#your darkest thoughts

[darkestprompts]

Do you prefer the idea that the Fanatic is too much of a coward to actual enter the Courtyard, or that he can't ever get his hands on an invite because he burns every bloodsucker he finds and thus can't get in

Definitely the first. The second implies he's too much of an idiot to figure out how the Court operates. The Gatekeeper presents you with the invitation when it attacks, so he had to know such a thing existed if he ever faced one.

Besides, hounding and ambushing victims of the Curse while being too much of a coward to seek out the source of evil is perfectly in line with the kind of antagonist he is. He keeps two vials of the cure for himself only, he attacks the heroes outside of their homeground when they are likely exhausted from an expedition, he was mauled by a bloodsucker and therefore must have some degree of fear of what they can do. He's a wimpy little shit that fights you at 3/4 strength and no I'm not bitter ok yes I am.

[nemofil]

"let the world completely forget me"

[literary-ambrosiac]

Does your soul crave something so much it becomes an obsession, it's all you can think about night and day, and the thought of never reaching it physically hurts. Or are you normal?

[coffee-in-veins]

Plan accord-- oh stfu, Academic

after i booted DD1 today, i think i started to glimpse what is so wrong for me and why i cannot enjoy myself in DD2. and while i in no way can tailor your way of having fun, i cannot comprehend how someone new to the game, who doesn't have everything unlocked previously, can genuinely enjoy DD2 in the state it is now - even if we forget the sudden absolution of characters from their guilt and dubious past deeds in favour of making them as spit-shiny as they could be, for a moment. i mean DD2 solely as a game - especially a game for someone who started it after this godforsaken Altar of Hope change.

a lot of rambling regarding the games, obviously. i have very strong opinions and i wanna share them

the part which got me thinking was, surprisingly enough, the joy of getting some minor trinket in DD1, i believe it was this little fella:

a Blight Amulet. relatively cheap (only 1500 gold), unassuming trinket, which granted +20% blight skill chance and +20% blight resist at the cost of -20% bleed resist. nothing to write home about, really. but my thoughts were "Oh, how nice! I can use it on my PD, now!". and i was happy i got it. it felt like i progressed. let's pin this as important for a moment and move on to a few clarifications:

first and furthermost - i didn't have a PD that run; it was an expedition into Warrens with Dis, Rey, a flagellant and a vestal. sure anyone could equip it, but none of my characters would benefit from it. objectively, this trinket was useless in that particular run. but now i had it and i felt joy and i felt better equipped for the future planned march to the cove.

why?

because i knew i had it if i needed it.

it was a viable option for later, in case i chose to use it, regardless of its importance now. it didn't matter whether i would sell it or use it as a cornerstone of my future expeditions. the most important thing was that i got it, and if i chose to see it as necessary enough to make room in my bags to bring it back, it would serve me in any way i saw fit: as a usable item, as a pile of emergency cash, or as a bragging right of having every trinket in the game - it didn't matter; i got my reward and i was free to use it in any way that suited my playstyle. it was there and it felt like an achievement; a victory, however small.

that was when the revelation of why i struggle so much to find any joy in DD2 finally hit me: in that game, i never felt like what i acquired, lost or did before, mattered at all.

let me explain.

the thing with the Blight Amulet contrasted nicely with my attempt to find joy in DD2 again on the previous day. on my first Desperate Few talk or after the first battle in the Valley (i don't remember and it doesn't matter), i got this charming thing:

and this looks amazing, right? a great thing to make Dismas into the dps monster he's supposed to be! well, you see, there was a tiny little problem:

it was completely and utterly useless in this run. and since DD2 operates on "each run is its own separate universe", it was useless period.

for those unaware: you choose hero's path before you start the run; and the moment i broke and told myself "well, maybe i will give this path thing a try, maybe it will make things better" i am "rewarded" with a thing that should make me feel good (it's even in the name, an Incredible trinket for crying out loud), but instead i feel like the game is mocking me and spitting in my face. because i would have never, being able to read and relatively sane, given this item to myself on that run, had i the ability to choose like i have in DD1.

it doesn't matter that i got a supposedly strong item at the start of the run. i'm not stronger; and since the run is a universe in itself, i will not be stronger next time for getting it this round; next time when i'll go all melee on Dis, i might never see the whiff of it. it doesn't matter now, so it will not matter at all, period.

it will not be there if i ever needed it.

so let's unpin that previous pin now, shall we?

