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Tav and Astarion don't have place to return after their bizzare adventure and Gale is more than happy and lonely to help them.

Of course he still has Tara ♡

PART 2

doing important research on this fine sunday morning

if someone is regularly cruel to you, that's not okay at all. it doesn't matter if they do good things sometimes. they're hurting you, repeatedly. they probably aren't even giving you genuine apologies, right? at best, they just keep trying to justify their actions and wrap it up in pretty language and confident tone, don't they? does that sound like love and care to you? does that sound like anything other than self preservation and an attempt to keep control over you, so they can keep abusing/neglecting you without consequence?

that's not love. that's never been love. you deserve infinitely better, and i hope someday the both of us fully understand what it means to be safe and loved, as a mundane part of life. because that's how it should be. this is not all there is.

I love the camp gossip but do wish companions would interact with each other more... so I'm gonna draw it!!! I think Karlach and Astarion gotta have the most contrasts between their characters but one bit I like especially is touch starved vs touched out.

I see a lot of posts talking about how you’re not behind in life. And it’s true and a really great message. I’m not disagreeing.

I just want to take a moment to talk to those that feel behind because they’ve lost so many years to trauma, mental illness or any number of circumstances. It’s okay to grieve for the time you’ve lost.

It’s really valid that you feel it isn’t fair that you dealt with the obstacles you did. Because it isn’t fair. And while it’s important to not get hung up on that, it’s okay to feel it and grieve what you lost.

The trope I appreciate very much

nightly rituals

"Saw traps for people with moral OCD" is a phrase that has embedded myself into my brain because, well, Saw traps for people with moral OCD are everywhere.

Stuff that basically amounts to...

"You have to listen to my opinions on [issue], or else you don't care about [issue]. (Constantly talks about how people like you are the absolute worst.)"

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me tear you down over things you can't control or you're a bad person."

Anything that's functionally like, "you have to let me vent to you whenever and however I want or else you're a bad person."

"If you enjoy X media/trope, you just hate Y people."

"Everyone knows that X thing is harmful/hateful; if you engaged in it, it's just because you were fine with perpetuating hate/harm."

"You should have just known better/should know this already!"

This thread over here talks about the inherent issues of putting this kind of stuff out there. The TL;DR is that it really only works on people who are mentally unwell and have poor boundaries, while just pissing off everyone else. It really doesn't matter if you're technically correct; you're still attacking people, and that means they're not wrong to block you.

I think that many of these Saw traps are created when people effectively write posts directed toward people who don't want to help, rather than the ones who do. Like, if you catch yourself writing an angry, shame-laden post, ask yourself: who are you writing it for and what are the odds you're going to change their minds? If your mental image is some smug fuck or angry reactionary, you're writing for the wrong person. Write for the person who's curious, who's willing to learn.

Also? Work on figuring out how to transmute negative feelings into positive, encouraging rhetoric. EG:

"Why is there no X positivity?" -> "Let's hear it for X!"

"No one cares about Y problem!" -> "Hey, we need more recognition of Y problem" or "I haven't seen many people talking about Y problem, so here's some info on what's up."

"If you don't reblog this, you don't care about [group]" -> "Please reblog this, it would mean a lot for us [group]."

And if you're really super duper frustrated and want to vent with a lot of nasty words and sentiments? Consider taking it to a private vent channel or a journal or somewhere that a stranger with moral OCD/scrupulosity isn't likely to run across it.

Remember, most people don't want to hurt anyone. More people are ignorant than malicious. People naturally want to do the right thing, so if you feel like you have to guilt them or shame them into it, there's probably a fundamental communication issue somewhere, or they simply lack the context to understand why what you're saying is so important.

putting my parasocial and rpf goggles on again im sorry but. do you ever just realize how insane the dynamics in smosh are and how most of it reads out like a sitcom or a fanfic someone made up in their mind.

imagine starting a youtube channel with your childhood best friend, being able to turn it it into a company, falling out along the way, not being in contact with each other for half a decade until one random december and being able to buy back back said company with said best friend and getting to do the thing you guys did at the start.

imagine auditioning for a youtube channel you really look up to and meeting a former disney star who tells you they’ll see you at work immediately after auditioning, being best friends with them along the way, falling in love and getting to announce (or joke about) your marriage with said former disney star in the same youtube channel.

imagine befriending your coworker for a kids sketch comedy show, being best friends, moving on from said show, auditioning for a youtube channel as an actor and later as an on-screen personality, being roommates with said best friend and getting them to audition in the same youtube channel you’re working at so you could work with each other again.

imagine auditioning for a youtube channel that you don’t really know about, meeting someone for the first time in the first video you appear in for said channel, them constantly telling you that you’re killing it and doing a good job, immediately having good comedic chemistry with them on your first video, and then finding out along the way that said person is basically you but just a couple of years older and is practically your soulmate. how do you explain this to someone who just watches reddit stories