#the kind that falls apart in my hands

[beescake]

shit. two dudes

[schmweed]

[wilchur]

It really annoys me that there's no way to talk Astarion out of the ritual other than bargaining with the lives of the spawn to be honest. Makes it so that trying to persuade him as a character that is far from good and selfless, but cares about him a lot feels ooc as hell. Sure you can pick the "Cazador said this will kill you, don't risk it" option but it leads you back to either "But the spawn :(" or "Okay, let's do this". The dialogue tree there leaves no ambiguity to the morality of your character.

I wish there was a way to get the insight check after you voice the fear for his life and get a persuasion one if you succeed. Kind of a "I was ready to see them all burn for you, but I can see that you're not sure and the ritual claiming your life is not worth the risk. We'll find another way. There's still the crown, remember?" thing. They leaned too heavily into this ending being the "vampire fetish" one, assumed that if the player character doesn't care about a bunch of random spawn, they would not care about Astarion's emotional wellbeing and that's just not how people work to me. The way you have to be the one to make the choice what to do with the spawn if you do stop the ritual annoys the fuck out of me too. It's not my choice to make, my Durge does not give a fuck what happens to them once Cazador is gone and the party is safe. He would rather leave that choice to Astarion. He wants to kill them anyway? Great! Blood, guts and suffering! Lovely! He wants to spare them? Whatever love, if that's what you want. Let's just get the fuck out of here.

It would be nice to have that option, especially considering this is supposed to be all about Astarion reclaiming his autonomy.

I just don't like it when to not get fucked over by a game I have to sacrifice the roleplaying aspect of it idk. Even if my character genuinely wants Astarion to ascend no matter the cost it will have for others because he's convinced them that's what he needs to finally gain his freedom and they're the kind of "anything for you kitten" person, they still should be able to notice that Something Is Not Right without it going against their personality and feeling forced.

[arolesbianism]

I hand you a doodle and then go back to dying of the plague

[parallaxabomination]

my brain is so full of stress it might explode. but ill do my best to keep putting out my best and stay kind to myself and others. but man, is it hard

[hecksupremechips]

Actually cry so goddamn hard when I think about Shinjiro Aragaki healing and being loved and having to learn to be okay with himself and being taken care of

[yansurnummu]

ok I lied I'm gonna talk about it more

90% of the narrative changes I made to the necrom story in my fic are mostly because when put into the format of written word, they don't go over as well as they do within the context of the game (mostly stuff that boils down to fetch quests, or quests that rely heavily on game mechanics like combat & exploration) I wanted to keep the core ideas and essence because I did really love it! I have a real love for cosmic/eldritch horror and high fantasy and mystery, and I think they did a fantastic job of blending those elements together in a way that still felt very ESO. Some details I don't really vibe with and think they could've done better (why put such an emphasis on the dusksabers being vampires if you're not going to use that in any interesting way, for example)

Mostly what I think it boils down to is the kind of story I want to focus on vs the focus of the story in-game. Like I could go for a one-to-one novelisation, but frankly I would find that boring. In shifting the focus to drals and his self-discovery journey, I do feel like I've had to pair down on some other elements (having gadayn as more of a background character, cutting out meln's ghost and leaving him as a figure of drals' past) in order to keep the focus on drals' relationship with azandar and friendship with leramil. Also dialling back the world ending-ness of it and just having apocrypha and mora being the ones in danger, lowering the ultimate stakes but still giving them all a reason to be extremely invested in the Plot.

Haven't planned as far ahead as The Reveal yet, but honestly? I might leave out the whole ithelia thing and come up with some other big dangerous secret mora's hiding. Not because of anything against ithelia, but because it does end on that kind of cliffhanger and sense of impending doom, and I think I'd prefer it if I could just end the story there and allow the characters to rest after a bittersweet victory.

[websitestar]

im working on temaking @aftonenterprise-moved and @lbm7094 because i miss both those muses so much

[synonymroll648]

absolutely evil fic idea! sophitz soulmates au where post-war they reconcile but also find out that fitz won't make it to 100 due to the severity of his shadowflux echoes and the reason sophie kept surviving seemingly impossible odds was because the black swan 'accidentally' made her immortal.

to make things extra cruel: consider how fitz canonically counts on having thousands of years ahead of him to build himself a future he enjoys, and how sophie canonically struggles w/ the idea of living forever due to her human upbringing (plus the canon-compliant possibility of her hearing ten bajillion tales growing up of how immortality is a curse) :D

[dirt-str1der]

Guys in shounen or bara yaoi will say shit like “hes a monster....” like okay ? So fuck him

[milkweedman]

Eugh

[sysig]

:D ♪

[orcelito]

I love openly identifying as gay/vaguely bi & still openly talking about potentially being attracted to men. Like I Do lean towards women, but I also can be attracted to men, & I'm not gonna deny acknowledging that to myself

[bretzkysbs]

It turns out the cookies are real — sort of.

