Vicker

“Weirdly, D&D didn't encourage my leanings towards trying magic of my own at all. In fact, it frustrated them. Even the most pompous and ambitious historical magicians, from the Zaroastrian Magi through John Dee, Francis Barrett and Aleister Crowley, never claimed to be able to throw fireballs or lightning bolts like D&D wizards can. So D&D was never going to feed the fantasies of practising magic in the real world. That is all about gaining secret knowledge, a higher level of perception or inflicting misfortune or a boon on someone rather than causing a poisonous cloud of vapor to pour from your fingers (Cloudkill, deadly to creatures with less than 5 hit dice, for those who are interested). The game, as we played it, just doesn't support the occult idea of magic.

In fact, it might even be argued that, by giving such a powerful prop to my imagination, D&D stopped me from going deeper into the occult in real life. I certainly had all the qualifications—bullied power-hungry twerp with no discernable skill in conventional fields and no immediate hope of a girlfriend who wasn't mentally ill. It's amazing I'm not out sacrificing goats to this day.”
― Mark Barrowcliffe, The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons And Growing Up Strange

“But the attitude that Viking society held up as the ideal one was a heroic stoicism. In the words of archaeologist Neil Price, "The outcome of our actions, our fate, is already decided and therefore does not matter. What is important is the manner of our conduct as we go to meet it." You couldn't change what was going to happen to you, but you could at least face it with honor and dignity. The best death was to go down fighting, preferably with a smile on your lips. Life is precarious by nature, but this was especially true in the Viking Age, which made this fatalism, and stoicism in the face of it, especially poignant.
The model of this ideal was Odin's amassing an army in Valhalla in preparation for Ragnarok. He knew that Fenrir, "the wolf", was going to murder him one way or another. Perhaps on some level he hoped that by gathering all of the best warriors to fight alongside him, he could prevent the inevitable. But deep down he knew that his struggle was hopeless - yet he determined to struggle just the same, and to die in the most radiant blaze of glory he could muster.”
― Daniel McCoy, The Viking Spirit: An Introduction to Norse Mythology and Religion

“When we identify where our privilege intersects with somebody else's oppression, we'll find our opportunities to make real change.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“You'll see me differently in the morning, after I've fucked some sense into you.”
― Virginia Wade, Cum For The Viking 1