I love these cuties btw.

Their original purpose was as guard dogs for children and nurseries, the nanny dog

They are gentle, cuddly and ridiculously easy to train.

You have to actively try to fuck up to get them to be aggressive.

I said I was done, but this still is on my mind and I lied.

Here's me bashing the mish mash of conflicting lore together in speculation on how Bhaalspawn work for my own "fuck you collective of official gibberish, this is my take on it" canon (again, BG2 spoilers):

I have settled on extraplanar outsider rather than native (despite the majority being born to humanoid parents). As outsiders their bodies and souls and intrinsically tied together in a way humanoids' aren't. If they die outside of the plane of Gehenna then their body dissolves and they return to that plane; if they die on the plane the rules are that "To die in this place is to cease to exist," as Irenicus helpfully put it. He's still around afterwards, so I assume he's referring to Charname (Gorion's Ward) specifically. Should the soul somehow depart to the Lower Planes without the living body, the body might follow it there (I think the body dies? I was never terribly clear on the exact details of what happened in that part of BG2...)

When Sarevok died, his body and soul dissolved and returned to the Throne of Blood, where he/his independent part of Bhaal's essence was absorbed into the "pool" of collected Bhaalspawn souls/essence. "Echoes" of dead Bhaalspawns' personalities exist within Bhaal/the collective, much as the mortal mage Midnight is an echo within the goddess Mystra, and sometimes they can be separated back into independent beings if a portion of Bhaal's essence is granted to that echo allowing them to reform a physical body and live again.

Sarevok was able to reform because he was given a fragment of Bhaal's essence (independent from the whole) - not enough to restore him to true demigodhood, but enough to materialise a physical body.

(There is... an interesting way to interpret the Dark Urge's creation here, where they're one of the original Bhaalspawn reborn - although it's not one I personally plan to use. Also the fact that they're apparently born from Bhaal's dead physical body, not the pool of essence, implies something strange happened, regardless.)

I'm not sure where Bhaalspawn stand when it comes to souls; judging by Bhaal complaining that Charname is "strange amongst their kin" because their soul has independence, they're not supposed to have one inherently separate from Bhaal's essence, that independence is just a quirk (Charname was explicitly a special prophecy child, they're the exception to the rules). Bhaalspawn can have the divine essence/their soul extracted from them and still physically exist, although it will eventually kill them. Their bodies are also considered part of Bhaal, he is described as existing in "the very fibre of their being[s]." Even after supposedly ceasing to be Bhaal's children, both Sarevok and Durge are explicitly stated to still carry Bhaal's essence in their bodies and will pass it on to any offspring they have. As 5e lore has retconned the possibility of having Bhaal's essence totally cleansed from a Bhaalspawn, rendering them pure mortal, I am rolling with that one and ignoring the mortal ending (I always go for the god endings anyway). Bhaalspawn remain what they are always. As I like them.

It does seem like their body, soul and Bhaal's essence are one big chunk, instead of the usual division of body and soul seen in full mortals. As he says: "he is [them]"; their "whole being is borrowed"; etc.

Which leaves the question of "Withers what the fuck did you do. What are you planning??" in regards to Durge being resurrected. I have no idea, but I didn't play the special snowflake demigod to have my special snowflake status stripped from me, so I'm clinging to "Durge is still a quasi-deity, and you cannot pry that from my cold, dead hands." Larian can even release a DLC or BG4 that tells me otherwise; I will ignore it.

"BG3-" Larian has left out, changed or ignored/forgotten a load of stuff about how Bhaalspawn work in their story (which is their right, it's DM fiat). There should be no "Little Brother Toop's" corpse on display on the hall of wonders because he shouldn't have a corpse. I'm blaming the tadpole, ignoring it and moving on.

Imoen is disqualified as an aberration; her thing is purely game mechanics not matching the lore that was established before they retconned her into a Bhaalspawn. Doesn't count.

We are not in Larian's house for this interpretation, just as they are not in Bioware's; we are in mine now and I'm ill and grumpy.

