so I’ve been meaning to put this on tumblr and keep forgetting but, in the campaign I’m running my sister is playing an orc fighter, and one of the options you can pick for a fighter’s signature weapon is that it “glows in the presence of [fill in the blank].”
I was like, “oh, that’s funny because it’s a reference to that sword in The Hobbit that glows in the presence of orcs. Your weapon probably doesn’t glow in the presence of orcs.”
to which she responded, “FUCK YEAH it does.”
So now we have in the party an orc fighter with a club that glows in the presence of orcs. Or, as far as the character is concerned, a club that glows. It’s been in her family for generations since some ancestor won it in a battle, and it’s just always glowed. She has a sack to put it in when she’s trying to be stealthy.
LMAOOO. All right Ima try and explain this succinctly as possible. Basically this random-ass ‘young adult’ book, ‘Handbook for Mortals,’ hit the NYT Bestseller List on the #1 Spot for the Hardcover Young Adult Category this morning. Only problem is that literally NO ONE had ever heard of this book before, like nada marketing, publicity, etc. Zilch. It was supposedly published by a company, GeekNation who only announced their publishing arm back in July.
To hit the Bestseller list, the book would have had to sold at least 5,000~ copies within the first week, but a few people were quick to point out a major discrepancy where the book was literally out of stock everywhere in all major retailers, like legit you couldn’t find it on B&N, Amazon, and so on.
YA Twitter basically crowd-sourced an investigation where a few anonymous booksellers revealed that they had gotten calls first asking if they were NYT-reporting bookstores, and then received bulk orders of the book but not caring when the books arrived. Soooo essentially what happened was that this book scammed it’s way on to the top of the NYT Bestseller List by figuring out which bookstores reported sales to the NYT (to determine what hits the bestsellers list, the NYT’s methodology takes a sample from various bookstores, and this supposedly changes every week). They then ordered thousands of copies of the book from those stores and only those stores – and by doing so, this was all a scheme in the hopes of driving the book to the top of the bestseller list.
The main impetus for hitting the bestseller list was for getting a better chance to have a movie adaptation of the book made with a label like ‘#1 NYT Bestselling Book!’ which would have made it more appealing to potential investors. Butttt all of this was discovered and the NYT sent out a revision where they removed the book on the list a few hours ago.
Someone also compared an excerpt of the book to an excerpt from ‘My Immortal,’ so now there’s a conspiracy theory that the author, Lani Sarem, is actually the author behind that fanfic. She’s also a former music manager who worked with bands like Blues Traveler, and the official Blues Traveler account weighed in and claimed that she was fired for ‘pulling these kind of stunts.’
yikyak was cool. I used it back when i lived next to millitary base, so I just had to go “whoops! accidentally farted on the flag today!” and 15 dudes would threaten to hunt me down
some fucking dumbass: gay people with gay relatives are more likely to be gay than straight people with predominantly straight relatives, proving the gay gene is real and exists
me, a gay with a brain: gay people with gay relatives feel more safe coming out than gay people with a lot of straight relatives, proving nothing other than the fact that straight people oppress us and then try to cop out of taking responsibility
callanswall 