#also before you say it

[asha-mage]

Something I've been thinking about a lot as I play my current Sims 4 legacy challenge is how a lot of the negative criticism about The Sims 4 being to easy comes from critics and reviewers taking mechanics and even whole expansions in isolation, which is not really how the game is asking you to play it.

If you focus on any one specific aspect of TS4 to the exclusion of everything else it is in fact, a pretty easy game. But if you are trying to tell a story or allow one to naturally evolve, you are never going to be focusing on just one part of the game.

For example, in my current game I have four sims- two adults two children. Just juggling their needs and keeping everyone alive is not terribly difficult, but every layer beyond that you go it gets more and more challenging. As a result of my founder Sim picking the hot headed bad boy instead of the more stable family man (a choice made as a result of being more attracted to Bad Boy) the parents have a Unpredictable romantic dynamic and a Strained family dynamic, which means their pink and green bars are in a near constant state of free fall and it takes a lot of concentrated effort to keep them from fighting all the time and being miserable any time their around each other. They can't get a divorce though: because I need both their incomes and because it will get substantially harder to raise the kids in a one parent house hold, so instead their trapped in this endless cycle of me intervening to send them on a date to fix their shitty relationship and remember their each other's soulmates, being fine for a while, then slowly growing more and more miserable and unhappy with each other as they start fighting constantly, until I step in again, and save their relationship, again. I could just send them to relationship concealing fix all this but that takes money they do not have and it wouldn't be worth setting aside because this is ultimately cheaper (seriously, counseling costs like a thousand dollars per session and my criminal husband is taking home 170ish a paycheck!).

Meanwhile you have the kids. One just started being a teenager and that means she's constantly getting asked to do things, go places, and have those typical Important Teenage Experiences (board walk, sports day, career fair, prom, prom after party, etc). Again on it's own it wouldn't be to bad, but I have to pick and choose what high school experiences for her to have very carefully because I can't consonantly be tabbing away from my home lot to follow her and make sure she's getting the Most Out of Her Teen Years since that might mean her parents digging a relationship hole I'll never get them out of, or her toddler little brother's needs getting incredibly out of wack. I misjudged this balance initially because she got a Fear of Unfulfilled Dreams and she would often fall into an ennui doom spiral of bad moodlets related to her not missing out on life despite being like 16 (honestly? millennial icon). These bad moodlets where getting in the way of her socializing and school progress so I had to have her conquer that fear (it's own lengthy process) in order to get back on track. At the same time her little brother being first in infant and then a toddler, needs constant supervision and care from his parents- he can't go anywhere or do anything on his own, and if I let his needs slip to far away he's going to get yanked by social services, which absolutely can not happen because he's the heir to this challenge and since he's sister isn't a spellcaster I don't have backup plan for the next generation if he gets taken.

Did I mention yet that this is largely a spellcaster household? Cause see the overarching story line I'm going for is the rise (and possible fall) of a family of spell casters over several generations. And you might be thinking 'surely having phenomenal cosmic power makes all this easier' and you would be wrong. I frequently set things on fire when trying to magically repair them, overload on magical charge, and have to deal with my og Sim being cursed with everything from higher spell failure rates to being stalked by evil spirits. The curses especially are wild because in my efforts to Decrusify myself I ended up with a completely different unrelated curse from overloading during the spell. I can't just stop using magic either because it's my main sim's Aspiration meaning I need to keep grinding out those spell caster experience points- which leaves me in this feedback loop of trying to solve every problem with magic, it going horribly awry, needing more magic to dig myself out of the resulting hole, and that going horribly awry.

Honestly the only advantage of being a spell caster has been being able to make huge batches of chili in my cauldron and just leaving it there for family members to eat from when their on the go, since cauldron chili never expires. It's saved me tons of time that would otherwise be spent cooking meals, which has been a huge help since Everything Is Happening All of the Time.

All this to say is that while I understand where the complaints of The Sims 4 being to easy, I think it's a problem of framing rather then with the game itself. If you just set out to tell a story and then let it naturally evolve and twist, you'll find plenty of challenge- as each layer of the game adds it's own plate you have to keep spinning if you want to avoid peeing yourself in the street during an existential crisis.

[sillyguy-supreme]

white americans when you tell them that the idea of climate change as an impending disaster is a reductive first world perspective because it’s a tangible reality for many in the global south already:

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[symphonyofsilence]

Let the poor man rest.

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

How Bill was defeated and captured by Ford in my Gf AU! He basically just tricked Bill into accepting a deal that trapped him within Ford's mind and under his control :]

He may have gotten a little out of hand though....

