Nepenthe

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

Right? At that point, if you're making drama out of it, you're either pirating on misguided principle alone because you're Ayn Rand's petulant zombie, or you didn't have that money to burn anyway. Your account is at zero.

Here I was, thinking it would be some insane hike like a $12 game jumping to $50, for "pirate it, then" to even be a meaningful response. No. It's a $2 increase from...the equivalent price of chicken nuggets.

This was a painfully slow day at the newsroom.

Nepenthe, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

You guys have to see the newest glitch on kbin, lmfao. I damn near reported this post before I realized.

@ernest no hard feelings and I know your hands are pretty full, but I don't think the resulting thumbnail is quite historically accurate?

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

He had him consider all the animals first 😬

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

You missed my personal favorite: a viking burial mound on whose walls, some seven or eight feet up, is written, "Tholfir Kolbeinsson carved these runes high up."

Viking men averaged out at 5'7" (173cm), so he must have been lifted by someone.

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

Anna Garvey has described these individuals as having "both a healthy portion of Gen X grunge cynicism, and a dash of the unbridled optimism of Millennials"

I'm sorry?

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

Satan doesn't punish. Satan's whole job is temptation. Anyone tempted would technically be punished by god.

I assume the mixup has to be resultant of the constant game of religious Telephone. Not really surprising. It's pretty awkward to frame your spotless savior who is the living embodiment of Love as also doing deliberate premeditated torture, even when it's written right there. And comparatively simple to expect it from someone who's supposed to embody unpleasantness.

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

• It would help someone whom I don’t want to.

....explain? We're...silently and maliciously watching people eat shit when they don't have to? And this happens often?

Y tho

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

Unsweetened was bad enough. People up north just forgetting it used to involve water? Just crunching on hot tea bags?

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

Ok. Mini-rant because I can't contain myself atm. Do you wanna know a badly-kept secret? I've been making art on and off for 29 years. My ass wishes I could draw too. A ton of artists wish they could draw.

Talent will only give you a leg up, and mainly just at the beginning. The rest, all of us have to struggle for and I'm quite sure very few of us appreciate having to do so. And no matter how good they get, there is always something they have no idea how to do yet or they have some idol whose style they envy more than their own. Or they're the type that only hates what they make because they're the one who made it.

Van Gogh had a painter friend named Gauguin, and they were both jealous of each other. There is no magical point that one hits where you feel like you're Good Enough. The best you can aim for is the kind of steady improvement you don't even notice happening except on a scale of years, and the confidence to acknowledge those improvements instead of hyper-focusing on every way it isn't what you saw in your head (it never is).

Go get a pencil or your ipad or whatever. Youtube is by far your biggest friend. Go look up videos about how to actually see what's in front of you instead of what your brain insists must logically be there. USE REFERENCE. Trace a photo over and over, then immediately try the same thing freehand -- this one is super useful, because a lot of drawing is also muscle memory. Break things down into simple shapes and then build on those. Use the open space between objects if you need to, to trick yourself into drawing something complex without getting lost in intimidating structural details.

When you've got those down, move onto perspective and composition. Cry a little if you have to, then get back to it. Because now you're able to do whole backgrounds. People? Do tons of deliberately imprecise gesture drawings. Give your OC a terrifying robot head, a pillow for a torso, and springs for limbs. But go get. Your pencil. And be ok with drawing at first like everyone thinks they draw.

Barring that, my second choice is singing.

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

The part where the ecosystem is in collapse?

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

Ideally, global warming, but it would be fair to view that as pointless when dissipating the extra CO2 doesn't necessarily return the trees and the problem would degrade again in a couple hundred years. You'd have to introduce a new fuel source that is sought after, clean, and eternal. Which would be two wishes.

So you have to define it as both of your options, since the loss of either worsens the other. Turn the whole environment back to where it was in the 1200s, overrun the streets with bears, see if I care. It'll give 'em something to do. Especially the Amazonian avocado farmers.

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

Mine went with commode as well, and my 70ish aunt is the only born American I've ever heard insist on calling it a buggy.

