Clippet or “Clippy” is the eldritch entity that resides in the Office Plane, a demiplane that takes the form of an infinitely tall office building filled with cubicles. Each cubicle houses a damned soul bound by chains of paper clips as they perform mundane paperwork for the lower planes as their eternal torment. The demiplane is reachable through the door of a brutalistic building in the city of Dis on Baator. Clippy does not profit from his work but simply enjoys helping others at the expense of his eternally damned employees. He will often seek out warlocks to aid in hopes that they will seek business with him in the afterlife.
Clippy Patron Warlock Features
Assistance: At 1st level, you can use your action to focus on one humanoid creature of your choice other than yourself within 30 ft. of you. Using your concentration, you provide aid to that creature. That creature may add 1d6 to any one damage roll of their choice during each of their turns.
Desktop Divination: Also at 1st level, you can automatically detect when a creature within 300 ft. of you is writing something and the nature of the inscription, but not its precise contents. For instance, you can determine that someone is writing a letter but not the contents of the letter or to whom the letter is addressed. You instantly learn the direction and distance to each writer in range relative to you.
Template: At 6th level, you can create templates of your spells to easily replicate them. Each time you complete a short or long rest, you may instantly create a spell scroll of any one spell from your list of spells known called a template. Any creature can use the template to use the spell scroll, even if they cannot normally cast spells. You can only have one template created at a time but you can change the spell stored in the template whenever you finish a rest.
Save Your Changes: Starting at 10th level, when
you cast a spell with a duration of 1 minute or longer, you may immediately take 5 points of psychic damage to double the duration of that spell (up to a maximum of 1 hour).
Don’t Show Me This Tip Again: At 14th level, you can use your action to attempt to banish a creature. You target a living creature with an Intelligence score 4 or greater using your action. That creature must make an INT saving throw. On a failed save, the creature vanishes and reappears in the Office Plane (the home of your arcane patron). The creature remains there as long as you maintain concentration up to 1 minute. While banished in this way, the creature takes 3d10 psychic damage at the start of each of their turns. The target can attempt a new saving throw at the end of each of their turns, escaping on a success. During each of your turns, you can use your action to impose disadvantage on the creature’s next saving throw. If the creature is reduced to 0 hit points while banished or if they are banished for an entire minute, the creature becomes eternally trapped on the Office Plane where they are slowly transformed into a paper clip, one of the many that form the endless paper clip chains that weigh down the souls of the damned. Once you use this ability you must finish a long rest before using it again.
Spells
Chains of the Office Plane
3rd level conjuration
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: 120 ft.
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Components: V, S
You call upon the paper clip chains of Clippy to bind your foes. You choose up to five large or smaller creatures within range, each no more than 10 ft. apart from at least one other target. The creatures become linked to one another in one long chain. Each creatures becomes linked to the nearest other target. If two targets are the same distance from one another, you choose which ones are linked and how, as long as it produces one unbroken chain. All linked creatures move at once when one target moves and cannot move more than 10 ft. away from a target they are linked to. This unique movement expends the movement speed of all creatures in the chain until their next turn. An affected creature can attempt a STR saving throw using their action during their turn to break themselves free from the chain. On a successful saving throw, all creatures linked to that creature are no longer linked to that creature.
Conjure Office Supplies
Conjuration cantrip
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: 5 ft.
Duration: 1 hour
Components: V, S
You summon your choice of either Calligrapher’s Supplies, Cartographer’s Tools, or a Forgery Kit. You also conjure a writing desk in a space within range. Only one set of tools and one desk can be summoned using this spell at a time. You may dismiss the summoned objects using a bonus action.
Clippet’s Magnificent Cubicle
7th level conjuration
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: 5 ft.
Duration: 8 hours plus half an hour for lunch
Components: V, S
You create an extradimensional doorway to a cubicle of Clippy’s Office Plane. The door will only open for creatures that speak the passphrase you determine as you cast the spell. The doorway leads to a 10 ft. by 10 ft. room. The room contains an ordinary desk with plenty of paper and writing implements. A medium sized humanoid employee wearing a collared shirt and khakis and the paper clip chains of the damned also appears in the room. The employee follows your commands to the letter, but at half the speed of a regular person. There are also various magical tools available which allow you to do one of the following:
Shred any one paper or parchment using your action.