DD2 presents itself as a management game while not being one, unlike its predecessor

it tries to be such, and presents itself as such with candles, and the Altar of Hope with a similar to DD1 rebuilding of the city, and the constant yelling in your ears about it, but it is not designed as one. unless you consider choosing Heroes' skills management, that is.

"The next Inn is leagues away!" the narrator needles me. "Plan accordingly!"

and i flip the bird to the screen as i gloomily look at the provided assortment of Chalk Dust (removes invisibility), Noisemaker (adds aggro to a hero) and a single sorry Ablative Powder (increases fire resist) with a side serving of Slime Mold (the food you do not want to give to your heroes period) while having to go to the shores where none of those matter at all. what am i supposed to plan, if i have negative options? for a game that constantly pokes you about how you suck at planning and managing your resources and squander your opportunities, it provides aggravatingly little of either. sure there is managing stagecoach inventory, and... managing stagecoach inventory, considering you don't have anything else, and all goes in it.

in DD1 i knew that if my character died from blight, it was on me: i failed to spare coin to buy antivenom from the Caretaker and bring it with me, or threw it away to make room for loot, or grew greedy and hoped they'd survive one tick without using it.

in DD2 when my guys die of blight, i throw my hands up with a yell "What in the everloving fuck was i supposed to do if all healing has round CDs and none of the three shops i visited (including a bloody field hospital) didn't have no antivenom? Conjure it outa thin air?!"

now, this can be refuted by: "oh this is roguelike" or "you're supposed to open antivenom in this barb wire sarded new gatcha minigame called The Working Fields"

well, two things regarding that:

first: i had antivenom unlocked; it didn't mean that the game felt entitled enough to roll it in any store for me (while showering me in burning salves AND failing to offer to go to the burning city simultaneously), and that's my gripe with it; let's expand on this a little bit before poking the "roguelike" aspect, shall we?

i cannot understand who in their right mind came up with "The Working Fields" idea for DD2 and i don't usually wish harm on people, and you might react very negatively to my following statement, but i genuinely wish to smack them over the head with a mobile-shaped club until they become a normal functioning person again since they can't have concussion while not having a brain.

the idea of a player having to roll for the privilege of even having a chance of the item at their disposal is utterly and absolutely abhorrent. you got unlucky and rolled the only fucking healing item in the game which works in all circumstances at your 35th attempt out of the 35 slots in this glorified gamble machine? well sucks to be you! look at this dung beetle, observe how it eats shit and contemplate what you can learn from its example.

yes, i still don't have healing salve or anything better than slime mold food; yes, it aggravates me to no end; imagine playing DD1 where you need to play slot machine to have the privilege of having a non-100% chance to have food offered in store at the start of your expedition; or the game randomly deciding you don't deserve having torches in the store; sounds like a moronic thing, isn't it? well, welcome to the DD2 experience, hope you like losing.

and it's not even a hard fix; just skew the chances of "newb friendly" items higher at the start of this bloody gatcha if you're so dead set on keeping it, before offering something highly specific and ultra-specialized, which is used in precisely 1,5 builds when you have everything else opened to support it. hell, the experience system everyone criticized so heavily was less prone to fuckups than this. and with it, you could clearly see how long you needed to suffer before it became better; even throwing items away boosted your experience - now you cannot sell them and don't get anything for throwing them away. you just get to see what the game tries to sell you as "cool" or "useful" and spitefully yeet it out of the window because you cannot do anything with it.

