thaethiira

[thaethiira]

::schlorps out of the cube slippery and naked. the cube is purring::

...I MAY have misunderstood the word 'eat' fellas.

#we fuck monsters here sir

[thaethiira]

Typical Friday at SCP Headquarters after I start turning off circuit breakers.

The Cabin In The Woods (2011)

[thaethiira]

Random worldbuilding idea: a culture where everyone is a goth, but for perfectly sensible environmental ressons.

Wearing mainly/almost exclusively black clothing because either the dye protects them/the fabric from something in the environment, black clothes are the most convenient ones to maintain, or then a century ago black dye was extremely difficult and/or expensive to produce and only the wealthiest of society could afford it, but now a cheaper dye method has been invented and after a huge trend of Now Everybody Can Wear Black, it just stuck and nobody even remembers why all clothes are dyed black. It's just tradition.

Everyone wears demonia-style platform shoes because the climate is wet and cold, and for most of the year the ground is either muddy or covered in icy slush, so knee-high tall boots are simply the most pragmatic way to keep the rest of your clothes reasonably dry and clean.

Silver and leather jewellery is widespread because the land is rich in metal ore - while the rich can afford to buy/commission delicate silver threads, even the peasants can afford some sort of rough iron chains and studs on their wristbands. Studded leather is more sensible than having metal rings touching skin directly, due to the cold weather. Studs and chains also double as armour and weapons which technically speaking don't count as such, allowing people to circumvent any "can't openly carry weapons during peace time"-laws. Law enforcement could not confiscate someone's bling without causing public riots.

Everyone is about as pale as their natural complexion allows since the climate is cold and dark and the sun does not rise much during the winter. Cold dark winters are also the reason why the culture is so morbid in general - in the heart of the darkest months there's fuck all else to do than write poetry about the moon's silver light and the howls of wolves and the beauty of death, while polishing your iron chains until they shine like silver.

Domesticated ravens are more covenient for messenger birds than doves are, as they're hardier and can manage the climate better. Even if more modern messaging technology has been invented, people prefer sending letters by bird because it's more romantic and poetic. Sending someone a raven message poem about how you'd like to be buried in the same grave together one day is a very standard way of flirting.

#Just Ravenloft Things

[thaethiira]

That's it that's Drow culture.

Baldur's Gate 3 (2023) by Larian Studios

[thaethiira]

I mean, did you The Player ever think to check on what they are a level 30 IN? No, you just shoot them, totally unobservant to the fact that they are ALSO merchants, or buyers, or shipping companies. SMH. Have you considered that perhaps The Player is the acknowledged road hazard, much akin to those enormous Pavement Princess "trucks" and "SUVs" that are driven by half-drunk lunatics that think the rules of the road don't apply to them? this metaphor got away from me.

#i wrote a smutfic about this once actually #about the level 30 fiends that are involved in the day to day running of Baator's economy I mean #and also the way logistics would work in Faerun like as an industry #why have forklifts when you have wizards that need jobs?

[thaethiira]

My favourite was the idea that tieflings could look extremely normal for whatever race they came from, except for small things like Doesn't Have a Shadow, Skin Is Just Slightly Off Tint, Eyes Glow VERY Faintly, The Smell Of Sulfur Lingers Around Them, etc. Basically you could make the entire Addams line and it's like oh they're all tieflings that's why they're Like That.

(I had a character who could pass for human as long as he did a full face of makeup and didn't lurk in shadows. He was a cleric of Asmodeus anyway but him looking human made him seem more affable and friendly.)

(Also yes I'm transsexual and lived most of my trans life under immense pressure to conform to a gender, why do you ask.)

If you’re wondering what the whole drama regarding tieflings is in the Dungeons & Dragons fandom: basically, capitalism ruined tieflings, and for once that’s not even slightly a joke.

Tieflings were first introduced as a playable species in Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, via the Planescape campaign in 1994. At the time, there were no particular rules regarding what a tiefling was supposed to look like. The text explicitly stated that their basic physiology could vary wildly depending on what their fiendish ancestor was, and one of the first major Planescape supplements even included a table for randomly generating your tiefling’s appearance, if you were into that sort of thing.

This continued to be the case up through the game’s Third Edition. However, when the Fourth Edition rolled around in 2008, the game’s text suddenly became very particular about insisting that all tieflings looked pretty much the same. Some campaign settings even provided iin-character explanations for why all tieflings now had a standardised appearance. Understandably, this made a lot of people very annoyed.

