Can anyone else get into their mailbox? I know there was a glitch with xkit last night where you couldn’t reply, but now I can’t even load my inbox, even with xkit uninstalled. It just keeps timing out :/
{edit} okay, the general rule of “bitch about it and the problem will fix itself” held true, I can now access my inbox.
I can. But that explains why we haven’t talked in a couple days
I was also in hospital so there’s that.
Oh! Please remember that you are not legally permitted to die as stated in paragraph 32, section 16-18 of your contract.
Shit, you guys still have copies of that contract?
Please you know I’d march into the afterlife and drag you back
I’d have to come with you. I have to be having Some Words with Joy.
Seems reasonable. I can only assume ETD would also come with us.
When two of your oldest irl friends who have never met before gang up on you to defeat Death.
It comes for her, as it came for her husband, so many years ago. It comes for her, as it came for her Headmaster, the price of his ambition. It comes for her, as it came for far too many of her friends and students, in one war then another.
Death comes for her.
Minerva McGonagall Looks at Death, and raises an eyebrow.
Death pauses, then nods and backs away. “We’ll call this number three then, shall we?”
She smiles as she turns back to her paperwork. There is a reason her animagus form is a cat.
Capitalism will put the bill on your grave and harass your grieving family until they pay
One of my cousins passed away unexpectedly at the age of 35, and had been paying back a loan from the bank. About two weeks after his death, my great aunt received a statement from the bank (his mail was being delivered to her house) about a late payment. She called the bank and explained the situation and the only thing a manager could say was “Well, that’s unfortunate. We can arrange so payments will resume in 30 days, that should be enough time to have already paid for the other arrangements.”
On top of the unexpected $10,000 funeral, cremation and burial bill, my aunt had to finish paying my uncle’s $5,000 loan. She’s a disabled retiree, on a fixed income, and could barely afford to pay for her insulin for diabetes. She nearly lost her home of more than 40 years. Fuck the system.
She didn’t need to pay. When people die, their debts are not their family’s responsibility.
In fact, it is outright illegal to try and collect those debts from a person who didn’t cosign the loan and isn’t executing the will.
Banks count on people not knowing that last comment so that they can still get money
They really do.
My great-grandmother had her identity stolen before she died at the age of 93, and thousands of charges were racked up on credit cards in her name. After she passed away, they called my mother to try and collect. My mom laughed at them, and told them: “She’s dead, good luck collecting.” The credit card asked my mother, “Don’t you want to clear your grandmother’s debts? Don’t you want to clear her good name?” My mom laughed at them again. “No,” she said. “Because a 90 year old wasn’t watching porn with those credit cards, and her name is fine. Don’t give credit cards to old women likely to pass away soon. This is on you.”
Which is how I learned as a young child to always question collection agents, and to never pay off debts that aren’t your own. They often can’t even collect that money from the estate, if there is one, depending on how you write your will and what kind of account the money was kept in.
DO NOT EVER PAY OFF DEBTS THAT AREN’T YOUR OWN.
If a loved one of yours dies and bill collectors (credit cards, loans, etc etc) start calling you off the hook and request that you pay off their debts, tell them in no uncertain terms to go fuck themselves.
The reason being is that the moment you give them a single penny, that debt is now on YOU because you’ve now agreed to pay it off.
Do not agree to pay off their debt. Do not pass go, do not give them $200.
That happened to my grandma when my grandfather passed away. They had been separated for two years and he had some debt. They called her not even two weeks after the funeral and she told them where he was buried and ended it with “when you get your money bring me back some too.”
imagine a horror movie where all the characters are gen z and not particularly scared of dying
killer on the phone with a character: i’m in your house and i will kill you
character: alright lit hurry up tho
killer: do you want to die?
character: yea? what kinda question-
Killer: whats your favorite scary movie?
character: tiktik cringe compilations
Character sitting still some the entire contents of their room flying around them: Can you NOT I need to get this essay done before midnight. It’s worth a quarter of my grade and this is the only place with wifi. Do this spooky shit or whatever you like after
Death offers a game for your life. You decide on D&D.
“I assume you’ve never played?” I asked.
The cloaked figure across from me shook their head slowly.
“Great,” I said. “I’ll be the DM. I’ll walk you through everything. First, character creation.”
Six hours later Death sat leaned over the table with a mountain dew in one hand and a D20 in the other. Their hood was thrown back to reveal a bleached grinning skull.
We were in the company of four infernals from the depths of the Abyss. I don’t remember which of us invited each of them. Turned out we had quite a few friends in common.
They rolled a one.
“Oohh, tough luck,” I said with a smile.
“Fuck. This is the best time I’ve had in centuries, but I really should get back to work,” they said reluctantly.
“Yeah…” One of the demons agreed. “I actually have a meeting with some senators in like an hour.”
“Same time next week?” Death asked.
“I’ll be here,” I agreed.
I suspected they knew before we started that this was a game that didn’t have to have an end and didn’t have a winner.
For those who don’t know, this xkcd strip was done as a memorial when Gary Gygax died.
They came back the next week, and the week after that. After a month of weekly sessions, Death pulled me aside.
“Hey,” he muttered, shuffling his skeletal feet a bit and rubbing his arm. “I don’t want to be That Guy, but this game does have an end, right? I’m having a blast, but this is still technically work for me, and I have to file reports, especially with all the loopholes I had to pull on to get a multi-session game approved in the first place.”
“Oh, yeah, for sure!” I told him. “There’s lots of ways for it to end. “Your characters could all die, we could finish the story we’re telling together, or our group could even just stop playing.”
Satisfied, he took his place at the table, but for months thereafter, he would cock his head at me every time I ended a session with excitement to play again. All I could do was shrug.
The weeks turned into months, turned into years, and Death stopped his reminders that our game, like everything else in the world, would eventually have to die. He told me, once, that he was determined to see this through to the end because my absurdly long game would make for a good story, but I think he had grown attached to his gnome cleric. Her magic was from the Life domain, and his grin always seemed just a touch wider every time he healed someone.
Half a decade after we began, my players were as seasoned as their level 20 characters, and I was running out of curveballs that would challenge them, so I wrote an end to the campaign. I spent months on it, carefully tying up every loose plot thread I could think of and giving all five members of the party the best resolution I could muster. Three of them got married to each other.
There were tears flowing from every eye that wasn’t an empty socket as I narrated their proverbial rides into the sunset, before finally I folded my screen, looked at each of them in turn, and said “The end. Death, you can take my soul now.”
He froze, and the demons around the table turned as one to stare at him.
Then, slowly, he cocked his head the same way he used to. “But you won,” he said. “The object of the game is to tell a story with your friends, and you did.”
“But so did you!” I cried. “And everyone knows that when Death wins a game, he gets your soul.”
Death’s grin spread wider than it ever had when he saved someone’s life in-game. “Didn’t you just finish pouring it into a game that you shared with me?”
