#dishes are still a problem

[lydiacatfish]

i think being back on the vitamin d is working. i did a BUNCH of chores today and we had extra time after dnd so i worked on my sewing project for the first time in a few months.

[y-rhywbeth2]

I, a lunatic: What if Bane was the midwife for Durge's 'birth'?

Gods above lesser rank have the ability to create whole living beings (and inanimate objects). An intermediate deity (such as Bhaal was) can replicate anything it 'holds,' so long as the 'materials' to build it can be harvested from the material plane the creation is going to be on. Bhaal's first three kids were born this way by consuming and tearing apart living animals to create abominations imbued with his divine essence (though he was apparently a Greater Deity at the time, which means he could make new and original creations instead of just copying. A Greater Deity also doesn't need materials and can just use their own essence).

Regardless of rank, creating/duplicating whole new objects and beings into existence is absolutely exhausting for the deity. (Although if you're just making a human or something of similar mass that's still just a few moments to catch your breath, really.)

Of course Bhaal wasn't holding jack shit between the Time of Troubles and the 1480s on account of being dead, lacking a physical form or access to anything on the Prime to build with, and was reduced to a vestige of rank 0 with those powers well out of reach. No remaining fragment of Bhaal has the power to create a godspawn (except the Bhaalspawn, who can do it the old fashioned way, but apparently that didn't happen). And yet Durge predates Bhaal's resurrection (or else they'd be like 10).

'Often lesser powers have alliances with intermediate or greater powers that allow them to rely on their more powerful friends with assistance with the creation of objects.'

For Durge to be created this way, another god would need reason to take Bhaal's divine essence (maybe the portion stashed away on Mt Celestia or hidden in the Winding Waters, idk) and then craft it a form. Of Bhaal's allies; Loviatar, Mask, Talona and Malar are lesser deities who don't have the power to do this, and Myrkul is also dead. This leaves Bane. I don't see why Bane would do this, outside of some complicated machinations (blackmail?), but the consequences of sort-of having Bane as a (step?)father-ish presence could be interesting for Durge (who probably knows nothing about this). Might account for their insane ego and lack of subtlety which Orin despairs of so much.

(It goes without saying that in 'reality' I don't think this actually happened, but it would be one workaround.)

Bhaal's 'dead flesh' couldn't be used because he doesn't have physical flesh, he's a god. And the corpse-asteroid doesn't exist on the material plane and is formed from pure concept. His avatar, might in theory, have physical form, but being dead that's out of reach.

Bhaal could have created them prior to the events of the Moonshae Trilogy or as a secret fourth Child of Bhaal who didn't get noticed during the zombie apocalypse shenanigans.

...Timeline incompatibilities aside, my love of creepy changeling-themed Durge is now going: 'what if Bhaal murdered somebody's kid and then harvested their flesh and combined it with his own divine essence to rebuild a little predatory murder god replica and sent it 'home'?'

[vimbry]

the silly linguistic absurdities in homestar runner that you need to take a moment to register anything wrong with were a huge influence on my sense of humour. "the geddup noise wins a year's supply of our home game" is one of my favourites.

[sleepyorchidmonster]

Chen'ya is such a constant presence in NRC that he even has a (fake) student ID.

During his first year, he would often accompany Trey during classes, staying invisble while being a general nuisance (people though that Trey was swatting flies, Cater has a lot of funny videos).

After Riddle enrolled, Chen'ya also started to follow him around, and even acted as a bodyguard in the weeks following the redhead's overblot.

Chen'ya's favourite pastime is impromptu tea parties with his friends. Just a random teacup or tart appearing for Trey, Riddle and/or Cater. He also likes to steal tarts at unbirthday parties and even go hang out at other dorms (he absolutely LOVES Monstro Lounge's food, also annoying Azul is always fun).

The other students don't tend to notice him, since he is always invisible, though a few beastmen and fae are often on edge for seemingly no reason.

He once growled at Malleus and Leona during a dorm head meeting.

