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nerdalmighty · 3 months

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hey! so, i just recently started playing baldur's gate 3 after seeing people put it all over my dash for months--and you're one of the people i've seen reblogging a lot of posts about it LOL. so if you don't mind me asking, i was wondering what kind of character do you/did you play as? and do you have any sort of backstory for your tav that you'd like to share?

Hoooooooooooooh my god thank you so much for asking. I have a friend who comes over to watch me play on Thursdays and I make a powerpoint every week to catch her up on what she missed - this week's powerpoint literally has slides about my Tav's background (more on those later). This is about to be long, I'm about to drop ALL my lore so buckle up! AND THANK YOU FOR PUTTING UP WITH MY BG3 BRAIN WORMS!!!!! I'm glad they convinced you to play 😈

So to begin, I've been in my first ever dnd campaign with a group of friends for a little over a year now. I didn't know much about Baldur's Gate except that it was a dnd video game and that you could romance people. Me, being a Big Fan of Romance And Fantasy was like "okay well I'm in" and my friend actually let me start a game at his house. Through that, I met Shadowheart, Gale, and Astarion.

Backing up a bit to my character; I decided I'd put my character from my irl dnd campaign into the game since I already knew her whole deal. I get pretty overwhelmed with making decisions, ESPECIALLY with big open world games like bg3, so knowing who/what I wanted to be really helped me out.

In the campaign I'm in with friends, it's pirate themed, and I play a half-elf bard named Birdie Harp who's secretly half-siren (murder mermaid). To make a long story very short, she was born in the arctic and escaped her murderous pod during a coming-of-age trial where she also lost her siren abilities (hypnotizing voice, breathing underwater, etc).

I've watched a ton of Dimension 20 which is an actual play show on Dropout.tv (an "actual play" is where you watch other people run a campaign of dnd - like Critical Role, which a lot of people have at least heard of - HIGHLY recommend Dimension 20, as I find it incredibly funny and easier to get into than CR because of the episode lengths), and I knew that I really liked the silliness and theatricality of the bard class. I also loved the bards from The Owl House which helped influence my decision as well.

To be honest, Birdie is my first ever dnd character, so she's basically a self insert but with a MUCH more traumatic backstory than me (this IS dnd after all). As for the half-elf aspect, it was more of an "I want to be half mermaid, what's similar to that?" as opposed to a love for half-elves or something.

BACK TO BALDUR'S GATE - knowing I wanted Birdie to be in the game, I felt a lot less overwhelmed to come up with something entirely new - I knew a lot about the bard class having played one so I wanted to CONTINUE playing one (and I've learned even more since playing bg3!).

When I finally got my own game (I no longer play at my friend's house, but in the comfort of my own home), I recreated Birdie and started on my journey in earnest. I'm VERY MUCH someone who likes to be in control and know what to expect, so I've had guides and walkthroughs to help me the whole time - SUE ME! When it came to first meeting Shadowheart, Gale, and Astarion back at my friend's house, Gale actually immediately stole my heart - a kind, witty wizard who likes books and cats? Literally say less. I went home from that session with my friend fully thinking I'd be a Gale girlie until I really looked into the other options and saw The Vampire.

Blah blah blah, he's hot and funny, but he can also be incredibly soft, which really won me over in the end. So I've been romancing That Guy.

Through Acts 1 and 2, I wasn't all too sure about this version of Birdie's background - sure she COULD still be that half-siren from the arctic, but the game kept suggesting she was FROM Baldur's Gate. I LOVED the inclusion of the harpies in Act 1 and thought maybe that was a viable entry point for her backstory, but so far, she was kind of just... me? She was making the choices I wanted to make (and a few that I knew Astarion would like lmao), but she wasn't really her own entity apart from me except for her name. She also felt vastly different from that character I'd created for my friends over a year ago. For instance, my irl Birdie currently has a crush on a Gale-type character, but this Birdie is ass deep in Astarion (hey, sorry I said "ass deep in Astarion"). The thing I love about Baldur's Gate 3 is how you can really come up with your own backstories, since the in-game one for your Tav is so vague. It's totally fine to ignore tiny details in the game and mold them to your own headcanons for your Tav, but I was so unsure of what I wanted for this Birdie that I kind of internalized that she was from Baldur's Gate.

HEADS UP! The following has some spoilers for Act 3 and some side quests, so STOP reading if that's something you'd care to avoid (the last 3 paragraphs of this post are SAFE from spoilers):

When Act 3 finally rolled around (which is where I am currently, I only have the one playthrough so far because I become INCREDIBLY attached to things), I stumbled across the Water Queen's House in Baldur's Gate. Ah ha! Now this felt promising.

A temple dedicated to the Vengeful Sea Goddess, Umberlee, and her loyal Wave Servants to serve her. It's ocean themed, it has mermaid undertones, and their goddess is basically evil. Seems like the perfect place to FINALLY insert this version of Birdie. I wasn't 100% sure until I completed the Iron Throne mission and was faced with either handing a (mostly) innocent man over to the Wave Servants, or fighting to defend him.

Here are a few of the slides from this week's powerpoint that I mentioned all the way back at the start, starting with SOME background on the Wave Servants:

Ass and Shart are what I affectionately call Astarion and Shadowheart (Also I got this beautiful "Birdie" art on Pinterest which originated from someone named Dantrelium on Reddit):

Apologies for the small text here, but there are some more details about THIS Birdie here, which I literally made up/figured out earlier this week:

Essentially, this Birdie was born at the Water Queen's House as Kittiwake Crest - Kittiwakes are common arctic birds, which I thought would be a nice little homage to the original character she was based off of. She was raised by the collective of Wave Servants there, the main one being Flood Tide Allandra Grey who seems to be head honcho at the Wave Mother's House (in this reality, she is).

Since Umberlee is such a vengeful goddess, I imagine she asked her Wave Servants to commit unspeakable acts in her name, mainly drownings, which THEY see as merciful, but I think Birdie always saw as horrifying. Who were they to decide the fates of others? I also think that the Wave Servants themselves were abusive during her upbringing to keep her in line (but much like how Nocturne was a light in the darkness for Shadowheart, I don't think EVERY Wave Servant was evil). GOTTA have a classic tragic backstory.

Upon researching Umberlee, I learned that most of her servants are clerics, so in my mind, that means Birdie was raised to eventually become one, with her official title eventually going to be "Seawind Kittiwake Crest." Is she still half-siren/mermaid though? Not entirely sure. This IS a magical world though, so I'd be inclined to say yes, probably.

But when we first meet the Wave Servants, they're singing beautifully for their drowned sister, Holli. I think Birdie REALLY loved music and singing with her sisters and secretly trained herself in bard magic when she should have been learning to be a cleric. It's also a classic trait of bards to hide their pain through humor, so I often imagine the type of stupid things Birdie gets up to to bring herself joy (my favorite headcanon being when you meet Skittle the Rat in Wyrm's Rock prison - he's a rat merchant who speaks exclusively in puns. I think Birdie and Gale would excitedly throw puns back and forth with Skittle while Astarion and Shadowheart begrudgingly (and affectionately) roll their eyes in the background).

Another thing I love about the game is how you can string together your own ideas of how companions react to things between big cut scenes. For example, in my head, in my game, Astarion has really become a Big Softy thanks to how fucking Stupid (affectionate) Birdie acts in life and has drawn him out of his shell, but also runs a tag team scam with her where she plays her lute to distract people while he loots an entire place. Gale is Birdie's partner in crime when it comes to tomfoolery and loves to joke and fool around with her (so long as it goes easy on his knees). And Shadowheart is basically a sister figure who flip flops between sassing with Astarion and joining in on the fun. THEY'RE JUST THE BEST, OKAY? OF COURSE I'M GONNA WALK AROUND WITH A BUNCH OF IDIOTS. I LOVE THEM.

Anyway, back to Birdie's backstory: she always hated the atrocities that were asked of her, and she was looking for a way out, but was too scared to take that step and leave since the Wave Mother's House is all she's ever known. One night, while stepping out to quietly dip her toes in the water, the Mindflayers captured her, and that's where we start Act One, all the way up on the Nautiloid. She changed her name to Birdie to distance herself from her previous life, fully took up the bard class, and the rest is history.

Back to that dilemma with handing over that (mostly) innocent guy or fighting the Wave Servants: with encouragement from the party, they convince Birdie to face her traumatic upbringing and fight the Wave Servants once and for all. At this point in Act 3, she's basically helped every single person with their problems except her own. Here's another slide featuring Ass and Birdie:

That's right folks, Birdie faced her past! But the bad news is we don't get to see Astarion in this (audio from The Adventurous Adventures of One Direction):

(Video description - Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3 wearing the Wave Mother's Armor with the following audio:

Guard 1: Whoa, check it out.

Guard 2: Hubba hubba hubba.

Gaurd 1: Nice. I love dudes in skirts.

END VIDEO.) I don't want to tell you how many times I recorded that until I felt like I got it right lol. Also yes, I DID do a scum save where I handed the guy over ONCE just so I could see Ass in this outfit, but Birdie did canonically save Redhammer in my actual save file.

And honestly, that's BASICALLY it for now! My most recent save was after that battle, so I need to figure out if Birdie's going to go back with her party to confront the rest of (or most of) the Wave Servants, or if this chapter of her life is closed.

In an ideal world I'd LOVE to make one of those artsy gif edits of my Tav like this and this, but PS5s make it hard to download clips without uploading them to YouTube first which I don't really want to do.