>:)

Next post :]

[littlefankingdom]

Bruce is a overprotective and kind of strict parent, but he is very lax in some domains where other parents wouldn't. Here are some examples:

His kids stealing money from him. You will never catch Bruce Wayne lecturing his kids for taking his money. In the Arkhamverse, Jason steals 5 millions from Bruce's bank account to buy his army, and the problems for Bruce are: he didn't know it was Jason so it stressed him a bit, and Jason used it to buy an army.

Stealing from him in general. What is his is theirs. Unless it's dangerous. (Cars are death machines for his anxious self, which is why buying another batmobile for the young justice is not acceptable, or is kids taking it for a ride. He did made Redbird for Tim as a gift for when he got his license.)

Stealing from the cops (he has done it himself so many times)

Stealing money from rich people. In Knightfall, Bruce meets a British vigilante named Hood who steals from the rich to give to the poor, and Bruce had NO problems with that. He likes the young man. Stealing possessions is an issue tho. (Dick should follow his Robin Hood's dream, his father is fine with that)

Hacking into government facilities or anything really. Unless it's to harm an innocent civilian, like a classmate, he will not say anything. Hacking the FBI? Good. Hacking a russian mafia? Ok. As long as they do it safely and follow Barbara's instructions, it's fine.

Lying to him. Bruce is always impressed when he realizes one of his kids lied to him and he believed them. He's the Batman, after all, they have been able to fool the Batman. When he learns that Tim invented a fake uncle, he is proud of him and he tells him such, because he made the Batman believed it.

[secondbeatsongs]

source

[noodles-and-tea]

I feel like Jon is a bit of a rebound…

[shadowtraveled]

"mithrun is the only real monsterfucker in dungeon meshi" is objectively the funniest bit you can get out of his everything, but in all seriousness i think his attraction to his love interest is deliberately overstated—and that makes sense, because romantic jealousy is a classic and digestible motive, which is explicitly what kabru was aiming for in condensing mithrun's backstory, and also because until chapter 94, mithrun wasn't willing to admit to the true nature of his desires.

but because romantic envy is both classic and digestible, it probably isn’t a unique enough or complicated enough desire to tempt a demon’s appetite. mithrun’s wish, as far as we can figure from kabru’s reduced retelling, was to have a life in which he had never become one of the canaries, and that carries like 3857 implications and desires within it. that’s delicious. his love interest acts as sort of a red herring to his motivation for making it, though. (side note: i'm saying "love interest" here because, keeping in mind that i barely speak japanese on a good day anymore, "想い人" is something i'd usually take as just kind of an old-fashioned and romantic way to refer to a lover, but in context i wonder if both the connotation of yearning and the vagueness are intentional, and i think this phrasing gets those aspects of it more effectively. anyway.)

mithrun considered his love interest to be untrustworthy. there was a minute where i thought that comment might be about a similar-looking elf (yugin, one of his squad members), but comparing the two…

the "sketchy" arrow is definitely referring to the elf we know as his love interest—the bangs go toward her right, she only has the one forehead ornament, and, most notably, her ears aren't notched.

every time she’s given a full-body depiction in his dungeon, she’s drawn as a chimera, with the body of a snake from the waist down. (side note: the “what if a dungeon has chimeras before reaching level 4?”/“then the dungeon lord is unstable” exchange just being mithrun grilling his past self alive is so funny. he’s so. but anyway) there are a couple things about this.

first, the snake part of the chimera appears to be modeled after some species of coral snake mimic

which, in the biology-for-fun manga, i… doubt is a coincidence, especially with the added context of the “untrustworthy” comment. the dungeon’s conjured illusion of mithrun’s love interest was a harmless copycat of a venomous original. for whatever reason, he felt this person was a threat and made up a "safe" version of her to be in a relationship with, and while it’s definitely possible to be attracted to or even love someone you find to be toxic and/or intimidating, when you take that into consideration alongside the configuration of her body, you get some interesting implications.

which brings us to our second point: if we assume that mithrun was not in fact fucking a snake, then sexual attraction, at least, was so far removed from his idea of a relationship with this person that he did not even bother to keep her dungeon copy human enough to maintain the illusion of the option of a sexual relationship. this is somewhat echoed in the depictions of their interactions, which also imply a frankly unexpected romantic distance. she kisses his cheek and he doesn't seem to react; she's at the edge of a narrow bed with only one set of pillows, on top of his blankets while he's underneath them.

the kiss is particularly interesting because it seems to contrast the text. kabru's narration tells us this was everything mithrun could have asked for, but mithrun is there looking unreadable to pensive, likely because this is right before the panel that makes it clear things in the dungeon are beginning to go wrong.