@Kid_Thunder, mind if I ask the general era you were growing up? Because I'm a millennial from the triad and we say soda. Soda pop in elementary, but I'm not sure whether we picked that up from media.

It would be interesting to work out around when the shift happened.

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

While my own similar rant would have been only meant in play, this is how I feel about both o' y'all. It's a fucking soda. Gonna just go all the way and call sweet tea a coke too?

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

I wouldn't worry too hard about that one. The difference is one of the things a person only picks up on by seeing it written like that over and over for years. I'd probably have to stop and think about it too.

Nepenthe, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Average citizens are less culpable than government officials are, but we are all culpable for it to a degree.

There is a degree at which idealistic humanitarianism is pushed to such an extreme that it swings all the way back around into the concept of original sin. I know, because it's where I've sat for years and I had to sit down about it when someone pointed out I'm basically so atheist I've gone catholic.

Guilt is indeed a matter of calibration. This is correct. But at a certain point of granularity, it becomes a pointless statement.

Anyone insisting on wearing clothing or utilizing objects they didn't make by their own hand is a capitalistic slaver. You and I both own slaves right now.

I could disappear into the hills and become a vegan goatherd, and it's probably the closest I could get to neutral. But by the mere act of minimizing my own harm, I'm also shutting my ears to the plight of all others, which is an implicit endorsement through inaction.

If I choose action and swing the tides over to Gaza, they still have their own weaponry. If bringing my corrupt genocidal government to its knees, I've created a power vacuum that harms countless and will most certainly kill. Doing nothing or something both make me a murderer.

Even in donating to a charity, you're deliberately choosing to ignore three others just as worthy. When everyone answers to everything simply by chancing to be born, this kind of thinking becomes at best a semi-interesting joke and at worst actually psychologically destructive.

What am I meant to do, to stop personally committing at least 4 types of concurrent genocide across the globe? Stop paying taxes towards the military? At least my below-the-poverty-line ass is already there.

Calling my representatives won't do much with the US so heavily invested in the area, but I suppose if I'm culpable for mass murder either way, I might as well go to prison for it.

Nepenthe, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Can happen just the same with Astarion. He's perfectly fine being in a relationship with you if you never turn him down, but
[SPOILER paragraph because the tag won't work]:

whether he means a damn thing he says is completely dependent on one single camp scene. If you rest enough with a sufficiently progressed relationship, he'll confess that he meant to use you as a shield and accidentally fell in love. If you progress to Act 3 without the confession, you get a cruel speech about how easy it was, and he doesn't know why you're so shocked ("It's what I DO.")

....end spoiler. Someone needs to explain the hieroglyphics of that tag to me.

It's a pitfall of theirs, and as intrusive as it would have been to keep the exhaustion meter they originally had, removing the mechanic entirely is too destructive. It makes hoarding camp supplies laughably easy and results in too much missed content.

Maybe a notification marker of some sort reminding the player would be enough. Maybe it wouldn't, because "Boy am I tired" is just something my party members say sometimes and it was easy enough to ignore without any clear punishment for doing so.

But they really need to reinstate something.

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

It doesn't, but I've wished it did. Probably as a toggled option, since I know it would aggravate others.

It would require a couple more Act 2 safe zones scattered about for the player to keep track of, but it makes more sense than the ability to just chill for a while in what can be some incredibly unsafe territory. Sneaking off to bang in the underdark? Sure. Fine. I'm certain that won't cause any undue noise.

There are only 1-2 battles I'm aware of that can or absolutely will happen, and neither are randomized encounters in the same vein. Areas it notes are dangerous, it won't allow you to rest at all.

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

In that case, I also choose NZ, 802 years ago.

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

because you (they?) have to also worry about losing potential romantic partners if people think you’re queer.

Honestly, it really shouldn't be a worry. Maybe it's me, but unless they're being really obvious about another guy's body, I can't think of a compliment that would give me that impression.

