Alternative cursed monarchies for your fantasy RPG settings:
In an effort to transform the kingship into a pure meritocracy, a mighty enchantment was wrought to ensure that only the most skilled citizen of the kingdom could wield the power of rulership. Being somewhat absent-minded, the wizard in question neglected to specify most skilled at what, so past monarchs have included the kingdom’s best baker, the kingdom’s best shoemaker, and the kingdom’s best mom; how the spell judges comparative excellence at completely unrelated skill sets is as yet poorly understood.
A century ago the king jokingly designated his favourite housecat as his heir, and was promptly killed in a hunting accident before he could rescind the order. Unfortunately, the king ruled by Divine Right, which actually passed to the cat, and thereafter to the cat’s descendants. Efforts to teach the current monarch to designate a human heir have failed because, well, it’s just a cat, albeit a cat whose commands – insofar as its human attendants are able to understand them – are divine law.
The throne is enspelled so that the current monarch is obliged to rule with compassion and justice, with even the slightest impropriety resulting in unbearable suffering. The royal succession is carried out primarily by means of tricking foreign visitors who don’t know about the curse into accepting the crown – whereupon the newly-ex-monarch promptly runs away before they can change their mind!
There’s something really terrifying about the concept of being pursued by something that can only walk slowly after. Just slooowly following. You can chill for a while if you get far enough away but it’s still coming.
That’s called “persistence hunting” and it’s how humans hunted all sorts of megafauna to extinction, as well as what let our species become so disperse and so numerous. Our existence is a horror story told from the monster’s perspective.
So you’re telling me zombie is absolutely a valid career path
Watch the movie on Netflix called “ It Follows” lol
Basically our hunting super power is that we are really smart, good at tools and can walk/run forever.
If my roommate ran 20 miles twice in one day (possible if she does one in the morning and one in the afternoon) she would out travel a horse.
She is not FASTER than a horse, but if a horse was walking away from her for 8 solid hours, Kait could catch up to it. She could probably also walk after it for an additional 5-10 miles after the run and then stab it when it got too tired to go on.
But kait’s athletic.
I, on the other hand, am a fatty fat who weighs 210 and never exercises ever.
I once, completely spontaneously because i had no money for the train, walked 17 miles in the winter from one end of Chicago to the other. I had also not eaten and was wearing a backpack. It took me 3 hours, but I accomplished it with ease. If i wasn’t a chub goddess, and had eaten and it was summer and I wasn’t wearing a backpack with a laptop in it, imagine how far and fast I could have gone.
Now. Horses can only sustain a run for about 15 miles ( at 8-10mph it takes them a little over an hour).
If my fat ass was walking towards a horse for 3 hours and it was literally running away from me. It would become exhausted after 15 miles and unless it can recover completely in 2 hours for another lengthy sprint, I can reasonably catch up to it and stab it. (not that i would ever stab a horse. horses are terrifying and should be regarded with suspicion, respect and fear)
The longest run ever was 350 miles over 80 hours without sleep.
We are endurance monsters.
humans terrify me
“Our existence is a horror story told from the monsters perspective” is one of the coolest and most terrifying sentences I’ve ever thought about
It is with a heavy heart that I am forced to announce that I must disassemble my lawn chunks.
Yes, my critically tolerated yard sculpture “Lawn Chunks”, after having received glowing reviews such as: “Is that just like a whole ass fucking tree or what?”; “How’d you fit that in the Buick?”; and, “Patsy Ann, please stop putting chunks everywhere, it looks like a mummified octopus,” is unfortunately no more, as my dad wishes to “not have to look at this thing every goddamn day”.
As I cannot reasonably fit “Lawn Chunks” into the new apartment, her skeletal bits shall be removed and made into like maybe a jewelry stand or something, and this big ass piece of wood will be respectfully thrown over the guard rail, where hopefully my dad will not see it and yell and yell and yell because I lied and said I would not throw it over the guard rail. There are train tracks down there, and while I do not think I can throw that hard, I bet it would look incredibly sick if this thing got hit by a train.
RIP.
Stereotypes like this are the exact reason my chunks are being unjustly terminated, and I hope you have trouble sleeping at night knowing that Lawn Chunk’s innocent splinters are on your hands.
I call this one “Hmm This is a Pretty Fucked Up Thing to Find in the Woods and It’s Absolutely Haunted But Residual Catholic Guilt Prevents Me From Throwing It Away So I Guess It’s in a Tree Now”:
And this is a little installation known as: “I Took This Behind the Garage to Fix It and Forgot About It For Like a Whole Three Months and I Think There’s Ticks in It Now Which Isn’t Great Probably”.
I’m really just out here living my life like a cryptic swamp hag in a low budget backwoods slasher flick, and I mean, it’s fine, it’s sexy, but also I’m very concerned as to how exactly I’m going to survive in an apartment.
some people: omg… epic nostalgia fail… right in the childhood. guess a kid can’t be a kid anymore
people who have bought a toy in the last ten years: good fucking riddance to that dump and its insane markups.
I’m in both camps. TRU’s prices were nuts at times, but it was the only outlet for a lot of stuff, and there’s something deeply sad about the death of the last of the chain toy stores.
people who actually looked into why it’s shutting down and not just smugly jerking off to their own selfishness: Toys R Us was saddled with thoroughly insurmountable debt by the exact same venture capitalists who tanked Kay-Bee Toys and numerous other retail chains. They took a company that was struggling, bought it, then leveraged that buyout almost wholly into a $5 billion debt on the company that was virtually impossible for them to cover, something that should be illegal because it’s absolutely ruining the economy by just funneling money into the coffers of the already-super-rich while destroying competition that helps keep prices all over down. TRU’s model was actually successful and under normal circumstances they’d be recovering fine, but that debt was never going to go away and sucked up pretty much any profit the company made. Needing to clean up that debt, by the way, is also a factor in TRU’s prices, as well as Walmart not needing to make a profit off of toys, making them “loss leaders” by selling them at minimal profit because they make their real money elsewhere in the store but using those loss leaders to lure people in. Also TRU accounted for roughly 15% of the sales from major toymakers like Hasbro, Mattel and Lego, and this will hurt all of them (especially because now Walmart has even MORE leverage and market share and they are notoriously vicious with how they treat suppliers, plus the scummy Amazon), and god knows what this is going to do to many smaller companies who relied on TRU’s orders and distribution for their wares that Walmart wouldn’t carry. Plus this is thousands and thousands of jobs lost in a poor economy, but hey, you sometimes might have had to pay a little bit more for a hunk of fucking plastic you didn’t fucking need so who’s the real victim here?
BTW the venture capitalists who just destroyed Toys R Us? Bain Capital, brought to you by Mitt Romney, who is looking into running for Congress.
what is the German word for when you turn over in bed with a hangover but instead it feels as if you have astral projected into the sea and been smacked in the face by a whale that might also be you
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