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morgana-ren · 5 months

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Hi Morgana :)) hope you're having a good day. So I stumbled upon this video and the discourse in the comments https://youtube.com/shorts/cbtSWTjXvZQ?si=8g19VZHJUNI-5niU

And quite frankly got curious as I didn't get to play much of an early access Astarion but I do remember how his attitude at the tiefling/goblin party seems a lil different from early access to launch as well as his noble to charlatan change. So I thought that I could ask the Lore Mommy do you think he was changed that much and or how these changes shifted your perspective on his character. Because personally I do view him as a decadent and somewhat hedonistic as Ascended and those traits do show in his Spawn persona as well.

So just curious about your thoughts on this:))

Okay, I ended up fucking rambling and getting off topic here. This is too long for comfort. I'm sorry I just ended up blabbing, I swear that wasn't the intention lmao. I ended up looking into the comments at aforementioned discourse and it just reminded me of shit, so please forgive me. I tend to r a m b l e with a fuckin capital R. I'm talking in a more general sense and not at anyone in particular, most especially not you, so please don't think that. It's just my observations at large. I love questions like this and I hope this doesn't make you roll your eyes.

So, I got the EA version of the game when it was still fairly early. It was Patch 2, if I recall. It was interesting watching the group develop and grow as the writers and developers decided some things fit more than others because sometimes the patches were so drastically different than the last. Wyll actually got an entire rewrite between the EA and the full release. All of the characters we had went through changes (except Karlach and Halsin because they weren't there but they were likely tweaked behind the scenes.) A lot of Astarion's concept was already written, but his character was absolutely tweaked. The art book and a lot of the released designs are very early. We had them as of patch 2 where he was drastically different. In the beginning, they very much were going more for the stereotypical 'evil' follower. You could play as a good character and he would still like you, but he was very much geared for more debauchery-based playthroughs. It's also important to note that we really didn't get to demo everything. We only got the first act, and some of the more shallow aspects of it.

The thing about Baldur's Gate 3 is it is written so well because no character is good or evil. They are rounded, genuine characters with stories and lives and opinions of their own. You can dislike them, but you have to acknowledge they aren't written to be banal stereotypes. Astarion was a bit more of an evil clusterfuck in EA, but even then, there was a deep pain inside of him, and he was using his callousness and lack of giving a shit as a defense. Even then you knew something was very wrong. He mentioned Cazador because you ran into the Gur hunter, and you knew he was kept as a spawn against his will and was tortureda and had a very dubious past, but a lot of the character development wasn't in the EA-- because they didn't originally intend for it to be there.

But that doesn't fully change his character like some of the comments and other videos and posts I see seem to suggest. It seems like a lot of people have an egregious misunderstanding of his arc-- especially on tiktok and youtube shorts where the audience is younger and more prone to projection and group-thinking, echo-chambery line of thought.

Here's the rundown from what I remember deducing with EA combined with my personal playthroughs now that the game has released:

Astarion was absolutely a shithead before he was taken and turned. We don't know about his childhood, mostly because he doesn't know or remember, but I can say with certainty that he didn't become a dickhead after Cazador. Being taken made him worse, but he absolutely was an asshole before he was taken. He probably wasn't the traumatized, terrified young man he is now, but he was probably a real shit-kicker. He was on the winding path to darkness and they make this clear.

(His childhood was not touched on in the EA at all. All you knew is magistrate, vampire, gur killed him, Cazador, slave, and his dickish, libertine attitude.)

He is a noble though. This much we knew. He is privileged. Elite. He took without caring and doled out where he saw fit. He was your stereotypical rich boy-- or that's the vibe he gives off. He doesn't give off 'I earned my way into power' like Gortash does. He gives off 'I was born into privilege and I'm making it everyone else's problem.' He's educated and very savvy with language in a way that those of higher education access learn to be. He is well spoken and snubs his nose at 'lessers' in a way you see the wealthy do so casually. He was likely living a life of luxury and emerging into his own life in an Elon Musk-esque sort of evil powergrab. He might've always been a pesky little troublemaker, but he very much has 'I'm rich and I don't care about you' vibes, even beneath all of the trauma. This did not develop from Cazador. This was preexisting.

He was young. He was impulsive and dumb. He never had a chance to emotionally mature. It's entirely possible that, had he been left alone, he might've blossomed into a better person. But do not be mistaken, he was a bad person. Honestly, it's more possible to me that he would have just become another corrupt patriar with the city in his coin purse. Either way, fate played him a different hand than the one his birth had decided on.

You are told that he is a magistrate back in the city, which is true. When you play his origin story, you get options relating to it and it's actually been referred to a lot since the EA. He absolutely was some form of up and rising politician seeking power. A man with high ideas of himself, libertine proclivities, a self-centered attitude, and very much not a good person. Probably not horrible or sadistic for fun to the degree he is now, but definitely spiraling that way with the path he was on. The seeds had been planted already before any of his trauma happened.

I assume he wasn't quite important enough that his death would cause an uproar, but probably an impudent little upstart with his eyes on high political power just getting his bearings in the political world with help from mommy and daddy. The kind of petty asshole who abuses any authority he gets and doesn't care who or what gets in his way because he has some shit to prove and a life to live, everyone else be damned. That kind of person. He had ideas and ambitions, and is probably very open to corruption from the get-go. The kind of politician that dies in the street and people go "Hmm. Shame." and move on because they weren't anything special or grand. Just another corrupt asshole getting what they deserved. Another rich daddy's boy brought to the knife by the populace.

He was mourned. Someone missed him. But it wasn't the people of Baldur's Gate. That's for sure. He was forgotten before he became a true problem. Killed and stemmed. Just. Another. Cruel politician. Just another bastard with a big head. Just another.

In short, he definitely made some enemies and had drawn the wrong sort of attention during his time as a magistrate. Being the peacocking, lovely, arrogant young man he is, I bet he'd managed to make more people unbelievably pissed off than any sort of admiration, which normally for the rich isn't a problem, but... when it is, it really is, as you can see.

Even in the EA, he is very open with you tells you that the Gur, likely unhappy with a recent ruling he made, jumped him and murdered him in the street and you can let him kill the hunter. Thing is, Gur are not a violent people. If they attacked him like that, he did something to warrant it. It had to have been pretty nasty for it to have that consequence. The main difference is in the EA (later, of course, but still) you can find out that it was not Cazador that sent the Gur hunter. In fact, it was someone different entirely. I think it was someone named Maiden Fel or something. I do not remember. They likely switched it up. It was not the Gur looking of their own volition originally, but neither was it Cazador. But the EA was also slightly disjointed and broken so it's hard to tell what was canon at the time.

Astarion, in his shitty early days, isn't shy about his slight racism. He seems to dislike everything that isn't human or elven. It's entirely possible he had racial/cultural biases against the Gur and ended up pulling a ruling that was extremely unfair. It would be fair for them to seek retaliation.

This is never officially elaborated on as far as I know, but I do honestly believe that Cazador was almost more coincidence than anything. He saw a young, beautiful boy and went "Hmm... useful." He smelled blood in the water and saw someone that wouldn't be missed and offered them eternal life, knowing this silver-haired young man would be foolish enough to grasp it. He probably reeked of privilege. He would take it with open arms and without asking why or what for because that is what he was used to. Privileged people do not ask. They take. Cazador knew this.

(The point of me running through his past is to point out that not everything can be blamed on his trauma. He was at least kind of a bastard before this ever happened. And both EA and release have the similar trauma background almost identically.)

As we know, Astarion died that night. In the street. In a puddle of his own blood. He was scraped off the cobblestone and thrown into the cemetary, where he emerged the next night to his new life-- to Cazador. He didn't die. Astarion the Magistrate died. But Astarion, the stuck up, pompous, selfish asshole very much did not. In fact, that very same noble was forced to swallow a taste of his own medicine-- and it was a bitter fucking pill.

It made him worse. Trauma doesn't always make you soft and sweet. Sometimes, trauma makes you hard and cruel and angry and spiteful. Sometimes it doesn't make you apologetic; it makes you venomous. It makes you a spitting cobra rather than a loyal, empathetic puppy.

(Notice all I say about projection) Honestly, for me, it's nice to see that representation. Because my trama did not make me kind. It made me hurt. And it made me angry. And it twisted my mind into ways of thinking that I do not like. And you almost never see that. You see a lot of people who are kind and soft and gentle, but you don't often see those of us that were ripped apart and never managed to sew back together right. We do not bend and break our back and twist our tongues for others. Sometimes we are hurtful and mean and things that people paint as evil. Sometimes you grow claws rather than thick skin. Sometimes you grow fangs rather than a bigger heart.

So, more in line with the actual question, they very much did change up his arc. He was meant to be much more manipulative and shitty. It was datamined in the original script, I believe. That much was confirmed way earlier in the early access. But more or less, they went 'Hey, maybe we shouldn't write such a vapid dumbass character because it doesn't fit with the theme of 'complexity' we're working with here. Maybe we should make him more rounded. Maybe we should make him a person.' His story had been mostly mapped, but his character hadn't quite yet. And I'm glad they did.

Having him be a vacuous, shitty stereotype would have been a massive disappointment, especially in a game that is so deep.

Here's the bit though:

It is a CONSTANT throughout the game, EA and release; Astarion very much is an asshole. He is throughout the entire game. He can get better, but he's a dick. No two ways around it. His trauma didn't make him terrible, he very much already was a selfish person who ended up getting stunted. He learned to lie and manipulate to survive, but he wasn't a sweet boy when this happened to him. He was a 'bad' person who had something horrible happen to him that opened up his body and made him defensive and cruel, because he believes the world is cruel and indifferent to suffering, which goes in line with his earlier pre-kidnap thinking of 'Who cares?' It made him bitter for sure, but he already had those ways of thinking. He didn't care who he hurt. He didn't care about anyone. That's the entire bit with 'libertines' and the elite. He was already bad; it made him worse.

He was a fucking jackass. But notice I don't say evil.

