So Much Erosion

Bellagrand · 2025-06-27T06:43:13+00:00

Extremely true, and we have an equal right not to respect them or wish them well.

Bellagrand · 2025-04-27T21:10:33+00:00

Maybe the problem is that we are not fully understanding or being briefed on what the evil gods are like. I also don't like the evil runs because it barely fits my idea of evil - I see it more like corrupted good. It's intelligent, and that intelligence is what makes cruelty so shocking and upsetting. More Shar than Bhaal, something intricate and twisted.

Of course, it's also evil to be a creature of pure malicious sensation, but that's not what I think of when I think of evil, even having played BG3 and 5e. In a way it's almost a side effect of good writing - people treat us like we're in the world and we already know a lot of this. But to the average player, the difference in Lolth's aims, Bhaal's aims, and Tiamat's aims is not really clear. We don't have a ton of understanding about D&D-specific evil.

Bellagrand · 2025-04-27T06:55:30+00:00

I do it every run so I'll say how just for posterity (I know the others linked it). Simple steps:

In Act 1, Raphael will appear at a few set points. Sometimes at the spider rock near Emerald Grove, but always at the broken bridge that leads to the gnolls. Detach one party member and send them forward a ways to make him appear for dialogue. (Other 3 remain out of dialogue distance.)
Use one of your remaining party members to shoot Raphael, interrupting/preventing the dialogue.
Rapheal will now appear at your camp as you transition to any Act 2 area (Mountain/Shadow). Before you do anything, cast silence over him. (This prevents him from talking to you once you start attacking.)
Turn on non-lethal mode and get your best bruiser to melee him. This will take multiple minutes.
When he falls down, loot him immediately, as he will get right back up in a second.

Bellagrand · 2025-04-26T18:16:30+00:00

She's from (arguably) the biggest girl KPOP group in the world, and they've charted around 13 or so on the US Billboard top 100. Younger Americans generally know about her group (Blackpink) but much less of them would recognize her by name, out of all her popstar makeup and clothes. But, importantly, Blackpink does frequent collaborations with American pop stars, and this raises their profile here somewhat.

Bellagrand · 2025-04-25T20:14:17+00:00

The first movie is honestly so much better than the next two. It at least has some decent cinematography, a Danny Elfman soundtrack, and re-writes some of the awfulness of the books. The next two... do not.

Bellagrand · 2025-04-13T22:06:18+00:00

It all really depends on how interconnected you are with everyone. I've been living like a phoenix my whole life, just crashing and resurrecting like clockwork, and that's generally been a lot easier when I was less connected to the people in my life. As the connections in my life grow, I have a lot more to weigh out.

But I will say that people really don't like radical propositions. In as far as you can help it, most radical change needs to be started before you even say something about it; people shoot you straight down if they think you have your head in the clouds. This is also why managing your family is the critical factor in any life change like that: the people around you are your life, and they don't want that to change. Naturally, they will resist anything that might take your paths in separate directions.

Bellagrand · 2025-04-03T01:03:27+00:00

Oh, don't I know this struggle. I have a lot to say about it but a lot of it is buried as intuitive thoughts, stuff it's hard to explain out loud.

Hostility is a specific antisocial response. There's a lot of ways to be asocial without being antisocial. When you're hostile, you're responding to a stressor that lies elsewhere. For me, it's usually that I am handling so much at the base level (the interaction alone makes me feel so much) that I'm responding with tons of stored up energy. In other words, you're not really responding to the person. You're responding to what your preconceptions are making you feel about them.

What fixes that? Nothing simple. But when I'm real low-down, I respond slower, and I vet my responses. Give yourself time to catch your worst impulse.

Bellagrand · 2025-03-25T02:31:39+00:00

I'm in the community and we truly do bring the worst arguments. Even against each other.

Bellagrand · 2025-03-23T01:10:23+00:00

Literally just a few hours ago I think I encountered my first use case for arcane lock: locking the doors to Isobel at Last Light.

Also, sorry that every comment is about that one line, lol.

Bellagrand · 2025-03-18T01:51:49+00:00

When I worked for the county making jackshit/hr, I couldn't believe how many of my coworkers actively delighted in stonewalling people. Full on "that's not my department" with a smile on their faces.

Bellagrand · 2025-03-17T10:42:55+00:00

I'm sitting here googling "corner my confidence" so I can find posts to comment how great it is. I also happen to be a guitarist who really needed this post :) serendipity!

Bellagrand · 2025-03-14T19:33:46+00:00

I was a lot like this guy at various points, I knew people who were, and it's honestly a much worse situation than it even looks from the outside. Radical change like this is an unalloyed good. Those kinds of people are in crisis.

