Memes
WilloftheWest
1 month ago
•
100%
Depends on your frame of reference. When traversing the surface of a globe, your described concept of a straight line isn’t intuitive.
WilloftheWest
1 month ago
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87%
Forgive the ignorance, but are regular OBGYN appointments a thing in the US? From the media I’ve consumed it appears so. I know people with actual gynaecological issues like endometriosis, and even they find the idea of regular checkups without a cause weird.
Not The Onion
Man who said he'd 'pluck out' VP Harris' eyes was baffled when feds appeared at door: Complaint
WilloftheWest
1 month ago
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100%
”For a comment.”
In this day and age, who hasn’t made incredibly specific ultraviolent threats against an elected official while constantly reassuring others that they are serious/making a promise to enact these threats? Did this upstanding citizen simply forget to cite his first amendment rights to the agents?
Comic Strips
It's done. My masterpiece...
WilloftheWest
4 months ago
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100%
The is me with my PhD thesis. I wrote it, submitted it, planned for an absolute grilling in the Viva, got waved through the Viva with just minor corrections for grammar, went overzealous with corrections, submitted for review, got accepted, finally graduated.
It still makes me sick to look at it on my bookshelf.
WilloftheWest
4 months ago
•
100%
This really makes me grin, as I've argued these "theological debates" on multiple sides depending on which splatbook I'm into at the time. I've definitely been on both sides of the Caine vs Prime Archmage debate.
Lemmy Shitpost
Godfather
WilloftheWest
6 months ago
•
100%
Jarl Balgruuf energy.
politics
“They don’t have the courage to say the N-word’: Baltimore mayor rips right-wing “DEI mayor” attacks
WilloftheWest
6 months ago
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100%
We both know who cares. Who would derail a discussion about bigotry by making pedantic observations on grammar or language?
WilloftheWest
6 months ago
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100%
Do they have a different tattoo or are you referring to the one circling their arm? It looks like the inscription on the One Ring to me, though I definitely could be wrong.
solarpunk memes
What if public libraries...
WilloftheWest
6 months ago
•
100%
Conversely, a lot of people abstain from drinking. Entire cultures abstain.
I like the “facts and logic” crowd having their arguments torn down with actual facts and logic. I don’t like cutaway gags, ridiculous hyperbole delivered in an exasperated tone, shoehorned Obama worship coated in an “I’m not saying he was perfect” disclaimer, or recurring meta-gags. This cuts out most snark podcasts which, unfortunately, make up a lot of the most popular podcasts tackling right wing pundits. Ideally, I want an introduction to the right-wing narrative of the week, and a firm put-down delivered in a documentary fashion. I don’t want hosts who I can see 2 nights a week at Second City or hear on half a dozen other podcasts. Any suggestions welcome.
Mildly Infuriating
Et tu, Guinnéss?
WilloftheWest
6 months ago
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80%
Ah shit. Reading is hard sometimes.
Mildly Infuriating
Et tu, Guinnéss?
WilloftheWest
6 months ago
•
100%
A pint is 568ml.
Edit: the extra 30ml might be accounted for with the patented Guinness widget, a little ball of nitrogen gas that ruptures and forms a foamy head when the can is cracked.
Mildly Infuriating
Et tu, Guinnéss?
WilloftheWest
6 months ago
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40%
GPT4 is wrong and it doesn’t require a price per litre comparison to prove it.
4 cans at 440ml cost £4.50. Therefore 12 cans at 440ml cost £13.50, £1.50 less than 12 cans at 330ml.
WilloftheWest
7 months ago
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80%
The fact you made such a connection says a lot about you.
196
WilloftheWest
7 months ago
•
100%
I agree on a personal level. FOSS software is much more convenient for my usecase of writing papers/typsetting notes, some automation, writing a program that works for me, and browsing/videos.
On the level of someone working in academia, it can be incredibly inconvenient if not outright impossible to implement. I can manage if I come across a bug in some FOSS software in my personal usage. An enterprise encountering an error with some utility whose support forum is a discord server: completely unacceptable. The entire printing service being offline because CUPS is temperamental: completely unacceptable.
Enterprises are the core customers of these inconvenient pieces of software with subscription based models.