Thank you SO MUCH for this ask, I had a blast writing it!! Sorry it's so long, I just love this game so much and LOVE talking about it. Please feel free to ask more questions OR chat with me about YOUR Tav! I'd love to hear all about them :)

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archer-kacey · 2 months

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Secrets of the Machine (Bendysplaining)

(Full disclosure: both of the computers I have access to WILL NOT TRIGGER THE LIGHTNING CUTSCENE therefore making B:SOTM unplayable for me! Watched a couple walkthroughs to get the gist of things. I found ONE easter egg on my own lol.)

Secrets of the Machine is so out of place to me, seeming almost unpolished. I'll give it a fair shake and go over the pros and cons, but if you want a short Bendy game to play, PLEASE play Boris and the Dark Survival, not this.

Pros:

This very important bird that makes me well up inside with a positive emotion.

Ragtime Guffie. Cute character that I feel has a charm similar to the original Bendy cast. I wouldn't have been surprised to see this guy walking around in BATIM back in the day.

This screenshot I can use for memes:

This ONE scene/"jumpscare" was executed well:

The Goofy ahh can dispenser laugh

My personal favorite, this random ass arrow outside that you can follow into the darkness for about a minute until you're spat back out by the entrance arch (useless):

And last but not least, the inclusion of Gaskette and an insanely niche nod to Nightmare Run?

FIrst off, Gaskette looks killer (pun intended):

And secondly, there are at least a couple hands around the map that open and close when you click them in a very similar fashion to a hand that could be found on the menu of Nightmare Run. I was actually excited about this! (Why they didn't they just go full ham with the Nightmare Run characters for this game?)

Cons:

The first glaring issue I have is *checks watch* the FOUR Bendy advertisements thrown into the game??? What???

I'm not mad about hyping people up, but it is............LAZY?? What was the point of this? These ALL could've been Tweets!!

In fact, Lone Wolf's Announcement nearly WAS a Tweet!!

I would feel differently if the presentation was better, but you literally throw a can at some flippable....plates(?) around a screen at random and get still images. I understand that this game is meant to be small like BATDS, but BATDS was more polished, more fun, and didn't throw four adverts in as gameplay/easter eggs.

This is also gives me a Bad Feeling because if you're willing to make your smaller content into a glorified advertisement, what are you going to do with your mainline games? How are you going to treat your content? Are you going to let things cook or serve it to us raw?

ALSO...

Riley.

Riley's story itself is fine. Not amazing, not awful. Riley's parents die in a car accident when she's six. She starts drawing disturbing content, and the school counselor catches wind of this and brings it up to her guardian. Riley goes to work for JDS at the same age as Buddy (17), and is subsequently fired for drawing more disturbing material pertaining to the accident.

While it sounds cliché, the way it was presented in-game was fine. There are obviously things that could be improved, but the point here isn't the story itself.

Let me ask the audience of this post a question.

Where the hell is Lacie Benton?

Or, more broadly, why aren't M+M fleshing out characters that have been with us since *checks watch* 2017?

I'm struggling not to start doing the Macarena, because adding new characters and slowly abandoning the old ones works in direct contrast with "caring about the lore", AKA what this franchise was built on, and it's something M+M like to bring up. When you remove that backbone, everything else falls apart. When you neglect the old characters, you're neglecting the heart of the franchise.

Riley having her story isolated to one game seems to be a blessing in disguise, I'll admit. However, this is ALL just BATIM: Red Flags. Disappointed, but not surprised. Scared for the future of this franchise, but trying to stay optimistic.

#bendy secrets of the machine #secrets of the machine #bsotm #gaskette #ragtime guffie #bendysplaining #archer writes #batim #batdr #batds #bendy 3

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blueskittlesart · 1 year

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hi! im really curious about your thoughts on oot, i'm trying really hard to like it and i wanna see what you enjoy about it

Hi!!! I'm going to do my best to explain exactly why I like oot but there is a TON of ground to cover. i have already written a bit about the story and my thoughts on it in this document, but this is a much more in-depth analysis of the symbolism and implied narrative which i think may be more helpful to you if you're struggling to get into the story and gameplay!

oot is my favorite zelda game of all time and was what made me fall in love with the series, but I will concede that it shows its age, especially with the insane advancements that video games have made over the past 2 decades or so since its release. Try to remember when playing it that it came out in 1998, when a game with any sort of 3d graphics at all was still new and exciting. some of its gameplay is going to be a bit dated, unfortunately, and it's totally reasonable to dislike that aspect of it i think! If you really find yourself struggling with gameplay, i recommend zeldadungeon.net for dungeon walkthroughs. they have very concise and easy-to-follow walkthroughs for the entire game which make the gameplay MUCH smoother for first-time players! there's no shame in needing walkthrough help in these dungeons, ESPECIALLY some of the later ones which get notoriously convoluted and difficult. that being said, even if you use walkthroughs, I'd encourage you to still pay attention to the dungeon's designs and details as a lot of thought was put into these designs and I think they're still some of the strongest in the series! gameplay-wise I'd also say that there are a lot of little collectibles that will seem like they're way more important than they are to new players. you don't need the skulltulas (they get you a bigger wallet), you don't need to complete any trading sequences, you don't even REALLY need to go out of your way to collect any of the extra heart pieces, the game is perfectly beatable with just the hearts you'll get from dungeons. Knowing all these things going in will really streamline your gaming experience and make things easier for you if you're getting put off by the 90s-style game design.

As for what i really love about the series, it's the story. And i understand that if you're not someone who makes a habit of analyzing media to an obsessive degree, at first glance oot doesn't seem to have a lot of story. A simple fact of old game design is that more dialog and cutscenes meant more storage space was needed, and the biggest constraint in game design at the time was the limited amount of storage a disc or cartridge could hold. What this means is that storytelling in older games like oot takes a very different form than the cutscene and dialog-heavy storytelling that games tend to use nowadays. the storage restrictions on the game meant that a lot of oot's story had to be told implicitly, via details and worldbuilding and actions carried out by the player. I know this can make it difficult to grasp at first glance! that's why i love to analyze it and talk about it, because I want people to understand how rich and well-told oot's narrative actually is and i know that most people aren't as willing to put in the work as i am, lol. with that being said, this is where the spoilers are gonna start! i'm gonna recap and analyze most of oot's story here, so if you're not looking for spoilers scroll away now and experience the game for yourself!!

oot is at its roots a story about adults failing children. i will elaborate on this point a bit more later, but for now let's look at our opening segment. We are introduced to our link, the youngest link in the franchise, at nine years old. From the get-go, we as the player are told that link's hylian parents died in a conflict very shortly after he was born, leaving him in kokiri forest to be raised by the deku tree, among the kokiri.

The kokiri are a race of eternal children. what this means, essentially, is that we begin the story with a link wearing rose-tinted glasses. the kokiri live forever without aging or dying, and they never leave the forest. Link has grown up isolated and without any concept of aging or death. he has been told by the deku tree, his father-figure, that he IS a kokiri and therefore will never age or die. Despite this, link does have a crucial difference from the rest of the kokiri that even he is aware of--he has no fairy. If you talk to the kokiri in the initial kokiri forest segment of the game, many of them will talk down to you or make remarks about you finally getting a fairy, reminding the player that link knows SOMETHING is wrong with him, that he's different from the other kids somehow, but he's not yet been able to pinpoint what.

we come to our first dungeon segment, where the deku tree summons link and tells him that he's dying and that link must defeat a monster to save him. when the player completes this objective, the deku tree dies anyway, revealing that he knew all along he couldn't be saved and lied to link about it in order to get him to do the dungeon. with his dying breath, he tells link to leave the forest and find princess zelda. (worth noting that up until this point, link has been told that leaving the forest will KILL HIM.) this is the first major failure of an adult we see, and as the inciting incident of the game it sets the tone very nicely for the rest of the shitshow. The deku tree lies to link his entire life about who he is, and then spends his dying moments lying to link AGAIN, specifically in service of a greater plan to turn link into the savior of hyrule by sending him to help princess zelda. this point is crucial--the deku tree has clear-cut, understandable reasons behind acting the way he does. It would have been much easier on link to allow him to grow up isolated among the kokiri, and it removes a lot of the potential danger he would have faced as an orphan in hyrule in the aftermath of the war which killed his parents. (we will later see that hyrule is in no way a safe place for a child on their own.) Explaining all the magical-destiny lore to a nine year old had the potential to scare him away from the task ahead, as did admitting to him that there was no way to save the deku tree. But lying to him about it all still ultimately deeply hurt him. this is the stage upon which the rest of the game will build.