okay, while i was typing this i came up with another fix that might solve some of this frustration - there's a hoarder at the start of the valley, right? let the player buy back the trinkets they had at the end of the previous run if they wanna; boom, problem solved! you got unlucky and looted this incredible thing for the path you don't use this time? you're now inclined to keep it for as long as possible so you can buy it back at the start of the next run instead of yeeting it out and forgetting it existed; now there's a reason to spare that precious inventory slot for an item which is useless *now* to have a better chance *later*. why can't something like this be implemented? sure, puritans would spit at it - that's what they do after all - but it's not like they have to buy it back; don't want don't take, easy solution - all while those who struggle will have a little more of a wiggling room so they don't feel like they're permanently chewing cacti. i'm not asking for easy difficulty for those who want a challenge, i'm asking to offer options for those who struggle.

because honestly, for now, it feels like DD2 doesn't want to be played by the new people.

now, secondly, regarding the roguelike pin from earlier. i've played some roguelikes before, the most notable was Hades, and i want to show what Hades does well and DD2 handles poorly, in my opinion, and that is the same sin as almost every MMORPG in existence does:

making only endgame matter.

all is locked behind candles: your characters, their trinkets, all trinkets at all, all items (both combat and inn), cosmetics, and worse of all, hero stats. deathblow resist, stun resist, hp, damage, you name it - just push enough candles in the slot, and you can have anything. Dismas you start with and Dismas you could grind into are two very, very different Dismases even if both won't have paths and trinkets. sure you can argue it is similar to hero lvls in DD1, but - no, they're not. you got lvls if heroes survived expeditions; regardless of whether you had money or not to up their gear, they still lvled up and gained stats. you could improve them further to have better chances in the expeditions of the corresponding lvl, but you weren't paying for the lvl up itself with, say, Heirlooms. imagine dishing out busts or coins to lvl up your Dismas from lvl 0 to lvl 1 instead of spending it on the city. suddenly it becomes a lot more wtf, doesn't it?

and this is candle-bound lvl up troublesome, because combined with the lack of drops (oh yes, i forgot to mention - those, TOO, are locked behind candles!), lack of "privilege" to even have a chance to loot items, trinkets and food, it becomes painfully obvious the game wants to pad its time and make you grind. you can't experiment, you're locked out of 95% of the characters, and you WON'T have enough candles to unlock after your first death, or even after your fifths. you can't just go on a short run without healer and burn mobs before they burn you - DD2 won't allow it. at least, i'm yet to see any successful "no healer" run in it, while even i, being the unbearable ruminator who overprepares for any expedition, ran plenty of no heal expeditions in DD1 and those were mad fun.

DD2 dangles a carrot of "oohhh imagine how good it will feel to use it???" in front of you, and you go and farm the same first location over and over again for your 14 bloody candles, because attempting to finish cultists after second location each time ended up in a 32-37 round battle for me, and with all honesty fuck that shit, those are hours of my nervous system breaking apart that i'm not going to get back.

if we circle back to Hades for a moment, sure it has some grind too: the mirror, the prophesies, the unlockable weapons. but you not having bow unlocked doesn't mean you cannot make a full run with another weapon; and you don't have to lvl up your Mirror of the Night to have a chance of Daedalus hammer or Charon's well even be considered as a thing which can spawn. and for the love of everything that's holy, you don't need 100+ runs to open all the weapons' upgrades; and even if you do, if you suck immensely and cannot get any titan's blood needed by killing bosses, you can grind your way up and buy it from Infernal Brocker. i know because i've done it as a self-imposed challenge.