The Onion
WilloftheWest
7 months ago
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50%
That’s the thing: you’re proving the idiom in the way that you’re arguing. Naively, one would expect that comparing fruit is easy; after all, they’re both fruit. Two nations have supposedly, in an official capacity, made the same statement (which I don’t believe without you providing a source, and yes the burden is on you).
The thing is that these are all superficial observations on complex entities. The idiom of comparing two fruits is a common idiom in many cultures, and it’s not for want of an internet commenter pointing out that they’re sweet, have seeds, and are similar colour.
General point: practice making pithy arguments based on well researched points. I’m struggling to see an actual point in the drivel you’re writing. It isn’t a reading comprehension issue; I read and write dense academic articles for a living. Short, pithy sentences are simply better writing.
WilloftheWest
7 months ago
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50%
There's no reason 2 fruits can't be compared.
I find it hard to believe that you’re not familiar with the famous phrase “comparing apples and oranges,” which is specifically about attempting to compare incomparable items.
tumblr
WilloftheWest
7 months ago
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100%
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Sorry I had to get that out.
Cringe. You’re an anonymous person interacting on the internet, not the main character of a sitcom.
WilloftheWest
7 months ago
•
100%
Pad thai isn’t even that spicy. Who’s ordering a super spicy pad thai?
Risa
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
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100%
You know you’re never going to get any hard evidence other than surface-level stuff that they can get from their bigot blogs, because bigots hate actually engaging with media.
Baldur's Gate 3
Pinpointing Key Locations in Baldur's Gate 3
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
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100%
This is a great observation. I just generally think a world that poses questions such as “why haven’t wizards fixed this” is more interesting than a world with arbitrary precision measurements and walk-in cancer curing services in every hamlet.
Baldur's Gate 3
Pinpointing Key Locations in Baldur's Gate 3
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
50%
Some good points. I'm just going to continue this discussion because it's interesting and it helps me prepare my games to consider these things.
1: Universal answers don't necessitate universal acceptance, and it can make for more interesting lore when that's the case. As an example: in the lore of Legend of the Five Rings, it's common knowledge in the Empire that the official map of the Empire has a massively inconsistent scale, with journeys of similar charted length having up to a threefold difference in travel time. Savvy travellers know to plan accordingly, but no one would ever question Imperial doctrine, as the charting of the Empire was an act of a very real and tangible living god. This is where I got my praying at every temple comment; it's common for people to avoid accidentally badmouthing the Empire by saying "I took longer than expected as I took every opportunity to honour my ancestors at every shrine on the road."
1b: The pantheon of the Forgotten Realms is ever expanding and there are gods in that pantheon that are opposed to Mystra, as well as luddite gods who are oppose the gods of innovation such as Gond. Gondians certainly promote the advancement of science, and Mystrans and Oghmans promote the advancement of magic to a very certain extent, but there are gods in the pantheon who would task its worshippers with direct opposition of these missions, if for nothing else than to piss off their rival god.
2: This comes back to point 1. Different states will have their own standards of measurement, often using the same name, and the usage of these standards are very often more political than logical. A famous example from history is Napoleon's height. Napoleon was "5 foot 2 by the French measurement and 5 foot 6 by the English measurement," which made him a French adult man of average height. It was a common political tool to report him in the British Press as 5 foot 2, thus implying that he was short of stature.
Imagine the compounding issue of different species interacting in the Sword Coast. A human-majority patriarchal city state may define an inch as the average length of the the second knuckle of an adult human male's middle finger, while an elvish-majority patriarchal enclave may define it exactly the same but for an elf's finger. These slight discrepancies aren't an issue until they can be exploited for political gain; an elvish embassy may be established at a distance no closer than a mile to the Palace of the Magistrates, but there's roughly a 10 human-yard difference between an elvish mile and a human mile.
If someone casts a spell asking for a measurement and they are told "10 miles," is that 10 miles from their perspective, 10 miles from the perspective of whoever invented the measurement spell, 10 miles according to some third "universal" perspective, or something else entirely?
3: Again from my previous comment, the precise limitations of spells are assumptions and generalisations made for the purpose of codifying into a game. In the actual fiction, spells are quite variable dependent on the caster and their abilities. The only general assumption we can actually make is that a set of repeatable actions yield roughly the same result: if you rub a glass rod with a bolt of fur and sing the chorus of Tubthumping backwards, lightning appears. The reason that in the current edition of the game we have somewhat concrete descriptions of spells is that we as the players require a certain level of abstraction in order to play the game; The GM shouldn't need to have an idea of wind speed, the aerodynamics of the flier, and all other forces in order to make a quick decision to determine how the flier flies. Some randomness of outcome is still evident on the modern game rules, such as the damage from spells being random and spells like sleep affecting a random number of creatures. Older editions were a lot more meticulous with this.
