#fuuuuckin hell

[cassmouse]

Okay. Okay okay okay so I am very very close to the end of Bunny I probably should be finishing it but this is so obscenely horrifying, hallucinogenic and absolutely fucking devastating that I can't physically bring myself to

[luck-of-the-drawings]

so REVENGE, HUH? or justice, if that makes you feel better. it tastes the same when cooked just right. 'I REALLY WANTED A BROTHER.' such a shame to burn a bridge you so desperately wanted to keep, especially when it wasnt even you who started the fire. especially when you hope that not a single fragment of that bridge ever washes ashore.[MAY IT ROT FAR FROM MY SIGHTS] an unfortunate loss! atleast he has his friends.

[4phr0d17e]

shoutout to the woman at work today who was wearing big dangly earrings that said CUNT in pink bubble letters

[notable-phlyarologist]

ok ok ok Baldur's Gate 3 has made me aware of a certain piece of Faerûn lore which i have been unable to shake so I am screaming it into the tumblr void in the hopes it forever leaves me

In Baldur's Gate 3, explicitly, repeatedly, to the point where it is in fact a plot point, it is stated that illithids do not have souls. A fact which makes me go fucking feral. here we fuuuuckin go

Spoilers for Baldur's Gate 3 under the cut, and also maybe for Curse of Strahd.

Ok so first off souls exist in Faerûn, provably. They can be trapped, used as fuel, shoved back into mortal shells to bring them back to life, all of it. It is impossible, in fact, to bring someone back to life without having access to their soul, meaning that souls umambiguously comprise a fundamental aspect of the self. Additionally, gods specifically derive their power from individuals with souls.

This creates a strict delineation between those with souls and those without. Souls are that which gives the mortal dynamism and identity, and given the way illithids are exclusively referred to with it/its pronouns even when they take on individual identities, it is thus implied that individuals without souls *cannot truly* lay claim to an identity. This is then extended to create the necessary justification for typical adventuring party justified carnage-- illithids do not have souls and are not people, and you do not need to feel sympathy for the ones you kill.

Beings without souls are simply ontologically evil.

And okay, I get that this is Faerûn we're talking about, where the whole setting is awash with sapients who are 'Always Chaotic Evil' and whom can be killed on sight with no greater thought put into it. I get that if you open up a Monster Manual it will happily tell you about all kinds of beings incapable of positive emotion whom you may simply mow down en masse and which reads like a big ream of genocidal propaganda. I get that. I understand. The whole setting was fundamentally founded with some very fucked up ideas and no amount of after-the-fact polish can fully escape them.

But even by Faerûn standards this drives me bonkers. Like, okay. Illithids don't have souls, and can be killed with impunity. But they are also continually under the control of a giant psionic hivemind and are allowed no individuality. We meet two illithids, one very important to the plot, who are in fact free of the brain's control and who are perfectly capable of existing in polite society, given that polite society unpersons criminals which provides an easy source of brains for them to eat.

So illithids don't seem, once freed from an evil alien supercomputer's control, to be any more ontologically evil than, like, a picky carnivore. Hell, they can eat, like, demon and devil brains and be totally chill. And demons and devils are even more ontologically evil. So already we're seeing friction between what we are told and what happens most often (illithids as evil body snatchers who need to die) and what we see (illithids are weird creatures who need to eat brains and who can simply decide to not be evil same as anyone else).

But now it's time for my second question. What happens to a mortal soul when they are transformed into an illithid? Illithids exclusively reproduce by transforming souled creatures, and they thus become unsouled. So what happens to the soul? Does this count as death of the self, thus letting the soul move on into the messy and complicated D&D afterlife? Does the soul just vanish, obliterated? Can you bring someone back to life if they were turned into an illithid and that illithid is still alive? Does the illithid not have the soul, but traps the soul somehow, meaning that they aren't actually using it but the soul can only be released when the illithid is dead? What the fuck does Faerûnian philosophy even look like because I'm going insane and we're not even to the part that drives me the most crazy yet.

Because, spoilers, you can become an Illithid! Or more specifically, any one of the player characters, be they Origin or Original, can. When they do, shielded from the influence of the Evil Lobe, they still possess all their normal personality traits and are basically the same except that now they think brains are yummy, that being an illithid is super cool, can blow stuff up with their brain, and use it/its pronouns. #transitiongoals

But they still do not have souls! They still possess the fundamental identity that they had as a souled person, yet now they are continuing to have it without the soul that makes it possible to have an identity! What the hell is going on? They have all the memories, the mannerisms, the internal perception of self that they did before they became an illithid. Somehow, the illithid version of them is fundamentally false! Despite being functionally indistinguishable from who they were beforehand! If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then where did its soul go?

And that's not even touching whatever the fuck being a half-illithid does to your soul.

