#this is possibly a

[prismatic-starstuff]

it is seven in the morning and I have Not Slept and my brain has said 'hey, you know those Extremely Complicated Feelings you have about Astarion in the ending where he ascends? how about we talk about them a bit Right Now? :)' so let's go for it AMSNAKXNXMXN

so I don't want to get into all my feelings about it right now because I would literally be here for hours, but... I want to clear something up!

in my eyes, the only in-game ending that Astarion deserves is the good ending. he deserves to have a loving voice talk him out of doing a very unwise and cruel thing that he's not really doing because he wants to, that he's only doing because he wants to save himself from further trauma. he deserves to kill Cazador and show that he's better than that bastard ever was in every imaginable way. he deserves to get on that path to healing, to living a healthy and happy life, and to having a healthy and happy relationship with the one he loves.

this is what I want for him. this is what this beautiful character I love so much deserves; freedom, and happiness, and healing.

now lately, I have said some positive things about Astarion in the ending where he ascends, and I need to make something clear. when I do that, I'm not promoting that ending or saying I prefer or enjoy it; when I do that, I'm not saying I prefer him that way or want him to be that way. no harm to any lovers of the ascended Astarion ending ofc! it's just not what I personally vibe with.

when I say positive things about Astarion in the ending where he ascends, I'm doing exactly that: I'm saying positive things about Astarion. just because that ending involves him going down an extremely unhealthy path and showing some extremely unhealthy behaviours, that doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to stop loving him, you know? he's a character I care for very deeply, a character I wish the best for, a character who I have a lot of strong feelings about; I love him at his best, I love him as he's figuring himself out... and yeah, I love him at his worst too.

but I just... felt like I needed to make that clear aldmakxnskcndn. the ending still breaks my heart, I don't want to see my beloved vampire elf going down that path; but I am in love with him, so I do still see certain things to appreciate about him in that ending, not the ending itself in general.

long ramble over! I shall now think about sleeping ALXMSKXNXOXNSM thank you for bearing with me—

[stillgotscars]

this part of stevie nicks’ interview with rolling stone is taking me out

[mintbees]

if i was a popular minecraft youtuber id just tweet "hey guys stop drawing shipping fanart of me and my friends/coworkers, i only fucked one of them and seeing me paired with anyone else is kinda weird and crosses my boundaries" and then i'd turn my phone off

[evidently-endless]

i think we should remind musicians they can absolutely make up little stories for their songs btw. it doesn’t have to be about them at all. you can invent a guy and put him in situations to music. time honoured tradition in fact.

[everlastingrandom]

This morning there was a nation-wide text spam campaign targeting Black Americans (largely students) telling them that they’ve been selected to pick cotton and will be picked up to be sent to a plantation after Trump’s inauguration.

People online are making jokes about it, but it’s genuinely a disturbing sign. Someone was emboldened enough to intentionally run a background on thousands of young Black people and send them racist messages the day after a very exhausting and stressful election.

[adobe-outdesign]

the craziest beta 'mon is this guy, who would evolve into a random Pokemon upon evolution

like imagine finding this autism creature fighting for its life out in the wild so you catch it out of pity and two months later it evolves into goddamn Rayquaza

[thebreakfastgenie]

I absolutely think adults, especially parents, ascribe manipulative intent to children when they shouldn't and it's absolutely a problem but it's always kind of funny to me when people go online and proclaim that children are incapable of manipulation. When I was three I asked my mom to get my older sibling their favorite candy bar at the grocery story because I knew she'd get me mine too as a reward for being thoughtful and that was way more likely to succeed than if I just asked for a candy bar for me. And it worked. Children scheme at a developmentally appropriate level the trick is not assuming children scheme at an adult level.

[viola-sororia]

first class news paleontologists never disappoint

[sealsdaily]

Today's Sea Lion Is: Making Contact With An Unknown Beast

[rovermcfly]

proud to say that I have never once in my life figured out the whodunit in any crime story I've read or watched. I just let the facts and clues wash over me, absorbing absolutely none of it. I am the audience they think of when they throw in red herrings, in case you've ever wondered "who would fall for this obvious false lead". it's me. I am the idiot viewer/reader. not once has an obviously framed clue revealed anything to me. my head is completely empty when I consume these stories.

[runawaymarbles]

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

[kachikirby]

IF YOU LIVE IN THE US, PLEASE READ THIS

Posting this from the bird app since I hope it can help people.

People have been contacting the White House directly to demand a recount, especially since there has been evidence that not every ballot has been counted and will be thrown away if it hasn't been cured.

The link to contact the White House is here!

The following screenshot comes from here!

If you need help writing something, check under the cut! I've provided a prewritten response from one of the replies!

"I am a concerned citizen, and I need you to hear me. I urge you to recount the ballots from this election and investigate election interference. Bomb threats have been called into multiple polling locations, causing some to close early. Domestic terrorists have burned ballot boxes. An unprecedented number of ballots have been rejected and require curing. There have been reports of polling officers allowing voter intimidation in and outside of polling places across the country and an estimated 20 million mail in ballots are unaccounted for. In addition, many people have reported that ballots were not counted for suspicious reasons such as signature invalidation which is information that vote counters do not have access to. These events have occurred in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Georgia, for instance."

Feel free to add and change what you want, this is just a base for you to work off of.

[zytes]

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

[spamton]

i accidentally napped and had a dream (nightmare?) where a new update for stardew valley released where everything was the same except on a random day in year 3 Evelyn would just straight up die. There was a whole cutscene that started in her house where she collapsed, and then transitioned over to the hospital where Harvey gave George and Alex the worst news of their lives. However, they got to speak to her where she said something along the lines of "Yoba will protect me, and I am sure he will let me watch over you."

Alex and George would not talk to the player for more than a few words for a full season after this event. George would spend most of his time in the bedroom, so if you had less than 2 hearts with him, you could barely ever speak to him.

And Alex... oh my god, poor Alex. If you were married to him during this event, he just stayed in bed all day. Otherwise, if single, he would just stand on the beach most of the time, staring off into the ocean. If you tried to interact with him, it would just say "Alex is grieving... Better leave him be."

There was also other NPC dialogue like mayor Lewis saying "I haven't seen the community in this state of mourning since your grandfather passed..."

there was also a glitch where you could make Evelyn live forever and there were entire guides for the "immortal Evelyn glitch" that got patched out in the next update. If you tried to perform the glitch after the patch, mr. Qi would tell you that "hey, it happens to all of us. We can't prevent it, and neither can you, no matter how hard you try."

[greelin]

this is going to have me on my hands and knees dry heaving