alias_sqbr

Question at little_details from someone trying to accurately write a vegetarian second gen Indian immigrant teen in Perth in 2003.

I'm still getting over my cold but rambled about what I remembered vegetarians eating back then, and it occurred to me some of you might be able to offer useful information as well. No pressure, I don't know this person, but thought I might as well pass it on.

Are there any fantasy stories with democratic gods who follow the conscious decisions of their followers as a group? It's like... a typical god may be similar to a king who tries to listen to his citizens else he be deposed, but I'm looking for something more like a democratically elected president who was voted in and can be voted out.

This is an off-shoot of a discussion of Baldur's Gate 3/The Forgotten Realms but I think it should work for any fantasy setting where gods can be deliberately created or are a job mortals can take on, with powers reliant on simple things like their number of followers instead of anything numinous or mystical. I'm mostly thinking high fantasy set in a secondary world, but I guess it could work in other sorts of fantasy too.
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Imagine you join a discord (or other similar online group social space with rules and moderators) which has this rule: you're not allowed to say anything too self-deprecating. If you do, you must say three nice things about yourself.

The discord otherwise seems appealing.



Asking because I have seen people reblog this tumblr post mentioning such a rule positively, and I also once encountered this rule on what I think was a separate discord (rather than being for a group of friends it was for a fandom that poster does not appear to be interested in) So it seems a non-negligible number of people are cool with such rules.

But my reaction is very negative, and I'm curious to find out how unusual that is. Thus, a poll! I also just want to get across that some people are seriously troubled by such rules, but am genuinely unsure how that compares to the number who would significantly benefit from them.

Note: I'm not asking about variants like self deprecation being discouraged but there's no actual consequences, or whether you find this kind of rule helpful to enforce inside your own head or in other very different kinds of social situations. Nor am I distinguishing between how you would feel about the rule being applied to you, versus your assumptions about a space that has such a rule. If you have different feelings about Discord versus other social spaces, just answer for Discord.

Just: would encountering this specific rule in a real discord overall feel like a positive thing or a negative thing.
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Would anyone be interested in some low-key online 'table-top' roleplaying during my daytime? I've dipped my feet into TTRPGs in the past and had a lot of fun, but unfortunately all the existing games I've encountered have been offline (not practical for health reasons) or in the middle of my night. So I guess it's time for me to organise a game myself, unless any of you know of some suitable games I might be able to join.

This post is just me poking the idea and seeing if anyone's potentially interested, if I get some interest and an initial sense of people's preferences then I'll try and organise something more solid.
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How much of a thing are the Santa Zombies going to be? Just the rest of the first episode or an ongoing thing?

If there's one thing I learned from Shaun of the Dead and Gravity Falls, the zombies being very silly doesn't help as much as you might expect /o\

If noone's listened that's fine, there's other places I can ask. It's otherwise pretty good so far! And not even especially scary, unless you're me.

My access filters are a mess of dead accounts so I was thinking of at least removing all the livejournal accounts, now that crossposting isn't happening any more, but if anyone's still using them to access dreamwidth via openid I'll hold off. So, let me know or lose your access!

Also, what would happen to the posts on an access filter if I just deleted that filter? Is there some way to make all the posts on a filter private first? It's annoying when I go to choose a filter and the list is cluttered up by like...the filter I made to process my feelings about a breakup with a mutual ten years ago etc, and it's all such old news I just want to sweep it all into private posts and be done with it.

EDIT: Tested it with a new filter, and yep, deleting a filter seems to make everything private. Sweet.

Here's more answers to questions from this post.

fred_mouse: Tell me about something you can see from your window?

brainwane: Are there words you particularly enjoy reading, hearing, writing or saying? Or particular numbers that delight you? Could you share any words you remember learning in the last few years?

skygiants: If you could pick an iconic adventuring outfit, and practicality was no consideration -- say you were designing a personal sim for an immersive virtual world in which you were about to have a sff adventure -- what would it be?

Transcript below the cut, with image descriptions. The sound worked better this time since I made sure to shut down everything but the recording software and text editor.
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Has anyone had good experiences with devices to help cut vegetables into thick slices or sticks? I specify thick because my in-laws gave me this thing for making thin slices, and it works fine but it's still a lot of physical effort and I don't actually want thin slices most of the time. If I want something diced finely I just use my food processor. What I have trouble with is making slices/sticks/cubes.

The physical effort of cutting is something of a problem for me, but even a manual device that used the same amount of strength but required less concentration would be helpful. Variable widths would be the most useful but a set width over 1cm/half an inch would be something.

I looked it up online and there are things that do what I want but I have no idea how useful they are in practice.

Does anyone have a DJ turntable or math-type chalkboard?

I haven't been playing much lately so am thinking of turning off my nintendo online subscription, but naturally first I must make my house PERFECT (and then I will update my dream and get everyone to admire how pretty it all is)

Sometimes when I make a post I get a lot of nice but similar comments I really appreciate, but I have nothing interesting to say to in response beyond, like, "thanks". Thinking about a unique variation on "thanks" for each comment is a lot of mental work for little benefit, but a wall of identical replies, or no replies, might make people assume I didn't like their comment. Especially since sometimes I do happen to have something interesting to say to one or two comments in particular, but not all of them, which could make everyone else feel weird.

Or maybe people won't notice or care!

So! Help me find replying to comments less mentally tiring.



Please don't feel obliged to say you don't mind when what you mean is "It would make me feel a little bad, but I'd prefer that to you getting stressed". I just want to know what people prefer out of these two options so I can make an informed decision.

If other, please explain in the comments!