Even muscles, if the subject is in fact jacked, I would just think they're a really supportive person and like them more because of it. The insinuation about their innate personality would briefly grab my attention.

Nepenthe, 6 months ago

Damn Americans and their...(squints)...canned food.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

I'm not so sure. I've not played the first two to be able to measure between them, but I do recall thinking that if I hadn't been so into watching videos of other peoples' dnd campaigns, I would be so helplessly far out of my depth.

As it was, I was already struggling a little bit with which class was best for my likely playstyle. Who can use what armor, why, and what happens when they don't. What skills go with what stats. The general info they don't have a need to go over when you're not the one at the table.

Those aren't things OP would know enough about to even know they don't know, so I'm glad they have someone helping them. I don't consider myself anything remotely resembling intelligent and they're starting out with less. For being easily one of the best things I've played in years, it would feel impossibly daunting for a noob

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

It can be a little stressful even for me. And yes, the inventory management is atrocious btw, it's a common complaint.

Like someone else mentioned, you can always pay a little to respec if you find out a character doesn't have the stats to do what you're wanting/what they're built to do. That does require gold, and it is something that needs to be read up on and ultimately taken for a test ride to see if it's even fun for you. That many options can feel really daunting.

But I think with enough cleverness, the game can be won with almost anything. Just last night, I watched a playthrough of a guy who had challenged himself to beat the game without killing anyone or manipulating anyone else to kill them for him, and he did it.

Whole game. The only NPC he had no way around personally harming could still be knocked out and left alive. He tricked the end boss into murdering itself through careful use of explosive barrels and he himself never fired a shot — a super cheesy fighting tactic common enough that the term "barrelmancy" is a thing.

I'm not gonna say there won't be reloads, but there are a multitude of ways to handle most if not all altercations. Some things can be talked out of, or allies sought to help.

If not, it could be a huge, horrible fight taken head-on for the awful fun of it, or you could sneak up and thunderwave them into a hole and be done with it. Covertly poison the lot. Command them to drop their own weapon and then take it, and giggle while they flail their fists at you. Cast light on the guy with a sun sensitivity and laugh harder at their own personal hell.

You could sneak around back and take the high ground, triggering the battle by firing the first shot from a vantage point the enemy will take 4 rounds to reach through strategically placed magical spikes.

I passed one particularly worrying trial by just turning the most powerful opponent into a sheep until every other enemy was dead and I could gang up on them. Cleared another fight sitting entirely in the rafters where they had trouble hitting me, and shoved them to their death when one found a way up.

Going straight into a battle is the most expected way to do it, but there are usually shenanigans that can be played, is what I'm saying. Accept with grace the attempts that don't work. If the rules of engagement seem unfair, change the rules.

If it helps any, the game does also reward xp fairly generously. Just reaching new/hidden areas grants a little bit, to say nothing of side quests.

That guy I was talking about, the one that finished with zero kills, ended the game at level 10. The level cap is 12. That was all just wandering around, doing stuff that didn't require fighting.

Know which stat each class mainly uses and focus on that. Do not make the mages wear armor, it is not a happy fun experience. Beyond that, be clever and moderately lucky with your cleverness. You'll be fine.

It's a lot to get used to and does take time to be familiar with all your options, but I started out not very far above where you sound like you are. You do get used to it if you take your time, and I'm certain most people would be overjoyed to help.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

The thing is — not trying to sound snarky about this — do you honestly believe there is someone on the fediverse that hasn't heard of Firefox before.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

The post can, yeah. The predictability with which all posts or comments containing the word "Google" will have several responses underneath evangelizing Firefox almost certainly will not, after it exceeds a point it very clearly routinely exceeds.

Not because you guys are wrong, (you're not), but because you're annoying, which is almost as bad. There is something in psychology called reactance theory, and it's the reason why, when you're just about to do the dishes and then someone else tells you to do them, it's suddenly the last thing on earth you want to do.

It is a choice so small it isn't worth arguing over, but it's no longer your choice born out of your own free will, and now you feel cheated and resentful and you are not doing it, both out of spite and more truthfully to regain your sense of choice.