I'm not a player of Call of Duty and ngl, the only campaign I've fully watched was the MWII (2022).

I'll still leave my ramble about the MWIII below;

/!\SPOILERS BE WARNED/!\

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I have yet to watch the MWIII campaign, but I did decide to take a look at Soap's death scene and yeah, I will admit, the scene of his death was very much underwhelming emotionally for the viewer and for the characters.

The most emotion we got at that moment from that scene was Ghost yelling out Soap's name. The way this felt to me was as if the developers didn't dare to give too much emotions to the cast at all.

Which is odd if compare to the older Modern Warfare games. The scenes where the characters would die was shown very dramatically; slow-motion, blurry POV, dragging out the scenes, dramatic music, etc... Basically giving a big emphasis on how important and impacting the death is. It should be presented as an actual loss to not only the player, but to the characters as well;

When Soap died in the earlier MW, Price has a very big reaction to the loss of Soap. Yelling out his name, begging him to live and even angrily pushing away a man who told him they had to leave to safety. Despite being a Captain, he couldn't help but have his emotions get to the best of him, and very understandably so. He didn't only lose a soldier, he lost a friend.

Soap (2023) felt like he was just another lost soldier and not a lost friend. Like I said earlier, the only emotion we hear (and barely see) from the moment Soap died is Ghost yelling out his name.

I will not lie, the last scene where they honor Soap was pretty emotional, but not enough because of the underwhelming reaction we got before.

The bond we got to see between Ghost and Soap in MWII kinda feels wasted to me.

We could've gotten a more panicked Price to moment Soap got shot, looking back very quickly at Soap before going to defuse the bomb. After Price and Gaz defused the bomb, we could be leaving Price's POV and see the both of them rushing towards the others. We could see a defeated Ghost over Soap's body after checking for his pulse, his voice reporting him being K.I.A. with the same tone. One of them cursing under their breath or whatever else way they could have their loss expressed visually and/or audibly.

All I got to say so far 👍

why do i feel so!!!! aaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it's like. i'm sad, but i'm not?? there's just this feeling in my chest and i want to cry, but i can't, and i also don't want to cry. everything feels so. i don't even know!!!!! i can't seem to put it into words? it's like. i'm standing in the middle of a crowd, but there's this small bubble around me people walk around and i know it should be noisy because of all the people, but it's quiet. and there's me across the street in a reflection looking back and i don't recognize myself. i don't know. i don't know.

Oh my god...it. was. SO. HARD! To read the middle of chapter 330. I already knew it was going to happen, thanks to inky mystery fans on Tumblr. That's why I've skipped the kissing part and read cupheads reaction. Eeeehhhhh...I just wanted to not read this chapter. I just wanted to skip it. But, I didn't because of the fear i might miss something important. It was just. no. (I'm glad Cuphead had a negative reaction to the kiss)

Also, what is going on with Bendy? Is he becoming an angel????

Now, exsuce me while I go back into my Colly loving cave.

Jesus fucking christ can someone slap all the bots here into shadow realm or something? I'm so done with reporting them EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. There is literally no end to that fuckery

In House of the Dragon, humans (Daemon and Aemond) look more like elves than the elves did in Rings of Power.

The elves in RoP look like humans with pointy ears which defeats the purpose of them being this ethereal and mysterious race.

I wanna go rant on more about this but it's "past my bedtime".

Also I want more Aemond content.

the story of kfc fucks me up man. the colonel founded this gas station that expanded to restaurant, the chicken at the restaurant gets popular, makes KFC, it gets big and he sells it to a corporation for a lot of money. realizes he got sorta scammed out of the true worth of kfc so tries to get more money and they refuse and the courts side against him. then he starts a new chicken restaurant claiming the corporate people were not making chicken to his standards and kfc sued him because kfc owned the colonel's likeness and the courts agreed. a corporation owned this man's name and appearance. he wasnt allowed to use either, thus legally erasing his reputation making it harder for him to get taken seriously in any food venture. the man, to the day he died, was going into kfc's and throwing fits because the food had fallen into such bad shape he hated it was associated with him. and it's like, whether he's a bad man or a good man or whatever, a corporation owned his identity, stopped him from using his reputation and identity in other businesses, and refused to acknowledge his outrage that they changed his recipes and still attributed it to him. this is literally the obnoxious plot of a jay and silent bob movie, but it was this dude's real life. what the fuck.