He is not a character that empathizes or sympathizes well. He doesn't care what others are going through unless you teach him to, and even then, he is still learning. He is capable of trying if you steer him there. But in general? He rejoices in cruelty, being a general nuisance, being selfish, being power hungry, and being self serving. These are not solely trauma traits. These are not all defense mechanisms, though they can be. Astarion is a rounded character that is complex but right now is not the stereotypical 'uwu sad baby' shit that people love to do to him either. They made him relatable. Gave him tragedy. And people love to latch on to that to paint us as these pathetic babies incapable of our own thoughts who need to be coddled and babied and defended.

From EA, they made him more rounded. They made him less cartoonishly gimmicky. He's still a very selfish jerkoff, but he is scared, and vulnerable, and they made a point to emphasize that. He is not just evil hot vampire. He is scared, vulnerable, rude, pompous, arrogant, selfish, terrified, traumatized, angry, subdued--

and the list goes on. He is a person. He is a relatable person. But these traits he respects in the beginning? Selfishness? Greed? Self-serving? These are traits he admired before that were amplified by his trauma. These are traits that we condemn as a human race, but we still hone and harbor. These are things we have and we see and we experience day to day.

And that is why it is so easy to judge him and condemn him and try to paint him in black or white and call him banal morality labels like 'good' or 'evil.' It's part of why we have these arguments over his EA versus now. Because you see these good/bad things and immediately need to justify your love or hatred for him and defend or condemn him because you hear them and go "No! Wrong! I know he's selfish but he's not evil and--" and all of those other posts we love. People struggle with nuance. That is why it is so easy for people to make these videos defending their views. They grab keywords and examples and go "See!" and show little tiny snippets instead of an entire person. Hell, we do it in real life too. We point out one facet of someone's life and judge and condemn them based upon it. With Astarion, we see so much more, but even then, people still struggle.

People have real experiences with these values. People have personal feelings and judgments based on those things. They feel a need to analyze it, but most people do not know how. They cannot say "No, I just don't like him" or "Yeah, I enjoy him" and leave it at that. Similar to how I'm ripping this open right now. And I'm not condemning anyone. Clearly I'm going on a tangent right now over it. It's fun to do. But people feel like it's necessary. Like they have to.

In those comments, someone points out that media literacy is dead, and I'm inclined to agree. Everything is black and white and must be tucked into neat little boxes that are easy for people to digest. A bad character is a bad mean evil irredeemable character. A good character is a good character that behaves good and does things we expect from good people. Humans are no longer humans. They are not complex. They are not nuanced. They are one dimensional creatures to be judged and executed. That is why people struggle so hard with games this well written. Because it is not that simple. It is not in real life and it is not in the game.

Also in the comments here, it seems like everyone is arguing over a nonissue. It seems to stem from the fact that there's a lot of discourse over liking a bad character. People feel like his newer design is 'justified' and even though he is 'a jerk,' he is not 'irredeemable.' The entire thing is asinine.

No one deserves redemption. That is the fucking point of redemption. That is the entire whole ass point. Someone who does not deserve it working to redeem themselves. If you deserve redemption, you don't need it. If you need it, you do not deserve it. People forget that.

I see this a lot. People demonizing others who enjoy complex or more nuanced characters that are not wholly good. People saying characters are irredeemable and terrible and if you like them, you're a bad person. If you like villains, you clearly relate and you're a bad person. If you like this person, you're just like them and must be condoning their actions.

It's so fucking stupid. I see it with books too. People jump on protagonists because they think the term 'protagonist' means hero, and people conflate the two. I could go on a whole (new) tangent about this, but the point is people are incapable of processing that now, because we've really muddied the waters with morality and we use shame rather than critical thinking. We operate off of gut instincts like 'disgust' and 'hatred' and instead of thinking about shit, we just shove it away and condemn, condemn, condemn.

A natural consequence of this is people jump like dogs to twist that character they love or hate into a victim or something beyond their actual story. They will jump through hoops. They will do whatever it takes to avoid the stigma of being a 'bad person' in the eyes of some internet tiktok teen with a billion followers or some tumblr mom because they have been raised to believe that makes them a bad person and they will deserve the ostrasizing they get. They will be bullied and driven from the internet and sent anons until they go into fucking hiding. It's not okay to just enjoy something anymore. You have to justify it to some asshole. You have to break it open and twist it and defend it or burn it. You can't just exist.

People project. And holy fuck, have they projected on Astarion. It's another natural consequence of having such an incredible, well written character. People see themselves in him. In fact, people see themselves in him so much that they inadvertently take away his agency again in an ironic twist because people with similar feelings or experiences feel like they 'get' him better and therefore have more say over a fictional character than the character himself, the person who wrote him and the man who brought him to life.

My point with all of this nonsensical and unrelated bullshit rambling is that I loved Astarion in the EA and I love him more now. I would have loved him if they left him 'evil' but kept him rounded. His ascended ending is him falling deeply into his worst instincts for control coupled with his entitlement and need for safety. His spawn ending is him relenting and accepting and trying to be better within reason. He will always be Astarion. But he can make efforts to be better-- or worse. But he is always Astarion, and Astarion is decadent, and a bit of a jerk, and a stuffy noble elite with standards. He will always be like that. He will always be Astarion. He probably does better there with someone to babysit like Tav, but even a single spawn Astarion made great strides and effort.

I think we take that for granted a lot. We get people all up in their feelings and lashing out at people who like one ending or the other. We have people calling other people horrible people for trusting Astarion in the end of his spawn ending instead of coddling him and taking his fuckin' free will away again. We have people throwing food like kids in a cafeteria and it feels like no one slows the fuck down and wonders why they feel that way.

I like Astarion because he's an incredible character. I like him more in the release because he's more developed. He feels real. He feels like me. (See, projection.) I get it. People are not always pure good or pure evil. These are words we made up because we're an idiot little species that needs to categorize, same as why we name shapes and traits. But I liked him evil too. I just liked him. He just interested me. I always liked him.

He feels better in the release. More fleshed out. Less foreboding and more understandable. He's not Viconia from BG2 who is basically just there to be an evil temptress for 'hehe evil' characters. But guess what? It's totally fine if you wanna engage with him that way! If you don't like him, or you don't want to bother with making him better, you don't have to. If that's all you want to do, then hell yeah, baby.

At the end of the day, he is a model we can use to dissect ourselves. He can help us understand how we view complex issues. But it gets frustrating when people highjack it with an absolutely egregious misunderstanding of the story. Like things are so simple, you know?

In the EA, he was cool. He was really cool. But we didn't know much about him other than 'hehe evil.' We didn't know much about anything, and man, did we like to theorize. I can remember doing it years and years ago before the fuckin' game came out. But ultimately, it was always a projection of ourselves. What we wanted. What we saw.

They made him a more fleshed out being. They filled in the blanks. He is an arrogant fucking asshole, and he is rude, and entitled, and pompous, and cruel, and self serving and greedy and all of that 'evil' shit, but he is also human. He is capable of deep and profound love. He is capable of caring. He is capable of so much. He can be selfless and loving and caring and gentle. He can be genuine and honest. These traits do not define him unless he chooses to cling to them-- and he only does if he does not learn. And when he doesn't learn? He loses himself and fills his destiny of being the wretched, terrible perpetuator of abuse both on the populace and you. And that was the point. That happens when you lose yourself and give in to fear. It can happen to all of us. And sometimes it does.

But it really also isn't that deep, in the same breath. If you like the ascended ending which is a bit more in line with his original origins, so what? It's a cool ending. It's neato. It still has a clear and blatant message, but it's a fucking video game. Do what you like. If you think it's hot? So what? If you just enjoy the goddamned doomed narrative? So?

Not everything has to be a trial of who you are as a person. Not everything is that deep. Sometimes the answer is as simple as 'shit is cool' and it ends there. If other people look deeper into it, that sounds like a 'them' problem. That's their need to justify. That's their desire. Both EA and release are fantastic. Some folks have preferences. I liked both.

He's my boy. I love him for who he is and what he has done for me. And I'm grateful I got to see his development. I'm grateful I get a well written story with incredible characters. If people think he's wholly evil or good, that's their sack of beans, my dude.

#morgana and friends #astarion spoilers #holy fuck I really just sat here and wailed forever huh #I do not expect anyone to read all of this #I think it's my way of compounding my thoughts #nothing is ever simple with me eh

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hufflepuff-legacy · 1 year

Text

On the Edge of the Abyss

You almost sent him to Azkaban.

Oneshot GN Hufflepuff reader

Spoilers for Sebastian’s storhufflepuffufflepuff playthrough (not much of a writer, but I’ll try my best)

Imagine meeting Sebastian after visiting the catacomb for the second time, you walk up with him speaking to Ominis..

“She’s devastated. She just buried your uncle.. alone.”

“I did it for her.” Sebastian says matter-of-factly.

“Sebastian-” Ominis continues, softly, trying to show Sebastian his error, “Anne can’t bear the thought of turning you in but-”

“What? Turn me in?!” Sebastian interrupts, irritated, “She saw what happened.”

“I’ll give you time to think, Sebastian,” Ominis finishes, sounding defeated. With that he walks past you, not saying anything but hoping you can convince Sebastian instead.

“Turn me in..?” Sebastian says aloud, talking to himself. He’s pacing, trying to get his thoughts straight. You can see how disheveled he is, how his normally well groomed hair is sticking out all over the place, and how his calm, collected face is now full of confusion and fear.

“Sebastian-” You start.

“Did you hear that?! You saw what happened! I never wanted to hurt my uncle.” He interrupts. You cast a glance to the side nervously, remembering how Ominis mentioned that Unforgivable curses have to be meant to work.

“..I know,” you reply lamely.

“I can’t believe he’s gone..” Sebastian’s voice wavering, his lip trembling slightly. “How did things go so wrong? I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to-” his voice trails off for a bit, and he runs a hand through his hair. “Oh Anne.. I was only trying to help,” he sniffles, and you think you can see tears welling into his eyes, before he looks down to the floor. “I can’t leave now. Anne needs me more than ever.”

After a few seconds, he looks up to you. “You understand. You can talk to Ominis,” He grabs your hand with both of his, looking into your eyes with his dark ones, pleading. You can’t help but look away. “Make him understand. He listens to you. I need to be with Anne.”

