uri9158

There's a single message in my inbox from a suspended account... ominous.

I keep a physical diary, but I've been craving to type. Also picture?

What a lovely color.

In lab meeting today there was a new undergrad there and, not hate to her, anthropomorphized the bugs. Both of them. We were discussing the figures in a paper about facultatively parthenogenic phasmids. To summarize, female phasmids from the female only population produced an F1 generation with males from another generation. A lot of these offspring were impaternate and also did not mate readily. I don't remember how (ironically) this came up, but the undergrad said something like, "So it's epigenetics and the children remember what happens to the mother?" Not sure about the epigenetics part (answer is probably no, it's a direct change in the sequence), but the whole thing felt anthropomorphic, kinda like she was implying the female phasmid was traumatized? Honestly, props to her for feeling sympathy for a stick bug. There are plenty of people out there who think these things don't feel pain. 

Near the end I asked Dr. B if phasmids had a spermathecae and if females could molt after a successful pairing. The answer was no I believe, they do not mate during the penultimate molt (I did not realize they even had an ultimate molt lol).

This lead to a conversation about how some black widow species will guard penultimate females, so that they may mate after she molts. The new undergrad thought this meant the males were guarding the spiderlings, which is absurd! That would use so much energy! The adult spider would probably die! And of course, they also brought human morals into it. Nature doesn't have morals. Living things only continue to reproduce because the previous generation reproduced. It's not "good" or "bad.," it is just selection, whatever produces the next generation. Let's say a spider that mate guards will produce offspring that also mate guard, out competing a spider that doesn't. There's no moral dilemma there.
I was coming off of accidentally drinking 300mg of caffeine (why does Bang have so much. Couldn't even see it advertised on the can). High amounts of caffeine makes me insane. Absolutely paranoid and aggravated out of my mind. I made a dumb joke as if I was a male spider, "What instar is she. I usually hate jokes like that, but it was right there."  And it was. Like it's hilarious to imagine a spider thinking like a person. Still hated myself afterwards because of the energy drink though.

Why the energy drink? It's because I had two delicious delicious Monsters the other day and it was great (the second was a little much). But there's a difference between 300mg over a long period and 300mg all at once. It puts any emotion I feel under a magnifying glass. At noon I had my Japanese 101 class and guess who showed up? That's right! My freshman partner who can't read hiragana and who missed last class. Just my luck. Second semester in a row where I've had a shit partner. I wonder if she'll drop the class halfway through the semester like the last one? I envision myself working with the third wheel at our table. Anyway, we had to schedule a dialogue quiz this morning, together. Couldn't put her own katakana name in the spreadsheet. Didn't even have the foresight to just write it down on a notecard and carry it around. Next, we had a money counting activity were we had to bring in stuff to "sell," very fun! I love this class. I was getting unreasonably pissed off at my partner, who didn't know anything the TA was trying to say to her. I also had to bum a pencil off her, which made me mad at myself. I forgot my pencil case. 

Thank God after the lab meeting the person who is terrible at labeling things didn't try to talk to me too much. I felt mentally ill.

I'm 100% fine with Jaheira being impossible to romance in BG3. as much as I enjoyed putting her in a low cut leather getup, her romance would've been on the same level as Halsin's and Minthara's (rushed and more fanservice-y than even bg2 romances) and I like having the focus on the new main cast. Jaheira has been in all three games already AND she was a romance option in the 2nd.

It would at least be interesting from a character perspective though to see how she's grown and changed throughout the years since losing Khalid and becoming a parent. But they already gave Jaheira so much in that regard. You pretty much learn everything about her when you go through her house with her.

You also just can't beat the insanity that is romancing your recently widowed godmother while her husband's body is rotting in a mad wizard's lair. God BG2 is so fucking insane I love it.

On the subject of BG2, what happened to Viconia.

Viccy what are you doing. Did the evil Shar mirror give you dementia? How the hell did you end up back in baldurs gate. You're supposed to be dead. Or in waterdeep. Can you come home our son misses you.

Talk about a character who got no love compared to Jaheira and Minsc. Like most people who like BG2, yeah it pisses me off. Having her as a villain I can understand. They could've very easily spun her story into a tragedy where, after losing contact with Gorion's Ward, Shar manipulates her into having her memories altered because she has little else. After losing everything, rejecting Lolth because she did not want to sacrifice a child, Shar makes her do the same thing. It's such a Shar thing to do, too. Shar in BG3 loves psychologically tormenting people (see: Shadowheart). I've combed over the cloister twice and there's no indication Viconia used the mirror on herself. There's no way the people who wrote this part assumed players would come to that conclusion on their own. 20 years after the second game came out nobody is going to know who Viconia is!

Oh and another small thing, because of the way BG3 handles drow (Lolth-sworn=red eyes, evil, Seldarine= light eyes, good), Viconia is classified as a Lolth-sworn drow. Because she's evil. I cannot think of another reason why she would be. They could've just identified her as drow, just plain drow. Whatever.

Is Viconia the most nuanced character ever written? No. The only way you can engage with any companion's stories in BG2 is by romancing them. Her tragic backstory was made for the romance. The bad girl to Aerie's good girl. But I love her and she deserves some respect. Her backstory is moving enough, fucked up in the way most drow are, and it ties in to Drizzt's backstory indirectly. It's cool. I like it. I like her. She deserved better.