walking through this backwards for a minute, we have the physical barrier of his bedding and the spatial separation inherent in a bed made for one person, the emotional barrier of his mounting anxiety getting in the way of his ability to enjoy the affection he sought, and... the snake, which historically carries the connotation of temptation, yes, but also mistrust, barring physical intimacy. okay. ok. if a dungeon reflects the mentality of its lord, all of this might suggest that mithrun was not able to have any real desire for a relationship with this person. his unwillingness to be vulnerable or let another person in was insurmountable. but in that case, why was she such a focal point that she remained to the end, after his dungeon had stopped creating iterations of his friends to come and visit him? why would he get so upset over her meeting with his brother that he became lord of a dungeon about it?

well. mithrun's brother was also interested in her, probably genuinely. and mithrun had to win.

you have an older brother who your parents completely ignore, probably in part because he is chronically ill/disabled and almost definitely in part because he received a ton of recessive traits that resulted in rumors that he was an illegitimate child. you are aware, most likely because those same parents fucking told you, that you actually are an illegitimate child. but they keep you around because you had the good fortune of looking just like your mother. what can that possibly teach you but that you, like your brother, are disposable?

it's utterly unsurprising that mithrun, under these circumstances, developed a pathological need to be better than everyone around him. people don't keep you otherwise. i'd argue this is also why he says he looked down on everyone he knew while milsiril claims his dungeon reeked of feelings of inferiority—he sought out people's worst traits and prioritized them in his mind to protect his already extremely fragile sense of self-worth, and all the while he tried to be as likable and high-performing as he possibly could be. his parents disposed of him anyway, but even then he tried to keep up the performance. he was kind to everyone. he never once lost to a dungeon.

when he saw his "love interest" meeting up with his brother, what he saw was himself being replaced by a person his parents had always treated as worthless, and if that was what they thought of the child they'd kept, what value could anyone possibly see in the bastard they'd given away to die? mithrun and kabru tell the story like he wanted to win this unnamed elf's heart, but it was never about being with her. it was about cementing his worth, proving that he didn't deserve to be thrown away.

and so it's particularly cruel that his demon discarded him, too. but maybe it's also particularly gentle that, in the end, there was someone who refused to even consider giving up on him.

kui laid it out in three panels better than i could hope to.

yeah. it's love. you wanted to be loved, even when the only way you were able to understand it was through the desire to be wanted, and you wanted that so badly that the idea of being consumed felt like the promise of finally mattering to someone.

[malinaa]

if i think about the hunger games in peeta's perspective i WILL start sobbing

[theerurishipper]

-

-

-

First <- Part 18 <- Part 19 -> Part 20

Masterpost

[sadagios]

double victory, was it? (it doesn't feel like one)

i saw a post about 3L!Grian meeting SL!Scar, but since SL!scar never died i figured he can't see any of the winners nor join them before the next session, and they appear before him as shadows. also, i thought 3L!Grian would be really happy to see a scenario where scar didnt die by his hand and actually won.

❀ bonus sketch ☘

[mokeonn]

"But if college was free, then people would abuse that and get useless degrees" hell yeah I would! If I could go to college without debt I would make it my job to get a degree in every little thing that interested me. I'd get a doctorate in film studies. I'd have a bachelor's degree for every science I like. I'd try to learn at least 5 languages with varying results. I would learn something "useful" like coding and then follow it up with a ""useless"" degree like art history. I'd be the world record speed run holder for getting every degree possible.

But I can't afford college without going into massive debt, so instead I spent the last 5 years trying to figure out what I am passionate enough about to consider going into debt over, because unfortunately being passionate about everything is extremely expensive to pursue.

[dollya-robinprotector]

Luka - deciding on what to wear on round 7 to face Till

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

A whole new meaning to Gay Chicken.

(For: Anonymous raffle winner!)

[spitedemon]

i really don’t think it’s “typical dragon age fandom nonsense” for people to be genuinely upset about the world state choices. combat, level design, art direction, gameplay gimmicks, those have all varied across each dragon age game. the one thing that’s remained constant are nods to our previous choices.

i wasn’t expecting my HoF to come riding in on a griffon, but i can’t find a monument dedicated to warden tabris somewhere around the anderfels? lucanis couldn’t have some lines about the time that one arainai boy was stirring up trouble in antiva city? you’re gonna tell me that making a mage the new divine wouldn’t have some impact on nevarra and antiva? on the anderfels, the supposed most devout militant andrastian nation in thedas? you’re saying nobody in the north is paying attention to who rules orlais or ferelden? come on.