you can argue "but it's the same as farming candles in DD2" - no, it's not; in Hades, you had different currencies and spent it on different things; secondary ones accumulated by just playing the game. you could ignore some and concentrate on others; you could get enough to have a power boost by just playing. in DD2, regardless of whether i want my heroes suck less, have options in combat or make my vagon look better, i need the same thing. and, well, good luck getting more than 13 candles for the first region before you unlocked (with candles!) their spawn on the map at all, when your heroes want to do some obscure shit like killing a boss (haha gl with that!) or using an item you don't have yet opened from the gatcha and in-game don't know it even exists (how the hell did that pass QA?).

in DD1 the expeditions were the gameplay; you could not poke into the Darkest and enjoy the game as it was, and not bother at all - and the game didn't punish you for this anyhow, unless you opted into a special mode with limited time. harder things in expeditions were layered on top of existing ones, instead of being locked away from you with demand to come back after you paid for the privilege of trying to have fun. in DD2, if we continue the analogy, only Darkest is "the real game" and all before that is a meaningless grind you're supposed to do "to start having fun".

and frankly... if this is what my options are, i'd rather spend my limited free time on a game which offers me all it has on the second week, instead of promising that "it gets good after [insert whatever amount you think is appropriate] hours". i have enough grinding in my life as it is. i don't want a second job in those precious moments i'm supposed to have my fun - that is, if the game decides i deserve it and allows me to have a chance of rolling an item i need.

if you find DD2 grinding and gatcha mechanics fun... first of all, i am envious of your ability to have fun in this. and secondly... please tell me how. i genuinely fail to understand that.

[mercymaker]

love is truly the dumb fuck juice of all time because a man can literally tell you 'i have violent thoughts of harming you' and your ass will be twirling hair and kicking feet like 'but would we kiss after that or?' like

[pbchocmint]

Imagine how dream would know all of hobs dreams and still fall in love with him. Pls and with how in love hob was and how he had probably not only had good dreams about dream but also nightmares about smth happening to him like imagine

[cephalopod-truther]

SPOILERS FOR NEW SPIDERVERSE

I just saw the new spiderverse (it was amazing) and all I can say is SERIOUSLY?? Y'all are thirsting over this guy???

Man is beefing with a fucking fifteen year old! He sees Miles and immediately goes straight to ragging on him for not knowing something that he deliberately kept Miles out of the loop from! Oh wow Miguel! Miles doesn't know what a Canon event is? Crazy! It's almost like he was specifically excluded from the group of people who knew all about that! Who excluded him Miguel? Why didn't he know? That's what I thought bitch

and then he's like "yeah ik you have no superhero support network, yeah I have specifically told your friends not to speak to or talk to you for no reason I will explain, your dad dies in two days (I am yelling this at you minutes after getting unreasonably mad you didn’t know about things that are common knowledge in my spiderman club (the club you aren't allowed to join)) and also you aren't allowed to save him. I expect you to react calmly and logically to this news. I see no problem with any of this why are you being unreasonable" when Miles is understandably upset by this

Like the sheer audacity of this fucker is unbelievable

[birdmenmanga]

some kind of moodboard

@birdmenanime @kitsoa

[witchofthesouls]

Did tyrest give them an altmode? Do they have the ability to transform at all?

They do have an alt-mode, but Revelation seems uninterested in transforming. It's different than what Tyrest intended it to be, but he's not complaining, especially with the impending newspark.

Revelation is under "development" so to speak. The dual valves and the strength should have been obvious hints, but he's in rosy Frollo-mode. While they're currently awake and mobile, there are still a lot of leftover bridges to cross and merge their old human instinct and their new Cybertronian programs. Revelation is in for a really confusing time: mentally, physically, and emotionally. In fact, they're gonna be taller than Tyrest when they settle in their frame.

Their frame is a throwback Seeker frame-type when Seekerkin wasn't just a mass-produced form everywhere, but a functional society with its own culture and methods.

Congratulations to Tyrest and Pharma; not only they had cyberformed a human into a Cybertronian but reintroduced the Seeker femme frame-type back to Cybertron itself.