Link, freshly traumatized by the death of his tree dad, leaves kokiri forest. he goes to castle town and meets princess zelda, a girl no older than him. Princess zelda tells him that she fears for the safety of her kingdom, but that no one will listen to her when she tries to warn them of the danger. this is our second adult failing--the entire conflict around which this game centers could have been prevented if only any adult was willing to listen to zelda's concerns about ganondorf. But because she is a child she is dismissed over and over again until she finally turns to ANOTHER child for help. her plan for link involves him retrieving objects needed to open the gateway to the sacred realm within the temple of time, which i know sounds like a bunch of confusing lore shit but all you really need to understand is that there's a gateway to what is essentially godlike power inside this temple, and zelda wants link to open the gateway and claim the power before ganondorf can. link already has one of the 3 keys he needs--it was the reward for killing the deku tree beating the first dungeon in kokiri forest, and zelda takes this as proof enough that he will be able to find the other two.

in these first three dungeon segments, link is confined to his nine-year-old form. His sword is wooden and deals considerably less damage than it will later in the game, and in each of the dungeon segments there are reminders of the way being a child affects his autonomy in hyrule--the guard at the gates of death mountain won't let him pass, the zora princess berates him for not being enough of a man, several collectibles are clearly visible but impossible to reach with his current size & ability, etc etc. this section of the game is deliberately juxtaposed against the initial segment in kokiri forest, in which everything was built for someone of link's size and strength and no part of the map was unexplorable or all that challenging. What you're supposed to realize here is that being a kid in hyrule is HARD. you have very little autonomy and are constantly condescended to. One of the few hylian npcs your age, Malon, is a good example of this--in her mini-quest she vents to link about how her father can't see that his stablehand resents him and she's constantly having to look after him without being listened to. She is being given adult responsibilities (looking after her father & the animals on their farm) without adult social status. Her situation is a deliberate parallel to both link and zelda's, though during this 3-dungeon segment of the game it's not immediately clear yet just how much adult responsibility link is actually shouldering. in any case, this is our third example of adults failing children, and the theme begins to be echoed in the worldbuilding of hyrule during this stage as well.

now we come to the initial confrontation, the scene which alters the trajectory of the game and divides what i consider the first and second halves of the gameplay (although the second half is probably much longer lol). Link, having found all 3 keys to the sacred realm, returns to hyrule castle, only to find that ganondorf has attacked, forcing princess zelda to flee with her attendant. He catches one final glimpse of her where she throws him the final key needed to unlock the temple of time: the ocarina. although no words are exchanged between them, it's clear that she's asking link to carry out the rest of her plan on his own and claim the power sealed in the temple before ganondorf can. and so link goes to the temple of time and opens the gateway, but link is nine years old and so link doesn't notice that ganondorf, a trained thief, is following him. When he opens the temple, ganon siezes the power zelda was trying so hard to keep him from finding.

we then pan down to link again, but different. he's changed, he's older. notably, he isn't an adult. he is sixteen years old, physically, but mentally, for both link and the player, no time has passed at all. this is important to keep in mind for the rest of the game--no matter how link may look, he is mentally still nine years old. he wakes up to essentially a lecture from the world's biggest dickhead, the sage rauru. Rauru places the blame for ganondorf's rise to power squarely on link and zelda's shoulders, noting that if link hadn't opened the temple of time in the first place, ganondorf would have never been able to sieze power. he tells link that he placed him into a deep sleep for the past seven years because, at nine years old, he wasn't strong enough physically to take on ganondorf and win. But now, he says, link is old enough to be a real asset. it's time for link to defeat ganondorf.

Once again, we have a clear-cut case of adults failing children. Link and zelda took matters into their own hands BECAUSE of the adults in their lives. for link, it was the deku tree (HIS FATHER)'s dying wish that he help zelda. for zelda, her plan was a last resort after begging every adult in her life to see what was coming and being constantly ignored. now that what she predicted has come to pass, she and link take all the blame for it, for being kids in a difficult position doing the best they could with NO ADULT HELP WHATSOEVER. you can't place the fate of an entire kingdom on the shoulders of two nine year olds and expect it not to fall. but that's what hyrule's adult leaders did, and when the kingdom fell they let the nine-year olds take the blame for it. zelda hasn't been seen for years. she's either dead or in hiding out of shame for her mistake. meanwhile, Link has once again become a pawn in someone else's game. The sage rauru decides for him, without ever consulting him, that he can't be trusted to remain conscious for the seven years between gameplay segments. that he will be safer and happier to remain asleep. anyone who stops for a moment to consider what this might do to link's mental state would have not done this, but rauru sees link as a child, which in hyrule is synonymous with an object to be controlled, with no feelings of his own. he needs to be protected and hidden, regardless of what effect it has on him when he wakes up. nothing else matters as long as he can be kept alive and unharmed. this is a deliberate parallel to the way the deku tree treated link while under his care in kokiri forest--he doesn't need to know the truth, because it's easier and more convenient for everyone else if he doesn't. its effect on his mental state doesn't matter. what matters is that he is kept in a position which is convenient for the adults in his life. this is another reminder of the way in which being so young hurts link, and if I can diverge into real-world relevance for a second, it's an obvious metaphor for the way trauma steals one's childhood. Link was never allowed to grow up normally. he went from being a kid one day to an adult the next, with no time in between to figure anything out. his childhood, his coming-of-age, was stolen from him by greedy adults who needed him to be a pawn in their war.

the dungeons in the adult segment of the game can technically be completed in multiple different orders, but the usual order (and what i think is probably the way the narrative is intended to progress) is to get to the forest temple first, which requires you to reenter kokiri forest, all grown up. it's important to note that up until this point in your gameplay, link still has plausible deniability about his race. sure, he didn't die when he left the forest, but maybe that was a lie told to ALL kokiri. maybe he's still a kokiri and he won't grow up. but now he's got solid proof that he was lied to, and that the safe, beautiful sanctuary he's spent the majority of his life in was never actually meant to be his home. When you return to kokiri forest as an adult, you find that it's nothing like the safe-haven you remember. it's been overrun with monsters that are taller than you now, as an adult. This is a metaphor, obviously, for returning to someplace changed. link goes back to his home and it doesn't feel like his home anymore with all that he knows now. And if the monsters weren't enough, if link talks to the kokiri, cowering in their little kid-sized houses, not a single one of them recognizes him. they address him as an adult they've never met before. to them, it's been seven years, and they've never known a kid to grow into an adult before. but to link, it's been a few days at most, and inside he's still the little boy they knew.

the dungeons in this segment of the game are mostly straightforward training exercises to give link the necessary skills and assets he needs to fight ganondorf. I'll skip over most of them, but there are three things i DO want to highlight about this section of the game: malon, sheik, and the water temple.

Malon is introduced in the first half of the game as an example of another child with very little agency and power. Seven years later, if link visits her again, he will find the ranch in an even worse state, with the stablehand having taken over and kicked out malon's father. Malon stays purely out of fear of what will happen to her horses if she leaves them in his hands. She is an adult now, as you are, and yet she has even less power than before. So much of the first half of oot is framed in such a way that the player wishes link was older. It wants you to think, wouldn't this whole thing be easier if I was an adult? Wouldn't I have more power, more agency? but now that you ARE an adult, you're confronted with the fact that nothing has changed. you are still a pawn in a war against ganondorf. Malon is still trapped at the ranch, forced to endure daily abuse or leave her animal friends to die. however, this segment is also the first time you as the player are given the option to fight back. If you, as a child, have taken the necessary steps to befriend malon and epona, one of her horses, you are able to use the bonds you forged in childhood to run the stablehand off the ranch and return power to malon. this mini-arc with malon is a teaser for the overarching arc of the game--having no power in childhood, believing that adulthood will be your savior, but finding the same powerlessness in adulthood, and ultimately returning to pieces of your childhood in order to finally reclaim your power.

next up is sheik, who is deliberately a mystery for the majority of this segment, but. well. we all know he's zelda, so i'm not going to beat around the bush. Sheik is what has become of zelda in the years since ganondorf took power--where zelda was once strong-willed and refused to stand down in the face of danger, sheik now moves among the shadows, darting in to offer link a bit of help or advice but never getting too close. My reading of this is that zelda, after growing up in the aftermath of her failed plan, was afraid of what she'd done to link. She saw her influence as the thing that brought hyrule to ruin--after all, link never would have opened the door in the temple of time if not for her. The way she sees it, her choice to use him back when they were nine destroyed his life and her kingdom. This is why she's largely absent in this segment of the game, only stepping in for brief moments and disappearing the second link tries to reach out for her. Her character at this point is essentially representative of self-isolation as a coping mechanism.

finally the water temple, which I promise i didn't single out just because it sucks, but i will warn any potential players that it sucks. it's the most convoluted ass design in the world and even with a walkthrough it gets confusing and hard to navigate at times. this is not the point of this paragraph, though. the point of this paragraph is that there is a miniboss in this dungeon that is INCREDIBLY important to link's character and to this day is one of the most well-done and impactful battles i've ever had the pleasure of playing. (side note, why the hell did the himekawa manga make this battle happen at the bottom of the fucking well?? ive believed for years that he was a shadow temple boss because of that. whatever. anyways)

about halfway through this dungeon, you come upon a room that looks like an endless sea of water, with bits of ruins and a single rotting tree in the middle. when you walk into the room, you'll be attacked by a mini-boss that takes the form of link's reflection, black and translucent with glowing red eyes. the miniboss dark link will mimic your attacks and block when you swing, requiring players to be crafty and strategic in order to beat him instead of just swinging with the right weapon at the right time. from a purely gameplay-based standpoint, this fight is sick as hell. it rewards you for thinking on your feet and forces you to come up with real time strategy to beat a foe who genuinely seems to think the same way you do, which is REALLY cool, especially for a game released in nineteen fucking ninety eight. narratively, though, there are symbols upon symbols upon symbols to be picked apart in this fight alone. there's the obvious metaphor of fighting onesself--representative of an internal struggle of some kind. pair that with the set dressing for this arena and the information we already know about link, and things start to fall into place. Link was raised in a lush forest, surrounded on all sides by walls of trees that kept him safe and isolated from the world at large. the minute he left that forest, bits and pieces of his worldview started to fall apart--he learned his identity as a kokiri was a lie, experienced the hardships of being a child in hyrule, and now he's grown up and become a pawn in the fight against ganondorf, losing what little agency he had along with the ability to return to his home in kokiri forest. He finds himself in this illusion room, with a shadow version of himself waiting to attack him, clearly indicating that this room is representative of his state of mind. an endless, desolate landscape stretching out into infinity. no walls to keep him safe, no cover at all save for that one single, ROTTING TREE in the middle. This tree is a symbol of link's mental state. (my evidence for this one spans across a couple games but just trust me when i say this interpretation is grounded in reality it would just take too long to explain) and the tree is not looking good. it is dying. and from this dying tree springs a reflection of himself that link must fight to progress. I think there's an obvious message that's being conveyed here: link regrets leaving kokiri forest. he regrets the way he's been used, the hard truths he has had to learn about the world since he left. He is still mentally nine years old, and as a child he still yearns to return to that safety he was promised in kokiri forest despite knowing that it's no longer there for him to return to. Dark link is representative of all link's fear and regret and turmoil surrounding his destiny and what has been done to him over the last seven years. Because this is a video game, he is able to physically fight those feelings, to defeat the reflection of himself that torments him and walk out of that room at peace, having faced his fears and confronted his true feelings. Narratively, this battle is representative of the ongoing internal struggle link is grappling with over the course of this segment of gameplay, and shows the player how link must overcome those feelings of fear and inadequacy in order to gain the power to defeat ganon.

