probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
Funniest bit of the dnd movie is Xenk clearly being an NPC the DM introduced for lore and plot purposes who’s a competent fighter because of course he is, his reputation and backstory require it. But whoopsies the DM made him too powerful, the whole party likes him, and now they want him to come with to fight the BBEG which will completely and utterly fuck up the encounter balance
So instead of there being any actual plot reason he can’t join Xenk just says “I can’t. This is something only you can do.” And then walks off, never to interact with the party again because the DM just knows those little shits will find a way to use their OP creation against them
Aaron the believer, Neil the skeptic, Andrew the main cameraman. Kevin does research probably. There's vague ideas for everyone else but mostly I laugh about Dan and Matt being the editors bc they make the funniest edits
Thank you @jtl-fics for enabling me and having great ideas as always 😂💕
I like bloodweave. Okay. But I DON'T like the version of them in fanfic where Astarion is a dick and Gale is like. Whining and pleading for him to be emotionally vulnerable (or just. Nice to him) prior to the relationship being established. Because that is just not accurate. Gale needs the player to express interest in him during his weave-teaching scene before he even considers hitting on them properly. Gale is entirely resigned to his fate and needs someone else to pull him away from it. Gale only starts being sweet and romantic and devoted after you accept his love confession and give him hope for the future. Gale says fuck all and then slinks away to cry privately if you break up with him.
Like he isn't chasing after people lmao. He isn't dropping to his knees and crying about anything much less this dickhead he met a week ago. He is overwhelmingly passive about literally everything personal to him up to and including his own death (provided there are no casualties/there is a good reason) until after the player expresses that they care about him. Astarion is not doing that in any of these fics.
Like Gale is friendly and a dork and doesn't wanna get murdered but he fully has a suicide plan. He thought the artefacts would help him survive but he didn't believe he'd ever truly live again. If Gale confessed and Astarion said/did like one (1) mean thing afterward Gale's romance is closed off forever. He's wandering into the forest to cry. He's killing himself immediately. His fragile ego and self worth can't take it. You have to understand that when we joke about him being pathetic it's not bc he's like. Sopping wet and chasing people down and begging for a scrap of attention. It's because he craves affection but would literally rather die than ask or even hope for it until someone else forces that hope back into his serotonin-deficient tadpole brain.
I really like your theory about Spamton basically haunting a mannequin after death. Have you ever touched upon the reaction from Jevil (or anyone, really) upon seeing the new Spamton? Especially considering Spamton isn't even aware he 'died'.
^ how i think jevil's first sight of Spamton would go. i love this ask. this is referring to some headcanons I made a while back, I'll link it here for the one post and the general ghost spamton theory is linked in that one as well. Going to elaborate on it more under the cut for those interested + more art.
In general I think that people from Spamton's past wouldn't really care if they notice at all, since he wasn't in the business of making close friends with anyone. With the Addisons, in my interpretation he had a "weird co-worker" relationship with them, and while Addisons in general treated each other like potential business competitors that they had to make-nice with, Spamton is especially easy to single out for being visibly and temperamentally different. His altered, current state is something they'd feel at least uncomfortable by, but many wouldn't have been too close with him to begin with for them to talk about it with him directly. Would get whispered about between each other for sure, like we saw with them talking about Spamton after the NEO fight. It moves him from the "disgraced guy I used to know" category to the "actually unpleasant to look at or think about" territory. This goes for Swatch, Queen, and Seam (less so), who seem to buy heavily into the Lightner and Darkner dynamic, with Spamton corrupting the Lightner's dream being a strong taboo against what it means to be a Darkner.
As for what Jevil thinks, Spamton during the NEO fight is both a beautiful and horrifying display. Jevil at this point hasn't seen him in years since his imprisonment, and in their time apart Jevil has grown to find novelty in the cage that everyone else besides him is in since he's created huge emotional distance between him and the reality he lives in. Seeing the fact that Spamton had corrupted an abandoned dream of a Lightner and was causing so much chaos to the established order of the world would be exhilarating, but at the same time seeing that Spamton had accomplished this and still had his strings visible (and changed to a marionette puppet with no symbolic agency), it'd be a painful confirmation of his worldview that even Spamton, who deep down he still cares for, could never have been free.
Jevil would think at first he'd just gone through some nebulous situation to change what he looks like, since ofc he himself has toy-like traits (arguable if that happened with Gasterfication or not), Seam is a plushie cat, and other Card Castle Darkners are based on toys, but feeling the lack of life combined with the symbolic body of Spamton would mean to him something bigger had went wrong. He wouldn't dare to bring it up in an empathetic way, stuck in his mindset that it doesn't matter, but it'd still hit a part of him he doesn't like to think still exists. It's something he gets over quickly, almost performatively going back to fucking with him and taking advantage of his fear for entertainment, but it didn't sit well at first.
To me, the fact Spamton "died" isn't really a huge deal, kind of like with the ghosts in Undertale where no one really cares they're just ghosts. They're just doing their thing. To me it'd be fine if neither of them find out what happened for certain, but it's something that adds Flavor to his character.