Edit: specifically tackling Wish, assuming even a perfect casting would not yield a perfect map. Check out the Coastline Paradox for a real world example of how natural bodies such as coastlines fail to have well-defined length. No amount of arbitrary precision measurement is going to change the facts that coastlines and waterways have fractal dimension.
4: At least in 5e rules as written (and I dislike this and usually houserule it when forced to play D&D), with the exception of protection scrolls, reading a spell scroll requires caster to have the given spell on their spell list.
Baldur's Gate 3
Pinpointing Key Locations in Baldur's Gate 3
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
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50%
There are a couple things that need addressing in this line or argument.
First is a certain assumption of rigour in logic; rigour in proof was a very nebulous thing until concrete efforts to codify rigour in the 19th century. We used to simply assume Euclid’s Elements was true because it was old, reasonably argued, and some easier results were verifiable. There’s no guarantee that Forgotten Realms wizard, who lives in a magical late renaissance analogue, would hold a scientific philosophy similar to our modern philosophy, rather than having a scientific philosophy similar to that of a renaissance scientist.
Supplementary to the first point, there is also the question of religion. Given how much the Catholic church impeded scientific progress that challenged their worldview, we could expect the many churches of the FR pantheon - many with opposed views to one another - to interfere with scientific progress.
The second point comes from the measurement units used in the rulebooks of the game. Unless we’re accepting that FR society independently came up with the imperial system or a measurement system that translates rather cleanly to the imperial system, we can assume that the measurements in the game book are approximations for the purpose of ease of use to the player. I doubt a wizard in canon is calling a distance “about 10 feet” and Ed Greenwood is just doing the common fantasy thing of “translating their language and measurements to a form understandable by earthlings.”
The third point is the Wish issue. The Wish spell is undeniably the strongest spell in the canon and requires a wizard of tremendous power to cast. Given the hubris of powerful wizards in the Forgotten Realms and fantasy in general, it’s doubtful that a wizard would use their one 9th level spell per day to either altruistically progress the knowledge of the realm or to improve mapping methods to sell a better map. If a wizard were to use their strongest spell for something as trite as monetary gain, That same knowledge gained from a Wish could be hoarded and exploited for substantial personal gain.
Finally, there’s the time commitment. You mentioned using Find Familiar to measure distances but that still requires a wizard in the field, essentially using a sentient trundle stick. Mapping requires a ridiculous level of effort from a huge team of surveyors, and is almost always backed by a government. The Sword Coast, where all the main plot happens in FR canon, is a handful of city states and frontier towns in a wild region. The Open Lords of Waterdeep would probably have hired a set of wizards to accurately calculate the acreage of farmers fields in the immediate vicinity. For something like the distance from Baldur’s Gate to Elturel, distances would be approximate, about 200 miles or 10 days travel with time to pray at every shrine.
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
100%
It baffles me every time I see a sov cit state there is no victim, because the plaintiff is the state, that they can’t figure out that the state is representing the citizens of that state, who are the victims.
Spooky 👻 Halloween 🎃 Dark 🦇 Horror 🔪 Memes
How many will be able to repurpose for Valentine's Day next?
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
100%
Far too easy to make a boning joke for Valentine’s Day
PCGaming
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
100%
Are you effectively synergising your party? Martial characters have multiple actions, while casters typically get one.
If you’re frustrated with 35% hit chances then you could focus on using some members of your party to debuff the enemy and buff the hard hitters; this has much better damage output than all 4 party members just slinging attacks with hit chances below 65%. If you want to just blast with all 4 characters then that’s a valid play but it isn’t guaranteed to be viable.
solarpunk memes
snowflakes
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
66%
I dunno, the only other leftists that annoy me are browbeat merchants like Thought Slime.
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
100%
So 56 years is so long ago as to be ancient history that has no impact on the politics of today? Everyone involved in the conflict is less than 56 years old? Learn to actually form an argument, instead of calling fascist at the first opportunity, especially when you’re arguing on the side of Likud.