[autistic-katara]

oh my god can ppl find a reason to ship/not ship something that’s in the middle of a ship war w/o trying to make out the other character to be the worst person in existence? honest to god it’s not that hard to say “this ship doesn’t work for me bcz of xyz” u rlly do not need to go “uhhh actually no it’s not character a that’s a horribly racist asshole who thinks SA is cool (that’s so stupid wtf, they barely did anything), its character b. did u not see how they [smallest thing possible]??? can’t believe the hypocrisy u have going on here…” like seriously PLEASE u do not have to justify urself to this level it just makes everything 10x more annoying

[terresdebrume]

Had people over for a crêpes party today! Started making the crêpes at 8am, finished just around 12 when most of the guests came in, which was excellent timing, though not fully on purpose xD

We used to have one of these once a month when I was younger, and I never knew why my dad seemed so reluctant (he was the one in charge of the crêpes) but as I contemplate the dishes waiting for me in the sink after all this I'm like ... Yeah, I get it now oO

Despite that, I think that's one of the traditions I'd like to keep with Baby if/ when it comes so I think maybe I'll try and have another one after I move and go from there

[figofswords]

anybody remember the stephanie brown essay I was working on under a research grant fully last summer? yeah it’s not done yet it super needs to be done and I’ve been avoiding working on it for weeks. someone tell me to just do it already

[look-at-the-stars-tonight]

the amount of effort that goes into figuring out what to cook and eat every day is RIDICULOUS. i used to think people were so weird and boring for eating the same thing every single day but it truly does make life so much easier

[kaasiand]

It's kinda weird how, compared to Metroid Dread, Metroid Fusion was so much more blatant in

its prioritisation of linear story progression over exploration

its linear presentation (literally naming the areas sector 1–6), though it still does the classic "linear game pretending to be nonlinear" thing by taking you through them in a different, but still fixed, order

the way it literally directly tells you your every next step constantly

yet when playing the games, it felt to me that somehow, despite all of this, Fusion felt a lot less frustrating in its linearity to me than Dread. In Fusion it was immediately clear that I would just be sticking to a single sector for each part of the game and those sectors themselves would still be mostly freely explorable in a way that felt more similar to Metroid II, but in Dread there was just no telling AT ALL when the path behind me would be blocked off and it also felt wayyyyy less justified than in Fusion, especially with just how often Dread would be doing this.

With Fusion's extremely tense atmosphere being present throughout the entire game and so much of the story taking place and developing during the game itself, I was totally understanding of its structure and restrictions. Dread on the other hand just kinda made me feel nothing, except

frustration at the lack of exploration with every single door locking behind me constantly for no good reason. Even some obstacles don't *go away* but instead switch from blocking the path forward, to blocking the path back: the thermal doors, the lifts that go down if you stick to their spider magnet walls, the big boxes that you had to move with the charge beam (or grapple beam idk? or both?) it just gets soooo annoying

frustration at how you need to use 3 buttons simultaneously to perform one single god damned action

frustration at how abilities felt extremely underused in the level design—you rarely grapple your way across the ceiling to cross a pit like in Super (which is the kind of level design that allows for sequence breaks in completely natural ways that encourage player experimentation), no, you just open the grapple beam door lock with your grapple beam door key. Literally every single ability in dread relies on this WAY TOO MUCH in painfully obvious ways, including literally every single power beam upgrade

frustration at how missile tanks feel worthless because getting only 2 is just not worth my time (yet the total number of missiles is similar to the other games... a sign of the game being too long/padded compared to the old games)

frustration at how energy tanks feel worthless because every boss does 100+ damage per hit; you're just not allowed to be tanky and the game is forcing you to play in only one specific way. The full energy tanks are just straight up given to you at way too hard-to-miss points—it's not a reward for exploration, it's forcibly scaling up Samus's health so it can scale up the next bosses' damage accordingly and absolutely nothing ends up feeling different. And to make things worse, the energy tanks that you DO get to find on your own don't actually DO anything because they're fucking energy PARTS. They just deliberately made exploration as unrewarding as it possibly could've been

frustration at how almost every area looks the goddamn same and has no music to stand out with either

I must say Dread's final boss was actually really reasonable though, it was really generous with the heals/restocks provided in between & low damage numbers making it so that my collected energy tanks FINALLY felt like they were actually making a difference. I will hate that one arbitrarily locked door in the escape sequence though

[strohller27]

.