Make a copy of any paper or parchment
using your action
.
Bind up to 100 pieces of paper or parchment together into a book
using your action.
Cast Scrying (save DC 17) on a crystal cube located on the desk.
Invocations
Clippy’s Binding Blade:(Clippy Patron, Pact of the Blade feature) You can summon a pact weapon that takes the appearance of sharpened paper clip with a hilt. Whenever you deal damage to a creature using this pact weapon, the creature must make a STR saving throw against your spell save DC or become restrained until the start of your next turn and take an additional 1d6 bludgeoning damage from the attack.
Summoning this weapon takes a warlock spell slot and lasts for 10 minutes.
Paper Clip Familiar:(Clippy Patron, Pact of the Chain feature) You can summon an avatar of Clippy for your familiar when you cast Find Familiar. The avatar takes the form of a paper clip with eyeballs riding a floating sheet of paper. The familiar has the same statistics as an Imp but also grants you a +2 bonus to all INT, WIS, and CHA ability checks while it remains within 5 ft. of you as it provides you with useful assistance.
Page Navigation: (Clippy Patron, Pact of the Tome feature) You can detect paper and parchment within 300 ft. of you at will. You can use your action to teleport using your book of shadows to any piece of paper or parchment within 300 ft. of you by spending a warlock spell slot.
The owlbear was inspired by a cheaply mass produced bag of plastic monsters from China.
Gary Gygax and the rest of his pals in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin (the very game that gave us the campaign setting Mystara, with Gary Gygax’s character, the wizard Mordekainen) kept their creative muscles strong by making up stories about the random cheap monster figures in the bag. Another one of them became the Rust Monster, for example. Some of these monster figures remain unidentified, perhaps, in a job for future game masters.
Owlbears need to become scary again. They were once described as “congenitally insane” creations of magic that were perpetually paranoid and hostile, creatures who shouldn’t exist who automatically grabbed you after 2 claw attacks, squeezed and could peck you, and with the grab, they’d do that damage every round. Every edition made them less and less scary, until the recent one, where they’re just treated as a normal animal with normal animal motivations instead of a thing created by experimentation that “shouldn’t be.” The grapple damage that made it so scary is no longer there.
This creature forced me to suck its foul blood. And then it opened it’s wings, like this. And hovered above me, screeching. ‘Now you are vampire.’ And it was Petyr. And we’re still friends today.
What We Do in the Shadows | 2014 | dir. Taika Waititi & Jemaine Clement
there’s a lot of evidence that the iliad and the odyssey were actually composed by a variety of poets through an oral tradition rather than just by one poet, so what if the homeric texts are actually just a very long game of D&D
homer, the dm: okay achilles, agamemnon has just taken away your war prize, what do you want to do achilles’ player: i roll to have a diplomatic conversation with agamemnon achilles’ player: *rolls a 1* homer: you throw the staff of speaking at agamemnon’s face and storm off to sulk with your boyfriend
Homer, the DM: Your beautiful Patroclus is dead. What do you do? Achilles’ player: I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: You can’t fight everyone. How would you even– Achilles’ player: *rolls a 20* I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: *sighs* Fine. You cut a path through the Trojan army, enemy dead strewn in your wake. Achilles’ player: How many? Homer, the DM: …lots. Enough to clog the friggin’ river with bodies. Achilles’ player: I fight the river. Homer, the DM: You. can. not. fight. the. river. Achilles’ player: *reaches for dice*
Homer, the DM: Okay guys, so the war’s over, you had a bunch of losses but you won in the end. Time to go home, let’s roll to see who gets there firs—
Odysseus’s player: I got a critical failure.
Homer: The cyclops asks you who you are. What do you do?
Odysseus’s player: I say, “Who me? I’m nobody.”
Homer: Roll for deception.
Odysseus’s player: I got a natural 20.
