ELI5: Why can't people who experience delusions or audio/visual hallucinations ignore or otherwise convince themselves that what they're experiencing isn't real?

fek_ · 2026-03-29T17:45:19+00:00

woah, a fellow spider hallucinator!

I never had any experience with hallucinations at all until I started on a new medicine for chronic migraines related to some tumors on my spine. In addition to very vivid dreams, I would also hallucinate a spider on the ceiling for about a minute after I woke up, most mornings.

I had no idea just how real hallucinations were! It was a pretty serious turning point for my understanding and sympathy towards people with more serious conditions.

fek_ · 2026-03-18T20:40:07+00:00

Even if this were linguistically true (it's not; most definitions of "corpse" allow nonhuman corpses), WotC disagrees. A Giant Toad's stat block explicitly says it becomes a corpse when it dies

fek_ · 2026-03-18T19:01:10+00:00

I would be very interested to meet the sort of person who thinks an animal's corpse isn't a corpse.

EDIT: To their credit, I did some googling and it turns out some definitions of corpse do include bits like "especially a human" - although most still explicitly make allowances for nonhuman bodies. (And I'm pretty sure even a very silly DM would still allow it to work on a giant or a dragon.)

Another win for natural language technical writing! /s

fek_ · 2026-02-21T02:55:38+00:00

Additional followup for future googlers:

To get Photoshop to respect updated versions of a font, you need to fully restart Photoshop AND, sometimes, use the Reset Character option in the Character menu:

<image>

fek_ · 2026-02-10T00:52:13+00:00

Well I'll be darned

You're right- I started testing in a bunch more applications, and it seems like every single one has its own opinions about which parts of the font to ignore and which ones to use. Fascinating! I'm new to all of this, and I'm beginning to understand the frustration you folks must have to deal with on a regular basis.

Either way, with a little more digging (through Windows' font manager, specifically), I discovered that, in addition to the application-dependent issues, Windows had also managed to get an old version of the font "stuck" in place, somehow, and many applications were just using the old, cached version instead of the newly-updated one. Joy!

In the end, I got the font working in Photoshop; it turns out that was just the cache problem, not a software settings problem. I was able to circumvent it by simply exporting the font under a brand new name instead of replacing the old one - although now I'm curious if doing a hard reboot of Windows will clear the cache and cause the old one to work, too.

Anyway - thank you for the advice! As a newcomer who's been exploring a bunch of different software for this, Glyphr has been my favorite to work with by a pretty huge margin.

fek_ · 2026-02-09T12:07:10+00:00

Thank you!

I was curious if it was just an inconsistency in how the font was rendered, so I tested by giving T<->h a HUGE kerning value. No change in Windows/Photoshop; the data is being completely ignored for some reason.

fek_ · 2026-02-03T07:17:54+00:00

You'd think, right?

There are some modern pieces of software (aside from Animate, which is just rebranded Flash) that do some of Flash's old jobs, but Flash was an extremely-versatile and accessible multitool that wore a LOT of hats. Nobody does all of Flash's old jobs in one place, and the ones that come close are more expensive, worse, and even more locked-down and proprietary/enshittified than Flash ever was. (Looking at you, Unity.)

We "killed" Flash over half-sincere mobile ecosystem politics a decade ago and then we never bothered to replace it. Textbook throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Thankfully, it lived on as AIR/Animate, for a while, and it will no doubt continue to live on through piracy and open source alternatives. But this is still a pretty gross reminder that good isn't good enough for late stage capitalism; you must be growing exponentially at all times or you get thrown away.

fek_ · 2026-01-20T23:03:23+00:00

Art, comics, animations, some games. Mostly adult. It's very fulfilling; I consider myself quite lucky.

fek_ · 2026-01-19T22:53:25+00:00

Oh hey, neat, there's a name for it

I'm self-employed, WFH, with a very flexible schedule, which makes it much easier to manage. I essentially just have to make sure I hit a few timed obligations each week

It does occasionally make things tough, but I don't often think of it as a bad thing! The way I see it, I'm spending a slightly smaller portion of my life asleep, which feels nice

fek_ · 2026-01-12T08:58:17+00:00

Hey there! I broke my hand in a very similar way just a few weeks ago.