For every step of the way, you were there for him, through all of his mistakes, all of the pain and anger he took out on you. Even when it wasn’t easy, even if it made your heart ache, you were there supporting Sebastian through it all. You weren’t sure if you could support him through this.

“..I don’t know what to do, Sebastian,” you say softly, pulling your hand away.

“You don’t know? You do know!” Sebastian retorts, with venom in his words. The sudden change in tone made you wince. “Anne has no one,” He continues, softer. “I regret everything I did. I know what I did was wrong.” His voice quivers again. “I only hope she can forgive me.. that everyone can forgive me.”

You start to walk away before he quietly, almost to himself speaks, “No matter what happens from here.. I’m glad we met.” He slumps to the floor against the cold stone walls, running his hands through his hair, thoughts racing behind his eyes.

You look at him for a moment, wanting to hug him, to tell him that it’ll all be alright, but you refrain. As much as Sebastian means to you, you’re afraid of him. How effortlessly he cast imperio on the goblin, the killing curse on his uncle, you weren’t sure if you could trust him not to go down this road again. Instead, you walk over to Ominis.

“Poor Sebastian..” Ominis sighs, his face in anguish. “What a mess. I can’t believe it. After I last saw you I went straight to Hogwarts.” He pauses, his milky, unfocused eyes cast to some part of the floor, “Before I had time to talk to Black, I heard from Anne. I rushed to Feldcroft and found her with Solomon’s body.” He breathes in heavily, his fingers fumbling over a nearby barrel, trying to calm himself in the ridges of the wood before continuing. “She was beside herself with grief, Part of her wants Sebastian to face the consequences, another part can’t bear the thought of it.” Ominis’ hand grip the lip of the wood hard, his voice comes out in a weak tremble, “I don’t want to lose Sebastian, but I don’t think we have a choice..”

“We don’t have a choice,” you say. He had to answer for his mistakes. “You’re right, you were right the entire time.”

“I wish I hadn’t been,” Ominis’ voice barely comes out as a whisper. “If we do this, we may never see Sebastian again.”

At this, you falter. You’ve never really thought about it being forever. You’re mind can’t help but bring you back to your time at Azkaban. How dreadful and depressing and downright terrifying that place had been. The damp, darkened halls, the screams that seemed to come from everywhere at once, the black robed figures floating just above, waiting for the tiniest flicker in Helen Thistlewood’s patronus to descend upon you both. You remembered seeing the prisoners in their cells, how a woman seemed to be spasming alone on the floor, tearing at her skin leaving deep gashes, her eyes wild, her face thin.

You remember Anne Thisbe. Her first wish upon hearing someone approach being death. That before her false imprisonment in Azkaban, she had been a Hogwarts student like you. But now, between the harsh years and the dementors sucking out any ounce of humanity left in her, her mind was gone.

The memory rattled you, and you couldn’t help but give a shiver. Could you do that to Sebastian? Could you let him rot away in Azkaban for the rest of his life? If it were any muggle prison, you might’ve been okay with it- they wouldn’t have treated him kindly, but at least it wouldn’t have been so cruel.

You look at Ominis, his sightless eyes crinkled in worry and sadness. You know that for him, Sebastian is both his dearest friend and closer than any blood family he has. That you’re sure he sees Sebastian as almost a brother. You think of Anne, how she’s lost everything in her brother’s search for a cure. You know she won’t have anything to do with Sebastian now, but you aren’t sure she could handle losing her brother as well. You think of yourself, how much you’ve grown to care for the Slytherin boy. His smug smile when you both had first dueled, him taking the fall for you in the restricted section, him showing you the Undercroft against Ominis’ wishes where he taught you Confringo. You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t send him to Azkaban.

“But what good would it do to turn him in now..” your voice is shakey, and you didn’t even realize you had started crying. “He clearly regrets everything. He’s not going to do anything like this again.” ‘You hope’ your mind finishes.

“We’ve both heard that before,” Ominis says bitterly, his face now a scowl.

“But we also need to think about Anne,” you begin, Ominis’ face softening at her mention. “She’s lost her health - now she’s lost her uncle. Do you really want to take her brother away from her too?”

“I.. I understand what you’re saying. Perhaps you’re right. As much as I believe that Sebastian should pay for his actions-” he sighs heavily, closing his eyes. “-We’d only be punishing Anne as well. I hope we’re doing the right thing.” His eyes open again, settling somewhere around your shoulder. “I’ll talk to Anne, If it comes from me, she’ll agree with this decision.”

“Thank you, Ominis. You’re a good friend.”

“Whatever lies ahead, we must face it together. That, I know.” at that, Ominis pulls out his wand, it emitting a small red glow, and walks out of the Undercroft.

--- Notes ---

I honestly almost sent the best boy to prison, but the idea of my MC going to Azkaban, seeing what happens there, then doing the same thing to Sebastian? Nah sorry, loyalty over sense of right I suppose. Like I said, not much of a writer, but I feel as if I did a good job, hope you enjoyed.

#hogwarts legacy #sebastian sallow #spoilers #hufflepuff #oneshot #long post #writing #fanfiction #reader insert #angst I guess?#gender neutral reader #anne sallow #ominis gaunt

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cigarettesandinevitablebetrayal · 9 months

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sidestep ask game asks for ! Rashad: 27 28 ? Remus: 19 21 ? Seongwon: 17 18 33 ? Mateo: 5 12 22 ?

Alright, boss, let's go:

Rashad: 27) What qualities might someone appreciate about them? What would drive someone away?

They are so unabashedly kind. Rashad is the kind of person to drop everything to help someone in need. Even when they have little, they give what they can.

On the flipside, their tendency to disregard themself at every turn, I feel, will inevitably push people away. There's only so long you can watch someone spiral into self-destruction before you have to step away and let the pieces fall where they do. This doesn't stop me or them from hoping Wei and Ricardo can catch them before they hit the ground.

28) What do they find attractive in others? What’s a turn-off?

Rashad likes someone with a strong moral code, a kind heart, and a good sense of humor. They also like someone who can challenge them intellectually on some level.

I don't feel like they have a lot of turn-offs. Maybe cruelty. Close-mindedness is one they really struggle with with Wei (but they're working on it). When their partners see them with rose-colored glasses or idolize them.

Remus: 19) What scarred them the most about the heartbreak incident?

The idea that he'd done so little with his life. He'd experienced so little, gone next to nowhere except Los Diablos. He wasn't ready for it to end. He wasn't done living. And he didn't want it to end this way.

21) What is their philosophy?

Life is too short and we are too small in the scope of the universe to not live life to the fullest. Especially at the cost of those who have too much in this world.

Seongwon: 17) What is their ultimate goal?

To dissuade anyone from following in the footsteps of Enhanced. Seongwon feels a lot of the troubles of today stem from the misuse of boosts and mods. She wants the violence to end. Even if she has to burn the rot out herself.

Internally, she wants to stop being in pain. She wants to stop feeling lonely. She's not sure how to stop either, so she'll settle for hurting everyone else in the meantime.

18) What is their greatest fear?

I was going to say that I don't think Seongwon is afraid of anything at this point, but that's not true as of her latest playthrough. She's deathly afraid of being proven wrong about her friends abandoning her and moving on. She's afraid of learning that what she thinks happened in the Heartbreak Incident isn't what actually went down. The worst thing that could happen to her is for her to learn, after she's killed everyone she ever cared about, that people were looking for her.

33) How do they feel about herald idolizing them?

She hates it, hates him, hates the look in his eyes as he tracks her movement through a room. Seongwon doesn't see herself as someone to be idolized. Nor any of the heroes or villains in this country. Luckily for her, she doesn't have to interact with him often.

Mateo: 5) What is their zodiac sign?

Gods, I don't think he has one. I'm not certain he ever picked a birthday. When pushed by Ricardo, he picked a date somewhere around the time he first escaped the Farm. Given his personality and a quick overview of the star signs, I'm gonna say he's a Capricorn.

12) Do they prefer to solve things diplomatically or through violence?

Generally, diplomatically. Violence didn't really help him establish anything as Sidestep, so he's more interested in building connections and forging allies these days. However, that's not to say he doesn't see cleverly applied violence as a form of diplomacy.

22) How do they feel about their telepathy? Is it a gift? A curse?

Oh, Mateo loves his telepathy. It helps him navigate sticky situations and catch traps and attacks before they are put in motion. He also uses it as a way to instill obedience in those around him through that nagging fear that he can always wipe your mind and drop you out somewhere. Mycotic is a known telepath with a reputation for dropping people with little effort.

Sidestep-Specific Questions

#Rashad Basri #Remus Ramirez #seongwon kim #mateo de la cruz #Thanks for the questions Dani

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creepy--claws · 1 year

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[● I've said it once and I'll say it again. STOP PLAYING THE TRANSPHOBIC ANTISEMITIC WIZARD GAME AND PLAY MY FAVORITE VIDEO GAMES DO IT DO IT DO IT this is because I'm biased and I do not care what the differences between them are I'm literally just here to shit on Joanne, her fans, and their disgusting views, and promote games that I personally like for video game reasons.

Portal 2 is great and people with common sense know this but it's fun gameplay wise and the environments and story are fuckin amazing. For a game from 2011, the graphics look beautiful, better than some recent games I've seen. The soundtrack is also wonderful and I am in love with "Want you gone". The storyline, while told throughout several different games (including those in the Half Life storyline but Half Life is also really good but don't take my word for it because I've never played Half Life before I am indeed a fake fucking fan) is intriguing and the characters are great. The mechanics are really neat and they let you experiment a little with how you play and it makes you use your brain and really think about how you'll utilize two portals to get you around places. You know a game is good when it really challenges your intellect, and you may get stuck sometimes, but with enough thought and dedication, you'll pull through. Also the voicelines and humor is amazing, I still find myself thinking about lines from even the turrets! Also the final boss is really good and the reveal is excellently portrayed. It genuinely sent shivers down my spine. I think this is one of those games where you should avoid spoilers as much as possible and just experience it for yourself.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is more than just funny meme game. It's got good graphics, a beautiful story, an even better soundtrack, and fun mechanics. I got an achievement for being a huge fucking dumbass and not utilizing the mechanics until my second playthrough. I went through the broken elevator level and had no idea I could use enhanced AI to get through that and went in completely blind. I didn't know that was impressive I just thought that's how the game was. I love how the soundtrack is used to tell the stories of the antagonists and help you understand them a bit more. They're cruel, ruthless, and unjust (except for Blade Wolf, he can do no wrong), but they have reasons for what they do and the music tells you this while also being A FUCKING BANGER. THE INSTRUMENTALS GO SO HARD OH MY GOD. Also they give you the ability to cut anything and everything you want (except for the cat who does backflips and avoids getting hurt) and it is so much fun. Of course the game isn't perfect and has flaws, but it's not antisemitic or transphobic. Overall a masterpiece and the ended did make me feel things. Also play the DLCs, they're really fun and flesh out two major characters and also let you do more cool shit that you can't do as Raiden.