Homer: The cyclops now completely believes that your name is Nobody. He shouts for help from the other cyclops but they ignore him because he’s telling them that “Nobody hurt him.”
What’s up Octobocops, it’s Halloweason. Let’s get spooked. Here are some movies of the horror and horror-adjacent genres that you might watch by yourself or with a party of friends or with the spirit of a long-deceased duke who lives in inhabits your house. This is part five; you know the goddamn drill by now.
A couple of notes for those who are new to the list:
This is being posted on October 2, 2017. For humans of the future who find this, the links may not all be up to date. Some might even expire by November 2017. Click at your own risk.
I try to offer both breadth and depth of options on this list, but it is by no means exhaustive. I’m sorry if a favorite of yours got left off. There’s a chance I just haven’t seen it yet. Feel free to reblog and add some of your favorites, but please make sure a movie is actually currently available on Netflix before jumping my shit about some nonsense I “forgot,” please and thank you.
This list is based upon movies that are available on Netflix in the US. I have no idea what is streaming on Canadian Netflix or British Netflix or Slovenian Netflix. How would I know this. Why would I know this. Please do not expect me to know this. Feel free to be the Canadian/British/Slovenian Benito and make your own list applicable to your own countryhumans.
Horror movies, by their nature, have horrific things in them. Most of these movies are violent; lots of them deal with torture, abuse, and mental illness. If some element of this jumps out to me while I’m writing these up, I’ll mention them, but if you are sensitive to or have issues with certain types of content, you might look an individual movie up on Common Sense Media first to check for content warnings.
While there are always good horror movies to be found on Netflix, if you really like scary movies, you should just get a Shudder subscription (or even just the free trial!). It has an unbeatable, well-curated selection.
All right let’s get to the goddamn movies what say
Classics (this section seems to get smaller every year):
We Are Still Here (Barbara Crampton is in this; her name will be mentioned a few more times on this list because she is apparently a major selling point for some people)
At the Devil’s Door (from the maker of The Pact; not as good, still interesting)
The Void (Lovecraftian cult shit; very cool visuals and practical effects)
Baskin (subtitled; super gory; also, the protags are asshole cops who tell transphobic stories and say homophobic slurs and talk about bestiality at the beginning, so heads up; worth a watch if that doesn’t bother you)
Extraordinary Tales (animated anthology of Edgar Allan Poe stories narrated by famous people; a mixed bag, but cool)
Darling (okay, so: this is a really beautiful and atmospheric film that I, generally speaking, recommend; however, it is kind of “artsy,” there is not a lot of dialogue, it is in black and white, there are some light strobing effects, rape does not occur on screen but is implied to have happened in a character’s past)
Beyond the Gates (I actually did not like this very much, but some people might find it interesting, especially if you like–wait for it–Barbara Crampton)
Turbo Kid (this is not really horror, but if you like horror, especially splatter stuff, you will probably like it; it is good as shit)
Gerald’s Game (new shit from Mike Flanagan and it’s really great. Deals with lots of hard issues like abuse and such so maybe take a look at content issues if you are sensitive to that kind of stuff. Also definitely not for the squeamish, so head’s up. That said, it’s really really good)
80s/90s shit:
Hellraiser (not my style, but maybe you like this stuff, iunno)
“But, Benito!” I hear you cry. “I don’t have Netflix for some reason! What about some other streaming services?” Yeah, all right. Here are some quick hits that are definitely not exhaustive. Just a couple of party jams you might enjoy if you’ve burned through the Netflix list.
What’s on Hulu though
10 Cloverfield Lane
Monster Squad
Fright Night (the original; a must watch if you haven’t seen it)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
From Dusk Til Dawn
An American Werewolf in London
Hatchet
Pumpkinhead (check this one out if you haven’t seen it)
The Blob
I Saw the Devil (amazing)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (either version)
Shaun of the Dead
The Loved Ones
Wolfcop
The Thing
Rigor Mortis
Borgman
The Descent
Bloodsucking Bastards
Willow Creek
Berberian Sound Studio
Plus a bunch of shit that’s also on Netflix
What about Amazon Prime you idiot
The Girl with All the Gifts
Them (not Them!)