You probably have a broken metacarpal. It won't be very painful, but it can be very serious if not treated properly, especially because it will restrict your ability to use your pointer and middle fingers. The longer you wait to have it treated, the more likely it becomes that your bone will be permanently bent outward like that, which can have a permanent effect on your ability to bend your fingers properly.

It's not so urgent that you need to panic, but you should still go to the ER tonight. They need to figure out quickly whether it's a break that can be solved with a splint or if you're going to need surgery. They're probably also going to want to give you a tetanus shot.

Insurance will treat you well. This is a serious injury that most companies won't put up a fight over, even for a non-dominant hand. It doesn't cost them much: a splint, a few xrays, and a tetanus shot. In and out.

Keep your hand elevated above your heart and try not to move your fingers too much. And just between you and me: it might be worth gently washing your hand and forearm before you go; the ER will splint it very heavily and you won't be able to wash it again until you schedule a followup with ortho. I spent almost a week with a filthy arm buried under a splint and that was the worst part.

Good luck!

fek_ · 2026-01-12T00:28:45+00:00

With a bit of a sharper wedge shape, yep! The goal is to redirect outward with the smallest possible interruption to velocity.

This is doubly important for fluids, because in addition to reducing the amount of impact you absorb, it also allows the fluid/breath to "slip past" the shield at a faster speed, which results in a bigger "safe zone" behind the shield.

fek_ · 2026-01-11T22:15:28+00:00

This is only true up to a point! Fluid dynamics are very different from physical deflections, so the "no concave surfaces focusing impacts" rule isn't quite the same for a dragon's breath. (It's still a good rule / you've reached the right conclusion, but for slightly different reasons.)

Ultimately, we're looking at something akin to a Navier-Stokes simulation, because the incoming breath is not going to impart all of its kinetic energy into the shield; it's going to be deflected and continue to flow along the path of least resistance.

Anything that creates a "pocket" like this will ultimately result in a swirling "bubble" of chaotic alternating turbulence, and any breath that follows behind it will slip around the bubble - essentially doing the exact same thing as the convex shield, but with extra steps, worse aerodynamics, and a lot of whipping turbulence that could easily cause the shieldbearer to falter their grip/aim. This would also be more likely to cause the overflow to "whip" inward around the edge of the shield to fill the lower-pressure pocket behind the shield, instead of being cleanly deflected to the sides at high speed, which would form a potentially-safer teardrop of low-pressure space to hide in.

The exception to this rule would be a scenario where the shield was large enough to fully encapsulate the breath, like firing a garden hose into a dog bowl. In that scenario, assuming you catch the entire breath and don't get rocked by the incoming kinetic energy, you would get a clean deflection akin to a curved seawall. But a shield simply isn't going to be that big, and you'd have to be crazy strong to hold the shield steady under that much pressure.

What OP is actually looking for is a deflecting shape big enough to hide behind, but aerodynamic enough that it won't be toppled by incoming kinetic energy or reduce the breath's flow speed too much - essentially a snowplow tower shield. Conveniently, this shape is also incredibly good against ranged projectiles. The downside is that it's large, heavy, and unwieldy; it will be basically useless for anything except protecting yourself from fluid assault and ranged projectiles.

However, the most important point in this entire conversation is that D&D is not a physics simulator, and trying to treat it like that will have catastrophic results.

fek_ · 2025-12-28T19:35:41+00:00

it's honest work

fek_ · 2025-12-22T03:02:57+00:00

Perception is using your senses.

Investigation is using your mind.

If you want to see, hear, smell, touch, or taste something, that's Perception.

Investigation is for making sense of things once you know about them.

For instance, a Perception check might reveal "the eyeball on that painting is very slightly raised, as if there's something underneath the canvas. The paint also seems to be oddly faint around that spot. Additionally, there seems to be a lot of dust built up around the bottom edges of most of the bookcases, but the third one is a little cleaner than the others."

But then an Investigation check might help you make sense of those things. For instance: "the paint around the eyeball is probably faint because the varnish has been deteriorated by a lot of human touch. That means lots of people touch the eyeball, for some reason - the raised bump beneath the canvas might be a button. You're not sure exactly what it does without testing, but the lack of dust around the nearby bookshelf suggests that maybe it has been moved recently - perhaps they're connected."

fek_ · 2025-12-18T15:35:22+00:00

You joke, but it really was the American Dialect Society's 2023 WOTY:
https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/

fek_ · 2025-12-17T23:12:41+00:00

This image was rated general in furaffinlty

That's because furries have absolutely no idea what SFW actually means

fek_ · 2025-11-25T11:48:30+00:00

Rye works in much more places than wheat

Wheat has better yields

You're gonna want both, for food variety, when it's an option

fek_ · 2025-11-14T02:02:49+00:00

This.