It’s impossible to view the October attack in isolation when it is a direct consequence of the chain of events and continuous prolonged period of hostility described in my previous comment. Pull a different one.
Funny
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
50%
That’s what I’ve been saying. I’ve only ever been calling bad things bad. I was saying that fish and chips from a take away is bad and shouldn’t be recommended as some exemplar of British cuisine
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
50%
Sure, if you insist. Though the barrier for “nice” is really low. If you like beer that isn’t Stella or Carling, you’re not calling beer trash in general.
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
100%
I like fish and chips from an actual restaurant or homemade. With the exception of the Magpie in Whitby, which is a restaurant with an attached take away, every take away fish and chips I’ve had has been flavourless chunks of varying textures.
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
100%
It’s fine now but some “staples” of our cuisine are trash. If you value your low blood pressure, don’t go into threads about people asking for food recommendations while visiting Britain. It’s just full of people recommending actual garbage like fish and chips from a take away. Are people delusional? I’ve been to dozens of chippies across the country, and save one meal at the Magpie in Whitby, I’ve never had a chippy tea that’s lived up to expectations.
Recommend a good haggis or something rather than the bland meme food.
World News
Brexit Erased £140 Billion From UK Economy, London Mayor to Say
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
100%
My bootlicking family, who insists “we got our country back” but refuses to elaborate when I ask basic questions such as “from whom? How? What has materially changed?”
memes
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
100%
The niche story/support communities were a real staying power for me until they started taking a nosedive ~5+ years ago. Suddenly power-users were showing up, posting their creative writing exercises in all tangentially related subs, and it got ate up because over the top drama is more entertaining to some than true (or at least very plausible) stories.
It began with users policing others. You called out a fake story and you got half a dozen people playing devils advocate asking how you knew the story was fake. The poster being a serial poster who has dozens of box-ticking ragebait stories (per week) across multiple subs isn’t a clear enough indicator that this is a creative writing exercise for them.
Before long, subs were seeing much more engagement due to copycats and drama seekers; suddenly the rules prohibited calling out fake stories. Suddenly your support subreddit for offloading about your abusive parents has turned into the personal playground for creative writers with 58 part epics about their mother getting arrested for the fifteenth time for brandishing a knife at a baby at the family dinner.
I’ve already unsubbed from a community on Lemmy because I’ve seen one creative writer is cross-posting to Lemmy under the same name.
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
80%
Let’s hope the incel top brass don’t discover Devil May Cry or we’ll soon have an SS-male and an SSS-male above sigma.
WilloftheWest
8 months ago
•
100%
How is it stupid to understand that recent events are a continuation of a decades long conflict begun with the Six Day War of 1967?
Anyone with a modicum of knowledge on the conflict in general would see that I threw you an easy pitch for the sake of a joke. If you had knowledge of the issue, rather than what news outlets deigned to tell you, you could have retorted by asking who initiated the Six Day War. You could have even made the very valid point that this whole conflict is all caused by British imperialism stemming from the Balfour Declaration of 1917, an act appeasement by the British Government brought about by decades of anti-semitism in British politics; this is my actual stance. The reason you did none of this is because all of these terms like Six Day War and Balfour Declaration are completely new to you, as you have no actual knowledge of the subject.
WilloftheWest
9 months ago
•
100%
A war started by Hamas
An organisation formed in 1987 started a war in 1967? Did they utilise Delorean-propelled grenades?
WilloftheWest
9 months ago
•
100%
I'm going to use smaller words so you can keep up: I understand the point of the meme. I understand that people are having fun. I'm having my own fun in poking at the one moron who's coming to a fun thread with actual Tory arguments and getting tilted when he gets called out.
No, a 90 year old should not be forced to work to help their family. No, there isn't a logical argument in favour of it. You're just making Tory arguments, and I'm poking fun at you.
WilloftheWest
9 months ago
•
100%
I’m not missing the point at all, actually. You may notice I’m not up and down this thread shooting down everyone calling him a coke fingered nonce because that’s comical. What isn’t comical is your particular overanalysis which is outright wrong. A joking comment that he’s a workshy scrounger is a funny over-exaggeration. An analysis of how a 90 year old should be grafting to put food on the table is neither funny or correct.
