“Hey, Danny.” Sam twisted her upper body as much as she could from the trio’s puppy pile on the floor. It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday, and the trio had nothing to do except comb through old occult books and internet records for more information on the supernatural. Danny was on the bottom of the pile, laying on his stomach with both a laptop and a old red journal splayed out in front of him. Sam and Tucker were piled on top of him with their own reading materials.
Sam couldn’t see his face, but she wasn’t all surprised when Danny solved this issue by simply turning his head around all the way like an owl to look back at her. Perks of being dead. He blinked. “Yeah?”
“You know how your parents have that working theory on ghosts and obsessions?” Sam asked. Tucker peeked over the edge of the laptop, interested.
Danny nodded slowly, which was odd to see when his head was backwards.
She continued, “Well we already know that some of that is true-ghosts do have obsessions but it’s not the sole reason of their existence. Right?”
“Right.”
“So would it make sense for halfas to have an obsession?”
Danny opened his mouth, then closed it as a thought occurred to him. They all thought on it for a moment.
Tucker clicked his laptop a few times. Probably pulling up their old ‘case’ files and notes for reference. “I don’t see why they wouldn’t, but maybe it’s more subdued than a full ghost’s due to their half human nature?”
“That’s a good theory.” Sam agreed. “But what if halfas are the only one with a true obsession-something that would cause them to come back to life because of it?”
“But that defeats the purpose of the ectoplasm research.” Tucker argued. “Danny was exposed to two different elements during the accident. The thing that killed him and the thing that brought him back to life. That’s what caused the halfa evolution. Besides, if a true obsession alone managed to bring someone back to life, there’s be a lot more halfas in the world.”
Sam set down her heavy occult book, dog-earring the page. (Ghost Writer won’t like that.) “Well what about Vlad?” She countered. “That fruit loop obviously has some sort of obsession going on-maybe even more that one!”
“Guys.” Danny interrupted. “I think you’re both right and wrong.” His face was still thoughtful, staring up at the ceiling that held little paper bats on string. Which, again, was a bit unsettling since his head was still turned around. “I think I do have an obsession, maybe even more than one. But it’s not because I’m part ghost.”
“Then what’s if from?” Tucker exclaimed. “What did we miss??”
Danny gave them a tiny, fanged smirk. “You forget, I have ADHD.”
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[Bhaalists take] care to let economically and socially important individuals live unharmed. High Primates spent much of their time planning the proper strategies of manipulating nearby rulers, inhabitants, and organizations into the deeds and behaviour that the Bhaalyn desired. - Faiths and Avatars
I have read this book literally hundreds of times, why is this the first time I've ever actually physically read that line with my eyes.
Anyway the job description was always implied, but there's the flat out statement of your job as head of the Bhaalists of Baldur's Gate: herding the Patriars, dukes, merchants and etc into your strings.
I wonder if Durge and Gortash were ever manipulating the same people before actually meeting face to face. Like some kind of game of complex online chess against a mysterious rival that's kind of fun and kind of annoying (but it's politics and people and crime instead of chess).
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"stop making [media] your whole personality"
ah... okay. yes. so.
first off:
there's this neurodivergent thing, where you use an interest as a filter for processing the world.
for some people that is called a "special interest," for others with different needs it is more of a "hyperfixation;" there are far more variations than i (or the field of psychology) know how to describe now. if you want to understand the difference there are people who can explain those variations better than me. but i can tell you what it feels like.
you discover something.
it doesn't matter what it is; you find something that speaks to you, something you can connect to, and it becomes a bubble of safe habitat from which you can rest from and explore and connect to all the other parts of this strange chaotic world.
a source of joy. a source of illumination.
it's like you're a person who has lived all their life in dark caves and you find something that glows.
these interests can be anything.
(literally anything; i personally derive meanings that you could never imagine from ✨ drainage ditches. ✨)
but very often, they are stories. tv shows, books, movies, comics, songs, podcasts, minecraft improv streams, cartoons, web serials, whatever
these things are:
tangible. you can hold them in your hands, replay them, turn on the subtitles, take screenshots, read the sheet music
and yet
real. they form a genuine connection from your (isolated, untranslatable) internal world to other (formerly unknowable) people and the rest of the universe
they create meaningfulness
and they exist because humans find these incredibly effective soul-deep ways of communicating to one another.
now, appreciating stories, that's not a neurodivergent thing. that's a human thing.
the point of relevance here is that experiencing an extreme love for stories is a neurodivergent thing.
it's a very common neurodivergent trait which often gets mocked, portrayed as childish, and used as a pretext for infantilization and bullying.
(and it is also a trait of young people in general, to take stories very seriously in a way that looks silly to adults, and that is something that many people (regardless of age) try to bully out of each other.
what good is that doing anyone?)
"stop making [x] your whole personality"
listen, you. get down off that goddamn embankment and climb down into this ditch with me. dip your toes in this oily water. watch the stars and city lights ripple into constellations you've never seen
now look me in the eye
you need to understand that no matter what lowbrow, cringey, problematic or otherwise not-to-your-tastes drivel you might be complaining about today,
you are talking about the phenomenon of creativity
you are talking about a transcendent catalyst of human emotion
and yes that includes the overmilked disney franchises, it includes the formulaic shippy fanfictions, it includes whatever brightly-colored cartoon this website is obsessed with this year (and will be having incredibly dramatic meltdowns over next year), it includes the cheesy action movies and the fanservicey anime and the badly-designed video games and the milquetoast tiktok "literature", it includes the indistinguishable scribbles of some random five-year-old and/or famous fine artist and/or precocious elephant
i get it. you care about real life and touching grass and shit. you have taste. just take the stilts off your horse for a second, okay?
i know you're probably sick of "let people like things" discourse
i would just like for you to stop for a second and take a deep breath, and let the stench of whatever is in this mud puddle wash over you (yeah i know, ew, but you'll be fine) and consider
what is so bad about having a cringey personality, anyway?
and maybe you will think better of making "stop making [some silly moment in the universe] your personality" into your personality and maybe you will come off as a little bit less of a snob/ableist/ass and maybe you will have a slightly better outlook on life among humans.
that's all. yeah you can get out of the gutter now. thank you for coming to my ted talk—
ooh wait, look, a bottle cap
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