There was naturally a great deal of speculation concerning what had motivated this change. It was widely cited as “proof” that Dungeons & Dragons was trying to appeal to the World of Warcraft fanbase – which was nonsense, of course; nearly all of the Fourth Edition’s allegedly MMO-like features were things that popular MMOs had borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons in the first place, and to the extent that tieflings’ new look resembled a particular WoW race, it was in that they were both extraordinarily generic.

In reality, it was a change that had been lurking for some time. Though Dungeons & Dragons is directly published by Wizards of the Coast, Wizards of the Coast is in turn owned by Hasbro, and Hasbro has long regarded the D&D core rulebooks as a vehicle for promoting D&D-branded merch – in particular, licensed miniature figures.

This was a bugbear that had reared its head before. When the Third Edition received major revisions in 2003, Hasbro corporate had ordered the game’s editors to completely remove any discussion of how to improvise minifigs for large battles, and replace it with an advertisement for the then-current Dungeons & Dragons Heroes product line. Implying that purchasing licensed minis wasn’t 100% mandatory simply would not do.

If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably already guessed where this is going: tieflings having no standard appearance made it difficult to sell tiefling minifigs, as any given minifig design would only be suitable for a small subset of tiefling characters. In the brutally reductive logic of the corporate mind, Hasbro reasoned: well, if we tell tiefling players that all of their characters now look the same, we can sell them all the same minifigs. So that’s what the game did, going so far as to write justifications into several published settings for magically transforming all existing tiefling characters to fit the new mould!

This worked about as well as anyone who isn’t a corporate drone would naturally anticipate – and that’s the story of how capitalism ruined tieflings.

#the new tieflings are boring anyway #why would i want to look like a devil on a hot sauce bottle anyway

[thaethiira]

It's very funny to me that the stereotypical gelatinous cube is bright fucking green when the monster itself is almost perfectly transparent. Like its gimmick is that it's a monster that imitates an empty 10x10 hallway. How many people have fallen victim to gelatinous cubes because they "know" that the ooze is bright green and so don't bother to check the suspiciously clean corridor in front of them.

#::witch cackling::

[thaethiira]

they're a TEMPLATE. You can apply 'vampire' to ANY creature, it's creature type becomes 'undead' afterwards and it retains all stats and spell-casting abilities that it had in life along with vampiric modifiers and special abilities. OBVIOUSLY. XD

[thaethiira]

Guys you're forgetting that Devils are LAWFUL evil.

They don't have a Legal Department because ALL OF HELL IS THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT.

You need to find a LAWYER before you try and get Astarion's soul back, because Hell WILL sue for damages and you need like, Hermes Himself on your side before you cross The Lawyer Dimension.

(I feel Larian really fell down on how LAWFUL Hell is; then again, I LOVE leaning on the lawful part of the Lawful Evil alignment of Devils)

It's really just easier to file a RICO charge against Cazador. I mean 7000 souls? From ONE town where that's probably the population?? That's gonna cause a net LOSS and is a wildly irresponsible and corrupt pattern of behaviour on Mephistopheles' part. I'm sure the King would like to know about a contract that is so wildly irresponsible, just saying.

DnD mechanics question: for the sake of post-story narratives and roleplays, would it be possible to cure Astarion of Vampirism (as a spawn) with a wish spell? The spell is capable of a lot but it seems almost too obvious. But it's doable, isn't it? I think so. Would love to hear more opinions. Thinking about Gale and a BardTav dedicating ample post story time to that study and making him a regular elf again. Think Emoji

I also think it would be interesting bc I think part of him would want to hold on to the version of himself he's gotten used to for 200 years in the same way sometimes it's easier to choose despair over recovery but I also believe ultimately he'd want to be done with it very much based on the way he talks about being a spawn and the way he delights in experiencing the world again in the sunlight etc.

#people wildly overestimate pre-industrial population sizes

[thaethiira]

alright tumblr, here's your homegrown cowgirl C:{

what do you think of her?

#excellent work everyone

[thaethiira]

god i miss the 80s and 90s when computers were assumed to be a kind of tentacle monster.

[thaethiira]

💖 Don't forget to add your explanation in the tags 💖

#the emperor #he got multiple long muscular hydrostats not just a little short one #and they're safely OUTSIDE his teeth #objectively he'd be the best at it #also illithids suck brains out of people #that suction would be good for other things ykwim?? 👀👀👀

[thaethiira]

#omg i found it again #'the rule is half your age plus seven' is so fucking great #like yeah that's definitely the kind of thing that crops up in regional social spheres #just some weird rule involving a math problem #that everyone takes as absolute truth #and nobody questions

[thaethiira]

saw someone say that they block "ageless blogs" and for a moment i imagined, like, cthulhu having a tumblr

#lmao #yeah fuck your performativeness 'i block ageless blogs' get bent! #that does not save you from people who LIE dumbass #do you not know about this thing called lying??? #you're just being creepy demanding someone's age

[thaethiira]

If you are anti-darkfic, you are anti-survivor

I’ve had a bee in my bonnet since this incident the other day, and I figure it’s probably time to get it out of my system.

