Nepenthe

That was very nearly my exact same thought. Maybe not for curious children with carrot-sized fingers, but for adults, how convenient! Business competitor’s body won’t quite fit in your fancy frunk? Just while away on your phone for about 10 minutes, let the cat do its magic, and off go the legs! Travel-sized!

From the US: I’m over 30 and this is the first time I’ve heard surrogacy referred to as human trafficking. And now I need to sit and think.

It’s always felt a little bit creepy to me, but I’ve also never wanted kids and the idea of pregnancy for any reason would be traumatic. So I’m starting out heavily biased. I think if you take the money out, it no longer counts…?

But the idea would be so out of left field that it would mostly be dismissed out of hand, probably even by most women.

Otherwise known as: “what if everyone’s abusive ex ran the government?”

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.

I’ll admit, there have been multiple times recently I’ve started to wonder if he’s somehow a pod person. And he’s…certainly one to speak, as a national representative.

But as much as it irks me, I’d rather admit to common ground than find myself sacrificing my own morals on the basis that I don’t like who said it.

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

It was my understanding that this is just how science people act

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.

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

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.

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.

I am uncomfortable to say that I failed 3 of the human ones. In my defense, the guy on the bottom right has pointed teeth like Sweet Tooth

In general, or just in red states? Cross-referencing LGBT politicians with their states’ historical political leanings, an openly LGBT politician has been elected or reelected while their state was considered republican a total of 96 times. The lead is actually a three-way split between Florida, Georgia, and Arizona, each with a total of 9.

So. Less than it perhaps should. Way more than you’d think.

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.

Well, that makes them like the edge of a freezie pop. Those are dangerous.

I don’t think plastic would cut so well as it does in the article’s video, but maybe it’s not the only schematic.

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.

If we make them out of little bits of plastic, the answer is shockingly yes

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

AI-generated maps and NPCs might be ok. Ditto fights, though there would have to be playtesters whose job it is to make sure the result is something winnable and acceptably fair.

The main issue there would be that there IS no continual certainty of that. You’d have to either be able to rerolled entire encounters — which would be jarring — or force the AI to DM what happens when you lose an impossible battle — far more rewarding, provided it doesn’t keep doing it. But it may keep doing it. This would be impossible to ever test adequately. Every game on the market may be a hard mode Bethesda game.

I personally really don’t think I’d enjoy something with a randomly generated cast/main story for the same reason I wouldn’t be interested in owning one singular book whose writing changes every time you read it. I don’t play to kill time; I play for the stories and I get attached like hell to the good ones. I replay them ad nauseam because I miss the characters.

I think it would be an intensely entertaining idea either as a New Game+ or for those games to have a wildcard setting that you could turn on and off. That way, there’s no lack of devs who get to tell the tale they wanted and players can mix it up when they’re bored. Otherwise, you’ve downgraded the job of the entire company to filling the AI in on background lore and nothing else.

Other aspects:

• for those that do get attached and wanna re-experience it, you’d need a way to save the information behind the game you just played. That file might be fairly gigantic?

• Would also lead to a weird market for other peoples’ saves. The way modders already make quests, but for an entire plot.

• NPCs and party members that all look like randomized sims.

I remember the opposite: heads always felt like “right way up” to us, but the result was almost always tails no matter who flipped it. To the extent that it still feels like the heads/tails percentage is the only positive version of the 50-50-90 rule, and I will never choose anything else.

Probably confirmation bias. But I wonder if the people in my family are wobblier than others.