a job. Keep in mind that the wars our family members had fought in were things like Vietnam or the Gulf War. For kids like me, “war is the nature of man” was one of those phrases that would have seemed ludicrous. Something villains say, before enacting a particularly stupid Evil Plan.
That a lot of those same kids I played Space Hulk with later ended up taking 40k TOTAL SRS is something I still don’t understand.
I always wondered what John Constantine did to deserve such treatment as depicted on the Vampire Player’s Guide cover.
I have found “Rogue Trader” to be pretty decent, since a lot of the “JESUS IS ACTUALLY THE MAUD’DIB” stuff is off on the periphery and you’re not obligated to pay attention to it.