duriens

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Vampires in 2020: *Shitting themselves because phones and CCTV are everywhere*

Vampires in 2025: My Prince, I know my childe slipped up and their Masquerade violation is now on Reddit, but I think you should let this one slide because half the commenters are saying it's staged or AI

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Funniest thing about Inquisition is how the walk animation team and the cutscene animation team were on two very different pages when showing Lavellan walk. In the over world, she’s shifting her hips like she’s on the runway, even when running she’s swaying like her life depends on it. Meanwhile, in the cutscenes, she’s hunched over like a teenager forced to attend church (which one could argue is the plot of the game)

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brennan: she whispers to you in draconic--

alex: which i don't understand

jasmine: because i raised him

;-; ;-; ;-;

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it's lowkey crazy how (all the way back in episode 11) caleb is so interested in Courting of the Crick, a romance novel about a dwendalian general and a drow assassin, and then later on he ends up with essek

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this was too funny to not redraw

thank you patopq for making the screenshots!

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[ID in alt text]

Head empty, love Crokas 🤍

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the world is running out of glassblowers and yet you want to become a fucking doctor

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'ao3 needs a like and dislike button'

what you need, my algorithm-rotten minded friend, is a grip

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here's some more unsolicited adult advice as someone in her 30s who knows there are a lot of twenty somethings and teens that follow her: if you're trying to build a new habit you really want, and are struggling, you have to break it down to the smallest building block possible. If you're failing, you haven't thought small enough. I know it's possible to hear stories of people who just snapped into new life mode one day by "just deciding", but truly what's happening there is a confluence of events and experiences that force the brain into some sort of epiphany. You cannot will an epiphany. It'll never work. For most times of your life, you will need to build habits intentionally, and that means not working against yourself and to set micro goals. like laughably tiny goals. because once that easy tiny goal is met, you can build off it, tiny goal after tiny goal until you reach your big goal.

so for example, if you want to be a morning person that gets up at ass crack dawn so that you can work out, eat brekkie, shower, and get to work at a leisurely pace, and you're not that person because you will hit your snooze button 800 times, you have to get the big picture goal out of your head. think smaller. "I want to get up 15 minutes earlier than I normally do." If you can't do that, make it 5 minutes. "I want to cook breakfast every day" hell no too big. "I want to eat something, anything, before I leave the house" hell yeah, fantastic. When you go to the grocery store to make sure there are things in the house for breakfast, if you keep buying bagels and microwave sandwiches that you ignore, you gotta think smaller. SMALLER. What's something so easy to eat that you'll never say no to. Is it a yogurt? Is it a handful of grapes? Is it a hostess ho ho? is it hot cheetos? FORGET the big picture of the fantasy put-together woman preparing a full nutritious meal that you'd be proud to admit to. Think only of the smallest goal you can achieve. If you know you can't say no to an ice cream sandwich, put a ton of ice cream sandwiches in your freezer and have one for breakfast every day until it's so instilled in you that you gotta get up to eat something you can start diversifying.

It sounds like, from the lack of habit place, that must take forever. But really it doesn't take too long to form the habit once the discipline kicks in. the trick is that you have to give your brain something easy to become disciplined to. If it's too hard, think easier and smaller. No one has to know. Literally no one in the gd world has to know that for 4 weeks when you were 22 you had an ice cream sandwich for breakfast every day. who cares. If it gets you eating oatmeal with fresh fruit in a few months who cares. you did it, yay. smaller, easier. if you can't do it, think smaller and easier. smaller!! EASIER!!! You are not thinking smaller and easier enough. break your brain thinking how small and easy you can go. SMALLER. EVEN SMALLER, SIS.

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Midas Touch (1 of 8) Full Project on Behance / IG

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Brennan is literally just describing the layout of where folks are on the battlefield because a player asked for clarification. But he says it like this:

“There is a distinction between those who are standing back and those who have charged forward. Those that are standing back have a hope in their heart. The hope they have in their heart is that the world might be saved without any danger, fear, or risk on their part. Many of them are weak, and it should not be asked of them to be brave. If they are not asked to be brave, it is possible that they will watch the brave quickly die.”

And ooooof that hit hard today.

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I see arguments about mages being the only ones to blame for basically anything bad that happens in Exandria, but there are many contradictions with such a statement. Which is not objective, it's an opinion born from taking the behaviour of some people belonging to one group and expanding it to all the so called mages. It needs to be said that there is no such thing as an "objective" opinion. It's one of two things, not both.

If we start waving around opinions that do not admit their opposite or anything different from them, it stops becoming a conversation and turns into dogmatic preaching that goes nowhere and keeps the real truth of the world out of reach of the actual conversation.

If only the mages are dangerous (some of them, not all of them, that's discriminatory speech), then Asmodeus never did anything, if Vespin Chloras and the mages of his age were the only ones to blame. It's like saying the gods didn't do anything at all.

Denying the culpability of the gods contradicts in itself the need for the Divine Gate. If the mages are the only ones carrying the blame, why would we need to keep the gods away and not the mages instead?

