Nepenthe

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.

Anna Garvey has described these individuals as having "both a healthy portion of Gen X grunge cynicism, and a dash of the unbridled optimism of Millennials"

I'm sorry?

Average citizens are less culpable than government officials are, but we are all culpable for it to a degree.

There is a degree at which idealistic humanitarianism is pushed to such an extreme that it swings all the way back around into the concept of original sin. I know, because it's where I've sat for years and I had to sit down about it when someone pointed out I'm basically so atheist I've gone catholic.

Guilt is indeed a matter of calibration. This is correct. But at a certain point of granularity, it becomes a pointless statement.

Anyone insisting on wearing clothing or utilizing objects they didn't make by their own hand is a capitalistic slaver. You and I both own slaves right now.

I could disappear into the hills and become a vegan goatherd, and it's probably the closest I could get to neutral. But by the mere act of minimizing my own harm, I'm also shutting my ears to the plight of all others, which is an implicit endorsement through inaction.

If I choose action and swing the tides over to Gaza, they still have their own weaponry. If bringing my corrupt genocidal government to its knees, I've created a power vacuum that harms countless and will most certainly kill. Doing nothing or something both make me a murderer.

Even in donating to a charity, you're deliberately choosing to ignore three others just as worthy. When everyone answers to everything simply by chancing to be born, this kind of thinking becomes at best a semi-interesting joke and at worst actually psychologically destructive.

What am I meant to do, to stop personally committing at least 4 types of concurrent genocide across the globe? Stop paying taxes towards the military? At least my below-the-poverty-line ass is already there.

Calling my representatives won't do much with the US so heavily invested in the area, but I suppose if I'm culpable for mass murder either way, I might as well go to prison for it.

Satan doesn't punish. Satan's whole job is temptation. Anyone tempted would technically be punished by god.

I assume the mixup has to be resultant of the constant game of religious Telephone. Not really surprising. It's pretty awkward to frame your spotless savior who is the living embodiment of Love as also doing deliberate premeditated torture, even when it's written right there. And comparatively simple to expect it from someone who's supposed to embody unpleasantness.

Only people I like, which is none of them

Originally it was, with a more guilt-trippy headline, but like with most propaganda people like this come up with, I 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* want the best for my child.

• It would help someone whom I don’t want to.

....explain? We're...silently and maliciously watching people eat shit when they don't have to? And this happens often?

Y tho

Ok. Mini-rant because I can't contain myself atm. Do you wanna know a badly-kept secret? I've been making art on and off for 29 years. My ass wishes I could draw too. A ton of artists wish they could draw.

Talent will only give you a leg up, and mainly just at the beginning. The rest, all of us have to struggle for and I'm quite sure very few of us appreciate having to do so. And no matter how good they get, there is always something they have no idea how to do yet or they have some idol whose style they envy more than their own. Or they're the type that only hates what they make because they're the one who made it.

Van Gogh had a painter friend named Gauguin, and they were both jealous of each other. There is no magical point that one hits where you feel like you're Good Enough. The best you can aim for is the kind of steady improvement you don't even notice happening except on a scale of years, and the confidence to acknowledge those improvements instead of hyper-focusing on every way it isn't what you saw in your head (it never is).

Go get a pencil or your ipad or whatever. Youtube is by far your biggest friend. Go look up videos about how to actually see what's in front of you instead of what your brain insists must logically be there. USE REFERENCE. Trace a photo over and over, then immediately try the same thing freehand -- this one is super useful, because a lot of drawing is also muscle memory. Break things down into simple shapes and then build on those. Use the open space between objects if you need to, to trick yourself into drawing something complex without getting lost in intimidating structural details.

When you've got those down, move onto perspective and composition. Cry a little if you have to, then get back to it. Because now you're able to do whole backgrounds. People? Do tons of deliberately imprecise gesture drawings. Give your OC a terrifying robot head, a pillow for a torso, and springs for limbs. But go get. Your pencil. And be ok with drawing at first like everyone thinks they draw.

Barring that, my second choice is singing.

Unsweetened was bad enough. People up north just forgetting it used to involve water? Just crunching on hot tea bags?

Body count is how many different people you've had sex with. Or how many you've murdered, but usually at a get-together it's the first one.

I wouldn't worry too hard about that one. The difference is one of the things a person only picks up on by seeing it written like that over and over for years. I'd probably have to stop and think about it too.

In that case, I also choose NZ 802 years ago.