The Witch
Hell House LLC
Neon Demon
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Nosferatu
Green Room
Little Shop of Horrors (the Corman one, not the musical)
The Blackcoat’s Daughter
The Bay
Society
The Last Man on Earth
The Last Exorcism
What We Do in the Shadows
Amazon Prime is hard to navigate so that’s all. If I left off a favorite, it’s not because I don’t like it. It’s because it didn’t pop up in the first 20 pages of search results.
Tell me some good Shudder ones
The Innkeepers
A Tale of Two Sisters
The Gorgon
Lake Bodom
Prevenge
All the Phantasms (maybe not Ravager)
Shrew’s Nest
Noroi: The Curse
The House of the Devil
Black Sunday
Let the Right One In
Murder Party (highly recommended, esp for Halloween)
WNUF Halloween Special
Ghostwatch (play this at your party if you want to fucking win Halloween)
This list could be a million more entries long. Shudder rules.
What about Crackle/Vudu/YouTube/etc
Please shut up
As usual, please do me a solid and only circulate the current version of the list, so people aren’t clicking on dead links and thinking I’m an idiot. Again, this list is not and could not be completely exhaustive, and if I left off your favorite movie, I swear I was not targeting you personally. And, again, some of these movies are more interesting than they are good AND horror is a highly subjective experience, so your mileage may vary on some of these.
If you enjoyed this list, perhaps consider checking out some of my other Halloween-related posts:
Also maybe consider checking out my Letterboxd profile, where I rate and review movies of all types (but primarily horror) all year long and from all sorts of sources, in case you’re wondering what’s good on more than just Netflix. Also also, maybe take a look at some of my comics, several of which are appropriate for Halloween times.
Happy Halloween, nerds!
I Don’t Like Horror Movies, but if you do, Benito’s list is both indispensable and an October tradition. Also you should 100% watch Fright Night and the Phantasms – you can even hear Matt and I doing a commentary track for the first one!
For their part, the Gardner police said in a Facebook post that they thought it was pretty damn funny.
“We would like to sincerely thank the persons responsible as it made our day when we pulled up what we expected to be hundreds of pictures of coyotes, foxes and raccoons. Thank you to the citizens who noticed the cameras. Your effort and sense of humor are greatly appreciated.”
I’d like to think that this is just how people in Kansas naturally behave at night.
“There is a copy of the NES game Golf in the firmware of every Switch system”
Me: Oh haha, what a weird thing, probably some remnant from the debugging process -
“Since that was a game that Satoru Iwata programmed himself, this could have been intended as a way of saying that Iwata is spiritually a part of every Switch and is watching over and protecting every system.”
On July 11th*, the date of Iwata’s passing, doing Iwata’s “directly to you” motion with the Joy-Cons on the home screen will play a sound clip of Iwata and launch the game.
(* Before you try this yourself, note that simply changing the date on your system will not work, as this runs off the Switch’s internal internet-synced clock, meaning that changing the date manually will only work if the system has never been connected to the internet)
I… I can’t…
It goes even further than that.
Firstly, opening the game like this person is in the video is only possible with a brand new unit on system version 1.0.0 that has never been connected to the Internet. Because of this, opening it is pretty hard to replicate, unless if you have a completely brand new Switch. So, even if the system’s internal date is on July 11, it still won’t open if the system version is up to date.
The thing is, it’s not supposed to be opened.
The hidden Golf game has been described as an omamori, which, in Japanese culture, is a charm usually bought at shrines that offers spiritual protection and good luck if you keep it close to you.
Sometimes they’re made of cloth, and look like a tiny bag, which can contain a written prayer. People often tie them to something like a purse or a backpack, so that it’s always with them. Here are a bunch of different ones:
Omamori are not supposed to be opened, as doing so is said to remove its blessing.
Seeing as the hidden Golf game on the Switch is so difficult to run under normal circumstances, it’s probably not supposed to be opened in the first place. It’s likely meant to represent an omamori in Iwata’s honor. Its very fitting, because of how portable the Switch is, since people are likely to take it with them like they would with an omamori strapped to a purse or backpack.