now we finally come to the ending segment of the game. this is where the lore gets a little bit convoluted and trips some people up. if you're not a lore slave you can basically ignore the triforce thing. the only affect it has on the narrative is that it gives ganondorf a reason to need both link and zelda, since they have the other two pieces of the powerful relic he's after. this is why he kidnaps zelda and taunts link to come rescue her instead of just like. hunting them both for sport in the wilds of hyrule.

the final battle with ganon is the culmination of all your efforts throughout the game. in the leadup to it, the final dungeon reminds you of this by having each of its rooms be a mini-version of one of the previous six temples you completed in the second half of the game. once you finish this final dungeon, you're able to get into the castle. I have to mention one of my favorite design choices in this whole game here, which is the fact that the background music in the castle gets louder the closer you get to the final room, and when you finally get there it's revealed that ganondorf was playing it the whole time. the details in this game make me crazy they're all so well-done. anyways. to discuss this battle we first need to discuss a crucial character who i realize i've forgotten to mention this ENTIRE time somehow: navi.

I love navi. i hate the way she became a joke among fans. this is not the point of this post. the point is that narratively, navi is one of the only GOOD adult figures we see in the entire game. (one could argue that she isn't an adult, but she takes on a guiding and mentor-like role for link so i consider her one despite some of her more childish mannerisms.) Navi is the one character who has been at link's side since the very beginning, the only consistent good influence on his life. the only adult mentor who hasn't somehow tried to fuck him over or manipulate him somehow. She is INTEGRAL to his survival through all the crazy bullshit he gets caught up in. the game makes her importance clear to the player in two ways: the first, obviously, is that she's the tutorial character--she tells you where to go, what to do, explains mechanics and puzzles, etc. The second, and the detail that's gonna be super important in our discussion of the final battle, is that she's tied to the game's targeting mechanic. It's subtle enough that I actually didn't notice it my first time around UNTIL this final battle, but every time you target an enemy to attack them (which with the way the camera movement is designed in this game is basically a required element of combat) navi flies to their weak spot and hovers there, which is the in-game explanation for what targeting is--navi is showing link the monsters' weak spots. in the first phase of the final battle with ganondorf, he erects a forcefield which prevents navi from entering the battlefield, removing the player's ability to target completely.

i absolutely LOVE this battle in terms of both gameplay and narrative. removing the targeting mechanic is a genuine handicap that makes the battle genuinely difficult for the player, and narratively it serves to remind you of the importance of navi, a positive adult influence, in link's life. without her, dealing damage is so much more difficult, but as soon as you have her back the battle becomes super intuitive and you're able to strategize much more effectively. Eventually, you deal enough damage to get navi back and flee the castle with the princess, before making one final stand against Ganon, a mutated beast-form of ganondorf. with navi by your side, his massive weakness becomes easily targetable, and you're able to defeat and seal him for good.

the end-credits scene of the game shows link time-traveling back to his nine-year-old self, before any of the events of the game have come to pass, and re-entering hyrule castle to warn nine-year-old zelda about what is to come. this is a time paradox, i know, but i LOVE this ending thematically. As I mentioned extensively earlier, link and zelda's stories are both representative of the way trauma robs you of childhood. they were both stripped of their chance to be children and grow up and come of age due to what happened with ganondorf. Allowing link to go back and prevent those events from ever occurring is a promise of healing. it's a promise that he and zelda will be able to reclaim the childhoods that were stolen from them by war and by adults who wanted to use them as pawns in it. it's a reclamation of the agency that these characters have been consistently denied throughout their stories. it's. a good ending. it's a really good ending. I like it a lot.

So uhhh wow that was a lot! what it comes down to is that i think oot is a story a ton of people can relate to. being a kid with responsibility but no agency and longing to be an adult, but then growing up and wanting nothing more than to return to the childhood you lost... that's something that really resonates with me, at least. and yeah oot has a lot of quirks and convoluted story and stuff but at its core it's a really beautiful coming-of-age that deals REALLY well with trauma and childhood and growing up!! tldr it's just. a genuinely incredible story and it means a LOT to me lol

#THIS IS SO LONG IM SO SORRY IM CRAZY LMAOOOO #zelda analysis #everyone please play ocarina of time. im going insane here

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andy-deer · 8 months

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Tahts a lot of info, one stroke??? what? that sounds kinda crazy.

I usually use krita, but im open to suggestions (i wont buy photoshop tho)

And i would love a vid with a walkthrough

No one buys Photoshop lolll

Also I just use Photoshop for the final touches it's a bit harder to understand than paint tool sai

Yeah learning lineart was a lot like make line Ctrl z make line Ctrl z make line Ctrl z over and over again

It still is a bit like that when you have been drawing for yearshahaha

I know it's a lot of info I'm a bit not in a great moment of giving advice rn and that combined to I have lotsss of thoughts about it doesn't help lol

This is my fave vid of all time for art involving lineart

https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk?si=s2cmfFfd9E_rCEv6

The rest I can show you when I get to put together a proper video of how I do things

#idk krita but it's seems good to start #tou can use whichever really #pirate the shit out of art programs btw

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novelmonger · 7 months

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As this October comes to a close, I wanted to report briefly on the horror games I've played this Spooky Month:

Dead Secret - Adventure game that has "made for VR" written all over it (though I did not play it in VR), where you play as an up-and-coming reporter investigating an old man's mysterious death. The puzzles were pretty easy, and it was fairly simple to get all the different endings, but the story was kind of confusing and littered with plot holes. There were some scares that were actually quite effective, but that actually only causes more problems, because when you finally piece together the solution to the mystery, there isn't really anything supernatural going on...so why do you keep on seeing things that appear and disappear, the TV turning on, doors opening of their own accord, etc.? Also, I got stuck in the first five minutes because they never actually presented the controls to the player, lol ^^'

Stasis - Isometric adventure game where you play as a man who wakes up from cryosleep in a broken-down spaceship, with no idea how you got there or where your family is that you were traveling with. So you have to venture through this creepy, dilapidated spaceship, uncovering the horrific experiments that were going on here, based on a spaceship to avoid interstellar legal constraints. There ended up being a lot more gore and just...grossness than I was expecting, and I wasn't a huge fan of that :/ After a certain point, it really started to feel like they were just shoving as much shocking material into the game as they could, when a lighter touch might have been more effective. It also suffers from the usual adventure game issue of I Have No Idea What The Heck To Do With This Random Item I Picked Up So I Guess I'll Just Click On Everything Until Something Happens, and I had to rely on a walkthrough to get through it all in a timely fashion. But the unfolding story was enough to hold my interest through the whole thing. I found the ending disappointing and rather depressing, though, so I don't think I'll be playing the sequel. But kudos to the very small South African company that developed the game!

Shady Part of Me - Definitely my favorite of this year's selection! I didn't want to stop playing! 8D It's hardly even a horror game, though; it just deals with rather dark (haha) subject matter and has a somewhat creepy aesthetic, particularly in the beginning where the setting looks like some sort of hospital. But really, it's just a puzzle platformer where you manipulate light and shadow to get a girl and her shadow through a bunch of levels that are an abstract depiction of her mental illness. I loved the look and feel of the game, and some of the puzzles really stumped me. But this game was 100% my cup of tea. The only downside to it was that for some reason, the very very end kept on crashing the game, so ultimately I had to just watch the last cutscene on YouTube :/

Doki Doki Literature Club - I decided to round things off this year with a visual novel. I don't want to say too much, because it's best going in as blind as you can. (If anyone reading this is interested in playing it - it's free on Steam - I'd be happy to give non-spoilery trigger/content warnings!) All I'll say is that it takes the stereotypical high school harem visual novel and does things I've never seen a visual novel do before. If you can handle some creepy/disturbing content, it's well worth your time just for the experience, I think!