Darkfic is not a new phenomenon. It’s as old as the hills. For as long as there have been fic writers, there have been fic writers using the medium to explore themes that are taboo in mainstream fiction. Torture and gore, death and destruction, rape and sexual abuse. Every author has their own motives and inspirations for the content they produce, and there’s no ‘average’ darkfic writer. But what I can tell you - anecdotally, from a full decade’s worth of experience drifting in and out of various darkfic communities - is that when you involve yourself with these authors, you start meeting survivors. Lots of survivors. In what I think it’s fair to call a statistically significant concentration. 

For some, their survivor status is incidental to their controversial interests; for others of us, past trauma and mental illness are intrinsically tied to what we read and write. Darkfic can be a lifeline, a validation, a liberation, a profound and unbeatably intense catharsis for the shit we’ve got stored in our heads. Darkfic enclaves within fandom are places where we can air our darkest and most desperate fears and fantasies in a safe, supportive environment, in the company of others who remind us that we are not broken or defective just for wanting the things we want.

And here’s the thing: literally no one in these communities wants to force outsiders to join us. We recognise that our content is stuff that the majority of people don’t want to see, and we do our best to protect the rest of fandom from involuntary exposure by using appropriate trigger warnings. We don’t want to hurt anyone, we don’t want to ruin anyone’s innocence - we just want to be left alone to do our thing. But tumblr callout culture has taught people that “speaking out” against things they don’t like is cool and brave and socially progressive. It has created an environment where virtually the automatic response to distress, discomfort or personal offense is to look for a perpetrator, a culpable oppressive villain to whom the offended party can deliver a vicious “smackdown” while their friends look on and cheer.

I’m not going to argue just now about whether that’s ever an acceptable way to treat people. Regardless of anyone’s personal feelings on callout culture as a whole, there’s an intersection between darkfic and trauma survivors that you guys all need to understand before you go targeting darkfic authors as convenient representatives of everything you think is wrong with the world. So let me lay this out as simply and clearly as I can:

When you oppose darkfic because it “harms survivors”, you are talking directly over large crowds of survivors who will tell you they find darkfic to be a validating, healing experience.

When you claim that darkfic is self-destructive and unhealthy, you are privileging your personal beliefs over the lived experience of other people.

When you accuse darkfic authors of glorifying and supporting real-life abuse, you accuse survivors of glorifying and supporting their own abusers.

When you blame darkfic for supporting rape culture, you are making victims responsible for the actions of their oppressors.

When you set conditions around the creation and enjoyment of darkfic - aka “it’s only okay if you’re a survivor” - you create a culture of coercive disclosure, where survivors are expected to trade their right to privacy for the right to live free of harassment.

When you criticise darkfic authors for using survivor status as an “excuse”, you are locking us out of our own communities and denying our past traumas for the sake of a political argument.

If you are anti-darkfic, you are anti-survivor. I’m sick and tired of watching vulnerable members of my community get harassed and bullied by people who claim to be acting in the interests of survivors. I’m sick of being told that survivors like me aren’t survivors at all, that our very existence is toxic and harmful, that we have no right to speak and be heard on an issue that affects us so intimately. 

Anti-darkfic fans, you need to pull back. You need to realise that your comfort and safety, while important, are not more important than the comfort and safety of other people. You need to understand that it is your responsibility to learn how to peacefully coexist alongside people who experience the world differently from you, even if their experiences make you unhappy or uncomfortable. You have no right to ask us to stop existing so that you can feel at ease. You have no right to demand that we prioritise the needs of some survivors over others. You don’t own fandom, and you have no right to dictate who does or doesn’t get to participate.

You are not brave heroes speaking out against the spread of moral degeneracy in fandom. You are bullies, deliberately and systematically targeting trauma survivors with your abusive tactics. It really is that simple. And it needs to stop.

[thaethiira]

Carl, some people have immunity to the virus. I can share it with you, but we have to hurry.

#no but this idea is so intriguing!!! #who is doing it like pornography

[thaethiira]

Sexy Spider Sephora pheromones enters the BG3 chat

#OH SAME #SAME #'hey stranger from another world what's this purple jar you've never used and ar eusing now??' #'don't worry about it'