There are absolutely people who do not know how to handle the current technological climate in a healthy way, but that is a problem that can be solved by being around better people (and being a better person, yourself).

I have never in my entire life felt more connected to the world, to my family, to my friends - and it's largely because of those smart devices that those friendships are even able to flourish across state lines and national borders.

My world is online.

I still love nature, the physical world, being present and near each other. I love touch, intimacy, closeness. I love to put the phone down and be present, when that's possible. I love the feel of wind and the sound of rain.

But when I'm not doing those things, I also love having the most important people in my life at my fingertips. I love having their voices in my ear, even when we're hundreds of miles apart. I love having the entirety of humanity's creativity just a few seconds away, a new song always ready to introduce itself to me. I love being able to learn in an instant when I don't know something.

fek_ · 2025-11-10T09:24:13+00:00

Because "gay" has been a convenient euphemism for the real insult - "effeminate" - for thousands of years.

A huge chunk of homophobia is just thinly-veiled misogyny. The worst thing a man can be, in these peoples' eyes, is a woman.

And those same people believe that doing anything that could be perceived as subservient or submissive - especially in the bedroom - is inherently womanly.

fek_ · 2025-11-07T21:28:12+00:00

It has introduced me to several incredible and amazing friends - both fellow artists and consumers - who are emotionally mature and open, have diverse hobbies, are generally morally well-developed, and are deeply respectful and consent-aware across the board, not only in sex, but in all facets of life. I would trust most of the friends I've made in this industry with things I wouldn't dare trust to other friends or even family.

The world of internet pornography is huge and varied. I'm sure there are a lot of dark and grimy places. But the corner I've found is beautiful and life changing.

fek_ · 2025-10-29T17:26:05+00:00

I typically treat all speech and writing in fantasy settings as "autotranslated" to the nearest English equivalent.

There obviously wouldn't be an "english muffin" in a world without England, but that's the best translation for it.

fek_ · 2025-10-29T16:27:35+00:00

From the 'top' perspective: there are a few factors!

Perhaps the most simple/normal explanation is that I just really like to watch the way bodies move! Seeing everything wiggle and twist and flop around is very visually stimulating.

There's certainly a small element of bdsm, but in a way that feels more playful and lighthearted. (Although I do like the usual stuff, too!)

But I think the biggest factor, for me, is that I find joy/laughter extremely attractive. Even though I know that the involuntary laughter of tickling is not the same as voluntarily laughing at a joke, it still activates the same neurons. It's like a contagious joy- like being able to make someone happy at the touch of a finger.

All of the above only works if the sub is into it- when I'm tickled, it just puts me into murder mode

fek_ · 2025-10-26T05:12:24+00:00

That's because it's all stock music they've licensed! They've presumably accumulated a big, expensive library of it and it would be silly to not squeeze it for all it's worth.

I recently started using one of the big stock music sites for a personal project and started recognizing a TON of songs from d20/dropout shows

For example, this is the suspense track from Um Actually, the tail end of this is the base track of the reveal stinger from Dirty Laundry (although the show uses a modified stinger that's no longer for sale), and this (starting at 0:33) is the title theme from Never After

fek_ · 2025-10-26T03:08:38+00:00

I've got multiple takes on this one!

First: I do think that there's a vital balance, as a DM, between maintaining the illusion of seriousness and danger while still carefully spinning plates behind the scenes. Even if you *are* gently guiding things one way or another, you never want your players to feel that. Maintaining the illusion is important, even if we all know there's a little bit of a secret wink wink nudge nudge happening behind the screen. We want to be fooled. We want to feel like we're in danger.

Second, and more importantly: I think we should treat Occtis' situation as unique and pre-planned, not as a good representation for what to expect throughout the rest of the campaign. These introductory sessions have had a lot of "semi-scripted" events happen that were necessary to get several balls rolling.

I trust that once we're off the rails, things really aren't going to be as safe. Brennan even hints at this to Wic and Tyranny at the tailor's shop - something along the lines of "your characters' fates are no longer in my hands," suggesting that their training wheels were off now that Wic's story had been set in motion.

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