#video games #horror games #month of horror #aaaaand i actually kind of forgot about horror movies until it was too late? ^^'#i still have a couple on my list but oh well

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ethernalium · 11 months

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Who's your FF-crush?

it was squall for the longest time, then seifer sometimes (I alternate in my mind) I was 5 or less when my brothers bought the ffviii walkthrough magazine and I fell in love with the game and aesthetic, I've dreamt in playing and when I was 12yo I finally bought it, it was 20 reais (4$) but then at the disc 3, the game crashed at disc 3 and I had to make something like opening my ps1 so the cutscene could cut and the game could play it, I haven't seen the ending until I've went to a lan house and see at the youtube (wasn't a big deal for me since I could play the game tho)

now I can play it on my pc, I just don't have the remaster can you believe it? I accept giftssssssss 🥰😍 its 60 reais here (12$) but in a promotion 30 reais (7$, because paypayl grabs a few for international exchange lol) adgzjsjdhxj

anyways, now my final fantasy crush for the moment is clive, dion and joshua 🥵 also locke but locke became my crush after dissidia 😂🤣

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eleanorfenyxwrites · 2 years

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Random Idea junk drawer

So I had a great time doing my Wangxian-centric Breath of the Wild AU last year, and when I finished it I definitely left the epilogue open-ended enough to do more Zelda AU’s/Fusions in the future (I still don’t REALLY know how big the difference is between AU’s and Fusions and which one my other-content-inspired stuff usually counts as but I DIGRESS) because here’s the thing. The Thing(TM). Zelda games are my JAM. They were baby’s first special interest. Literally.

When I was 7 years old my parents bought a GameCube and a game disk that had 4 remastered Classic Zelda games on it (two 2D, two 3D) as well as a 20-minute playable demo for Wind Waker, with three different starting locations to choose from that you could play as many times as you wanted. And you bet my little 7-year-old ass played every bit of it that was within my skill level (which was not much lol), until I got my next Zelda game at 10 (that was Twilight Princess, and it was the first Zelda game I ever finished). I have the Wii walkthrough book for Twilight Princess that I bought used online and it reeked of cigarettes for months after I got it. I chose a screenshot of one of the characters out of it to paint on one of those horrible school industrial ceiling tiles in my 8th grade art class (sadly the photo of it is lost on an old dead phone, but it was really good, I mixed up all my own custom colors of paint and everything which was like. Impressive for 13 year old me :( ). I have and treasure the Hyrule Historia book. I had shitty ill-fitting graphic tees that said things like ‘Good things come to those who break clay pots’ (really funny to me now that I’m a ceramicist and could easily make pots for myself for the purpose of smashing if I were so inclined [I’m totally gonna]). I have massive Zelda tattoos on the insides of both forearms and I’m planning more so that I’ll hopefully end up with two Zelda half-sleeves. Like ZELDA IS MY THING. WHY I’m not writing more Zelda AU’s and playing around in my expanded sandbox of hyperfixations, I have no idea.

But anyway, I’ve started playing Ocarina of Time again, I have no idea how many times I’ve played it at this point within the last 19 years, and I’ve done it on every Nintendo console possible (except, ironically, the N64 as it was originally made for). So obviously I’m playing along and getting lost in the story because it’s a fuckin good story, as one does, and I was like ‘hey what if Wangxian tho’ and thus. Today’s junk drawer was born. Have I already started an outline of the fic plot points as well? Yes. Did I have to stop myself 800 words in and say that no I can’t just write out the entire plot tonight and no it can’t all go into this junk drawer post because I should actually just write the damn thing instead? Yeah. When will that happen? I don’t wanna think about it, so let’s just have fun talking characters and locations and their implications, shall we?

I’m going to post my notes completely unedited and let y’all see the whole ugly process, and I’m gonna put it below the cut because this is already long enough to scroll past but all I’ve done is gush about Zelda and in doing so further cement my well-established status as a huge fuckin nerd lol:

Jiangs/Lotus Pier as Kokiri Forest -- Deku Tree is Jiang Fengmian (Does this make Madam Yu the giant nasty spider inside????? ew)

- Wei Wuxian -- taken into LP/Kokiri Forest as a young child, young enough to fit in with the other children, but he'll soon be old enough for everyone to know that he isn't one of the lake/river children, he's from Elsewhere. - Jiang Cheng as Mido, small and angry and won't let anyone see JFM/YZY without really fucking good reason but also takes the leadership role in LP/Kokiri Forest once JFM/Deku Tree is dead - Jiang Yanli as Saria, gentle and sweet and fond of music and wandering through the woods that keep their lake hidden from the rest of the world. She'll awaken as a Sage in WWX's adulthood.

Cloud Recesses as Hyrule Castle, Lans are the Royal Family and Sheikah combined

- Lan Qiren as the king of Hyrule, though as the second brother he's supposed to be leading the Sheikah, not sitting on the throne - Lan Xichen (already in his 20's) as Impa. He'll awaken as a Sage in WWX's adulthood. Although he's supposed to be in line for the throne, someone has to be the leader of the Sheikah since LQR can't be, which leaves: - Lan Zhan as Princess Zelda -- plagued by dreams and visions of evil coming to take over the world, but no one takes him seriously because he's still so young. People also forget that in the line of succession he's supposed to be the one protecting the royal family as the next leader of the Sheikah, so it's actually his destiny to have these visions, not to be a politician. He sees in Wei Wuxian someone who's willing to break the rules and society's expectations to be the true hero he's been dreaming about. He'll take up the extremely active role of Wangji/Sheik as an adult, having learnt the Sheikah secrets under Lan Xichen's tutelage and taken up his rightful place as one of them since his escape from the palace as a child.

Kakariko Village -- inhabited by average people (akin to Caiyi town, close with the royal Lan family but not directly cultivators?)

Nies as Gorons in Death Mountain/Goron City/Nie Fortress

- Nie Mingjue as Darunia -- hot-tempered and built like the mountain, willing to swear brotherhood with the boy who came to save his people. He'll awaken as a Sage in WWX's adulthood. (NHS as the snot-nosed kid who hero-worships WWX in adulthood? lol)

Jins/Jinlintai as Zora's Domain -- The Zora are a proud people who live high above the rest of Hyrule at the top of their waterfall (tower). (Golden Carp Tower has a lot of water motifs and they decorate things in teal and gold like the zora do too)

- Jin Guangshan as King Zora - Jin Zixuan as Princess Ruto, eaten by their deity god (who is still a giant fuckin fish, I dunno what else he could be lol) and who thinks he has to be engaged to WWX after giving him the Sapphire (maybe because he was told from a young age he'd have to get engaged to one of the lake children anyway and just didn't know who/hint at unrealized Xuanli?) He'll awaken as a Sage in WWX's adulthood. - Jin Guangyao as (????? :( :( :( where will my boy go?? I need my boy for emotional support)

Wen Ruohan as Ganondorf -- a cruel king wreathed in shadow and flame....I mean it writes itself lol

- Baoshan Sanren as Rauru, the Sage of Light -- withdrew from the mortal world an unknowable amount of time ago to protect the Sacred Realm and has watched over WWX these last seven years as he slept. - Jiang Yanli as Saria, the Sage of Forest -- she awakens into her powers to protect her childhood friend/brother(s), though this will mean having to leave Jiang Cheng on his own in Lotus Pier - Nie Mingjue as Darunia, the Sage of Fire -- he awakens as a sage to honor the Brotherhood oath he swore with WWX in the past - Jin Zixuan as Princess Ruto, the Sage of Water -- he 'dumps' WWX because he has to do the more important work of stopping the apocalypse, try to contain your disappointment WWX, you can still be coworkers and save the world or whatever, if you even care. - Lan Xichen as Impa, the Sage of Shadow -- Lan Xichen must leave the mortal world behind to take up his mantle as the Sage of Shadow, leaving Lan Wangji to carry his worldly responsibilities instead (sort of half-retreating into seclusion like canon) - Wen Qing as Nabooru, the Sage of Spirit -- Wen Qing is the leader of the all-female band of Gerudo thieves who in no way endorse Wen Ruohan's domination of the world. When she leaves to take up her role as the Sage of Spirit, she leaves her cousin Wen Yun (my OC Madam Lan) to lead the Gerudo in her stead. (need to find a role for Wen Ning? Except zelda lore is that only one man is born to the Gerudo at a time every hundred years and he’s always their king. Maybe WN is meant to be the new one but WRH has reached immortality/won’t die and let him succeed him?)

Plot would follow Ocarina of Time fairly closely (Unlike my BOTW AU where I tried to make it...relatively more like canon??) because there's a very definite plot there, while BOTW is so much more fluid it was easier to adapt to something else.

#the untamed fanfic #wangxian #random idea junk drawer #so called because all these ideas rattle around in my head like pens and shit in a junk drawer #not because i think my ideas are junk #Ocarina of Time AU #no title for this baby yet but 'quqin of time' or 'dizi of time' just don't have the same flow ya know?#Oh also adult LWJ (in the role of Sheik) 100% uses his spiritual guqin to play music instead of Sheik's lapharp #and WWX uses chenqing instead of an ocarina #but chenqing isn't made of resentment she's just a spiritual tool

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iasmelaion · 1 year

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an assortment of my random thoughts about tears of the kingdom

No real story spoilers, because, real talk, I do not play these games for the story or the ~lore~. I am here to yeet my beautiful small son Link across the stunning landscapes of Hyrule, completing shrines, side quests, and murdering monsters at my whim. I will, perhaps, eventually get around to doing more of the main quests. First though, I must upgrade all my armor and get more hearts. So miss me with your 19481203 posts about the Zelda timeline, idgaf.