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

The worst thing about my brain being an autopilot grammar nazi is that every single time I see people misuse “it’s” and “its” as well as apostrophe placements is that I don’t want to be rude and correct people... but my brain still is like UGH THIS IS THE WORST.

“It’s” and “Its” are more just my brain going weeo weeo on me when that’s a more understandable one bc “its” is literally the exception to a rule (because “it’s” actually means “it is”, so to avoid it being used for two meanings the apostrophe is removed for ownership cases), but when I see apostrophes before an S for plural wording and I know they speak English properly I’m just like. ugh. damn. bruh. please. go back to school.

Less severe cases of incorrect apostrophe use tends to be like, when people are playing Heroes and have duplicates of units and are like “my Ike’s” instead of “my Ikes”, because I think people are trying to... make it more clear that it’s referring to more than one? I think? Maybe? Or they literally just don’t realize it’s incorrect grammar, idk lol. Still can’t get past my weeo weeo autopilot brain though sadly.

LIKE. IT’S NOT ANYONE’S FAULT THAT MY BRAIN IS WEEO WEEO, IT JUST IS.

Which speaking of Heroes, FE in general seems to have its script in every single game ever coded to always use apostrophes for ownership cases even when the word ends in S, so don’t worry folks. IntSys isn’t getting off scot free from my brain either LOL. No amount of “princess’s” is ever gonna fly with my weeo weeo brain.

this has been a psa

mainly a psa of my brain weeo weeos

[fatedevour]

♢  —     @bogachs​​ said:  20. my muse cuddles up to yours in their sleep (pantalone seeks the warmth)

nonverbal actions reversed  20. my your muse cuddles up to yours mine in their sleep

It’s one of those nights where the cold seems to invade every crack and nook and cranny, icy fingers seeping in like fog in spite of the warmth of the fire and heat. Not that it’s not comfortably warm as far as HE was concerned, but it did make any slight breeze above the blankets that much more chilling. Dottore can hear the faint sounds of the blizzard outside raging and howling like an angered beast. He’s been here long enough over the centuries to have a good idea of the severely and longevity of this blizzard based on the sound and time alone. So far, it was panning out to be a very long one. Unsurprising, given how fairly PLEASANT and docile the weather had been as of late. They often came back with a bite.

His thoughts falter and pause when he feels Pantalone pressing himself even closer against him, his head turning to watch Pantalone’s sleeping features as the banker buried himself against the doctor. Any closer and Pantalone would be practically CRUSHING himself against Dottore. Dottore shifts slowly just slightly, allowing Pantalone to clutch on and practically be half-laying on him. Not that the additional weight was of much note to him. His arms circle around Pantalone’s frame, holding him securely as he basked on him like a snake in the sun.

Red eyes focus on the sleeping face of the banker, lost in his own thoughts. Once, he was rather certain it would have been little more than a very convincing performance. He hadn’t thought about it at the time, but hindsight did have a way of opening even the most observant of people. Especially when he had learned what Pantalone’s ACTUAL breathing pattern sounded like when he was fast asleep. It said a lot that Pantalone didn’t look vulnerable in his sleep. Even if he technically WAS, it didn’t show. Though who endured hardships rarely looked at peace. Pantalone looked more relaxed, and he was sure that he himself often looked calmer, but never vulnerable. Too long with their guards raised, it was like layers fused together. Their guard had become like a cell wall or scales, shielding them till it merged and became one with them. To pry away their guard was to cut them open. But it was good to see Pantalone at least seem more relaxed. The upcoming months would be hard on him.

