Fantasy League Fantasy

Ahem…

Former (emphasis FORMER) D&D player here. Did I say FORMER?

It was a perfect way for a bunch of uncool boys to throw dice and kill orcs. It did teach me a few things:
1) There is such a thing as being TOO much of a nerd.
2) Kill orcs was cool, but if your dungeon master was a dick then it made things miserable
3) Girls don’t dig D&D nerds
4) Things start to go crazy when the M-60 Machine Gun suddenly appears
5) Space was my thing. If folks want to wear fungus covered leather and live in a world without toilet paper then screw them. I still have all my old role playing stuff in a box marked “Nerd Stuff… Please don’t show to any GF or Wife”

Reasons why I am a FORMER (I must emphasize that yet again… I can’t say this enough, FORMER!) D&D player

@ManchuCandidate: I’m totally playing before I die. It’s on my list of things to do, um, before I die. I’ve watched my kid and his friends play, but they won’t let me be the dungeon master. Brats. I guess the closest I came to D&D was when I played MUDs back in the mid 90s. I still don’t know why everfuckingbody wants to be a magish/wizardish/magiphysticalish character. Just gimme a sword. Fuck the potions.

ADD: And the WarHammer 4000000000Whatever seems fun, too.

@JNOV:
A DM is usually the wisest of the bunch (rarely) or the guy who owns the D&D set and the wizard’s hat (that might have been too much info…)

I never liked being a wizard. Magic guys always ran away due to the lousy armor classes against pointy weapons. I liked being a fighter, but I never liked the whole wave a wand and make the problems go away (pretty much doomed to be an engineer even as a gawky teenager, I guess.)

A muggle I shall be and always will be.

@ManchuCandidate: Yeah — I’ve noticed how the DM power-play works out. Pretty funny. So, I was like, “Look. I’m cooking for you [and I hang out with them, always, they’re a lot of fun no matter what they’re doing], blah blah blah, my house — my rules. I’M GOING TO BE THE DM!” And they give me a ration of shit about how I don’t know shitall to be a DM, and then I threaten to kick them out, etc., etc. I mock them. They mock me. It’s fun. I’d love to design a campaign.

My sister and her college friends (mixed gender group) were D&D fanatics back in the late 70’s. I think it was pretty new then. Three or four nights a week, a bunch of them would play all night, then tell tales of their adventures the next morning at breakfast to crew members that had missed the previous night’s adventures.

It ended out working quite well for me because I was taking a folklore class that semester. Our major class assignment was to collect contemporary folklore, then write about it.

I visited my sister over my spring break, brought my tape recorder, and recorded hours of adventure tales, which I demonstrated beautifully fit the classic structures of heroic legends.

Even more interesting (at least to me) was how the group dynamics, particularly gender dynamics, played out in the stories. The women were much more often the rulebreakers, they would explore at the margins rather than stay on mission. The men were far more mission-focused. The group almost broke up over the women’s perception that they were unfairly punished for breaking the rules.

I never played D&D.

@Walking Still: I read a great book about male/female play and how it relates to the development of our personal ethics. (I think it was Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice, but I could be wrong.)

Of course these are generalizations, but girls tend to have malleable rules that either include all or (unfortunately) sometimes ostracize others. Boys tend to be completely rule-driven: these are the rules. Period. Don’t deviate or you will be ostracized. Girls tend to see webs of relationships they want to maintain or destroy (who’s on the outs this week? Heathers), but boys are kinda like, if you know the rules, then the pecking order (there always is one, no?) is determined by your ability to follow the rules and your skill within that construct.

Like I said, pretty much generalizations, but a fascinating read.

Sounds like my sister’s group fit those generalizations pretty damn well.

BTW, Heathers is a wonderful movie. Should be required viewing for teens.

@JNOV: Have you seen the Seven Up movies? The next one is due out in a couple of years, 56 Up. Same group seen every seven years since they were seven. Amazing.

@Walking Still: Yup on all counts.

@Benedick: I’ve seen them up to 21 or maybe 28, I think. I really like them. It’s a great concept, and I’m a documentary freak.

Fashion TJ:

Stinque Fashionistas, can we please discuss Hillary’s dress at Chelsea’s wedding?

When I saw this photo of just the top, I thought it was lovely and she looked absolutely radiant.

Then I saw this photo. That’s her behind the bride and groom, with the big skirt covered in flowers. Ouch.

@SanFranLefty:

Photo 1 suckered me in.

Photo 2 — she looks like she should be one of these. Yes, my great aunt had them in all colors of the rainbow and colors unknown to wo/man.

@JNOV: Oh dear fucking FSM, what the hayell was that thing? You should have warned me.

Yeah, photo 1 was the first one I saw and I was all “ahhhh” and then I scrolled down and saw #2 and had to stop and look.

@SanFranLefty: She tore the red velvet drapes off of the walls of the ancestral manse in Illinois and had the local cobbler run them through his stitching machine. The poor daughter, though. Her entire life a complete freak show because of her twisted parents. Luckily, she is plain enough looking to be able to dye her hair and disappear into a crowd if her father is caught on a sex tape with a mule.

@SanFranLefty: I saw that last night. Again, WTF, Hills? You look like a 65-yr-old woman in a Disney Cinderella costume. A lovely, full-length raw silk sheath with matching jacket in pale blue would have been SO much better. After a certain age, long, full-skirted ball gown are as much mutton-dressed-as-lamb as a miniskirt.
Chelsea, OTH, looks lovely and radiant, as any woman wearing a $35,000 gown should.

