probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
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🇵🇸 May We Be Free, Together. One genocided peoples to another. We stand with Palestine, now and forever. 🇦🇲
Care for Gaza (Direct Paypal)
E-Sims for Gaza (Showing Where/How to give them)
Palestine Children Relief Fund
Medical Aid for Palestinians
Daily Click For Palestine (Help by at least clicking this daily, it may not be much but it counts for something at least.)
BDS's website, remember to follow the boycott.
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i feel like this is a topic that needs more than just a tumblr post to fully expand on but. i think that in modern-day christian culture we place WAY too much emphasis on Feeling and Emotion . and i think that this attitude is part of the reason why the most common struggle you hear is "God isn't speaking to me/I can't hear God". feels like the standard set is that you're constantly feeling a Supernatural presence and it's Big and Obvious and it Shows and you can't contain it... when that's just not it. God can be quiet. God can nudge. God's voice is contained in the Bible that you hold between your hands. If you're not "hearing Him" then maybe your expectation of what hearing Him is is flawed.
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I've seen a lot of people talk about how the game doesn't give you any leeway when you play The Dark Urge, how it makes it very clear that Durge was A Bad Person, but I haven't seen it pointed out that Sceleritas seems VERY well versed in gaslighting the hell out of them and steering Durge away from any doubt or guilt in regards to their actions. Makes me think that they've probably had those types of conversations before because Durge actually always had a soft spot, only it got smaller and smaller in time. I have not had the opportunity to see the Heal cutscene yet, but I've got the butler in my camp now and he had some interesting things to say, like
[Durge: Can you tell me the worst thing I ever did?
Sceleritas Fel: There was one time you gave a beggar some coin while we were en route to the Devil's Fee.
Sceleritas Fel: You didn't kick him or spot on him or anything! I was so shocked I almost fainted!
Sceleritas Fel: I still have nightmares about it to this day. But I'm sure you only did so to lower the suspicions of the Flaming Fist. Surely?]
and it struck me because tossing a coin to a beggar is a bit of a thoughtless act isn't it? You don't put much thought into it, you just see someone in need and you do it. Out of empathy, generosity, something The Murder Incarnate should not be capable of. Sceleritas' uncertainty of Durge's reasoning for it totally convinces me it was NOT intentional. A simple act of kindness that slipped out.
ALSO
[Sceleritas Fel: The only way for a Butler to die is if we are not of use to our Master. But you have always needed abundant assistance.]
They always needed abundant assistance. Why? Because they kept slipping out of Bhaal's grasp? We know they did at least once, with Gortash. Maybe it was not the first time, maybe there are more "Letters of Forgiveness" tucked away somewhere.
To me pre-tadpole Durge is just terribly mindbroken and indoctrinated person hooked onto the sense of safety, purpose and acceptance of their dark side that the cultists and their father give them. Yeah they enjoy murder, gore and all that. That's the curse of their blood, but I don't think they were ever entirely consumed by it. Morality, guilt and empathy have always been there on the edge of their mind. Losing their memories (depending on player choices I know, but bear with me) was what they needed for them to be finally brought forward.
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Legislative agenda:
Limit car headlight brightness to an amount recommended by eye doctors and traffic safety experts
Replace all prison lights with light posts that have caps
Cap all stadium lighting
Replace all public streetlights with warm colored lights
Limit brightness of all outdoor LED's (likely to a similar amount of lumens as the car headlights were limited to)
Create biannual event where city owned lights, including streetlights, and all businesses over 50 employees MUST turn their lights off for a dark sky night
maybe: Require all unoccupied parking lots turn off their lights 10PM-5AM
Proposed benefits:
Tourism
Education
Boost interest in the sciences and arts
Mental health
Physical health (eye disorders and reduction of sleep disorders)
Increased productivity of workers due to reduction of sleep disorders
The human experience
Eco friendly (Benefits animals)
Eco friendly (saves energy)
Cons:
Criminals target dark parking lots
Rebuttal:
Criminals can't target dark parking lots if they're all equally dark
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One mistake I made a lot when I started learning English was writing both the auxiliary and the main verb in past tense—as in, "Did the rain stopped?" My English teacher had to really drill this grammar point into my head, she was like "the point of 'did' here is to indicate past tense, there's no need for another time marker." Me, genuinely baffled: "Why not?" Teacher: "Think of the 'ed' in 'stopped' as having migrated to the beginning of the sentence and become 'did'. So it's no longer in 'stopped'." Well I was sad to see it go. I pointed out that in French you'd say "The rain (itself) has it stopped?" and 'the rain' feels welcome to stay even though the whole point of the pronoun 'it' should be to replace it in a quicker way. But it would be sad if the noun & its pronoun never got to hang out together so we keep both <3
My teacher had a British look on her face that made my middle-school self wonder if maybe she thought my language wasn't optimally designed, and then she said that in English it would feel clunky to give the same piece of grammatical information twice, and "if you use 'did' then the -ed in 'stopped' doesn't add anything." That just sounded offensive, I mean since when do letters need to add something to a sentence? isn't it enough that they adorn the end of words & frolic with the others in friendship. If it bothers you so much just don't pronounce them. Idk, "did the rain stopped" felt so right to me. In the end my teacher said that "The rain has it stopped?" with the redundant pronoun is the more formal French phrasing anyway, and I was like yeah true we'd rather say "is it that it (itself) has stopped to rain?" and I felt like this really proved my point and I think she felt the same way
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