Dottore lifts a hand to gently run his fingers through Pantalone’s hair, his other arm secured around Pantalone’s waist to keep him close. Once he would have been afraid to wake him with such a gesture and would have simply observed. But they’re both intimately familiar with each other now, they’d recognize by touch alone. And as it seems to no surprise, Pantalone doesn’t wake beneath the gentle touches as Dottore takes the moment for allowing rare gentleness to manifest. Sharp eyes soften to simply study without the goal of prying away information and secrets or instigating something ; hands touch with awed care to run over soft locks of hair, but careful not to get too close to his face lest he rouse the sleeping banker from his much needed sleep. It is in these quiet moments with only the ambiance of the storms and fire that the beast exposes a softer side when there are NO WITNESSES as far as he knows. It’s an almost skittish act. The Doctor can handle VIOLENCE with ease. He can take the blows and shoot them back ; he can even handle toying with one another. But GENTLENESS? He has little understanding of it. He has gotten better at not flinching from it as though it was a scorpion ready to sting,  but it is harder to express himself, so he slinks in to offer it when he is not acknowledged. Like now, as he listens to Pantalone’s steady breathing as he presses a gentle kiss to his forehead, and then lets Pantalone’s sleeping form press itself into the warmth of his neck with a suppressed chuckle. That was fine. He allows his eyes to close, his cheek resting against the top of dark hair.

He was OVERTHINKING again, he could tell. Lost in his own head and thoughts, mind unable to keep from its steady march forwards. It takes him considerable EFFORT to not think about much, and to simply enjoy the moment for what it was. Genius and insanity were not so far apart, and his ever racing mind struggled to slow itself when he wasn’t about to collapse from exhaustion. But he makes an effort now despite the temptation to slip away and back to his lab. He simply listens to the sound of the winds, the warmth of Pantalone lying on him, the rare taste of peace that rests on his tongue. And before he knows it, Dottore himself has slipped into a light, delicate sleep of his own, still holding the banker closer.

[marmotish]

[phrynewrites]

Hello, hello babe! I’ve been going through your Fake Dating au and let me tell you, the pain! The suffering! I’m sitting at the edge of my seat, damn it. Anyway, you being fantastic as always.

I see people really want this au to end happy and hopeful, but I don’t want to(??? After reading that masterpiece of angst I am convinced I want a Sad Ending (tm). Life is messy and doesn’t always end well, so maybe this is what they need?

However you decide to end it I sure will love it like I love everything you write. Keep going hun! ♥️

Please you're too kind to me and my lack of progress on this fic because I suck aha 😎 But rest assured I have so much suffering coming up like Jasmine is really going to feel it during Bosco's Hoe Phase (tm) and Bosco's for sure gonna feel it when they finally muster the courage to express their feelings only to get rejected.

Honestly I go back and forth between a happy ending in which Bosco realizes that they're not really happy without Jasmine and can't shake still caring about her, even though Jasmine did use them for her own benefit. Like fake dating did feel a little too real and it's a huge miscommunication between them because Bosco feels like they've crossed the line from friends to dating several times over but Jasmine is still holding onto the fact that it was fake and that's what they agreed to, before she herself realizes that it was about as real as it could get, and if she just allowed herself to realize that, she would have realized that she was happy with Bosco as well.

But then there's a menace part of me that wants Jasmine to have a whole "the one that got away" complex about Bosco like she runs into them years later and they're happy with someone else and she thinks about how that used to be her and how if she had only given into the fact that it was a relationship, if she'd only stayed when Bosco staged that whole feelings confession home-cooked-dinner thing with all the candles and the fancy dress, then that would be her on Bosco's arm, but she lost her chance.

[iloveyoumorethansoup]

I think it’s time for some good old fashioned journaling since I can post again

[metalheadkells]

depressed! wishing i could do somethingn with it! 

[dante-and-dragons]

OH! I never posted about it, but my first ever campaign (The Order of the Owlbears) which was running for four years ended recently, which is pretty cool.

And I am starting a Curse of Strahd campaign with some people who I don't know but who will be going to college with me next year. Which is also pretty cool!

And, along with continuing my second campaign (The Lunch Bunch—which needs to be renamed), I will be running a creepy circus oneshot with the people from The Owlbears plus a few others.