@FlyingChainSaw: The drapes remark made cafe au lait come out my nose. Well played.

@Mistress Cynica:
“Disney Cinderella costume”

Nail. Head. Yes, exactly. I thought Oscar de la Rente specialized in the sheaths.

Was not impressed by the wedding gown, however much it cost, but then again, those sorts of things give me hives.

@SanFranLefty: Nice tallis he’s wearing.

@SanFranLefty: I’m am really, really tired of the strapless ball gown wedding dresses–to me, they look like daddy made the bride recycle her debutante dress for her wedding. Not to mention the dreaded “meringue” effect. Look into sleeves, ladies.

@SanFranLefty: @Mistress Cynica: Arkansan Kuture.

This kind of pagan excess is the very reason the Primitive Church wouldn’t do weddings.

@Mistress Cynica: Why are you drinking cafe au lait through your nose?

@SanFranLefty: Toilet paper roll covers! Very spooky when you’re taking that late-night bathroom break.

@SanFranLefty: @Mistress Cynica: @JNOV: I don’t know. I am not totally hating it (yet). I feel like I need better pictures. It is really a lovely color. And whoever did her make-up should get a big fat tip. And Bill looks good too all slimmed down.

@SanFranLefty: Thank you for putting an end to that dreadful Scrabble game. I played as though I were heavily sedated.

@Mistress Cynica: Yes, the strapless ballgown look is exhausting and unfortunate on 90% of women unless they starve themselves for months before the wedding and spend three hours a day working on the upper arms and shoulder muscles, both of which Chelsea looks like she did. She was always very thin, but she looks like she lost weight along with Bill. Stress probably did it to her. I can see why if it’s a humid July in New York you wouldn’t want sleeves, but really.

Don’t even get me started on the frou-frou puffy skirts on those princess wedding dresses.

Then again, I was wearing khakis, a long-sleeve t-shirt from the Gap, and a cardigan sweater at my “wedding” at SF City Hall, so I’m the wrong judge of these sorts of wedding-industrial complex things, since I don’t get any of it.

TJ/ Hey — I’m writing a friggin’ syllabus — do I need to include page numbers, or is the title of the piece enough? I’ve got The Retarded Examination Copy, so I don’t know if my page numbers jibe with theirs. Honestly, I don’t see anything in this book that has anything to do with anything exam related.

Mrs RML wore a dress her mom made. I wore a ribbon shirt, beaded moccasins, and a red/blue half blanket. We had photographers from AP, the Albuquerque, ancestral land and Portland papers, plus a Latino photo agency but they were our guests. Mrs RML later went on to cover Julia Roberts’ wedding in New Mexico for People magazine, during which we saw and she met Rumsfeld, who has a house there want went to Julia’s pre-wedding party that week.

@JNOV: Section title/number should suffice.

@rptrcub: Gracias. I’m just giving them the story and the author. If they can’t find it, well, immacry.

@redmanlaw: Impressive. I wore a white shirt and my husband lost the ring.

@SanFranLefty: @Mistress Cynica: I hear you on the strapless dresses being so, so old and not actually that flattering–or low maintenance, for that matter–on most girls. Cynica, you had the right idea with a simple, flattering, lovely (comfortable!) dress. I feel privileged that I got to see you in it…and help you with all the buttons too!

@flippin eck: I didn’t even get to help with the buttons – and I was one of the attending gays!

@flippin eck: Why anyone would choose something that requires a strapless bra–one of the primary torture devices known to man–I will never understand.
@homofascist: Darling, I explained–I didn’t want to freak out the MIL. You’re still my #1 gay.

ADD: I paid ~$75 for my dress. Why you’d spend as much on a wedding gown as you would on a new car is completely beyond me.

@Mistress Cynica: Yes, I didn’t even get started on the evil torture device of Satan that rivals the anal pear and that we call the “strapless bra”

Your dress was beautiful, and you can wear it beyond that one day. Perfect!

Greetings from Erehwon, Montana – part of our hearing prep today included casing the ingress and egress to the tribal courthouse to avoid getting roughed up in the parking lot by the other side tomorrow. Slip in and slip out on the side where they’re doing construction then haul ass before they know Elvis has left the building. I’ll be glad when this fucking case is over.

Hey Beesko – when were you Over There? My client’s husband was over in Bosnia in 97, Macednonia 98, Kosovo in 01 with the Army. Got some expert instruction from the former sniper and firearms instructor in shooting the AR-15 and AK-47 today. Off the front lawn down to an old water heater toward the rail road tracks, just the way God meant it to be. Look for pix in the Club.

@Mistress Cynica: I like what Ivanka Trump did with her gown, although I’m not really sure if that qualifies as sleeves when they’re made of tulle.

As for Chelsea’s gown, it’s nice enough but nothing to write home about. I’m not a fan of pick-ups or ball gowns, but I suppose that’s more a matter of style than taste. I hope that the gown had a built in support system; for that amount of money, it damn well ought to.
I just wish Vera Wang would go away. She bores me.

And Hillary … well, I like what she did with her hair. Also, bewbies. I’m still recovering from that teal cleavage spectacle.

Meh. I’m not getting all this strapless hate.

I wore a strapless black ruched satin dress with a cream silk chiffon wrap (I don’t have the right to bare arms, YET) to my brother’s (evening) wedding recently. Bra, no prob, even though The Ladies ain’t where they used to be. Boning, somewhat annoying but still manageable. Now Spanx – those I have a problem with. But we still had the Sooooooouuuuul Train line going at one point, and mah bewbaaaays stayed put, even during the forward-to-back hair flip under the spot light.