WilloftheWest
9 months ago
•
100%
And if he really is the most fragile, why aren’t the others helping out around the house at the very least so Mum can go work, rather than dedicate her life caring for an entire double bed’s worth of old people on top of her family living on one person’s wage?
I really don't know, lad. Why don't you dig up Roald and ask why his lighthearted kids book doesn't stand up to your overanalysis? He's not up to much; he's just been grave-ridden for 30 years.
WilloftheWest
9 months ago
•
100%
Damn, you really throwing the word Tory around like that
If it walks like a Tory, talks like a Tory, and regurgitates bootstraps rhetoric like a Tory...
Everyone from a poor or working class family understands that poverty isn't something you can graft your way out of. Also, a man described as "96 and a half" and the most fragile among Charlie's grandparents, managed to muster the energy to celebrate his grandson winning a prize and then accompanied him on a half day tour round a local factory. If you think that's sufficient to classify him as work capable, then you've got a bright future conducting disability assessments for the DWP.
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Dream Cycle Book Club. This week we will be discussing the short story *The Dreams in the Witch House*. Our final story in this book club is *Through the Gates of the Silver Key*, which Lovecraft co-wrote with [E. Hoffmann Price](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Hoffmann_Price) in 1932-33. I should note here that Lovecraft uses racist slurs in the final chapter of this short story. The Arkham Archivist didn't include any stories cowritten with other authors in their collection of stories, thus a PDF of the story is available [here](https://oceanofpdf.com/authors/h-p-lovecraft/pdf-epub-through-the-gates-of-the-silver-key-download-62636018303/?id=001765278895) (sorry about the dodgy looking site. I've ensured that the PDF is legit). A LibriVox audio recording is available [here](https://librivox.org/through-the-gates-of-the-silver-key-by-h-p-lovecraft/) image credit this week goes to [Yuki Sato](https://www.artstation.com/satoyuki)
Welcome back to our Dream Cycle Book Club, where we explore the dream based stories and dream-adjacent tales written by H.P. Lovecraft. In this week's thread we shall discuss the final half of *At the Mountains of Madness*. This week we will be reading our penultimate story: *The Dreams in the Witch House*. The Arkham Archivist provides us with a collated collection of stories [here](https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412). A LibriVox audio recording is not available and so I direct you to a recording by the YouTuber HorrorBabble [here](https://piped.video/watch?v=QqIMRFhROHw) This week image credit goes to [Joseph Diaz](https://www.artstation.com/josephdiaz).
Hello everyone and welcome to the thirteenth week of our book club exploring H.P. Lovecraft's Dream Cycle. In this week's thread we discuss the first 5 chapters of *At the Mountains of Madness*, written in 1931. Our reading assignment for this week is the second half of *At the Mountains of Madness*, from Chapter VI onwards. A PDF of the short story is found in the collected works curated by the Arkham Archivist [here](https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412). A LibriVox audio recording is available [here](https://librivox.org/at-the-mountains-of-madness-by-h-p-lovecraft/). Very sorry for the late submission this week. My department is hosting an algebra conference and I'm spending my evenings "networking" (read: getting drunk while ranting about the Representation Theory of algebraic groups). Unfortunately, pleasure has to be sidelined by business until Wednesday evening. I'll post comments on the first five chapters as soon as possible but expect significant delays for this week. On the off-chance that the set of British Lemmy Users interested in Lovecraft and Representation theory of algebraic groups isn't a one-member set, I'm the guy with the beard in a purple mushroom shirt. Image Credit goes to Deviantartist [Zhekan](https://www.deviantart.com/zhekan).
