Nepenthe
@Nepenthe@kbin.social
Rexxitor. Biology nerd. Roguelites, indie games, and TRPGs. Drowning in unused yarn, unread books, and mandatory cat hair.
- Comment on 400,000 species 5 weeks ago:
Middle-aged men would be in their 40s-50s. Not to diss my dead relatives too hard, but you're thinking of old fucks that would have any solid opinion on that. In a handful of years, the music middle aged men will be up in arms about is *NSYNC.
- Comment on Just doesn't seem fair 1 month ago:
On the one hand, I feel really proud that I got under your skin so much that mine is the only contribution you've ever replied to in the 7 months that whole account has even existed. Someone just clearly isn't having a good day if that's the one thing that set off a professional lurker.
But also, like....I thought about this all through my quesadilla and it's just really sad? Is this like Incel Logic: Hobby Edition, where you're either born perfect and flawless or you're a permanent shit failure and therefore whichever way the coin falls, you never have to work at anything? Like Big Education is a trillion dollar industry now, and really society is divided up Airbender style and you just didn't get the CalArts gene?
There's only one kind of person I can see falling for this weak-ass angle, and it's the kind of person who's never taken up any recreation for more than 1-2 days in their whole life because they don't start out amazing at it and you can't fail at anything if you never do shit. And honestly, I'm kinda bummed out that you have to live like that. You know you can just look up tutorials for anything these days.
- Comment on Just doesn't seem fair 1 month ago:
A lot of people you read about who grew to be leaders in their field by some ridiculous age like 25, spoke fluently in 5 different languages, etc. etc. did so because they had three things: dedicated one-on-one tutors, an appreciable collection of slaves and/or other general servants, and enough family wealth to pay for both from the time they could walk.
Mozart was composing as a toddler, but he also came from a wealthy family of musicians that taught him basically nothing else. Ever. That was the one thing. He hyper-specialized in music and socially he was the guy that got bored and did cartwheels and meowed in public. If Mozart was in your position, with the kind of loving care and finances most students have today, he would have been the kid in class who beatboxes over the teacher.
I'm actually still coming to terms with this myself. with mixed success. I've always loved art, but I've never been where I want to be and I've been making strides again. But the further I take it, the more it becomes apparent that 90% of the problems I've ever had with it were not me, they were because no one ever bothered to teach me. And I'm pissed about the decades I lost simply because child me was never shown concepts that would have changed everything.
Do not judge your own accomplishments on the same scale as someone who had ample time to devote to their studies because their family had house slaves doing everything you have to do by yourself.
- Comment on Anon learns to love the bath bomb 3 months ago:
This seems like some "Einstein working at the patent office" type shit to me. I would have never thought how to do that and I hope that mechanical aptitude has stuck around somehow.
- Comment on Anon learns to love the bath bomb 3 months ago:
But on the bright side: not pregnant! 🎉
- Comment on Anon hates normies (probably) 3 months ago:
Anon thinks the internet is ten years old, and was only ruined recently.
- Comment on A Skibirational message on Christmas 4 months ago:
This. This was the moment that I found out that the eldest of gen Alpha, the babies after the babies who can only be so young as to be entirely theoretical like they were when we collectively decided on the name, are thirteen now.
- Comment on Jolly Old Saint Schrödinger 4 months ago:
It is santa. You think my own parents would just lie to me for over 30 years!? To hand the credit to someone imaginary? Doesn't make a shred of sense.
- Comment on Plummeting interest rate 4 months ago:
11yr old me would have disagreed
- Comment on Webcam repairman 4 months ago:
Oh no, it's much funnier with about 10 years and 200 miles between me and that moment, I assure you.
- Comment on Webcam repairman 4 months ago:
The manager of that store was the same one who, to name just a few occasions:
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Disregarded safety and climbed up the boxes herself when doing truck, resulting in a large container being dislodged from the top and landing directly on an employee's face, breaking his nose. She begged him not to tell, and he really should have. While I can't say that she 100% wouldn't have paid him off, he was also just really nice.
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Made fun of another employee's weekly pay in front of all their coworkers. It was only in the double digits because they'd had the flu for weeks.
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When a customer bought a candy bar, stood there in line and ate the entire thing, then immediately demanded a full refund because they "didn't like it," forced me to complete that refund because the customer is always right.
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Calmed a different customer over the holiday rush by publicly and very loudly threatening to fire me. The complaint had been quite simply that I (quote) "wasn't smiling enough" and this must have ruined this person's entire holiday spirit. Unbeknownst to the customer but fully known to my boss, I had just cremated my brother two weeks ago. The PTSD from that year's rush is just barely starting to fade twelve years later.
In short, the manager of this particular store would do whatever action was the cruelest to others with the least amount of effort on her part, but then fall all over herself to brown nose A Customer.
No, I'm not aware she was made to pay for the door. She very likely would have been allowed to shop if she physically could have.
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- Comment on Webcam repairman 4 months ago:
Not even solely relegated to old people, either, unless the fediverse thinks 30-40 is old. We had one woman come by our shit little dollar store about 20 minutes after we'd closed. So, long enough for us to start counting out, cleaning, etc., but not long enough to go home yet.