Sonic Adventure 2 is probably my favorite game of all time currently despite how ancient it is and the flaws it has. I. Don't. Care. What's wrong with the game. I adore it. You bet your ass I'm explaining why. The graphics hold up surprisingly well even today despite the low poly count (it's higher than Metal Gear Solid 1 and Resident Evil 1 don't worry) and the character animation isn't bad by any means. The environments for each level are beautiful despite how they vary. Radical Highway is my favorite level in the entire game and it's so much fun for no reason whatsoever. Like they put their whole developussy into this one stage and I dig it. I also really like a lot of the Knuckles/Rouge stage designs, Pumpkin Hill looks very spooky (but my worst fear is falling off the hills AAH). I also like the soundtrack, it differs depending on which character it's focused on. Knuckles has more of that lofi rap thing going on, Rouge has some nice jazz going on, Shadow has that alternative "I'm cool shit" rock going on, meanwhile Sonic sounds like that type of rock where a middle schooler finishes school and now it's summertime, I don't know how to portray it in words. I also like the Chao Garden, I love all 4 of my children they are beautiful and I love them. I also like the replayability value because you may go back to certain stages not only because they're fun, but to be able to collect animals and toys for your Chao to play with. Not to mention the activities the Chao can engage in, such as karate and racing. They also let me into hot topic I am very happy. The most I'll knock it for is the security hall voice acting, it's not awful but it's not perfect. Rouge specifically, her screams don't sound realistic at all, but I can't be too harsh because it's not like I can do better.

I guess Scott Pilgrim vs The World doesn't suck either but I'm not gonna go too far in depth with it because y'know, that's really biased and there are problems I have with it but if you like Scott Pilgrim, check it out, it's actually pretty fun tbh.

This has been Shrimp is a biased motherfucker who hates JK Rowling and Harry Potter as a whole for deep rooted personal reasons aside from the horrible shit within the book, and can't shut up about things they like and they are horrible at masking! Thanks for tuning in, if you also like these games, you are very cool. In short, play my games, boy! Don't play the bigoted wizard game. I must go, now.]

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julia-bunncat · 1 year

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Oh no, she found tier-lists again | DRV3 version

❗WARNINGS❗: huge text, some negative opinions and spoilers !!!

Well…. Happy new year of Rabbit, ahah! 🐇🎄 I went missing again for a while ;) But it doesn’t matter, because despite all the difficulties and festive fuss, all these weeks I continued to play DRV3 – my progress reached the beginning of the 4th chapter since the last post... And oww, if you only knew how much I love a full-fledged playthrough, how many emotions have been received, how many thoughts..! It was to be expected that no Wiki, fan's articles freetime- or other events would replace this experience. And of course, the kind of information that I’ve been posting about myself a long time ago, and that (because of my love for such stuff) also included all the Danganronpa characters Tier Lists, became… a little bit irrelevant ^^” So now, in order to avoid any misunderstandings and to make my position clear to all passers-by, I decided to update the V3 related tier lists!

1st category, which has finally become more definite for me – female characters:

What was my problem? Well, I treated all DRV3 girls (except Kirumi and Tsumugi) in a sort of same-neutral way with a slight negative shade, but now I know how I feel about them.

First of all, I want to clarify one thing: although in the orange group all the girls seem to be in the same position, in fact, for me personally, they are located in TOP3 xD In other words, after Kirumi, my favorite girl is Tenko. I like Tenko more than I like Miu. But also I like Miu more than Kaede.

Yes, perhaps someone would find such a clear distribution odd, if not wrong… But I didn't signed the orange tier that way for no reason. I have clear reasons to «underestimate and compare» each of them. Everyone has some shortcomings that repels me more or less, so… OK, just read it, I’ll go right-left:

Kaede Akamatsu. Ooh, I'm like walking on thin ice right now, judging her in some way, because I’ve seen from the very beginning HOW MUCH 90% of DRV3 fans love her and how upset they are that she never managed to become the main character…

But, you know, I’m not upset and I’m not afraid to talk about it. Her action in the first chapter only strengthened my belief that Shuichi is in the right place. Yeah, I understand why Kaede can be loved. I also like her energy, enthusiasm, companionship, liveliness, positivity, belief in the best, the ability to quickly get it together and not give up (in this regard, she's similar to Kaito, and Kaito is my favorite male character)… And I’ve often heard the phrase like «Yes, Kaede has her faults – and that’s fine, it makes her just like real people». But you know, it’s one thing to love a character DESPITE the fact that they does wrong things in the canon… When, in the case of Akamatsu, she seems to me to be loved for EXACTLY what she did. I mean- come ooon, by the murder attempt she betrayed not only Shuichi, not only all her friends (who prefer to see through rose-colored glasses), but herself first and foremost! By saying «I believe in you», she still succumbed to the selfish desire to "save everyone", although Shuichi's plan COULD'VE worked in theory – and without any victims that Monokuma needs so much for his killing game. Kaede is considered strong, but I don't see a drop of strength, not a bit of heroism in her wilfulness "for others", cause all this time she could confess, tell about her concerns to the same Shuichi, but chose to remain silent, fearing that «no one would want to be friends with a murderer» (selfishness again) and wishing at trial to figure out who's Mastermind in some unknown way. Overall, this foolish hasty action makes her interesting, right – everything would be okay if we stopped here… But I just can’t understand why she remains a heroine worthy of such blind compassion for so many people! 😩 She took on too much responsibility by agreeing to be the heart of the group, didn't handle with it, and on top of that, finally left it all on the shoulders of the survivors by making them promise her an unsustainable thing. For me, Kaede is a weak, insecure person who has pave the road to Hell with good intentions – and to some extent she admits it, saying repeatedly that she’s not really such a good motivator and that she’s highly susceptible to positive reactions from others.

Simply speaking, I like Kaede, but I can’t forgive her completely for the way she treated everyone (and Shuichi in particular) + I’m annoyed by the fact that the rest fandom are see her in the wrong light (we should take Kokichi’s assessment as an example – it has always been quite fair). It would be nice if Kaede could stay a survivor and go through a good arc of self-consciousness, admitting her mistakes and complexes. And also, to be honest, sometimes I’m both laughing and annoying by some of her carelessness / excessive curiosity, which she mostly exhibits in FTE's with her classmates (with Kibo, for example).

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The next one is Miu. Weeell here, the reason that prevents me from fully loving her is obvious (perhaps) :’D But let’s start with her merits (in my view).

First, how Miu combines incredible self-confidence + rudeness with blatant cowardice when you just give her the slightest resistance – it's both amusing and interesting phenomenon. Seriously, she is a MASTER of giving funny (and often inappropriate) comments that will relieve any atmosphere! 😄 Plus I cannot fail to acknowledge how talented she is and how valuable her ingenuity is. And this intuitive ability to guess the right culprits based only on inner certainty… (if only she could find impenetrable arguments, she'd be truly golden-mind, ahah!)

However, it’s time to name the chief characteristic that pushes me away from her. That’s her vulgarity.

Don’t think anything wrong, these horny jokes and comments are mostly harmless. I wouldn’t mind saying something like that in a joke too xD But Miu's FTEs and Love Suit event… There’s a certain hyperbolic overkill here. DR scriptwriters EXTREMELY love to hyperbolize everything and in almost 100% of cases it leaves a negative impression. You just want to erase it from the memory forever. So, honestly, if it was a little less vulgar, I wouldn’t be so picky. For good, Miu could have opened up as a character even better (although I haven’t gotten to her death) and she, with that emotional jumps, needs psychotherapy (like almost any Danganronpa's child). I hope her true fans took care of that, yeap..~

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And finally Tenko 💚 Honestly, I didn’t expect she’d end up being my second favorite girl :0 thought I’d be completely neutral… But she’s wonderful. Really. Sincere, devoted, heartfelt and generous, bold and cheerful – a real lifelike fountain of energy!

The shortcomings that were embedded in her just for meme (it’s pretty obvious if you look at most of her sprites) even all together are no match with the shortcomings I don’t like about Kaede and Miu. On the contrary, the fact that her misandry and excessive attachment to Himiko are imposed on the player – exactly allows me to ignore them against the backdrop of adequacy, which she demonstrates most often. Misandry generally seems to me insignificant, because at certain times she felt sympathy / respect for both Shuichi and Kaito (who is considered the most manly man). Yeah, she can be fiery, she can be weird and she even got really clingy to Himiko, regardless of her personal boundaries, but until her own death Tenko was in a continuous personal movement. She is another character who has earned a longer life, but was just unlucky… in every possible way.

Meanwhile, I’m getting to the yellow category!

It’s ironic that here I put the girls who remained among the few survivors, and they’re supposed to have plenty of time for me to like they, yeah..? ^^”

But no, I’m definitely gonna be a little biased. This is the case when the first impression turned out to be so negative that there is hardly exists anything to block it. At most, my attitude towards them will develop into completely neutral… And I’ll be brief, ok.

Himiko seemed to me either boring (due to her slowness, passivity, immobility and completely childish way of thinking) or completely useless (for exactly the same reasons) from the start. She is morally weak, easily susceptible to stress and manipulation. Yes, later she's rehabilitated; she grows over herself, becoming a little more active and emotional, but that only happens after Tenko’s death.