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Dream Cycle Book Club. Today we will discuss the final two parts of *The Case of Charles Dexter Ward*. Our reading for this week is the first five chapters of *At the Mountains of Madness*, written in 1931. The first five chapters should put us at around the halfway point of this novella. I'd call this one Dream Cycle-adjacent, as it features and mentions locations such as Leng and Kadath. It's also an important story in Lovecraft's Bibliography, but we'll cover that during the relevant discussion. A PDF of the short story is found in the collected works curated by the Arkham Archivist [here](https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412). A LibriVox audio recording is available [here](https://librivox.org/at-the-mountains-of-madness-by-h-p-lovecraft/). Image credit [Jagoba Lekuona](https://www.artstation.com/atomicbrain)
I’m just about to start my second full playthrough, and have run through Act I multiple times. Rather than choosing my main three companions and leaving everyone else in camp, I’m wanting to juggle companions. There are three main reasons for this: advancing everyone in the group and keeping them geared; giving each character a chance for their unique personal interactions; and trying to max out all opinion sliders. For an example: Lae’zel offers unique interaction with Kithrak Voss. I’m hoping we can compile a list of best party compositions for roleplay potential in certain areas. I’ll start us off with all that I can think up from above ground Act I. —- Party Pairings: Wyll and Karlach pair well. Lae’zel and Shadowheart clash. Astarion generally clashes with any companion with a modicum of decency. Grove: - Recommended party composition: Shadowheart, Wyll, and Gale for kind interactions, Lae’zel and Astarion for mean/underganded interactions. - Lae’zel is necessary for an interaction with Zorru. - Be mean to Zorru to get night 1 romance with Lae’zel. - Keep Wyll out of your party if you intend to free Sazza. - Keep Astarion and Lae’zel out of the party if you intend on being kind to tieflings. - Take S/W/G if you intend on saving Arabelle Risen Road: - Recommended party composition: Wyll, Karlach, anyone with high Wisdom. - Karlach and Wyll are a good duo for confronting the paladins of Tyr. This is a personal quest for Karlach. - For the gnoll fight, a character with high Wisdom is useful in persuading the flind to fight for you and then kill itself. Waukeen’s Rest: - Recommended party composition: Wyll, any other two (I just go Lae’zel and Karlach). - Wyll has a personal interaction regarding the kidnapping of Duke Ravengard. Mountain Crossing: - Recommended party composition: Lae’zel, any other two (Wyll and Karlach for me). - Lae’zel has a unique interaction with Kithrak Voss. Blighted Village: - Recommended party composition: Gale, Astarion (if he has snuck out of camp), any other. - Astarion has something to say about the boar drained of blood. - Gale is intrigued by the Thayan necromancer and the book of necromancy. Consider giving this to him. Goblin village: - Recommended party composition: Shadowheart, Astarion, anyone else NOT including Wyll. - Shadowheart has unique remarks about the repurposed temple of Selune. - Shadowheart and Astarion have a good time watching you bask in Loviatar’s love. - Wyll struggles to keep his fat mouth shut. Keep the liability in camp. Teahouse: - Recommended party composition: sneaky people or people with Hold Person (if you intend on minimising casualties), someone with create water for cheese. - I just always fight the hag. +1 to any stat is useless as only even stats count, and you should be shuffling the “standard” ability array to get all even stats (including two 16s). The Hag Eye is also a liability as perception is rolled more often than intimidate. - Sneak and cast Hold Person if you don’t want to fight any of the masked people. - cast Create Water on Myrina’s cage to protect her. You can usually tell her and Ethel apart through use of Examine, but Create Water results in Mayrina being wet, which doesn’t require examine to discern.
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Dream Cycle Book Club. This week we will be discussing the first three parts of *The Case of Charles Dexter Ward*. Our reading for this week will be parts IV and V of *The Case of Charles Dexter Ward*, thus finishing the story. The text, collated as part of a collection by The Arkham Archivist, is found [here](https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412). An audio recording by the talented HorrorBabble can be found [here](https://piped.video/watch?v=Va7WZT1lVsc). The image is a portrait of Vincent Price who played the role of Charles Dexter Ward/Joseph Curwen in the 1963 film [The Haunted Palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haunted_Palace). Art credit goes to [Shayu Dan](https://www.artstation.com/sharksden)
Just a vibe check of the Lemmy community with a deliberately exaggerated meme. A reddit post would get flooded with argumentative mini-essays from folks who can’t string together 5 words in-character.