Recently, an American expat who works in the same company as me joined us for lunch in the break room.

My friend and I were talking about our plans for Beltane (which was three days ago) and the upcoming Walpurgis Night (dunno if you call it differently in English)

Our American colleague did as Americans often do over here, and inserted herself into our conversation.

Which is a big No No, by the way.

She said, and I quote, : "You can't celebrate the holidays of the people you stole this country from. That's cultural appropriation "

...

My friend is Norwegian and I'm so german it's concerning...

My whole family comes from the same region I've been born in, with a tiny Irish and Scandinavian offshoot and a slightly bigger Slavic one...

We've been here for millenia, I'm unsure who we apparently stole our home from.

What do y'all learn in the US, I'm concerned

Outside of the whole new age stuff, the holidays of the wandering moon and the changing Sun have been celebrated all over Europe in one fashion or another. Under many gods and many faces, but the same idea and often the same traditions.

This problem is nothing new, but this specific example with these numbers puts it into a fucking brutal perspective.

To put these numbers a different way: A Taco Bell burrito that used to cost ~7 minutes and 20 seconds of minimum wage work now costs ~30 minutes and 30 seconds of minimum wage work.

You used to be able to work at Taco Bell anywhere in the country and make enough money in one hour to buy at least 8 burritos (maybe 9 if you're a manager or something) and feed, like, 3-4 people a decently-filling meal. But now, the same amount of work at the same job will get you one meal for one person. And this change has happened over a mere 15 years.

Remember this whenever you see rich people demonize younger generations for our financial situations, when they call us irresponsible for not investing a ton of money in savings accounts.

I am genuinely so worried for all the young horny dykes going into adulthood thinking there's something "problematic" / "wrong" with them for being horny because fucking tiktok lesbians think any horny dyke content is "male gaze fetishitic"

I think at some point in time we need to sit down and start explaining to artist who want to make a career out of art that there are FAR more options than just "living off of commissions" and "posting my art online and praying I get paid for it".

so when straight people ask me why I say I’m “queer” or “gay” instead of sharing my actual identity as a panromantic demisexual non-binary sapphic queer I just tell them “ok look, when you’re talking to someone who isn’t local and they ask you where you’re from and you either say the name of the largest city nearby or ‘town name, suburb of large nearby city’ so they can get some geographical context of where you’re located right, bc they’re probably not going to know the name of the little town you actually live in.”

but if you’re talking to a local you can say the name of your actual town bc they have a greater chance of knowing where/what that is.

ok well when I’m talking to a straight person I start with queer bc chances are they aren’t as familiar with the context of all the little towns in that big queer city and need gps (gay positioning system) to find me.

if I’m talking to another queer person and I say I live in a suburb of gay city in a town called panromantic on the demisexual side of the tracks which is in the county of queer and I live off the intersection of non-binary and sapphic, they’d probably be able to find me with little to no problems, make sense?

I hate that the "Gen Alpha can't read." conversation so much because people are taking this as a chance to call children stupid and their parents monsters instead of having a very real discussion about how the education system is flawed by design, covid fucked up everything socialization wise, these parents having little access to child care and more work hours leads them to lean on things like tablets and phones to watch their kids more and more, teachers are more overworked and underpaid than ever leading to them leaving the profession in droves and that's only like the surface level issues. There's a myriad of factors at play here, not just that "The kids are spoiled screen-addicted brats with no imagination and their parents are childish spoiled millennials who just let coco melon handle everything."

this this this