And Maki. Maki I like much more than Yumeno – she might well be in the same category as Tenko/Kaede/Miu. Most of the time, she means well. Her story is worthy of sympathy. But the character and personality… So prickly, cold and detached... Even after «Kaito’s therapy» reinforced by Shuichi’s help and belief in the second trial, she keeps. leaving. her crude. insensitive. comments. like she’s the only sane person who knows everything.

Yes, I understand that transformation/adaptation requires more time and it would be so much weirder, if she become a sweetie-deary in just a couple of days… But really, she can be neutral or at least a little empathic-respectful, while staying true to herself! I even read an article in which the author complained that Maki's crush on Kaito had ruined her personality. And even though I haven’t gotten to chapter five where their relationship (Maki's crush) blossoms, I can partially agree. In both her and Himiko's cases, characters development occurs mainly due to the influence/death of another character = a potential lover that doesn’t seem right to me. Anyway, if my first impression changes, I’ll let you know.

The last one – gray category (I remind you that it doesn't mean full-fledged hatred!)

Tsumugi and Angie… Okey, first of all, Angie went down a great deal in my eyes after chapter three. REALLY. A LOT.

Earlier, based only on fanworks, I thought - well, she's funny. Strange, silly, a little creepy, but in general, she seems amusing and pleasant, maybe she's even a sunshine..? But NO. Not for me, at least. I had no idea how manipulative, selfish, thoughtless and – I'm not afraid of that word – insensitive person she really is, that (as it turns out from her FTEs) just got used to getting away with anything, because she’s a preacher. Her way of recruiting a new student into the student council sect just underlines just how dangerous she could be – and those who think it’s cute actually fall into her trap :'^

But really, she either scared me or simply annoyed. Especially with that habit of changing decisions on the go, contradict any logic, and hiding her own desires/intentions behind the mask of the divine's dictates. I’ve seen theories that she’s actually brilliant, and all her decisions were to the benefit of her classmates, but I don’t really understand what makes its authors think like that. She always acted to please herself. And only.

My reaction to Tsumugi is less intense perhaps. First of all, I don’t like her because she’s a Mastermind, and I treat all Masterminds equally. Their philosophy and way of "having fun" are simply not close and incomprehensible to me. Second, she’s creepy too. I am repelled by her artificiality, her feigned "ordinariness" and affectedness with which she maintains this label in herself. I’m afraid to imagine what happens when her mask falls.

And now… Yes, it turns out that this post will almost half of my (I underline) personal opinion about female characters, ahah!

But that’s because I love ALL the male characters in DRV3. No exceptions. Just the different shades of my love – and that’s what I reflect on the tier-list о/ Adoration, maternal love, tenderness, compassion, respect… I can’t even highlight what I don’t like in someone of them, 'cause all of them are dorks and the sweetest one!! No offence, the heart wants what it wants! 💞

Which means, finally, I can show you a huge (and a last, I promise, aphph) list of my feelings about this or that pairings!

I don’t want to go into too much detail here and to be too much negative either, so I'll explain only those positions that are important or/and funny.

First of all, I’ve had a big change of heart about Angie, so it's about pairings with her too. I’ll start with the so-called «traffic light» that in my eyes almost broke into pieces. Seriously, they were always drawn by such faitful, sweet besties… I'm almost disappointed. What healthy friendship is possible in a Himiko/Angie relationship, when Yonaga only used Yumeno’s weaknesses without conscience, trolled her on her own show and imposed illusions?? What friendship is possible between Tenko/Angie, if Chabashira was starting to literally fear Yonaga’s permissiveness at the end + never adhered to her principles and ideas (and Angie was indifferent to her most of the time)??

Only Tenko/Himiko are stand out from this circle of bewilderment. I still haven’t figured it out, that's right. For now I’m inclined to think that it’s a bad idea – Tenko’s energy was not combined with Himiko’s impenetrable passivity from the very beginning, BUT! they’d have a chance if Tenko was still alive and Himiko kept trying to understand her (and Chabashira, in turn, would reduce the rush on her).

Next, Shinnaga, i.e. Angie/Korekiyo… *sighs* Honestly, despite their location in a more neutral category «I don’t know why most people think it’s a good idea» – I’m starting to treat them more like to NOTP. Yeah, I realize, a lot of people think they’re pretty similar. They are both creepy, to some extent connected with occultism, with culture; they have the opposite kinda sun/moon aesthetics and character's dynamic, but… Ship Korekiyo with a manipulative, spoiled girl, who is accustomed to sectarian power and that all her wishes are fulfilled without bickering..? Are you serious..? It’s literally the same as pushing him against his sister’s figure again 😣 Sorry, Shinnaga's fans, but this is a decision I can never understand .-.

And now to a more positive stuff! o/

(because by the time I explain why Saimatsu isn’t working either, Tumblr is clearly not ready yet ahah ;))

The platonic has changed a bit..~ I've basically added the category «good friends only» and quite seriously consider that many of these pairs of students are able to become friends. Especially I was pleased with some intersections between Gonta and Kiyo | Kibo and Kiyo, because Shinguji clearly lacks someone to share his interests (in addition to Rantaro and Shuichi).

But why Gonta and Kibo exactly? Well,

Korekiyo’s quite capable of teaching Gonta to be a gentleman from a cultural point of view

Gonta can always be interested in stories about bugs, and all Kiyo wants is a heareth disciple/listener

Kibo is interested in Japanese/Asian culture + all human aspects, in which Korekiyo is generally the main expert. [Yes, it may be difficult for Shinguji at first because of the slight robophobic prejudices, but he’ll get over it just by thinking about what a Kibo is really a delightful product of human labor!]

Of the girls, Kirumi and Tenko were included in the category of besties, as those whose personalities Kiyo most admired.

Kirumi herself finds Kiyo admirable (just read her thoughts about him on the Official Relationship Chart) + they are matched with temperament, love of similar aesthetics + she possesses such devoted, caring, "maternal" nature.

While with Tenko, as paradoxical as it is… Kiyo could discuss similar problems. This cloudy subject with inc*st and unhealthy attachment to a certain person… I feel like they could understand each other a little.

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Kaede, for some reason, became the queen of the lesbian party for me XDD But really, she pays a lot of attention to girls at first acquaintance – she called Tenko cute, Tsumugi sexy (and get under her skirt), was kneeling before Miu (although they bickered each other a lot and measured by breast size lol). I just think it’s kinda fun!

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And almost all pairings with Kokichi turned out either self-destructive or destroying the world xD With Angie and Tsumugi in particular, they would have made the apocalypse; and Miu, Tenko, Maki, Kiyo and Rantaro, in my opinion, will gladly line up "ready to rip off Ouma’s head" line. That's just the way he is..:-) Hard to understand, units can handle it 😅

But that’s where I stop! As you may have noticed, I REALLY love DRV3 cast 😊😅 Tier-lists are just the beginning – next I would like to present my thoughts about Chapter 3 and Korekiyo’s role in it..;) That's the subject when I can’t be stopped... thanks for your attention and until next time, ehehe! ~

oh, and my askbox is always open!! see ya ✨

#danganronpa #danganronpa killing harmony #my opinion #tier list #drv3 #ship opinions #character opinions #drv3 gals #kaede akamatsu #miu iruma #tenko chabashira #angie yonaga #himiko yumeno #maki harukawa #korekiyo shinguji #tsumugi shirogane #I hope I’ve expressed my thoughts quite correctly at least I tried ^^"

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northwest-cryptid · 10 months

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I found this image on my computer, which; without context is probably EXTREMELY confusing but it kills me every time I see it

I cannot tell you how badly I wish I could explain this game to you all, more specifically the adventure I went on with Chester but all I have left from the streams is this recap, which if you can forgive my god awful voice/audio summarizes exactly nothing everything and shows just how often my audience abuses the sound/music alerts video below the read more so it shouldn't randomly auto-play for anyone:

So, right off the bat horribly sorry for my god awful voice gracing your ears.

Other than that, for people who don't know; Kenshi is possibly my favorite open world sandbox game because it genuinely has so much to offer. It has no goals, it has no morality system nor does it try to tell you what is right and wrong. Kenshi just puts you in the world and asks you to survive however you want.

In the playthrough I'm doing on my streams I am playing as Chester, who's literally an old man who was a slave, escaped slavery, and lost all of his limbs; he has since been re-enslaved but broken out several times. I've decided that since he has been mistreated directly by slavers he would seek to rid the world of the two factions in the game that heavily support slavery, those being The Holy Nation (who are essentially a parody of Extremist Christians with their sexist and racist beliefs that anyone who isn't a Greenlander Male needs to be someone else's slave, or be killed) and The United Cities (who are basically Capitalism, I would say "Capitalism to the extreme" but no that's implied by saying Capitalism in the first place. Wealth is everything to them, how you get it doesn't matter; sell drugs, sell people; who cares as long as you make money in the end) as a result his journey has taken him all over the world.

Now normally in Kenshi you play as a group of characters you can set up a base somewhere, start up productions and do whatever. Kenshi is really well designed in that the world will come to you and happen at you but it will never treat you like anyone special even if you become a big shot. Taking out a few Holy Nation Paladins will get you a bad rep with the Holy Nation but no one is going to call you an Anti-Slaver hero, but if you take down Holy Lord Phoenix himself, you'll start to get a name for yourself both good and bad depending on who you ask. For every ally you make you make an enemy of someone else. If you build in bandit territory they will demand food to not launch raids, if you build in Shek lands they want their tribute for your colonization, if you build in the United Cities you better be ready to pay taxes. The world feels alive no matter how you play, and Chester is something of a nomad who just wants to explore the world and have one last adventure while leaving the wastelands a more peaceful place than he came into it as.

My current playthrough off stream is actually 100% different, I'm a lone barkeeper who set up shop in one of the towns of the United Cities, I would buy slaves and release them if they chose to stay with me I'd give them a job working at my pub. I was literally just a humble barkeep. Eventually I had the whole situation automated, we have robots manning everything, one running well water to the farmer, one working the farms harvesting crops and turning them into usable ingredients, another taking the ingredients and preparing food, another running that food to the front desk for sales, it was an elaborate and beautiful pipeline delivering grog, sake, and plenty of rice to the fine people of Stoat while simultaneously ridding the UC (United Cities) of their slaves, with the money lining my pockets it wasn't hard to buy out every slave shop I came across, and just release the slaves.