Hello everyone and welcome to the tenth week of our Dream Cycle Book Club. In this thread we'll be discussing Lovecraft's epic novella *The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath*. This week's reading is *The Case of Charles Dexter Ward*, Written in 1927. This is another novella of Lovecraft, weighing in at 104 pages in my copy of his fiction. I'm aware that 100 pages of Lovecraft's often verbose prose can be trying. Thankfully, Lovecraft actually separated this story into parts, which allows for easy splitting up of the reading. Our reading for this week is parts I-III, with parts IV and V covered next week. The text is available in PDF format courtesy of the Arkham Archivist [here](https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412). Audio is provided by the talented HorrorBabble [here](https://piped.video/watch?v=Va7WZT1lVsc) Image Credit [Jian Guo](https://www.artstation.com/breathing)
Jesterraiin is doing an amazing job of uploading inspirational posts. Let's get a little community effort going and see what we can come up with in terms of inspirational reading. Looking at my 2e boxed set, I can't find an inspirational reading list. Here are a set of books that I feel get some aspect of the setting right. Actual Dark Sun: *The Prism Pentad* series by Troy Denning. Though considered apocryphal by some (due to the apparently fragile mortality of some key figures in Dark Sun lore), this series offers some decent adventure ideas for a Dark Sun campaign, with each of the five books exploring a different aspect of the Dark Sun lore. Desert planet: Of course I need to mention the *Dune* series by Frank Herbert. Nigh omnipotent planetary governors, water scarcity, nobles flaunting water wastage as a symbol of power, and an oppressed underclass plotting rebellion. The *Dune* series also offers a cautionary tale of grasping power from a dictator only to secede it to a charismatic dictator (however reluctant that dictator may be to exercise power). The Bene Gesserit and the prescient Atreides lineage offer an interesting view into psionics. Post apocalypse: *The Dying Earth* series by Jack Vance. The namesake of Vancian magic and Vecna, Jack is one of the first authors to take a glimpse into a far future ravaged by magic and magitech, and the omnipotent sorcerers who bend reality to their will. Sword and Planet: *John Carter of Mars* and the *Barsoom* series in general, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. A set of speculative fiction which would become a major influence in the world of early science fiction. The main character focus of the series is John Carter and his later descendants. John Carter is a soldier transported from the verdant Earth to the dying planet Mars, finding that due to the lower relative gravity of Mars he has near superhuman capabilities. A word of caution on this series: it's a product of its time. John Carter, a veteran of the American Civil War on the side of the Confederacy, goes on pulpy adventures saving the "savage" Martians many times and even rescuing the damsel in distress, whom he promptly marries and sires multiple children.
Hello everyone and welcome to Week Nine of our Dream Cycle Book Club. This week's thread is for the discussion of the three stories from last week: *The Outsider*, *The Silver Key*, and *The Strange High House in the Mist*. Our reading for this week is a single story, *The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath*. It is Lovecraft's first novella-length Dreamlands story and ties together many of the disconnected stories that we've read in previous weeks. The PDF is available via the Arkham Archivist [here](https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412). Audio is provided once again by the talented HorrorBabble [here](https://piped.video/watch?v=zcZj5curWsE). The Silver Key used in the OP was created by the Rhode Island based sculptor [Gage Prentiss](http://www.gageprentiss.com/)
Hello everyone and welcome back to our Dream Cycle Book Club. This week we will be discussing *What the Moon Brings* and *The Hound*. There are only three more short stories until we reach the first novella length dreamlands story. If I'd had a bit more forethought, I'd have loaded one of the last two weeks with a third story, as both featured very short stories. Hopefully this week's reading doesn't prove too much. We have three stories for this week: *The Outsider*, *The Silver Key*, and *The Strange High House in the Mist*. Our First story, *The Outsider*, was written in 1921 but is listed on Wikipedia as 1926; this led to me missing it a couple weeks ago. It is available in PDF format via the Arkham Archivist [here](https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412), and a LibriVox audio recording is available [here](https://ia802202.us.archive.org/29/items/ghohor058_2201_librivox/ghohor058_outsider_lovecraft_as_128kb.mp3). *The Silver Key* is our second story this week, written in 1926. It is available in PDF format via the same link above, and a LibriVox audio recording is available [here](https://ia801600.us.archive.org/14/items/ssf093_2306_librivox/ssf093_silverkey_lovecraft_dg_128kb.mp3) Our third story for this week is *The Strange High House in the Mist*, written in November 1926. It is available in PDF format via the same link above. I cannot find a LibriVox recording, so I rely once again on HorrorBabble who has narrated the story [here](https://piped.video/watch?v=RB0aiL28zPQ). Image Credit [Clément Galtier](https://www.artstation.com/clement)