This game is so good in ways that are almost invisible until you realize how much work must have gone into making the experience so good and seamless. There’s so, so much freedom in the game--in terms of what order you can do things in, how you can solve puzzles, what play style you use at all, the things you can build with ultrahand, and of course the basic freedom of the map(s) themselves and how you can traverse them--and it’s not until you think about it that you realize how difficult it must be to design a game with this much freedom without breaking things left and right. An enormous part of the pleasure of this game, and to a lesser extent Breath of the Wild, is knowing you can just go off and do whatever, and the game will be like “cool, that’s valid!” or “hmm, interesting, I’ll allow it.” Sure, there are certain intended sequences or progressions, and there are ways to play the story parts in more narratively cohesive ways, but as the proliferation of challenge runs attests, you can also just do whatever whenever. It’s great, and I already know I’ve ruined myself for other games in this open world genre by playing BOTW and TOTK.

I like the new abilities in TOTK much more than the abilities in BOTW. (Though pour one out for remote bombs, that shit was useful.) The new abilities in TOTK all work together to help you solve problems in the game in multiple ways, allowing for both a lot more creativity and a lot more clever ways to be lazy. (recall elevator, my beloved) It’s super impressive, and it makes the game a lot more engaging than if there were only one or two intended solutions to any given problem.

Any more fiddly efforts with Ultrahand honestly make me motion sick (something about the way the camera moves plus the rotation, magnesis in BOTW caused me similar issues), so I’m probably never going to be building elaborate contraptions. Luckily for me, functional but hideous atrocities of Hyrule engineering are perfectly cromulent ways to get through the game.

I’ve done two temples so far (Wind and Fire), and looked up walkthroughs for both of them. Not because the puzzles are hard, but because lol my ability to get around in one of these things is tragically limited. I have an awful sense of direction and/or ability to navigate these temples, it was the same for me in BOTW. And like, in BOTW, do NOT ask me how long it took me to get my ass to Kakariko Village, it will only embarrass us both. So yeah, I look up walkthroughs just to spare myself the frustration of spending hours lost in the damn temple.

I also haven’t updated from 1.1.1 because I love me that duplication glitch. Like, listen. I would like to do SOME things other than play Zelda, and that means skipping some grinding for materials. It’s making the game much more fun for me, without breaking it entirely.

Little musical details I love: Link humming while he cooks! ADORABLE. Hestu’s little music and dance number every time he upgrades your inventory slot! Makes me smile every time, and made me lol in delight the first time! That music when you get yeeted out of a tower! Amazing and thrilling! Just in general, this is a very sonically pleasing game.

Also visually pleasing! I frankly don’t like photorealism in video games. Elden Ring looks hideous and unpleasant to me, Horizon Zero Dawn and Red Dead Redemption and the like edge awfully close to the Uncanny Valley, etc. I want more stylized, cartoonish art styles, and BOTW/TOTK is basically the ideal for me: painterly, gorgeous, and Ghibli-esque in the landscape, and pleasantly cartoony in the characters.

The act of exploring is still so rewarding in this game, even with a reused map.

LINK’S OUTFITS. I love dressing him up, and I super love the gender nonconforming vibes of it all. Unfortunately, I do go for best stats, armor-wise, and end up in the Twilight set most often now because I upgraded that to the max, but in my heart, Link is wearing that Frost armor set with the cute minidress with the back cutout all the time.

I built Link a house! It’s an architectural atrocity but oh well!

Was a bit of a steep learning curve, combat-wise, because I went in full of BOTW-arrogance, because I had, like, so many hearts and such good armor by the end of my playthrough there, and then you start off TOTK with none of that and suddenly red bokoblins are one-shotting you. Humbling. Should have remembered how thoroughly I failed the Master Sword trials. Definitely did remember that every time I died in the Proving Grounds shines.

Regained some combat arrogance though upon finding a way to cheese Lynels. I’m not sorry, even if this is definitely a glitch and not just the consequence of creative problem solving. Listen, I am simply never going to learn to flurry rush properly, so this is just going to have to do.

Anyway, this game is very good. Like, so good. I am going to spend all summer playing it and I’m going to have a blast.

#totk

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foxymoxyda · 16 days

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Hi Foxy,

So this introduction of your DA writing is a whole new world for me. I’m slowly learning what DA is all about. That plus what you’ve shared about it from the Lowlander universe, and Sasha from SS, has sent me poking around the interwebs to read up on the different version of it from over the years. I remember you saying that your career is also based in the game space, so let me ask you: as someone who has literally zero experience gaming (I know, I know, I’m an aberration) but who would be willing to give it a try for DA, where should I start? One thing I read was that for DA, the PC game is the way to go (as opposed to a separate console) - does that sound right? If so, which version/game? Sorry if my terminology is wrong. I literally have no idea what I’m doing here, but I want to be a bit like Sasha and escape in this world and pine for Cullen ;) a little too. Any direction would be appreciated. Also, Thanks for this story. It’s a cool departure from all your other stories (which I am equally obsessed with, don’t worry)

This is so fun!! The beauty of these games is that they're pretty good and easy to pick up. You can even play them on easier difficulty levels to just learn and enjoy, I highly recommend it.

PC is totally fine for these, you can play mouse and keyboard so you don't even need a game controller unless that is more comfortable for you. Reflexes are more important in the third game than the first or second. You can really start wherever you want so I'll give you some pros/cons for where you want to.

Dragon Age: Origins, the first game of this series. If you start here, you'll meet people and make decisions that can impact your world and story in the second and third game. Very story-based, some of the best companions. Generally I'd say this is the place to start so you learn everything from beginning. There's a part you go into the Fade which can be really long and frustrating, I highly recommend using walkthrough instructions online if you get too frustrated :) There are several DLCs you can play too that set up the next games further.

Dragon Age: II. Secretly my favorite of the games, but don't start here lol. I think this should be played after Origins. Fair warning, folks tend to either love or hate this game. I love it.

Dragon Age: Inquisition, the most recent game. It's got a better look and more updated tutorials based on how folks playl games now. It has a little more reflex-dependent gameplay but there are tutorials and easier modes. Its pacing can be faster depending if you want to do all the side quests, it feels more open world and exploring which can be a lot of fun if you're having fun. This is not a bad place to start either if you want to jump right in. You wont' have the backstory yet for some of the characters but you'll figure it out :)

Happy playing, I hope you enjoy yourself!

#asks #anonymous

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typewriter83 · 1 month

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I know you said you didn't wanted anyone commenting about last chapter anymore but I'm sorry, I just have to say: bill and ellie's dynamics is so funny and endearing lol. The way she could be a mastermind about everything medicine-related but he would still correct and mind her business was sending me. And i feel like you're really putting in character what bill is. 'cause like, hbo bill and game bill are sifferent. While Game!bill was a cynical and probably wouldn't even have the patience to teach anyone anything, show!bill is more soft in some kind of light, open-minded and has his own tough way to show how he cares (making dinners for frank, now this little dynamic with ellie, for example...) and you know how to write that. Can't wait to see more of them and very curious about how will he react when he finds out about that, because I feel like I can imagine what everyone's reaction will be about it but bill is still getting me in a knot

Commenting on chapter 7 is 100% fine - I just have to give myself the option to not answer if it’s uncomfortable for me. I love chatting with y’all about my writing (and fics in general!) 🩷

Yes! Finally, let’s talk about Ellie and Bill! 🩷 I watched the game walkthrough after watching S1, so imagine my surprise when I saw the interaction (beef, it’s beef) between Ellie and Bill - the level of immature bickering on both their parts was off the charts. I laugh every time I watch.

When I was creating this AU, I wanted to somehow work Bill and Frank into the diverged timeline. Based on their characters from the show, I estimate they’re about 10-15 years older than Joel, so they’re in their early-mid 70s if I had to guess. So, they’re living their best retired lives in Jackson.

Bill would never go out of his way to interact with anyone, but he’s also not going to turn a deaf ear to people around his home. Frank is so open and accepting of people, the community flocks to him, so naturally (but Bill would never admit it), Bill is privy to the town’s gossip and he likes it, lol.

Frank is fond of Ellie, therefore it’s become Bill’s job to protect her - I see this as an extension of his relationship with Joel. Frank accepted and befriended Joel, so therefore it was Bill’s job to protect him because Bill would be loathe to admit that anyone is his friend - but Bill isn’t going to let this feisty genius get away with anything regardless if she’s correct in her assessments, there’s always something more for her to learn so he’s going to feed her more knowledge under the guise of pushing her buttons.

I really hope you like where I take this once the showdown comes - because, let’s face it, Jackson is the Wild West at this point. There’s a “bad guy” in town, he’s a threat to someone and a number of vigilantes. I think Bill’s reaction to that might be surprising, but I also think it fits with how I’ve interpreted his personality.