Oh yea and I have modded the game to all hell without a care as to what I was actually modding in, which means everything from vroid models to dinosaurs to uh... warframe grineer? For some reason?

So my playthrough kinda looks like this:

I kinda want to run you through this playthrough in hopes it will share some of why I love Kenshi with you. See the stats in this game are brutal and they only get better by being used. If you want to get tougher you need to be beaten, if you want to run faster you need to travel, if you want to make better clothing you need to do a lot of crafting. So with only 6 Athletics (which is nothing) and a dream, I took off to go get my Skeleton crew (Skeletons are the name for robots in this game) which are out in the Black Desert which suffers from constant acid rain and lightning storms... which are a slight problem, however that's not as much of a problem when I didn't even make it 5 minutes out the door before some bandits launched an assault on me because I happened to have a loaf of bread in my pocket, yea this game is UNFAIR and it's great but we'll get to why later.

^ See this in the bottom left? Those are your health bars, you don't get HP in this game you get values for your limbs. Your VITAL limbs are things like your head, chest, stomach, and obviously blood. The higher your toughness stat the lower those can go before you fall unconscious/die. However you can entirely lose arms and legs and still be okay, you can even craft your own limbs (or steal them in the case of Chester :P) to replace them, and in a lot of cases limbs are a trade off, maybe you're really strong but that strength means you don't have good finger dexterity so you can't pick locks or steal very well but you can bust open a door or hit someone really hard, scout legs for example give you a ton of movement speed as they're basically springs on your feet, but they don't have a lot of health value so if you get hit in the leg you're probably going down quick, not to mention you can't swim very well with large pieces of metal for legs. These trade offs are really fun and the way health values work in this game is something I hated at first but came to love as I played more.

Everything you survive in Kenshi literally makes you stronger, it's that age old saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" yea it's that cranked up to 11, because wouldn't you know it after hiring some robots at a pub (they can only drink grog because it's basically oil to them, and yes they have oil not blood as a stat; man the devs really put so much detail into this game it's so cute) I got struck by lightning and left out in acid rain... with literally no protection from it.

However if you notice most of my stats are in the green minus stomach and chest... and my left arm but my VITALS are doing better because I already took a beating getting here, and I got tougher for it! God I love that shit so much it's such a cool concept because it means you organically grow over the course of the game!

So anyways we get back to Stoat eventually (I had to get one of the robots to carry me) and we begin to properly set up shop, it's real cozy since there's no real conflict and I have plenty of money (called Cats) to spend on resources right now

I even started making and selling weapons and stuff! I eventually had enough money I bought ANOTHER building and decided to turn this one into a big farm, we'd use moister farming to condense water in the air since we're in the middle of the desert and wells out here kinda suck for consistent water supply, we'll continue the use of hydroponic farming and start bread production from grain silos, yes all of this shit matters; Kenshi is a complex game with lots of moving parts, I mean hell there's a whole graph for making robotic limbs and it's fantastic, you have to know what to make at what crafting station and where it all needs to go, and what research you need to do to unlock it all. This game makes you work for your reward and then properly gives you a fitting reward when you can make shit like this:

This whole thing is a blueprint that contains 3 different types of farms (Vegetables, Rice, and Wheat) a grain silo to turn the wheat to flour, then an oven for baking that flour to bread, as well as Grog, Rum, and Sake distilleries, storage for it all, as well as 4 stoves all set to make various foods from the farms, the floor above this houses 6 water condensers that will generate passive water for us so the farms won't dry out, and you know what? This all pays off, we make literally over 100k just selling various foods and drink that cost nothing for us to make since we can now grow it all in house!

Just to give you an idea, there was a moment like this for Chester too, except Chester's moment was when he tracked down a tyrannical Skeleton warlord who had been literally making skeletons go haywire so he could have an army to commit genocide on anyone and everyone, Chester couldn't fight through the literal hundreds of thralled skeletons so instead we used stealth which we had been training for a good while now; and snuck into his throne room before carefully sneaking up and assassinating him. It turns out he has one of the strongest weapons in the game, something called a "Meitou Falling Sun" which is actually really important because the "Meitou" in that name is the weapon's grade, Meitou is a grade only given to 1 of each class of weapon, forged by an ancient blacksmith named Cross who was renowned as a legendary blacksmith who made top tier weapons. Now the Falling Sun is still WAY too heavy for Chester to use properly, but he was able to grab the warlord and turn him in to an anti-slaver group for a bounty, fun fact about that the anti-slaver group is ran by another Skeleton who used to be friends with said warlord but didn't agree with his system of going to war, and instead became an anti-slaver gigachad who doesn't even fight with a weapon.

Notice how in my Barkeeper run my big moment was automating a farm + kitchen combo and decorating my bar to be nice and fancy; but for Chester it was basically an elaborate stealth mission to assassinate/Stealth KO a warlord and change the global politics of the game entirely? Yea that's the freedom this game gives you, you will get these big rewarding moments no matter how you play. In one of my playthroughs that rewarding moment was hunting down a slaver group who had taken one of my characters and enslaved them, I broke everyone out of the camp including my old team member and despite effectively only getting back to square 1 (having both my party members in the party again) it felt super cool and rewarding to break them out of this elaborate slave prison and set everyone free to help me fight off the guards, because my whole playthrough changed when they got captured, suddenly I cared a lot more about lock picking and stealth and everything else took a backseat, I joined a group of ninjas and had them train me so I could sneak in and pick all the locks before opening all the cages and arming all the slaves with weapons from the storage rooms. Kenshi is an entirely unique experience every playthrough and speaking of playthroughs after I upgraded my bar I decided to take a little vacation out of the desert to go pick up some more friends, this time I figured I'd get some fleshy new hires since I want to diversify a little bit. While I was out, this Beak Thing (large carnivore creatures who when the game was released, could accidentally talk and would absolutely destroy you before saying "relax, enjoy death" which is the most terrifying shit) got stuck in our grog room

But he's still only a pup so we can't legally give him any alcohol, don't worry; he still hasn't left and he's now an Elder. I am trying to find the guy who will sell him to me because he's become something of a mascot for the bar. He also doesn't fit anymore...

So you may be wondering if there's plot or anything and well, there kinda is; and it's super organic and I love it to death. Okay so let's back up, now that I have an automated system I've begun going town to town and buying a bar in each major town in the UC this allows me to make money in town and then buy out the slave market freeing any slaves and hiring any who want to stick around giving them a weapon more powerful than a sword in the UC; money. In doing so I wound up in a coastal town called Bark where I was approached by a young woman and this dialogue happend:

It's a little hard to read but I'll summarize if you're not able to read it; essentially she asks if I'm from around here and when I ask if there's a problem by any chance she tells me she somehow fucked up with nobility, which in the UC is a big deal; like a "they will kill you" big deal. She tells me she NEEDS to get out of town, so I ask her what she was involved in; remember that if I get a bad rep with the UC my bars will be raided, all the slaves I have employed will be killed, I won't be able to fight the system so for now I have to play nice and that means I can't be helping anyone out if it costs me my own skin; plus I'm not some super strong anime protagonist, I'm a fucking barkeeper! I have no stats for fighting at this point and can't very well go to war with the UC over one person as much as I may want to help everyone. She tells me it's all a conspiracy and someone ratted her out, she needs to be gone by the morning so I tell her I'll see what I can do; yes you can actually disguise people and sneak them over boarders in this game it's incredible. However she tells me she only needs about 3k to bribe the guards to look the other way, 3k is pretty much nothing to me at this point so I say sure. After which point she joins our squad, I am then approached by another young lady looking to join up and get out of town; sounds good to me but I kinda need people here to run the shop in this town so I attempted to have a bit of dialogue to figure out why she wanted out so bad;

But she's an absolute riot, she tells me she has a pet Gutter (a species of Beak Thing) named Grimes and how she apparently has had a steamy affair with the barman's daughter and then even goes so far as to try to show me her weird rash but I figured we knew enough and you know we stan a lesbian with a weird rash.

But I couldn't just leave them here if they weren't well protected; so I set up a small fishing camp, and taught them how to farm, I even bought them a house and made good sure Khida was safe to leave town if needed.

I even installed a little Gutter weathervane for Ojillo on their farm

This game just has so much charm! Though I really need to get these two some clothes, most characters spawn with pants but not shirts; but the game is never weird about it so meh I'll pick them up some leather jackets from the shop down the road from my pub.

Now remember how I said I'm physically pretty weak? And how I can't really fight yet? Well to fix that I went ahead and used the skills I do have (in crafting) to make myself some martial arts gear, in this case this absolute insanely modded mess of a game showed me I could make Goku's gi and you know I have never seen Dragon Ball but that wasn't going to stop me, I even found a guy selling some weird robotic enhancements and bought that to go with it.

I essentially waited around at the gates of Stoat for wildlife, bandits, or threats of any nature to attack the town and when the guards would get involved I'd just back them up, it was pretty safe and if I was knocked out I had my pub staff nearby with medkits to pick me up and haul my ass back to bed. After a LONG time of this I was finally skilled enough at dodging, tough enough to take hits when I couldn't dodge, and actually skilled enough with martial arts; to explore the wilds out by where Beak Things live, I was hoping to get some beak thing eggs since they sell for a good price and I could use them in cooking some really nice stuff to sell at my pub, would absolutely bring in higher paying clientele and I'm all about that.

Oh and while I was doing all of this, the rest of the world was still actively going on around me, remember how I said I was freeing slaves? They were starting to take notice of this, and one of my ex-slave employee's Frump went by the slave yard to free some more people when this really wholesome interaction happened:

Kenshi really does a great job of making the world feel like it's happening around you but at the same time, taking notice of you. I love stuff like this, it's genuinely cool to see slaves notice my faction and know they have a chance of escaping because I set slaves free; and yet they don't immediately trust me just off my reputation because that's the kind of world Kenshi is, it's a world where for all they know I "free" slaves and then shoot them for sport, or feed them to my pet dinosaur for fun. Oh yeah my pet dinosaur, about that.