Welcome back everyone, to the seventh meeting of our Dream Cycle Book Club. This week we will be discussing *Hypnos* and *Azathoth*. Our reading for this week is two more short stories: *What the Moon Brings* and *The Hound*. *What the Moon Brings* was written in June 1922. It is available in PDF format via the Arkham Archivist [here](https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412). An audiobook version is available via LibriVox [here](https://ia802901.us.archive.org/14/items/dream_collection_1_2002_librivox/dreamscollection01_03_various_128kb.mp3) *The Hound* was written in September 1922 and is the last dream related story written by Lovecraft in 1922. It is available in PDF format via the same link given above. I cannot find a LibriVox recording so I once again link to a reading by the talented HorrorBabble [here](https://piped.video/watch?v=VLVpPET9VIg). Image credit [Carole Raddato](https://www.worldhistory.org/user/FollowingHadrian/)
Welcome back to our adventure into the Dreamlands as described by H.P. Lovecraft. In this week's thread we will be discussing the reading of last week, *The Quest of Iranon* and *The Other Gods*. This week we reach the "midway point" in terms of stories read in the Dream Cycle, though the stories in the latter half tend to be weightier volumes. We will be reading two more tales: *Hypnos* and *Azathoth*. Our first story, *Hypnos* was written in March 1922. It is found in PDF format via our friend the Arkham Archivist [here](https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412) and in audio format via LibriVox [here](https://ia902606.us.archive.org/9/items/ghost_horror_18_1210_librivox/ghohor018_17_hypnos_lovecraft_bm.mp3). Our second story, *Azathoth* is the shortest of our tales thus far and is reportedly the beginning to an incomplete novel of Lovecraft. It can be found in PDF format via the same link above. I failed to find a LibriVox audio recording, thus I rely once again on the talented YouTuber HorrorBabble. A link via piped is available [here](https://piped.video/watch?v=uvdWnCVZb30). Image Credit [Carlos Palma Cruchaga](https://www.artstation.com/cpcwolf). Sorry for a couple of late submissions. The previous one was due to my brother's stag, and this week I'm visiting the in-laws.
Welcome once again to our investigation into the world of Dream as defined by our favourite horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft. In this thread we will be discussing the reading assignment for the past week: *Ex Oblivione* and *The Nameless City*. Our reading assignment for this week is two more short stories: *The Quest of Iranon* and *The Other Gods*. *The Quest of Iranon* is another of Lovecraft's tales explicitly inspired by Lord Dunsany. The story, written in February 1921, is available in PDF format via the Arkham Archivist [here](https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412). Unfortunately, LibriVox does not have an audio version of this story available, thus our audio recording for this week is via the YouTuber HorrorBabble. The video, filtered through Piped (a privacy friendly alternative YouTube Frontend) is available [here](https://cf.piped.video/watch?v=Q6aEPlm2tys) *The Other Gods* is also heavily inspired by Dunsany's Work. Written in August 1921, the text of the story is available via the same link above, and a LibriVox recording is available [here](https://ia801603.us.archive.org/19/items/ghohor067_2303_librivox/ghohor067_othergods_lovecraft_py_128kb.mp3) Image Credit [Mert Genccinar](https://www.artstation.com/mertgenccinar)
Hello Everyone and welcome back to the Dream Cycle Book Club! In this thread we will be discussing the reading assignment for the past week: *Celephaïs* and *Nyarlathotep*. For this week we have two more short stories to read: *Ex Oblivione* and *The Nameless City*. I can't find much information on when *Ex Oblivione* was written, though considering it's publication in the March 1921 edition of *The United Amateur*, it has been given a writing date in the range of late 1920 to early 1921. It can be found via the Arkham Archivist's trusty PDF [here](https://archive.org/details/TheCompleteWorksOfHPLovecraft_201412) and in audiobook format [here](https://ia600705.us.archive.org/28/items/collected_lovecraft_0810_librivox/exoblivione_lovecraft_jp.mp3). The second story for this week, *The Nameless City* was written in January 1921. Though it is only tangentially related to the Dreamlands, it is fantastic Mythos reading. It can be read in PDF format via the same link above, and can be found as an audiobook [here](https://ia800705.us.archive.org/28/items/collected_lovecraft_0810_librivox/nameless_city_lovecraft_sc.mp3) On a side note: it's great to see that the community is becoming active. [Image credit Joao Sergio](https://www.artstation.com/ja0)