This is the same reason everyone hates vegans so much. They're not wrong. They're annoying. Firefox has vegan PR.

I held off listening to Hamilton for three years for no other reason than nobody else I met would shut the goddamn fuck up about Hamilton. Same with the TV version of Good Omens, whatever stupid cartoon jester thing has been in a third of the memes lately, and a hundred other things.

I am very likely to switch over to Firefox myself in the ever-nearing future. That ice is breaking. But it will not be because a bunch of strangers whined at me over my own choices for over a decade. It will be because the cons of whatever Google, Windows, etc. have done finally outweigh the pros of not having to exert effort to maintain my experience.

It bears consideration that in the meantime, Firefox users have a tendency not to even read the several duplicate comments before they start jacking off into them, not uncommonly in a way that's loudly judgemental towards their own target audience.

The resultant spam cements a mental association between Firefox, the brand and the feeling of being annoyed and insulted. Don't be those vegans. If I had to think, be like the art community treats Adobe. Fuck Adobe, but I'm not just gonna overload someone with aggressive pompousity who's only using the industry default.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

I figured I had worse things in my history and my personal TSA agent deserved to see this too, but nothing comes up except weird non-porn crypto stuff, a fully-clothed Shadowheart, and a magazine cover with muffins on it.

Don't let this be my legacy.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

• Need anything resembling a support system to make pulling myself out of an abusive clusterfuck even seem worth it.
• Can't socialize til I've already clawed my way of it all by myself, because I'm too far behind anyone who isn't still in high school and it makes people closer to my own age uncomfortable.

So I don't get to have emotional support of any kind. But I do get to be judged when I fail. I'd rather not die if I didn't have to, tbh, but I am kinda being pushed there for lack of other options. Anyway, how is your day.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

When I get deeply emotionally attached to my data analyst, I might care if they're moonlighting on the side. Sex, work or not, is still an emotional topic for most of the human race and it's not new knowledge to anyone.

Enough that it would not naturally occur to me that "please do not engage in prostitution while we're together" needs to be said out loud. I will casually ask if you're monogamous and if you say yes, that's how monogamy works.

Even aside from that, yeah, tbh, I would consider it good form to let your partner know you're considering a new job regardless, just so they generally know what's going on. If you have to hide it, maybe something is wrong.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

I wish I could tell if this was fake. But I've worked in retail before

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

book tubal ligation

Lol. Lmao. Just the rudest awakening not even 5hrs in.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

You don't think there's a market for gay guys? The backbone and indeed front bone of tinder?

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

Same course it took the first time, only sped up by three years:

• Confront my "fiancee" about what the fuck his problem is, and make clear that if the relationship keeps going like this, there's no point in keeping it.

He won't care any more than he did the first time around. He was too pigheaded for that and he never believed I'd actually do it. But I would have given him an overt shot.

• A bit more mindful of the bc, perhaps.

• Take an ex-friend up on their romantic offer much more quickly. I wasn't ready to jump back in at the time, but in my head I would now have been single for years.

He'd probably have the same reaction to this that he had last time — evaporating from my life completely — but I figure I might as well while we're still talking and I'm not going to lose anything I haven't already lost.

• Consider transportational/long-distance options in regards to the same college as before, as I am magically aware of one single existing career option that I'm actually passionate about instead of just performing for sustenance. Don't drop out this time.

Also fight tooth and nail to take A/P like the requirements suggest is necessary. There is a fuck up either in their system or in the counselor's brain.

• Call my dad/accept one of his calls.

He has an impossibly hard time not being abusive at pure random, and I don't think there was ever any choice I could make that he wouldn't find fault with. Telling him all the above may make him proud but probably not. But he kills himself next year and he turns out to be the parent that loved me.

• Persuade him about/do not dawdle on what little he leaves you in the will he never signs.

• Put your inheritance in the stock market where it belongs, not in "good people" who "really need the help" so they aren't "legit starving bro" like you're starving. Two legs bad.