Noticed the door was locked. Noticed those of us not still busy were hanging out and chatting while we waited, surreptitiously watching this person. Visibly read the store hours. Tried the lock again.
Started prying open the door while we all stared in horror, ended up breaking it, then threw a whole fit to boot because we couldn't sell her anything with all the tills in the back room and we kept trying to kick her out for some reason.
She wasn't even high. She was just that entitled, because very often for suburban moms, the rules don't apply if you don't let them.
- Comment on Never stop, king 4 months ago:
Fable does this too. At least the third one. I'd married a beggar with the honest intention of lifting up one of my kingdom's most socially aware instead of settling for some brainless, peacocking noble, and all he did with his time on the throne was become a national embarrassment on the same old street corner.
So. Remembering the existence of this "Henry VIII" achievement that I'd thought I was never gonna bother getting. I took my beloved beggar-king down to the treasury, positioned him at the very top of the overflowing pile of gold he always seemed to forget we had, and shot him in the head. And then I started thinking about that achievement.
There were a lot of NPCs that really did bug me.
- Comment on Current state of Reddit 4 months ago:
I was just thinking the same thing. More than the usual amount of love went into that one, and most people probably wouldn't even stop to notice. The subtle fade-out at the top. That is some pleasing vomit.
- Comment on I'm now concerned about the billions I flushed in my teen years... 4 months ago:
Only people I like, which is none of them
- Comment on I'm now concerned about the billions I flushed in my teen years... 4 months ago:
Originally it was, but like with most propaganda people like this come up with, İ fail to see the problem. Imagine your parents giving you the chance to be born and grow up in actual Heaven, having never been at the mercy of...*gestures vaguely at everything*....and that's supposed to be bad parenting.
That's apparently the evil option. The good parenting option is the one with all the murder and starvation and the constant risk of sin and therefore hell. You're giving your child the opportunity to go to hell if you have it here, instead of just automatically sending it to heaven like you could.
*I* know what I want for my child.
- Comment on Choose wisely! 5 months ago:
Bedridden, trying not to attract the attention of the government as I slowly teleport my 99yr old fail body a couple inches at a time towards the bathroom instead of being able to get up and jog.
- Comment on Choose wisely! 5 months ago:
8 and 9.
I figure I can either make bank lending the anthropologists/archeologists a hand with an extinct language, or at least have a bunch of fun bringing it back to life as a personal hobby.
And really? No one's picking nine? Have any of you seen Albert Einstein's calves? He biked regularly, so he was fairly fit for his age. If it turns out I can outrun him now, that won't always be the case as my sedentary ass ages.
No matter how crap my skeleton becomes, I'm giving myself an automatic default level of movement that isn't all that shabby
- Comment on Maybe I need a new mattress 5 months ago:
Can't really offer you a depiction of muscle pain, but I was so confused by the last one I had to share it around. If the vet appointment I'd had that day hadn't been forcibly canceled, people would have thought I was being beat.
Like the other commenter said, I assure you, you are definitely going to enjoy the rest of your 30s
- Comment on Maybe I need a new mattress 5 months ago:
The mystery cut in the middle of my forehead has healed. My left shoulder seems to be in working order again. Before that it was the right one, which lingered for 2 days and did so loudly enough to dampen my mood for both of them.
Before that, I was bewildered to find the uncomfortably visible marks of a random handprint halfway up my forearm, and even more confused to see that the whole thing lined up perfectly with the fingers of my other hand. I had been gripping my own arm in my sleep hard enough to leave bruises.
Kind of excited to see what the next sleep injury is going to be.
- Comment on Latest Baldur's Gate 3 update adds colour-blind settings, hireling customisation and best of all, sponge baths 6 months ago:
How did I forget about that cloak!? I won that before reloading because I kept failing my attempts to steal all my money back. I didn't expect the prizes to be so addictive, I loved them.
My personal favorite was the boots that grant their wearer misty step, but leave all your other clothes in a pile at your starting point. Still kinda sad I couldn't win those again.
- Comment on Latest Baldur's Gate 3 update adds colour-blind settings, hireling customisation and best of all, sponge baths 6 months ago:
Up til now, we've had:
• The sudden realization that you can bathe and don't have to crunch around in weeks of dried gore
• The further realization that at least one npc mentions you stink and should probably do something about that
• Standing relatively close to a waterfall for a few minutes if you can find one, or perhaps walking through a really deep puddle. Don't bend down. Just walk.
• Sophisticated method — stealing a water bottle, throwing it really hard at the floor, and hoping the splashback is enough
After months of steady work, we can use the soap now, but you're going to have to give us a minute to get used to things before you start making other suggestions
- Comment on Sometimes i sit alone on a room, wondering if people know what words actually mean or have we ventured past the idea of strict language and we've finally embraced the fluidity of language... 6 months ago:
What if we took all the words and we put them in a book, and just stuck that book in every classroom. You think people would go for it? It would be massive and the educational system already lacks funding
- Comment on Wake up. 6 months ago:
Sorry you had to find out this way, but I never wanted kids
- Comment on Dibbs 6 months ago:
Pic broke for me, I'm not sure if joke or photo of horse, which was the only correct piece. But that's, uh.......not a spring.