But that's where we can complicate this opinion, because as it is clear it is not objective truth. It's a polarized opinion.

If you are so focused on the mages being the only ones that are dangerous to the world, why are you more scared of the gods now walking on Exandria instead?

The mages were not the ones sealed behind it. The gods were.

And while people defend the gods for constructing the Divine Gate, "showing how much they understood what they had done", in its very design it's a physical embodiment of the gods actually refusing to own up to what they have done and to how dangerous they could have become.

Tharizdun cannot get out of its cage by himself. Neither could Predathos.

If the gods truly recognized the threat they posed to mortals, the Gate would have been impenetrable.

On both sides. Forever. Impossible to undo by any god no matter their unanimous agreement.

But we know that's not the case. One moment of them being on the same page was enough to shatter a "protective" barrier enveloping the whole globe in seconds.

Now, given the metaphor that I'm gonna use, there is trigger warning for disfunctional and violent family dynamics between parents and children below here.

I try to imagine what it feels like to be millions of actual children inside a house. They argue with each other, they steal toys and candies from each other. They hurt each other, sometimes pretty badly. Stories about kids pushing the joke or game too far are countless and common, both in our age and in many others that are past us. But why do kids do that, if not to emulate the ones that raised them?

Why does a mage yearn to be at the top of the hierarchy, if not to be like the one that made them? Does the mage do it because they feel themselves superior? Probably, but if we are familiar with a little bit of psychology, we know what the self-perceived sense of superiority stems from. The inner, deeply ingrained knowledge of being inferior and powerless. And also, as human beings we only replicate the patterns that are familiar to us.

To blame mages would mean to erase the environment they grew up in, the perception of life and society that was familiar to them.

They knew a hierarchy was there because someone before them put it in place. All the great tyrants have yearned to raise themselves to the height of other mountains before them, yearned to look them in the eye and say "I now have the power that you have". Which can mean many things, but deep down it comes down to one thing only: who is at the top of an ecosystem. Because the ones that are at the top don't have to be afraid of retaliation from the masses.

But again, as mortals they replicated a pattern they were familiar with.

Back to the house. Inside this house, millions of kids argue with each other and hurt each other. These kids are familiar with violent parents. Some of the kids try to please them and receive gifts, while some of them despise them and are singled out and villified. Sone of them even ignore them and try to just be, choosing no sides.

One day, the violent parents understand they have to leave, but given that they have been really dangerous to the kids, they close the door behind them.

Now, in a truly impartial world, a unconcerned third party would design a structure that would protect the kids from the parents, that must stay away from the kids while they figure their life out and make peace with their mistakes and own up to them.

To do that in a space safe enough for everybody, the parents must give up the keys to the house and provide for all the children.

In Exandria, the gods didn't have a third part construct the Divine Gate, they made it themselves. In this way, they managed to keep the keys to the door. And they kept picking favourites. It could be possible not to turn a few of them into overpowered war machines and give a little bit to everybody, but once again not the case here.

The kids kept fighting amonst each other more than before, and most importantly, they were not 100% safe from their parents. Let's add to that the fact that mortals have been led to believe they cannot survive without them, and most importantly the fact that they physically can't leave the planet. A barrier that was described as such become a one-sided door, which turns the house into a potential death trap with no way out.

No gifts, no food, no shelter, no healthcare, no money that they can provide will change the fact that even after hurting millions of people, twice, the gods thought they were worthy of giving themselves some slack.

"I will leave forever. I promise not to hurt you again... But I will keep the keys to the door."

I'll ask again. If the mages are the only ones to blame, why are the gods on Exandria's side of the Gate the ones that actually scare people more than the mages?

P.S. Give me mortal Prime/Betrayer fisticuffs in the parking lot any day, at least now half of a continent won't turn into a desert while they kick each other's teeth in. (Thank you for anybody reading this until the end in an age where both attention span and time are very short, I appreciate you.)

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All this discourse over who does "painting with light"

Hiroshi Nagai's paintings need sunglasses to look at.

They look like how it feels to walk across a parking lot on a 98° summer day without a speck of shade in sight.

They look like heaven but also like you'd burn your bare feet on the ground.

Even when you can see shade you know it's not enough and the minute you step out you'll be burnt to a crisp like a vampire.

And it's BEAUTIFUL

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Anyways. I'm gonna be thinking about Celeste saying "you are family to us" to Crokas for a while because what the fuck else do you say to the man you met like a week ago who just (without complaint. Without being asked) carried both of your children through an extremely dangerous wilderness that would surely have killed them. At significant risk and detriment to his health. For no reason other than they were children, and he was strong enough to carry them.

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“Don’t you think you should hold on to this?”

i got wizards on the brain!!!!

(DO NOT REPRODUCE WITHOUT PERMISSION)

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Love is stored in the little blue dragonborn family :')

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the stormlord saw his ass and said "are you going to take that lying down?" and defibrillated him with lightning