They are baked at the home of Lara MacLean, who has been a “puppet wrangler” for the Jim Henson Company for almost three decades. MacLean started as an intern for Sesame Workshop in 1992 and has been working for the team ever since.

The recipe, roughly: Pancake mix, puffed rice, Grape-Nuts and instant coffee, with water in the mixture. The chocolate chips are made using hot glue sticks — essentially colored gobs of glue.

The cookies do not have oils, fats or sugars. Those would stain Cookie Monster. They’re edible, but barely. “Kind of like a dog treat,” MacLean says.

Before she reinvented the recipe in the 2000s, the creative team behind “Sesame Street” used versions of rice crackers and foams to make the cookies. The challenge was that the rice crackers would make more of a mess and get stuck in Cookie’s fur. And the foams didn’t look like cookies once they broke apart.

Cookie has been portrayed since 2001 by David Rudman, who took over the role from Frank Oz. Rudman’s right hand moves the mouth, which is eating, and his left hand holds the cookies. Both work in concert to break the cookies, which means they have to be soft enough to fall apart.

Rudman said soft cookies are best, adding, “The more crumbs, the funnier it is. If he eats the cookie, and it only breaks into two pieces if it’s too hard, it’s just not funny,” he said. “It looks almost painful. But if he eats a cookie and it explodes into a hundred crumbs, that’s where the comedy comes from.”

MacLean has perfected a recipe that is “thin enough that it’ll explode into a hundred crumbs,” Rudman said. “But it’s not too thin that it’ll break in my hand when I’m holding it.”

Not every (human) guest realizes that the cookies aren’t meant to be eaten. Adam Sandler appeared on an episode and decided to share in the muppet's delight by spontaneously eating a cookie with him on set.

“As soon as the cameras cut, he was like, ‘Blech!' ” MacLean said.

[tautozhone]

idk how to start this so this post is ab individual action, trying to motivate positive change in the world, etc etc

a lot of growing up in the US for me makes things feel more scary than they are. like it’s actually not that difficult to go out of your way to get a bottle of water or iced cup of water from some random drive through if you think you should do it. either fast food conglomerate or local actually, it’ll usually be cheaper than 5 dollars to get drinkable water. i try to have 5-10 dollars i can justify spending on water, and asking for change, because sometimes when i’m out driving i need to go grab water.

i do not do this for me as much as i try to do it specifically when i see someone who’s most likely homeless on a street corner. i’m sure one day i might do this and they might not be there when i come back, but what have i lost really? a bit of time and a bit of money that would’ve meant more to them, that i can hold onto until i see them next.

the pressure that a lot of people feel when they think “what can i do” comes from this grand narrative that the average citizen can singlehandedly fix the housing crisis. rich people? maybe. nonprofits? not in a day, not all one person still. what can i do is a question i ask a lot. what can i do, not just because it feels bad to move along like nothings wrong with the world, but what can i do that will do anything. what can i do that makes even the smallest change.

i feel like it took me too long to figure out a personal method to what i consider individual action. it’s taking time to get to my own financial stability to be able to do more. but for now it’s as simple as water and cash. not water and food, but water and cash.

individual action means a lot in small steps, go get a bottle of water bare minimum and the price of a meal if you can and then just give it to them. if it wasn’t such a miserably hot place where i live i would keep a pack of water in my car, which i still want to do for the sake of having immediate access to water to give someone who might need it- hot or cold sometimes won’t matter. but when it’s hot out, get cold water, if it’s cold out, a warm tea will hydrate more than coffee will as long as it’s not super caffeinated.

[oc-cinematic-universe]

and the really fucked up thing about joe and dara is they both knew there was tragedy waiting. they knew from the moment they met. i mean, neither of them are really optimists... so much of the rest of their lives has already been pain and struggle and loss and they hesitated so much to try to be together because they didnt want it to end that way again. ...but tragedy hits. not in the way they expected but it does hit. but this time they're not willing to lose each other. this time grab tragedy by the throat and rip it apart until everything is ok again. because this time they care enough to fight. this time they want to live