So remember how I said I was going to go get beak thing eggs for profit and money? I found a Western Tyrant instead, or at least a Juvenile one; a quick fight later and it was knocked out, I patched it up and dragged it's ass back to my house in The Hub where I was greeted by none other than Elma from Xenoblade Chronicles X and 2b from NieR; why? Because MODS BAY-BEE WOOOO!

ANYWAYS we put it in a cage so it can't kill us and we feed it until it trusts us, we name it Gura because it will become an Apex Predator, and now we are best friends :D

Look at it! I love this thing! It's so cute! It's still a baby so I have to be careful not to let it get into fights with things that could easily kill it but it's a tanky beast and I'm keeping it safe. Well...

OKAY LISTEN IT'S OKAY! THE RAGDOLL PHYSICS ARE JUST HILARIOUSLY WEIRD IN THIS GAME BUT I PROMISE IT'S OKAY!

On my way back to Stoat I found a group of nomads who were also traveling with animals and I decided to follow them, strength in numbers and all that; we're all friends here.

This game is honestly beautiful to me even on low settings; I love looking up from the desert wasteland and seeing huge planets floating over the horizon it really sells me on the scale of this world.

Eventually we got to a town where I hadn't had a chance to set up a shop, the Nomads just brought me to an entirely new place; so I ran by the local bar to pick up a new hire and well, interview went great!

I literally asked if they had any potential skills they said no, and I hired them on the spot!

Oh yea I also found a guy getting chased around by a "processor unit" which are basically robotic vulture raptors that eat dying things; he was beat up pretty bad in a fight and woke up from his recovery coma because the unit was eating his flesh, and then the pathfinding decided he should RUN IN CIRCLES

So I see this looney tunes bullshit off in the distance while I'm traveling; gotta love it. Good luck dude! Some say he's still out there running in circles to this day.

This happened by the way because he was trying to attack the unit, and the unit was trying to attack him and the pathfinding wouldn't just let him turn around, and dear lord it was hilarious.

I was also laughing really hard because I sent my friends THIS picture which looks like the most generic youtube clickbait thumbnail, but was meant to express how much hell I was going through trying to transport all my goods over to the next town which was so heavy I couldn't move faster than 4 mph but of course there were a ton of things in the desert at this exact time of day, that want me dead:

I guess what I'm trying to say with this extremely long rambling, is that I genuinely love Kenshi for how much love and care and soul it has. Every character I encounter has a story, something to say, something to do. I wander into a town and someone tells me about this legend they heard and they want to join me to go hunt down some treasure somewhere, or I'll stumble into a pirate town where anyone who doesn't know the pirate code is immediately taken in to become a slave and work your way up through the ranks because you're an obvious outsider; but you can buy a pirate code book off a drunk guy super cheap at a bar and then pretend to know enough to not get caught. Sometimes I'm running through a place just for travel and stumble upon "Skin Bandits" who are Skeletons who think they're human, and they're all friends with a human who's their leader; and made them "peeler machines" to peel the flesh off their "flesh brothers" and wear the skin as a suit; genuine horror shit right there and I love it. Kenshi has so much packed into it, you could be a leviathan hunter seeking riches from battling behemoths that roam the land, or you could be a barkeeper who just wants to settle down in a quiet town and run a shop, or you could be an anti-slaver and free the oppressed people of the world; and hell there's nothing saying you have to play this way. If you prefer to be a morally bad person in games you can join the Holy Nation, you can become a slave trader; you can steal and kill to your hearts content because the game will never point a finger at you and say "you're being morally bad and mean and rude!" Instead you are chased down by the police, you might have to break out of jail, you might have to fight and die to get out of prison or to get away because you may get caught trying to rob people. Kenshi is immersive because it never tells you "no" outright, it plays like a huge game of D&D where everything is fair to the point of being brutal and unfair. Like the game doesn't deem you anyone important, you're just another person; so every choice you make matters but not in some grand scheme kind of way.

And what's really cool about it is, if you do want to be some important person, you can do that too! If you take out a big political name, someone else will make moves to take their place; other factions will move into the land and take up residency and you can sway how the game map will turn out. You can help the Shek reclaim their land, you can help the Holy Nation colonize everything, you can help the United Cities get even richer, or you can hang out in the swamps with the turtles; they're cute as fuck dude I love those little guys.

Yes the game is buggy, and yes you should probably mod the fuck out of it because there's a ton of ways to cheese it and honestly sometimes a bit of quality of life mods can go a long ways toward making a game more fun.

But I ultimately think this game deserves a look if you're into these sort of genres; explore the world, see what it has to offer; and just have fun with it. If you're curious and don't wanna play it yourself you're always welcome to check out my streams, Chester's quest to get all his stats to 100 is about to start back up again, we still need to put an end to the Holy Nation and make Chester the gigachad he deserves to be; so if you can handle my absolutely aggravating voice come hang out if you feel inclined.

Anyhow thanks for reading all of this, hope you enjoyed it; I could gush about Kenshi and it's little details all day but I'll spare you since this post is long enough as it is.

#long post sorry #oh god theres a really dumb 6 minute video under the cut #and you can hear my dumbass voice sorry about that lol #i love this dumb game so much

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dontbreakthechain · 11 months

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Doing this Scarlet Hollow meme I saw a lot of other people do

What can I say, I’m a follower by nature. Also, couldn’t find the original, can’t give a shout out to the maker. This is someone else’s copy pasted in and then their answers deleted.

TRAITS

Your “canon” trait combination? The canon-est playthrough I have is just my first one, Micah, the one where everything is a surprise. The traits for that playthrough are Book Smart and Keen-Eyed. I get why people think this combination is a little boring, but it’s great for a first playthrough. It gives you so much information, and its Skeptic Vibes work well when you don’t know how far the rabbit hole goes. I also want to give a shoutout to TTA and Street Smart (MC name: Kitty), hands down the funniest combination. This jaded cynical loner who talks to cute little animals like a fucking disney princess

What 3rd trait would you add for hardcore mode? I did do a hardcore mode, it was TTA, Mystical, and Hot. It’s a good hardcore set of traits, hot helps make up for the (to some characters) off-putting weirdness of the Mystical/TTA combination, and, because TTA and Mystical haven’t been special traits yet, it means your playthrough isn’t that much worse than a normal one. For my canon-ish runs, Keen-Eyed and Street Smart have some cool interactions, but overlap too much to make for a good playthrough. Keen-Eyed, Street Smart, And something else could be interesting.

What trait are you least drawn to? This is a fairly common answer, but Hot. It’s passively useful, and getting out of the Big Bad Choice of episode 4 is pretty great, but it has much fewer active interesting choices than other traits.

Speaking of common answers, Powerful Build is fun you people are just nerds mean

Coolest trait? Street Smart. All the traits have their moments, but Street Smart is by far the most op and gives the most cool opportunities. Also, it makes a funny as fuck companion to half the traits. Street Smart/TTA? Street Smart/Book Smart? Street Smart/Mystical? All absolute riots

ROMANCE

Who are you romancing? Everyone, sooner or later. Micah is romancing the dilf supreme, thanks to being in a prime position to do so after rescuing Rosalina/banishing Charlie. Kitty went with Kaneeka, my most common LI. I am not immune to goth girls or the music of Bruce Springsteen. It is also my mission to rescue her from Sybil.

What romance are you least interested in? Listen, Wayne girls (gn), I’m glad you’re having fun, but it’s not for me. Also, Stella’s romance is frustrating on a purely technical level. I get that it’s on purpose and I get why they did it that way, but it’s so hard to unlock. It’s especially frustrating that it’s so unclear whether Stella can even stand you until the very end.

Who would you romance if every character was eligible? I want Bo to [REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED] me until I can’t walk straight.

MISC

What character would hurt the most if something bad happened to them? Something bad is happening to everyone, but I will riot if Sybil successfully traps Kaneeka, Bo is made any sadder, or the curse on the pastor isn’t broken.

Would you stay in Scarlet Hollow once the week is over? I mean, we’ll see what happens, but the game seems to be heading in a Scarlet Hollow is not going to survive the week direction. If I’m wrong on that... maybe, but probably not. If some major changes get made and it becomes less of a ghost town (...literally?) by the end, it might be worth it, but I’m a city person at heart.

Who would you vote for dog mayor? Me. I’m dog mayor now.

#scarlet hollow

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thessalian · 11 months

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Thess vs Glitches

So last night, I stayed up far later than I probably should have. Why? Because I was this close to finishing the “craft every item” achievement in Wylde Flowers and I just wanted to get it finished so I could decide whether to start a new playthrough or what. So it’s very late (or by that point very early) and I am just crafting that one last bit of outfit...

And no achievement notification.

I triple-checked everything. There is not one single thing that I failed to craft. I worked all fucking week on this, and there’s an achievement glitch?!? I mean, it has to be a glitch because ... well, I am a secretary. When it comes to a to-do list, I am very fucking thorough. Also admittedly when I went through the settings menu and went to “View Achievements”, that Steam window opens up but I get a “We cannot open this profile” kind of message, and my profile’s fine, so I figure that there’s something wrong with how the game’s been talking to Steam in this regard.

So I submitted a help ticket (also flagging up the issue the game seems to have with speaking to my Steam profile) but the devs are based in Melbourne and it’s 10pm over there so it’s going to be awhile before I hear anything back. So that’s frustrating on a number of levels. Just ... all that work and all it’s got me is more work reporting things to an IT department. It doesn’t appear to be the first time this has happened, from my attempts to Google my way out of the problem, but it’s not exactly common, either. Yaaaaaaaaay I get the rare glitch.

Still, I guess it’s as good a reason as any to step back a bit. Not that it’s not fun, and not that I don’t really want to start a new game at some point, but I’m not touching it until I get this resolved one way or another. And that’s honestly fine because I’m still reinstalling a bunch of Steam games with my newly gained amount of storage space. It’s kind of like getting a whole bunch of new games all at once, since I haven’t played some of them in a really long time. I would say “some of them aren’t even that big, data-wise”, but that’s only because I’m comparing them to the increasing number of games I own that are over 50GB big, and the two that break 100GB. Part of me says, “Guess I’m going to have to get used to data bloat in games”. The rest of me says, “The game you’ve been more or less obsessing over for weeks isn’t even 4GB of data; clearly the data bloat is only necessary to a certain type of game and you can barely play those anyway”.