I loved you so much. I wanted to hold you in my hand forever. You were so small, so soft, so perfect.

When I brought you home, swaddled gently in blue cloth, I laid you on the floor. I went to grab scissors, paint, and paper. I only wanted a whisker. Just one, salt and pepper. My hand shook and I clipped them all.

I cried because you still needed those. I cried and my tears beaded off your perfect fur. I cried because you loved grooming your coat. It was so soft. The softest thing I'd ever touched. The vet said you were so soft.

I tried to clip your fur, but the hairs were so fine and light. I couldn't see them. And I didn't want to ruin you. A couple hairs wouldn't do you justice anyway.

I took a paintbrush, the smallest I owned. I covered your paws in black gouache and pressed them to the paper. The prints left behind were all smudgey. I cleaned your paws because I didn't want the paint to make you sick. And I didn't like how it made your pink skin all black. It never looked like that.

Weeks before you were even sick I thought about preserving you forever. I would buy chemicals that would freeze you in time. Your fur would never grow ragged. Your whiskers could stay long. I could look at your paws whenever I wanted.

But I realized that was unfair. You'd still be dead. You wouldn't be able to comb through your fur or twitch your whiskers. Or run on a great big wheel.

So I dug a hole in the front yard, big and wide enough so you'd have room to stretch your legs. You hated small spaces.

Your wooden house was the coffin. I lined the bottom with shredded tissue like how you did once. It all still smelled like you. I gave you cherries, lettuce, and a strawberry. I cried because I had never given you a cherry before.

I wrapped you in the blue cloth I brought you home in. You felt warm and limp, still. It felt wrong to cover you in dirt, but I did, gently and with my hands.

I cleaned your cage later today. I couldn't stop moving. You were gone, but I still needed to care for you. I found your sand bath. It still had dips and dunes from where you walked. I didn't dump it out.

I'm in bed now. I stopped moving and now all I can do is cry. I miss you. I want to dig you up and hold you so you never disappear. I want you to eat from my hand again. I want to hear the sound of your wheel again. I want to pick you up and hold you even though you don't like it and I want to kiss you on the forehead, right where the little white star is and I want you to make those little peeping noises you make and I want to cry and rub my tears into your fur knowing you'll clean them out. I want to wail at 2 am in the morning like I'm dying. I want to scream like its the end of the world.

The other day I saw someone who looked EXACTLY like a person I've drawn which a.) made me very happy because that means my goal of drawing believable people is getting closer and b.) gave me heart palpitations because holy shit she was sooo cute lol. I'll probably never see her again because the only reason why I saw her was because she was leaving the class I was going to. Anyways, I'm going to draw more people in hopes they will become real.

I have no idea how someone with media literacy could walk away from Disco Elysium and not connect "being a cop rots people's brains" to "Kim Kitsuragi is a cop." The dots are there even if they're delivered with humor, like in the scene where Harry and Kim talk to Acele on the ice.

1. KIM KITSURAGI – "Yeah, man..." The lieutenant suddenly appears to your right with his collar popped *insanely* high.

   KIM KITSURAGI – "Got any dope? We need some dope bad." He scratches his nose, then his armpit through the jacket. "I got the *Boogie Street* shakes."

   DRAMA [Medium: Success] – He's really shaking and everything!

   YOU – "Um... Kim? What are you doing?"

   KIM KITSURAGI – "Tryin'a score some *dope*, man. Like we planned. Tryin'a score some smack -- you got any?" He hops from one foot to the other in anticipation.

Its incredibly obvious that Kim has used a tactic similar to this to get people arrested as a juvenile officer. Its a side of Kim the player and Harry haven't seen before. Or maybe even thought about. I think its an important side that fans seem to forget whenever they talk about Kim. I can understand why people forget. Some of the text used to introduce Kim is literally something along the lines of, "if the whole world descended upon you, this man man would hurl himself in death's way to save you, but why?" How can you not go insane over that? It is very hard not to like Kim, especially when we're playing from the viewpoint of Harry. Its important to remember that Kim is a flawed human being and not a deity. Don't be like Harry.

The entire dream took place in a classroom. It looked a lot like the classroom I took middle school spanish in, except all empty. I was the same age I am currently. There was a teacher there that I've never met or ever had before. I was a part of some kind of boarding school?

I was a really bad student and the teacher was equally as terrible. I was physically fighting her a lot and I got pretty banged up.

Then a nurse came in to check up on me I guess. The teacher lied about us fighting and I was just kinda sulky and didn't say anything.

I took my shirt off and lay down on a stretched bed thing. The nurse was very nice and tended to some injuries on my arm I guess. After it was wrapped she started putting needles inside me to draw blood. They were really big. Not needle size wise but volume size wise. And they hurt. Realistically. When she put a needle at the bottom of my sternum my chest felt like it was collapsing. Everything felt like it was getting sucked out. The blood she drew was weird too. It wasnt just blood, it was pink and chunky with white bits in it. The blood from my arms was normal red. They didnt hurt as much, like a normal vaccine prick.