They fucking inside the can. You can’t put pictures of fucking beans on store shelves!

Digg went through a series of redesigns in a short period of time and the final straw was a redesign was one that removed users abilities to manage their feeds so that they could force ads into the feed. A few years later when they sold they said that overnight they lost a quarter of their users from that change. And those users were the initial userbase of Reddit, which was essentially the answer to Digg’s attempt to monetize users through forced ads.

Now, Reddit is “not even noticing a change in traffic” so much that they felt the need to make a public statement about it. Reddit is killing users abilities to customize their feed so that users are forced to use a feed which includes ads. It’s literally the same thing.

Well, we former Reddit mods don’t need to understand anything in that regard. Fuck Reddit in its entirety. I’m not wasting time considering their point of view. I understand that they’re pieces of shit. I did negotiate - they doubled down and so I carried through and walked the fuck away, revoked my registered copyrighted material and took the first steps to litigation when they reposted it. They’ve taken it back down after the DMCA was filed, we’ll see if it goes back up.

An ultimatum is a negotiation.

lol nah Reddit can fail. Just like Tumblr, and Digg, and MySpace, and LiveJournal, and GeoCities, and the list goes on. Reddit relies on volunteer work to provide its content, and just like when Digg tried to do almost the same thing, the community will move on. It always does. It has since the 80s and will until the extinction of humanity or the collapse of civilization.

Let it fail.

It’s like they forgot what happened to Digg. They have forgotten the face of their father.

I had to DMCA some of my stuff off the site to get it to stay off.

Prepare to meet, Kyle the Audacious

Arlo Underbarrel was the son of traveling merchants. He practiced music, burglary, and intrigue. It started as sneaking into places to steal stuff, mostly out of boredom. You see, Arlo didn’t have a difficult or tragic past. When he realized he could get easier access to places as a musician, and that as the hired musician he got into all the court gossip, he starts targeting nobility. He’s chaotic good and wants to make the world a better place by bringing the system down, and that’s easier from the inside.

Now grown up, while spending a couple years in the City of Dawn, he crossed paths with his now BFF, Chisuke (another PC). Arlo breaks into a room and is in the middle of stealing shit when Chisuke’s mark comes rushing in and Chisuke comes in behind him and kills him. Arlo just stands there, gaping like a dumbass, jewelry box in hand. Slowly puts it in his loot sack, mutters something like “good thing this room is empty.” and then dips out the window.

Then they start noticing each other at court functions - Chisuke, it turned out, was a Lord, and often crossed paths at parties where Kyle is the hired entertainment. Kyle would be down to help him break into places in exchange for the excuse to get away from the party with someone who belongs there and also, of course, the loot. Gotta have the loot. And if you gotta kill someone well that’s cool too, but he hopes they’re noble and deserve it.

Whatever timespan later - Arlo has decided he wants to change his life and become a bard. He begins his training at the Bardic College. When things go sideways with Chisuke’s family, Arlo turns to the stories of the Halfling heroes he grew up reading stories of. He decides that he needs to recreate ehimself, and Chisuke should do the same, and adopts the monicker of Kyle the Audacious, modeled after Lyle the Magnificent. Chisuke he dubs Okami the Bold!

So mechanically speaking he’s a Rogue 3 / Bard 3 right now. Arcane Trickster, College of Swords. Every round of combat he narrates. Even when he’s stealthed, he can’t shut the fuck up. He shouts “sneak attack!” every time he attacks, whether it’s a sneak attack or not. Whether he’s stealthed or not. Being as I’m also one of the only experienced players in the group comfortable with taking point he wound up being the defacto Face of the group. Which he has dubbed the Prose and Khans cause it’s 2 bards and everyone else is some form of fighter or barbarian.

We play on discord/roll20 so I send all the narration to discord to save it. Here are some of my favorites

Mold demons! Shit demons! Excrementals dripping from the ceiling! Time to get serious, GET IN THERE KYLE!

Tiamat’s Tits that thing is more rancid than Caos leaves the outhouse on curry night.

{prestidigitation for a sick metal riff} With style and panache, Okami the Bold charges into the frey! Fear not Prose and Khans, we’re here to save the day!

Bahamut’s Balls, you look like a scorpion fucked a tiger and abandoned the litter. I would abandon you too. I know those words sting worse than you, but so does this SNEAK ATTACK!

Overwhelmed at the terrifying might of Okami the Bold and Kyle the Audacious, the cowardly skinflints turned and fled! Get back here, we just want to talk!

Thom and Moiraine’s mutual interest was something that was never shown outright until book 11, which is why it comes up in the context of “what? when?” But there is a lot going on that’s easy to miss on your first read or five. Obviously I’m a fan and recommend giving it another go - my perspective has changed significantly in the 15 years since I first read it. But it’s also a serious undertaking. So if you decide to I hope you enjoy it and share your thoughts. :)