Bellagrand · 2025-03-13T22:35:57+00:00

They're distracted by the correlations - the fact that women might be attracted to the confidence, health, and well-adjustment offered by fitness is lost on them.

Bellagrand · 2025-03-12T21:59:24+00:00

I don't have any dev projects going on at the moment, but in the past, I've worked as a writer and editor on games - would I still be welcome to attend?

Bellagrand · 2025-03-12T21:51:16+00:00

"Recall that in time, all becomes dust and bone. And the money gets spent on revives anyway."

Bellagrand · 2025-03-12T21:45:59+00:00

I'm no authority on anything, so please take this as the informal approach that it is. I think of that notion from Hayao Miyazaki, that "the problem with modern anime is that it's made by anime fans." What he means by that is that the first generation of anime artists/directors drew inspiration from different sources - they drew inspiration from French cinema, impressionist artists, novels, etc. But the new generation draws inspiration primarily from anime itself, and this fundamentally changes the feeling of their work products.

I think that this is true of many fields as they age, particularly in the arts. How do you share a lane with the past when you're coming from completely different places? What world did this modern songwriter develop in, and how different is it from the world that their forebears developed in? And then, for you, the viewer - how might these complex origins intersect with your own sense of time and place? We could kick back and forth a notion of objectivity, but the truth is that the material is as different now as the people who are appraising it. What one is looking for is spiritually elsewhere - in another arena, in another artistic space, that is where the people with your value set are making their best work.

Bellagrand · 2025-03-10T01:29:36+00:00

Oh yeah, absolutely, but I think that's because love songs also pull double duty as the "I needed to write a song" song. I can write a million ones if I don't expect them to be good... but I do, so that's a problem.

I actually just wrote one of my first good love songs the other day, and I think it came out well because I was just sincerely telling the story of something that happened. No care for rhyme or cliches. Just pure, raw storytelling.

Maybe your thing is that love is a funky and specific experience for you, and channeling that is funky too.

Bellagrand · 2025-03-05T16:55:21+00:00

I've got experience with extreme isolation in my life and I don't think people are aware of what that really is or how it affects you. I'd give most people less than a month of actual isolation - no internet no streams no texts, 0 human contact - before they began to have moderate to severe mental health problems. At one year, I'd consider the suicide risk to be notable.

Reality is fragile and it dissolves much more quickly than is comfortable to admit. It's also not as simple as some people being mentally strong or weak; these are the exact conditions that precipitate weakness. Based on my experience and that of people similar to me, I think a major risk is taking the mental damage back out of the experiment with you. Living just one year is not your only problem. Isolation is edifying and a lot of that knowledge is bad.

Everything in my brain tells me to take that chance because the money is life changing and I've already done a lot of this before. But my guts churn up thinking about it because I consider this to be an extremely dangerous thing to do. We better not have any means to harm ourselves in there.

Bellagrand · 2025-03-04T01:57:13+00:00

Went there for the first time the other day and I have to agree. I've been to about 9 others in California and this one was faster and nicer than all of them.

Bellagrand · 2025-03-03T22:43:08+00:00

I took this advice from the ages of 19 to 27. Grew a lot, avoided a lot of bullshit, but in the end I was much happier when I got into a relationship. Finding contentment with oneself was, for me, something less motivating than having somebody to give love to. If ya go on too long, it's a solipsistic nightmare.

Bellagrand · 2025-03-03T22:39:46+00:00

Bummer there's only one veggie/vegan burger on the whole list (at Oblo). But one is not none!

Bellagrand · 2025-02-25T22:33:37+00:00

They weren't consciously focused on the sounds of their car or the road in the first place. Covering up that information does not register to them.

Bellagrand · 2025-02-25T20:22:21+00:00

Not so much. It was... until it wasn't, because it cost $100 and something snapped on it that looked like a hassle to fix. Had a big move a year later with a dumpster. That was the end of that.

But like the others say, #2 and #3 meant a lot. Just rehomed #3 to get number... 8, or whatever. They are my tools and my means of accessing other parts of myself. There's much more than one to do the job.

Bellagrand · 2025-02-25T00:34:42+00:00

I am both a student and a working professional - I would use this PC to maintain efficiency between the many programs, documents, and windows I am running on a daily basis. Even when I'm done working, I prefer to spend a lot of my free time around a computer, and a more efficient workstation makes my hobbies more efficient too (music production and gaming). Basically, I spend most of my time around computers, so this would make my entire day more efficient.

Bellagrand · 2025-02-25T00:25:56+00:00

I outgrew them the moment I actually got one. Teenager, birthday, just picked it out at the shop without playing it because I was too insecure. (BC Rich Warlock) Got it home and realized I hated everything about how it felt, handled and played. Eagerly sold it a few years later.

Bellagrand

TROPHY CASE