Thanks for reading and following along 🩷

🫶🏻

#mama bear speaks #ask away!#ltw_ao3

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ettadunham · 3 months

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not to brag... but i've been gaming.

there were several games i finished recently, and one of them was project eden: an action-adventure game from 2001, made by the same studio who brought us the original tomb raider games. and i absolutely hated playing this.

you play as a group of future cops who - no joke - have a more diverse cast than a 2010s marvel movie. there's even a robot! they really covered all their bases. and as your first mission, you have to investigate some kind of disturbance at the real meat factory. (don't worry, one of the characters makes the joke. and the female protag facepalms. it's kind of beautiful, ngl.)

also, the real meat factory is actually a synthetic meat factory. that being said, there are a suspicious number of dogs in the labs. and yes, you will have to kill a lot of dogs. but that's just part of playing a cop simulator i suppose.

also, also, most of the dogs are mutant dogs, because the story then pivots to you fighting mutants. because drugs. this is now also an anti-drug psa.

you might be catching on to the fact that the story and the tone of this game is... kinda weird. the voice acting is not helping either, giving us some of the most confounding deliveries imaginable. that in itself, can be kinda charming and bad in a fun way, and i was totally on board! if anything, the ps2 graphics only enhance this feeling, and i was even more delighted to discover that the game sometimes would just have 2d drawings instead of 3d assets as its non-interactive objects. what a weird and cost-effective old school design choice!

there's a pretty fun gimmick to the game's team setup as well. most puzzles and obstacles in the game require you to use multiple or specific characters - carter (the team lead) can open security doors, minoko is a hacker, etc. you also sometimes have to use one character to hold down a lever so the other can go through a door... things like that. apparently the game has a multiplayer option (my version just crashed when i clicked on it though, lol), which i imagine might make this whole aspect even more fun, but it all works in a single player mode as well.

except... the ai and the pathfinding is absolute dogshit. and your companions will not follow you. andre (the repair guy) especially seems to hate following you, and will get stuck on the most mundane surfaces. and given that most of the game is just you running around, trying to retrace your steps or finding where you're supposed to be going, having to do this regularly for multiple characters is an absolute nightmare.

also, the part where you have to shoot someone? bad. boring. you get new weapons throughout the game, but who cares. it's not even worth trying to strategize (other than for like one enemy that you can't take out unless you shoot at it very specifically), because when you die, you just resurrect at a checkpoint, and your enemies don't even regain health. it's not challenging but it is tedious.

you do have to somewhat look out for your ammo though, since you can only recharge your weapons at so-called recharge stations or use energy cells, that are a finite resource early on. at some point, i actually managed to softlock myself, because i needed to use a weapon to unlock a recharger and - you guessed it - i was out of ammo. great game design, guys. good thing that cheat codes still existed in 2001 (thank you, cheat codes!)

oh, and did i mention? there is 3d platforming. my favorite. great. awesome.

overall, i was using a walkthrough with this one a lot. like... a lot. there are just parts where it's absolutely not clear what you're supposed to be doing, and it's easy to get lost. there was also a part where i'm pretty sure i managed to get an npc killed that i was supposed to talk to to advance the quest. good thing i was saving pretty regularly by that point.

so... yeah. actually playing this game? not super fun. would not particularly recommend. the puzzles with the multiple characters are fun, and i especially liked a level where your team gets separated, and you have to do things in one section to help your other team members, but otherwise... the shooting and the running around gets old pretty fast.

that is until about 2/3 of the game where you get an unexpected flashback from one of the characters, tying her to the plot. turns out, she was essentially kidnapped by the cops when she was a kid, and got separated from her sister and father. wild.

i want to reiterate that we are at this point 2/3 into the game with no prior indication that our characters had any ties to the loosely defined story. we barely even defined our characters.

this is exactly the kind of nonsense i signed up for!

anyway, at this point, like me, you might think: oh. so the cops are the bad guys in this game! they really were ahead of the zeitgeist!

and to be fair, there are things in this game that would support the theory that this was actually intentional on the game's end. after all, the story takes place in a cyberpunk future where the cops are clearly there to protect corporate interests. we even meet a group of people living underground, whom our cops tell that they wouldn't protect them. it's all not very subtle.

but... no, it turns out that the bad guy is actually minoko's (said character with the flashbackstory) dad. because he's an evil scientist.

oh. that's actually pretty boring.

except, sike! spoiler alert! the real bad guy is actually the sister! who's still a little girl, because weird science. and fair play! if it wasn't gonna be the cops, creepy child is always a close second for a big bad choice.

and then the game ends on an absolutely bizarre note that made me laugh throughout the entirety of the credits.

10/10! no notes! never ever play it!

#adventure game extravaganza #mse's playing adventure games #mse's playing project eden #project eden #video game

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oathwilled · 5 months

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Hey, I was curious how do you make your picture edits?

hello!

honestly, photoshop and throwing images on top of things until i like it. it's a bit of a process that's hard to explain in detail without having a focus point, but honestly finding a good psd that fits your character/aesthetic is a great start ( i use @somresources for most my coloring psds, and there's a whole lot of wonderful creators out there a whole variety of resources ).

if you've worked with photoshop before, it's just a matter of tossing things together until you find what works, but if you haven't messed with it much before I'd recommend finding some premade templates (you can find these by searching tags like "promo template" or "rp templates" for a start) that fit what you what to do just so you can see how they're made and how to adjust things and what different things do.

other than that, really, it's sometimes as simple as finding a screencap i like, cropping them to tumblr-friendly dimensions, and tossing my psd on top and calling it a day, and sometimes it's more involved.

if you don't have photoshop, photopea is a great free browser-based alternative, and there are other free open-source programs like gimp that are powerful tools but sometimes have a bigger learning curve.

i'm sorry if this is vague but honestly it's about as much as i can offer without doing an actual walkthrough of a project and alas i don't have the oomph for that right now, lmao. but there's also just lots of resources online and in youtube for tips and tricks and things for all sorts of programs! the amount of times i google ' how to xyz in photoshop ' all the time is absurd, lol.

#;; & gathered round the campfire. ( ooc )#prettythinginthehouse #( ty for the question !#i'm not up to date on rpc aesthetics 99% of the time tho so #idek how to be modern lmfao )

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zentloper-xmas · 6 months

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Season’s Greetings! I’m writing to you in a frantic state because right now it feels like I have 17 million things on my to-do list and, like the Lernaean Hydra, every time I knock one off it, two more appear in its place! @0@

I guess that begs the question: What have we been up to this past year? Well, besides a beach trip to Corpus Christi, Ren Faire in Bastrop, hike in Dripping Springs, backpacking trip to Lost Maples, enjoying time with my brother’s family and Neil’s parents over Easter, marching on the Capitol for Trans rights, Furry convention in Houston, kayaking the river in Austin, video game convention in Austin, another beach trip to Galveston, seeing the botanical gardens in San Antonio, a visit to Knott’s Scary Farm in Anaheim (CA), another camping trip in Cameron, running our spooky garage walkthrough for Halloween, another Furry convention in San Antonio during the solar eclipse, visiting Neil’s sister and her newborn in Black Hawk (CO), another Ren Faire in Houston, and loads and loads of karaoke/dancing.

The lattermost of those is informed by the fact that we found ourselves a nice little social group based in the Austin/Central Texas area that hosts numerous fun get-togethers several times a month. In fact, the kayaking you see on the enclosed photo was one of said events! It’s an LGBTQ+ group, and I don’t think we’ve ever felt quite as “at home” in Texas as we find ourselves now. Amazing what a sense of belonging will do for a person! And for a couple. In a lot of ways, the events feel like “date nights,” especially when we dress up for the occasion. We’ve become a lot closer emotionally as a result, which has been simply wonderful. <3

Another wonderful thing Neil and I have been doing is book clubbing! We’ve been reading books on various topics that interest us a chapter at a time, taking notes and convening in the evenings to discuss and share our thoughts. We’re both pretty intellectually curious individuals, and it’s additionally illuminating to explore one anothers’ viewpoints and perspectives on the topics. In particular we’ve found our noses in a lot of LGBTQ+ and adjacent books. (I hope you won’t mind if I recommend a couple at the end of this letter!)

I’ve been getting big into advocacy this year. I’m a founding member of the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) Group at my work, and monthly I contribute an article to the Employee Newsletter. If you haven’t gotten enough of my prattling on with this letter, feel free to give them a read:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-zentler-529005147/recent-activity/articles/ Mostly they highlight important LGBTQ+ holidays and their importance to the community, to help raise awareness about marginalized and/or misunderstood groups.

I’ve gotten to get up on stage and give speeches at a couple LGBTQ+ pageants, which are judged also on an interview, costuming, and a performance (guess which of those is my fave, haha). In November I was selected as the winner! How cool is that? I’m hoping to do a lot more educational talks/panels/workshops in 2024 now that I’m an official Titleholder for Central Texas. It’s exciting to not only share my passion with others, but to be recognized for my efforts.

When we last left our intrepid heroes, they were attempting to line up surrogacy. We jointly agreed to press the pause button on that, as Neil decided to “return to school” to get his degree– quotes there because it’s all virtual and paid for by his employer! Definite win! It’s a bit of a juggling act for him to be working full-time and schooling part-time though, plus our new social commitments and time dedicated to one another… adding a newborn on top of that did not seem like the wisest plan. We’ll reassess in a couple years’ time once his degree is complete. The hope is that it will open some doors for him professionally, since well, babies are expensive (especially when you have to “rent a uterus,” LOL).

I think that just about wraps up what’s been going on on our end. Now to get wrapping presents!

We hope this year has brought you as much joy as it has us!