Which is where Curse of Strahd enters the field, because my outside experience of Ravenloft further complicates this. See, Ravenloft is a plane of existence magically sequestered from the rest of reality, and souls cannot pass through the barrier between Ravenloft and the rest of the D&D multiverse. No souls out, and no souls in (except for the ones brought in by the stereotype brigade). This means that the whole plane is just recycling the same set of souls, forever, resulting in a perpetual cycle of reincarnation. But the actual population of Ravenloft can grow and shrink, even if the number of souls doesn't change. Meaning, sometimes in Ravenloft, a baby is born *without a soul*.

These soulless people have some common traits. They are quiet, uncreative, boring. They don't seem to have desires or hopes or dreams. They just kind of Exist until eventually they stop doing that. In short, they are the purest form of a video game NPC imaginable.

This implies a whole suite of entirely different things about the presence or absence of souls in Faerûn which makes me froth at the mouth. What the fuck do souls even *mean* in this setting? They definitely exist, and they definitely do Something, but the nature of that something varies wildly. And don't even get me started on at what point souls stop happening with regard to animals, because from what a cursory search tells me 'plants and vermin are typically not sentient enough to have souls' which basically just makes smoke that smells like burning plastic begin leaking from my ears.

I have no answers and I must scream.

[pfhwrittes]

Last Sentence

Tag from @gemmahale my beloved menace 💜

Rules: Post the last sentence you wrote (fanfic / original / anything) and tag as many people as there are words in the sentence.

18+ only snippet of a poly!141 and trans!soap thing i'm working on

“shh, johnny. just be a good lad and take it, yeah?” simon’s voice rumbles over the slick sounds of him fisting his own cock near johnny’s face. johnny gasps as he feels price’s clever tongue brush over his clit again. fuuuuckin’ hells bells.

[russilton]

Toto has said that Lewis has the wrong front tyre axel all weekend.

Also, for the first time in a while I will be rewatching Quali when it comes on Channel 4 soon.

Fuuuuckin hell that explains so much, I was talking to @ininininininstayoutstayout during Quali about how I couldn’t see how lewis’ laps were ending up behind George, because the pair of them are notoriously good at getting within a tenth of each other, and we chalked it up to traffic

Hopefully it’ll be less of an issue tomorrow during the race, since Lewis was still UP there even with issues

[thecl0wnfather]

Im gunna jump off a buildin', PLEASE, i just keep seeing cool SSRs coming out only to hold back because I WANT THAT FUCKING FAIRY GEAR ORTHO SO BAD 😭😭😭 CLUB CATER, MY SK8TERBOI, M' SO SORRY!!!!! BUT I SHOULD PROBABLY ROLL FOR RIDDLE TSUMED CARD INSTEAD BECAUSE I NEED MORE WATER CARDS!!! FUUUUCKIN HELL *curls up into pathetic meatball* can't believe i wasted 100 rolls 2 get bean Floyd, i am ashamed

[redjaybird]

"Fuuuuckin' shit hell fuck damn!"

"That can't work out, though, can it? The bitch only thinks he killed them, so he won't be coming back for them cuz he doesn't know I saved their asses! Therefore they're not gonna fuckin' die! I THREW A WRENCH IN YOUR VISIONS, BITCH! YOU'RE WRONG! I WIN!"

"... Don't undo what I fuckin' worked for. I'm just makin' shit better, yeah?! Everyone lives! - That is not something I normally celebrate. Hooo, shit, I am fucked up. BUT! They're not dead! They didn't die from their fights! So! Whatever the fuck is coming, they're gonna be alive!"

@general-kalani

[soapfcrce-a]

@mvnces and decker - the secretly 9pm starter call

He had been left jostling his leg for what was probably the last five minutes of the briefing. Or maybe longer, honestly his attention had drifted so far left somewhere past his portion of the job and the deployment orders that it’d probably be a miracle if he even knew when he was supposed to leave. Even that prick in the fourth row’s scrolling of fishing spots seemed more interesting. 

Or maybe it was an order for new aquatic gear. Wait—why was he thinking about that? 

“Fuuuuckin’ finally...” A small groan as he seemed to dramatically put his head between his knees. He could hear his companion already laughing at him—hell, he’d be surprised if Decker wasn’t taking immense pleasure in watching him suffer one of his many personal hells today. “That go any longer, may ‘ve right lost m’ marbles.” 

[aikofanfan]

Why do I stall so long on the story? It’s fun!

[after a few dance battles]

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

[luck-of-the-drawings]

THE DUALITIES! the parallels between 'a chip on my shoulder' and almost 90 episodes later, 'a fish on my shoulder' are SOOOO NEAT... a duel!! to settle a dispute! to mend ones honor! to say sorry.. i LOOVE how the riptide crew has evolved n blossomed over time....

[meteora-fc]

looking back at ESL posts in a week's time

[thesschesthair]

Thanks to social media, my plan of saving some Mandalorian for Christmas is now ruined and i’m gonna have to watch em now...

TBH I knew what the internet was like.... i’ve no one to blame but myself for having eyeballs and being able to see a screen.  

[bakughoes]

Me: cant wait for that good klance content at sdcc

Lauren:

[redjaybird]

"Fuuuuckin' hell...." The consequences of his shenanigans. He's got a headache.