Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons - Emerald Dragon

The hell is this guy smiling about? It’s less like the Amethyst’s “smug asshole” smile, and more like “I’m going to flay you alive and turn your skin into a jacket”.

They wanna play with mah ehmowuld? They playin' with the wrong guy! I wanted to make a joke about them being Chaotic Emeralds, but the spoilsports who wrote this made them Lawful. Boo.

Anyway, turns out I made a massive miscalculation in my NaNoWriMo wordcount, and realized I actually had way more done than I thought. Meaning, I had way more time to actually write this. And since I pop these babies out faster than EA popped out Madden sequels, this’ll be a cinch.

Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons - Crystal Dragon

Well, Halloween has come and gone, and now we’re left with the rest of the Gem Dragons to cover.

Hopefully, the Amethyst dragon was the worst of them.

Crystal dragons are the friendliest of the gem dragons, always curious about the world. Though they seldom seek out company, they willingly converse with visitors who do not try to steal from them.

Okay, so friendly yet introverted. That’s… a massive step up from the Amethyst. Also, basically just me.

Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons - Dracolich

Get your "boner" jokes out the way, kids.

I know what you’re thinking “Paph, why the hell are you suddenly springing the Dracolich on us in the middle of the section on Gem Dragons?”

One, I needed something metal to purge all the bougieness from my system. Two, it’s Halloween, so what better time to bring in this fucker? Three, Dracolich’s entry actually comes before “Dragon, General”, so technically this whole order I’ve been doing things in was a sham from the beginning.

So, About Jareth's Backstory...

So, the internet being what it is, I see a lot of hypotheses on certain aspects of Labyrinth's backstory.

Or, rather, I see the same hypothesis popping up in myriad forms. You know the one, Sarah is the latest in a long line of Sarahs because Jareth is a lunatic who keeps going after girls with the same name because he has some bullshit tragic past involving a girl named Sarah.

After all, everyone acts like they expected Sarah, so surely this has happened before, right? No.

Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons - Amethyst

Look at this assclown. This is the face of someone who sniffs his farts and likes it.

What, you thought we’d be getting on to the Metallics, now that the Chromatics are done?

Well, so did I, but the Monstrous Manual had other ideas.

Amethyst dragons are wise and regal, with a detached air, and ignore what they consider to be petty squabbles between good and evil, law and chaos.
“Mmmm, yes, I see. A band of stalwarts out to vanquish Lord Mr. Kill. How trite. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to my readings of Orson. D. Olaf’s Aviagientienusybeleopatiearium Cycle. What, you haven’t heard of it? Of course you haven’t.”

When hatched, amethyst dragons have lavender skin with small scales of a light, translucent purple.
Good grief, they’re so bourgeois that even their underskin isn’t red, it’s lavender.

Let's Dissect the 2e Monster Manual's Dragons - White

He looks like he’s wearing a shark mask. Also, this and the blue dragon pic are the most physiologically accurate dragons thus far.

White dragons, the smallest and weakest of the evil dragons, are slow witted but efficient hunters.

Damn, that’s cold. The other entries were quick to write off the other colored dragons as mean, puppy-kicking fucks, but this one flat-out calls them dumb. The black dragon’s page looks flattering by comparison, for frost sake.

They are impulsive, vicious, and animalistic, tending to consider only the needs and emotions of the moment and having no foresight or regret.

So, these guys are actual sociopaths. No, seriously, that fits the definition perfectly. Add a lack of empathy, and it’s right out of a textbook.

Despite their low intelligence, they are as greedy and evil as the other evil dragons.

They really want to ram home the fact that white dragons are so fucking dumb, they get fired from the M&M factory for throwing out the W’s.

Windows Shareware Disk Showcase: Ultimate House of Games for Windows, Part 1

It's been a while since my last vidya game post, hasn't it? Well, that's what happens when you write a blog where anything goes. You know, I think I should make that my blog's subtitle: The Blog of Anything Goes.

By now, I’m sure any 21st century Earthlings reading these posts have a few questions. Like, why do I have such a nostalgia for all this crap that became obsolete centuries before I was born? Let me explain.

See, in the aftermath of the Fusion, one of the ways the two worlds started getting to know each other was by trade. The most vital commodity we traded was knowledge.

As we grew to learn each other’s languages and cultures, we taught each other what we knew. It started, of course, with things like what was safe to eat, how to prepare it, and how to make antivenom for that nasty yophakhi sting.

Once we got that part down, we got technological. Earth taught us about things like electronics and rocket science, and we taught them what we know about medicine, biology, and how to use the Art of Change.

One convenient stepping-stone in our wrangling of Earth tech was to buy older, simpler examples of it and the documentation thereof in order to dissect and reconstruct it with our own methods.

Thus, over the next few decades, we began our climb when it came to melding the arts of electronics and transmutation. Our climb was much faster, for we had the shoulders of giants as footholds.

And that’s why my first computer was one of these fucking things.

Even the art of transmutation can’t make this thing less shitty. Photo belongs to one Clicsouris (CC BY-SA 3.0). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Musee_de_l'Informatique_-_Exposition_25_ans_du_Mac_16.jpg

Back in the days when they were still replacing the old infrastructure for the internet, shareware disks got a new lease on life. Only ones I remember personally having as a ‘net were the eGames Galaxy ones, though.

Thankfully, since Archive.org’s servers weathered those decades like a champ, I can dig around and find some more of that good ol’ late 20th century crustiness. With a VM in tow, let’s take a trip back in time.

You’ve seen the Silver Surfer, now witness the might of the Silicon… uh, Sucker.

The one we’ll be looking at today is called Ultimate House of Games for Windows.