[fingertipsmp3]

I’m always so fascinated by people’s bad roommate stories. I’m not sure I’ll ever live with someone I haven’t vetted extensively beforehand ever again

[thateclecticbitch]

Request to move into basement failed. Sad.

[y-rhywbeth2]

While it might be an interesting enough topic to explore, personally I don't think attachment issues are going to be much of a problem for Astarion, ultimately. This particular angst is sort of a non-issue to me. He's most likely going to have them, yes, but he will work through it.

Player: "I care for you a great deal. That's never changing." Astarion: "After all this, I've realised it's all right if it does change. If anything changes."

If you break up with him obviously he's upset, but as he tells you, he is living again and will continue to do so. He can and will dump you, and has multiple opportunities to do so and be perfectly fine on his own afterwards (assuming Cazador isn't still alive, which has nothing to do with his potential romantic attachments).

Nor does he appreciate the notion of relying on somebody for anything, including his lover. He appreciates the sentiment of wanting to keep him safe, but he's clearly irritated by the notion: "It would be nice not to have to rely on you as my great protector". He wants his freedom and his self-determination and he's going to have it.

Note that if you fail to convince him not to ascend and then try to stop him, which he perceives as robbing him of self-determination/freedom, he either tells you to "die screaming" and walks out or tries to kill you himself. No amount of approval will stop him: Your love is not more important to him than his freedom and ability to determine his own destiny. The only reason you can talk him out of it is by pointing out that he's being ruled by fear, that ascension will rob him of that and turn him into someone he hates. The fact that ascension is not on the table anymore might knock that drive back a bit while he takes the time to recalibrate and find his feet again, but I highly doubt it will stick: He didn't suffer 200 years of misery, come out the other end ready to fight, and then claw back his freedom, then decide it's time for him to reclaim his life only to sell it to somebody else, no matter the pedestal they might stand on.

If he does ascend and you leave him he gets over it in a few days. He might think of you from time to time between schemes and blood orgies, but he considers it beneath him to seek out your attention. If you turned illithid then the dev notes will happily point out that he didn't think of you or miss you at all. Possessive as he might be of his property, you're not actually that important to him compared to himself.

He tells you he will be fine without you, and if he loses you he demonstrates that he will be fine without you. He's a very self-interested person, and imo, at his core remains so when romanced (people can talk about how sweet he is with Durge all they like, but as a durgestarion enjoyer I find he's actually incredibly insensitive a lot of the time. It's a bonus. Get the feral ending and he flat out tells you your relationship is doomed because you'll remind him too much of the aspects of vampirism he hates the most and he's going to prioritise his wellbeing. Sure, he'll carry you in his heart forever and grieve your horrific ending, but he's clearly ok enough in life to go to the party, dressed up nicely, and share a toast with other people he cares about: He'll live). Selfishness is a flaw and a strength of his.

Astarion wants his partner: he doesn't need them. If he identitifes co-dependent behaviours in himself he will want to unlearn it. He sets boundaries and he expects them respected, and he will enforce them - as he does in-game. The lover is not that important in the grand scheme of things.

[possum-tooth]

aita for doing the dishes

[there-will-be-a-way]

Bro, my (ex) roommate (who I successfully kicked out) literally pissed in my bed. He pissed. In my bed. In my bed.

And into the bathroom sink too.

[minglana]

also im so hungry. i made the stupid (?) decision of staying sleeping in bed instead of going to lunch OR asking for lunch to be brought to me (i did feel a bit under the weather). so now im very hungry. and i still have over an hour left for dinner😭