• Cry substantially and more than once. The best baby kitty you will ever meet is at the helpless mercy of someone you don't want to share a state with, much less "date" in order to care for her.

What do we do. She has no one else, so now she has no one. Do we have an obligation to pretend, in the hopes of taking the cat when we leave?

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

One in the photo was clearly installed backwards, then

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

$5 will buy you the kind of lessons that will earn that reaction

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

Perhaps hilariously, if I weren't going through it alone, I wouldn't be going through it at all.

But whoever wrote the original image gets points for trying, I guess. Even if the points don't buy anything.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

You can ask him five questions, but he won't be answering any of them.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

Oh goodness, I didn't know they were turning the book into a movie

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

It's not her bowl. She just turned into a bitch.

Ohhh man. This had me cackling. I mean, I feel bad for you, but it does speak to me in my soul.

The one I have now won't even eat off a plate unless it's wet food, where I'm guessing she's too excited to care about the peasant presentation.

I found out about the whisker thing and handed her fresh kibble that way just to see, and she wouldn't even touch it til I put it in her bowl for her.

It HAS to be in a bowl and it HAS to be full to overflowing, and she'd better not see any goddamn silver or she'll beat me with a coat hanger. And then the bottom goes stale because her whiskers.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

I instantly recognize this guy's style now. The symmetry gives it a very specific, dreamlike "off" quality even before you notice. But this one has been by far the most uncomfortable once I did.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

hasn’t talked to me since Monday.

I would normally interpret "we're not friends" to be joking, but not if it lasts more than a couple minutes. If real, it is the end of the 4th day for OP, going on into the 5th.

Whatever happened, it wasn't something good. Offering someone money to like you probably won't improve one's social standing. Not to say almost a week of the silent treatment bodes well for problem solving, either.

Without knowing the full story, @cRazi_man, maybe the two of you should at least think over seeing someone? A lot of couples see it as a last resort, so they end up waiting til there's basically nothing to save before trying to do something about it. This is...a concern.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

Imagine half your backyard being in another country. Do you think they still mow it?

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

Fair deal. Not everyone has the gas money to bother with a car. Measuring things is free.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

I tried it immediately in camp, the moment I saw it was an actual ability instead of a cutscene thing. You'll never guess what happened.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

Well, I got super curious back in Act 1 and remembered him telling me once about his original plan for when it became too unstable to handle anymore, i.e. to find the deepest, loneliest part of the Underdark and wait. So I took him down to the lowest point of the forge that I could find, slaughtered him, and then made haste to whatever point of the map was both topside and the furthest away I could possibly get before continually long resting, just to test if it actually would go off in-game or whether that threat was set dressing.

Nah, it still insta-kills you when the clock runs down. Just completely wipes the entirety of the coast, I assume. He mentions around the end of Act 2/beginning of Act 3 that he doesn't want to kill you and hopes you could find someplace safe away from him when he does so, but judging by that, there's nowhere far enough that you could possibly run. Fucker's "glorious sacrifice" is going to block out the sun for years.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

Up til now, we've had:

• The sudden realization that you can bathe and don't have to crunch around in weeks of dried gore

• The further realization that at least one npc mentions you stink and should probably do something about that

• Standing relatively close to a waterfall for a few minutes if you can find one, or perhaps walking at a normal pace through a really deep puddle.

• Sophisticated method — stealing a water bottle, throwing it really hard at the floor, and hoping the splashback is enough

After months of steady work, we can use the soap now, but you're going to have to give your fellow gamers a minute to get used to things before you start making other suggestions

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

How did I forget about that cloak!? I got that before reloading because I kept failing my attempts to steal all my money back. I didn't expect all of those to be so addictive. I loved it.

My personal favorite was the boots that grant their wearer misty step for the tradeoff of leaving all your other clothes in a pile at your starting point. Still kinda sad I couldn't snag those again.

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

Some fixes really should be optional

Nepenthe, 7 months ago

Oh, I'm sure at least one of us will be packing