Rick & Neil

Book Recs:

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine

#zentloper #christmas #xmas #letter #2023

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selamat-linting · 1 year

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i cant believe im saying this, but i actually enjoy playing re2 (remake). i havent played an actual video game in years so i think i'll probably fiddle around with a bit, watch some hurt/dying scenes, and stop touching the game after a week because i couldnt play. but i really really like it! not just for leon. one thing i like most is the atmosphere.

its been a long time since i got properly jumpscared, maybe in 2020 when i watched i am sophie, so this is a welcome surprise. i like getting scared actually, i just find it hard to be spooked or surprised in most situations. i love it when the zombies suddenly grab you from behind, i love it when they ambush right after you turn back from a door, i love it when i enter a dark hallway and shine a flashlight only to find a zombie that has been standing completely still and so close to me without noticing suddenly comes alive. i love it when im in a room exploring and the steady thumping suddenly erupts into a sound of breaking glass and a zombie stumbled in to fight me. i love it when dead bodies are dangling off the ceiling. i love it when i have to dread going up the stairs because a zombie would throw itself at the window nearby and you can never tell how long will the wooden boards would hold up.

and especially, that creepy thing with no skin. with all the brains and organs out in the open. its sooo scary. the terror i felt when i set up the c4 and the noises just came at me. i actually forgot that room actually has those creatures roaming around and i only remember AFTER i set up the bomb! i instantly ran to the corner near the door to shield myself from the blast, make sure none of those fuckers are creeping up at me from behind, and have close access to the exit just in case i have to bail. well, apparently those unholy perversion of human flesh decided to jump at me from the open ceiling! awesome! i love it when leon frantically stab at the creature and wasted half of our shotgun ammos just to make sure its dead! not a good decision in hindsight but we were spooked! the immersion of this game is top notch! it was sooo satisfying to get all of the puzzles. ALL OF THE PUZZLES.

have i told you how much i like the puzzles? i purposely try to not read any game walkthrough and blindly feel the museum / police station so i can fully explore the place on my own terms and it was just. so much fun. guys this is just like homestuck! aksnksxnzns anyways! ugh. it took a lot of backtracking and getting lost but i do adore the feeling of being confused amidst a sea of gore. it get me to look at things a lot closer because i dont know which one are relevant game clues and which ones are just props. it feels so satisfying when i solved things on my own and its just. SO PRETTY. the visuals! not to be a horror freak but the art and sfx are just sooo beautiful. the blood splatters are exquisitely done, the corpses, the zombies, the body mutations, its so gory. i wish i can kneel on one of the downed policemen so i can take in the details of their gored neck! i kinda want to poke at it lol. and the environment art for the museums are beautiful too. but if i have to see this irl i would wonder what kind of budget mismanagement that happens in the city to repurpose a fucking cultural center to be a police office.

right now, im trapped in the parking lot. before that, i went to the hidden pathway under the giant sculpture. i was disappointed at first at the lack of sprawling rooms. there was only a bunch of handgun ammos and some herbs and some construction items barring the way. now where should i go next? and then, that giant mutated zombie came. FUCK.

look, that was the best but also the most horrifying parts i've seen yet. i only have a grenade, a handgun, and a shotgun with exactly five bullets. i ran circles trying to find an exit but i was trapped! and everything got foggier and foggier and i cant see clearly let alone open a fucking map to get my bearings! and everytime i got caught my health dropped from fine to critical! what the fuck! the scene was gruesome too! but i didnt die tho. just so you know. i did finish off that thing with two grenades and a handgun. this game is so fun. im excited to explore everything! and i cant wait to see more of ada. the first thing we see of her is saving us from a rabid dog! that is so cool. i like how she told leon off to stop minding her business. she looks cute but she is so cool and awesome... *sigh*

and other than that... haha. i have to admit leon is cute. i feel bad making him run when his health is in caution because he sound ragged and tired. i like the tiny details in his idle animations and, lets just say im a little bit flustered sometimes. i cant wait to get off work so i can play this game again!

anyway, anybody knows good nsfw resident evil fanartists? so far i only find @/IOHMzgd on twitter.

#resident evil #re2 remake

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aero-sense · 1 year

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So, it took me an unusually long time to get this post out. Personal life got in the way and there were technical difficulties with the game. Right when I got to the last part before facing the boss, an enemy wouldn't drop a key item and then my save files got corrupted, so I had to replay the entire level again...

...

(¶⁋ ▾ ¶⁋)

Luckily it didn't take as long as I thought because i finished running around getting every single information. So here we go!

This is not meant to be a critical review or a detailed walkthrough. All I will do is point out little details I notice or like. I'm doing this for my own fun, not to be accurate.

Port village:

Something cool I didn't mention before is that the game screen uses large gears and elements (ie. water, fire) when you select things.

An issue with the game is how unlit the models are, especially during the cut scenes for this level.

The soundtrack of the game is really immersive. The music fades out with atmospheric sounds like whispering in the village, fog horns from ships, and birds calling. It's relaxing and one of the best parts of the game.

The location of the port village is in the Earth Kingdom, on a peninsula very close to the fire nation. The village went under FN occupation several years ago (according to the PSP version).

This level really goes in depth with the effects of colonization and what happens to a village under FN occupation. The villagers are taxed heavily and are expected to feed fire nation soldiers. Supplies like food and medicine are confiscated or outright stolen. Sentimental objects like family heirlooms are taken to demoralize villagers. They are confined to the village, under constant supervision and threat of imprisonment. A woman has to use tax money to afford food and is afraid the captain will find her.

One of the quests you have to help an old widow being harassed by tax collectors. Those outside of the village are taxed more. Her husband was an EK hero until he died and left her only a house. The soldiers are threatening to evict her from her house if she can't pay her taxes ( don't worry we kill them :)).

Despite losing most of their supplies, villagers will regret that they can't offer food to us. The FN did not kill their generous spirit.

Most of the overheard sound lines you get from FN soldiers are jokes and sympathy. What they're having for lunch, how they hate this place, and a lot of jokes about their military life. There are fire benders that object to the treatment of the village and Katara (currently imprisoned). The game portrays most soldiers would be happy to leave the military and get along with other nations.

Villagers will gossip about Katara in prison, FN soldiers will object to it, but no one mentions Zuko. No one cares... (Did you hear they captured prince zuko and that poor, POOR, water bender girl??? How could they be so CRUEL).

To sneak around, we end up taking stealing uniforms from small soldiers, suggesting that the Fire Nation take children into their infantry, what a surprise. They also hate talking to children, always responding with "ugh, good riddance" or "stay away" (those soldiers and us disguised). Maybe Zhao didn't have a vendetta against Zuko, maybe the FN is just like that, lol.

Momo's theme song is the same track when sneaking around. They add the same blur effect and people making momo sounds from the show when you play as him. He has an idle animation where he flips his ears around and does a cute little somersault in the air when he finds something what a cutie i love you Momo.

Have this glitched screenshot of Momo t-posing in the shop.

Certain characters can open chests and the location indicates who, such as being near water for Katara, or simple mechanisms for Sokka. This level decided some flowers and butterflies fit Aang. Cute.

So it makes sense that the FN attack you when you unlock chests, but they don't when you use bending to reveal them. This suggests the FN soldiers could care less if you're a water bender in disguise, but God forbid if you take their stuff.

You can help a random FN servant from being pelted by fruits from EK villagers. It's suggested that he's from the commoner and isn't a formal soldier (what his exact status is unclear). After telling him about soldiers stealing supplies, he expresses shame for his nation and wants you to tell his master, a good captain. The captain appreciates you helping his servant, condemns the corrupt captain, and promises to end the stealing.

You can help free other prisoners when you come for Katara. There is one Fire Nation soldier, who was locked up as a test subject for the FN war machines. The FN does human experimentation :)

[DS]

I like how Sokka tries to take charge and Aang reminds him he's over 100 years old, then Sokka backtracks and asserts his authority as the youngest in the group.

So overall, the humor pretty off base in the game, you especially see it more as the story progresses. However, in this version, the humor is way better and more refreshing. I think it helps with the expressive sprites and lack of voice acting.

There's a kid that sings Iroh's song, cute!

At the docks, a sailor says goods are disappearing off ships. The FN are deliberately targeting foreign looking merchant ships like his.

I like how Sokka and Aang look in their disguises and while walking, their sprites look just enough like the other guards while remaining them.

At the prison, Aang apologizes for coming up with a plan first and calls Sokka captain. He uses that nickname twice, and I wonder if it's influenced from the time they "ice dodged" together.

About voice acting, you do hear some during important cutscenes, right after you fight the boss for instance. Personally, I prefer if they just cut it out, it's very jarring to hear after playing mostly without it.

[PSP]

The game emphasizes that Aang is a lot more adventurous and risk-taking while Sokka pretends to be brave.

More expansion of the prison. The town used to have many young men until the FN locked them all up over false accusations or concerns of rebellion. The town is now dwindling without its able workers. This gets even worse, considering this establishes the FN uses slavery throughout their colonies.

Something I appreciate is how diverse a lot of the designs are for this version. This guy had no reason to look like this.

This game adds a lot of nuance towards how EK feel about the FN. Some villagers in the town are having a vivid conversation. One says that one day they'll wipe the town clean of FN (fair). The other says how not all are bad, some disagree with their nation's actions like down by the port (referenced below).

Evidence of the FN not being in unison towards the war. When you talk to a FN soldier (outside of disguise), he talks how a lot of people are questioning the FN's actions, how they recently captured a woman and put her into forced labor, and that he's getting doubts about being a soldier now.

After rescuing Katara, she insists on saving the woman mentioned above, Lian, a captured mechanic. In the other versions Sokka objects, upset that she "works" for the FN, having already fought her machine. However, in this version, Sokka uses logic and doesn't blame her for her circumstances! Can't tell you how refreshing this was.

Lian is so ominously anime in this artstyle...

If the DS version has better humor, the PSP version has a much better script. The conversations flow much better, the characters act more naturally instead of just following plot beats, and their dynamics are more positive like in the show.

#hopefully i wont take as long for the next level #but no promises....(Ｔ▽Ｔ)#this was probably the most interesting content wise level so far #atla the game (2006)#atla #aang #sokka #game sense

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