- Comment on AI in big budget games is inevitable, say dev vets from Assassin's Creed and Everquest 2: 'Developers hate it … the money is still going to drive absolutely everybody to do it' 6 months ago:
AI-generated maps and NPCs might be ok. Ditto fights, though there would have to be playtesters whose job it is to make sure the result is something winnable and acceptably fair.
The main issue there would be that there IS no continual certainty of that. You'd have to either be able to rerolled entire encounters — which would be jarring — or force the AI to DM what happens when you lose an impossible battle — far more rewarding, provided it doesn't keep doing it. But it may keep doing it. This would be impossible to ever test adequately. Every game on the market may be a Bethesda game.
I personally really don't think I'd enjoy something with a randomly generated cast/main story for the same reason I wouldn't be interested in owning one singular book whose writing changes every time you read it. I don't play to kill time; I play for the stories and I get attached like hell to the good ones. I replay them ad nauseam because I miss the characters.
I think it would be an intensely entertaining idea either as a New Game+ or for those games to have a wildcard setting that you could turn on and off. That way, there's no lack of devs who get to tell the tale they wanted and players can mix it up when they're bored. Otherwise, you've downgraded the job of the entire company to filling the AI in on background lore and nothing else.
Other aspects:
• for those that do get attached and wanna re-experience it, you'd need a way to save the information behind the game you just played. That file might be fairly gigantic?
• Would also lead to a weird market for other peoples' saves. The way modders already make quests, but for an entire plot.
• NPCs and party members that all look like randomized sims.
- Comment on Duolingo focusing on the important phrases to learn 6 months ago:
And then never discuss the weather or any emotion other than happy.
But then, I don't suppose the other feelings are even a necessity when you're drinking as much and as many types of alcohol as Duolingo seems to think Turkey, a highly regulated 98% muslim country, goes through on the daily.
- Comment on Baldur’s Gate 3 player finds “rarest” ending where characters are dogs and cats - Dexerto 7 months ago:
If I understand, the argument is that someone who doesn't want to be spoiled for endings should...look at a headline purported to be specifically about endings, and then read the article to see if it's about endings, which they are not going to do because there is an extraordinarily high chance it's exactly what it says it is in big letters, and any failure to voluntarily read spoilers they don't want to be spoiled for is then a failure on the part of the player?
That feels like reaching. Would rather not be mean. I think people stranded on top of zombie infested buildings whose only method of escape is a single in-use helicopter have reached less.
This is just a justification to brush off anyone who opens their mouth at all, because were there a reader who did for some reason want to click on every headline they didn't want to know about in order to make sure they shouldn't have clicked on it, that would definitely still be something that is their fault once they saw anything they shouldn't.
Even leaving aside why someone would do that, the OP made the conscious decision to post it like they did.
They could have tipped everyone off to the clickbait. They could have used a spoiler tag if they didn't bother reading it or wanted to play into the clickbait. They chose to do neither. That has nothing to do with the journalistic integrity of online gaming mags. This was a personal mistake.
I have seen communities be shockingly good about respecting this. The Hades community especially is amazing and, though the game has been out now for so many years the sequel is nearing completion, they'd probably still just give you what bare advice they have to based on your current status and tell you to keep playing because "trust me."
I don't know why the bg3 community wants to pretend it's impossible and out of their hands, while swearing it shouldn't matter anyway. It is, and for a game this stunning, it absolutely does.
- Comment on Baldur’s Gate 3 player finds “rarest” ending where characters are dogs and cats - Dexerto 7 months ago:
Unless you've forcibly seen most of them and you can pick out what moments go where because x action, or you have this one singular shred of information that happens to be the integral piece to draw together an entire arc.
Earlier this week, I was listening to music on YouTube and saw a thumbnail that told me exactly what was up with the tadpoles. Not even the title. I don't remember what the title was. It was written on the thumbnail.
If I am to play this game. I cannot have access to the internet in any conceivable way. I had thought this problem only extended to forums and news sights, places that were fairly obvious and thus easily avoided, but it's the entire internet when you least expect it.
I'm a third of the way into act 2 and the only teammates whose plot lines and/or multiple endings I don't know are Wyll and Lae'zel, and that's only because nobody likes them enough to be talking about them.
I have tried to avoid this shit at every turn. It's still a great game. It's fantastic. It would have been in my top 3 if I could have played the damn thing on my own. I fucking love picking things to shreds more than anything else and there are so many pressing unknowns and conflicting motivations that I'd be having the time of my life. You don't understand. I could write a whole thesis on any one of them.
But I know the answers already.
- Comment on This is a PSA 7 months ago:
This was super funny to read from the depths of my covers with the cat sleeping on me. Probably it's just going to be my back hurts again if I don't move.
But I am 30 anyway and she is sleeping, so this is not one of those decisions that is up to me. Know what you can control.