Well, never mind. Right now I should run a couple of errands. Mostly just the shops for a few bits and piece - hot chocolate fixings, stuff for cottage pie (I want to do this one for Cooking With Spoons, particularly since I finally Googled enough to figure out exactly how much ready-made mashed potato to use in a cottage pie instead of having to mash that much potato - and no I do not mean powdered mash; what kind of barbarian do you take me for?), maybe fixings for another lamb dopiaza, etc etc etc. This is the last official day of my vacation (read: the last day I would have normally had to go to work but did not today), so I’m going to enjoy it at least a little. Which mostly means “get me to the shops when it won’t be crowded to buggery, please”.

#Thess plays video games

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bellmo15-blog · 2 months

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(April Fools) And Objectively Correct Review of Devil May Cry

The original Devil May Cry from 2001… FUCKING SUCKS!!!!

I’ve made it pretty clear at this point that I’m the only one on this planet who has the right opinion when it comes to video games so what I’d like to know it WHY THE FUCK DO PEOPLE LIKE THIS GAME!?!?

Okay so let me get this straight, Dante is a professional demon hunter meaning he likely has a lot of weapons to deal with a lot of situations. SO WHY THE FUCK DOES HE COME TO THIS DEMON INFESTED ISLAND WITH ONLY A SWORD AND TWO HANDGUNS!? WHY IN GODS NAME DO WE HAVE TO FIND MORE WEPONS INSTEAD?

This game also has a fixed camera system similar to a certain other game by Capcom. Can you guess what game that is? THAT’S RIGHT, KLONOA 2!

Let me get this straight, Dante lost his mother as a child, knows how dangerous the Demon King is and has a messed-up childhood… AND MOST OF HIS DIALOUGE IS HIM JOKING AND QUIPING!?!? Dude, TAKE YOUR JOB SERIOUSLLY!!! No one wants characters like this in gaming! We want characters who feel real, feel genuine, feel serious! Thank God they fixed THAT for Devil May Cry 2!

Oh and speaking of weapons, WHY ARE THE GUNS SO USELESS!?!? Who the hell thought it’d be a good idea to make the melee weapons more powerful than the guns!? Do these devs not know how powerful a gun is? What am I even meant to use the guns for in this game anyway? Combo extending?

And why the Hell would I want to “extend my combos?” If I’m in this situation where I need to slay a bunch of demons, I’m going to get it over with as soon as possible! Good thing they made the guns way more powerful in Devil May Cry 2.

And WHAT IS WITH THIS GAMES TONE!? Moody and atmospheric music one moment but then hard rock during the battles? PICK A LANE AND EAT IT CAKE!!!

Trish isn’t my girlfriend. I’m so lonely. I need to feel the warmth of a woman’s touch. Please.☹

And WHY can’t we pick our difficulty setting on a new save file? We have to unlock Hard and Dante Must Die? WHY!?!? To help us “prepare” for the harder difficulties? Pfft, who wants to do that!? Just let me throw myself into the hardest setting on my first playthrough! I’m a pro gamer! I can handle it!!!

Just fucking call it rage mode instead of “Devil Trigger.” We all know what it is used for, why you got to give it a fancy name? To make this game “unique?”

WHY DO ALL THE GUNS HAVE UNLIMITED AMMO?

Oh cool, a final mission that has a time limit to escape the island. Cause that’s always fun.

What’s the point of even fighting if you can just use the Holy Water item to insta kill everything around you? Oh sure, your end of mission score is reduced but so what? Who cares about score anyway?

Some guy from God knows how long at this point once said that the best game is set in a relatively small space, I don’t fucking remember who though, but I bet that game would be better than this piece of trash!

This game is so horrible I don’t see how anyone could like this game. AND THAT’S THE THING THAT BOTHERS ME! PEOPLE DO LIKE THIS GAME! Why!?!? Everyone I’ve ever talked to about this game always praises it as being one of the earliest games that defined the… *ugg* Character Action genre of gamin… For God sake, that is a stupid name! Let’s just call it what it is already folks! An action game! And not a very good one either!

Now Devil May Cry 2 on the other hand? Now THAT is a good game! Dante is actually serious and never jokes at all, the guns are actually powerful and the swords are useless just like a real life Demon Hunter would do and they set it in the best setting ever. England! DMC 2 is the objectively best game in this series and I don’t see how anyone can hate it AND THAT’S THE THING THAT BOTHERS ME! PEOPLE SAY THIS IS THE WORST GAME IN THE SERIES! Why!?!? IT’S SO MUCH BETTER IN EVERY SINGLE WAY!

Oh but of course, I’M the one in the wrong, aren’t I? Because for Devil May Cry 3 and onwards they went back to giving Dante a more carefree and silly personality, over the top action, toned down the guns and now the series is “better than ever” according to some incorrect gamers!

Yeah, this is all your fault people! You just couldn’t accept that Devil May Cry 2 is better than the first and that affected the series going forward. Fuck you!

And while I’m at it, fuck this series! No actually, fuck Capcom in general! Fuck Mega Man, fuck Darkstalkers, Fuck Resident Evil, Fuck Okami and even though there was only ever one game in this series published under them before the devs went indie FUCK SHANTAE!!!

1/10 Stars, shit sucks, like and Favorite this post and follow for me objectively correct reviews!

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rottenbrainstuff · 4 months

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BG3 playthrough - start of Act 3

WTFFFF you guys weren’t kidding, act 3 is so full of things, it’s overwhelming. (Spoilers below)

Geeze ok where to start. My tav just wants a little time to rest and reflect on everything that’s happened and everything that’s been revealed, but nope - no rest for him, the camp is attacked by githzerai in the middle of the goddamned night and we have the Big Emperor Reveal.

Huh. That wasn’t really exactly what I was expecting, actually, somehow. I was expecting more “this thing that was helping us (or claiming to anyways) is actually an evil mindflayer and now it can manipulate us into doing what it wants more directly” and less “this mindflayer says it’s actually a nice friendly and totally heroic mindflayer and it just wants to be adventure buddies and wants us to be as devastatingly beautiful as (it thinks) it is.” (and somehow, I trust that even less!)

There appears to be a bit of a dialogue mistake. When you ask for proof and the Emperor lists the things you’ve done, he mentioned telling me about his room at the Elfsong Tavern. Lol what room? You never said that. I’ve run into a bunch of dialogue like this unfortunately, where it’s clear maybe something was changed or edited along the way, but old bits of dialogue are still there later on. Act 2 and act 3 definitely show some rough edges, but I still don’t really care too much. I’m having so much fun playing this game and I think the team worked so hard on it.

But going back to that dialogue…….. In my game, I made the perception check back in act 1 to notice the guardian looked tired, and I gave him a nice friendly little hug. Ok? Dude you look tired, do you need a hug? Yeah a hug would be nice bro, thanks. And then he mentioned his old girlfriend. Ok? It was just bros being nice supportive bros. Ok?

And this is how the Emperor described that encounter: “that night when you held me, and I was feeling vulnerable.” EXCUSE ME that is NOT how I would describe how that went down. No. No buddy. That is the wrong language to use to describe that, no. I am a bit scandalized by his recounting. Lol.

So then I met up with my tiefling buddies sitting in camp and not knowing what to do, and the people all around them bitching about refugees. Wow topical. In looking around for info online, I’ve found a lot of discussion of how the NPC’s negative reactions to the refugees are justified, actually, and I guess this isn’t surprising at all, because people hate refugees in real life, too. But look. Ok. I understand your fears and concerns about refugees. Perhaps even for the sake of this argument, we can assume that I agree with you, just for the next five minutes. Ok. And I’m not going to say I even know what the solution is. But then I ask you - where the hell are they supposed to go then? Like. My god. These guys don’t want to be here either. They would much rather be back at the only home they’ve ever known. They’re not sitting in a crowded camp, knocking on the door of Baldur’s Gate because it’s fun. They literally can’t go back. Half of them have fucking died on the road. Ok Mr Pure Proper Baldurian, so you don’t want them here: where the hell do you want them to go, then? They don’t belong in Baldur’s Gate, ok fine, but then where should they go instead?

And of course, the answer is that no one cares. Don’t care, just don’t want ‘em here. Not our problem, they can figure that out somewhere else. But everyone says that, everywhere. No one wants refugees. They are supposed to just not exist. How rude of you to have been born in an area where something happened that caused you to not be able to live there anymore. How rude of you to leave that area when you should have just stayed and died. How dare you have the audacity to pack up your children and flee with almost nothing beyond the clothes on your back and come here asking for help. Go die on the road.

The stuff the NPCs are saying just makes me so depressed because it’s so real. “Anyone could be hiding with these refugees!” “They’re coming here and taking our livelihoods!” “We need to protect the culture of the true Baldarians!” Jesus. Man, too real, too real. How are you guys seriously going online and arguing about why these guys are correct? How are you guys not aware that you are the cartoon villains? Sigh. Siiiiiiigh.

Anyways. Moving forward. It’s somewhat bemusing that Zorru is here, talking about how angry he is at Zevlor for letting them down. Look, the tieflings’ anger at Zevlor is absolutely valid, but ZORRU IN PARTICULAR? My buddy, you ran off leaving your friend to fight githyanki all by himself, and he was killed. My buddy, you ran off and deserted the refugees the night before the siege. And there’s no shame in being afraid. Certainly if I was the one stuck in the fantasy video game, I might have run, myself. But then, I wouldn’t be so loudly critical of others who also made poor choices.

Oh well.

(Depressingly, the game is including bugged background NPC conversations about Alfira: how much they liked travelling with her on the road, and how she’s in Baldur’s Gate now and sent them a letter, as if I didn’t horribly murder her in act 1. Augh! Way to twist the knife in further!)

Hey you wanna see my tav, btw? My giant scary drow bard dark urge who is trying to be a good boy, who JUST found out he is a goddamned bhaalspawn and doesn’t know what the fuck to do now:

And here is my 8 str weenie boy team:

I know part of the height difference is that he’s standing a bit closer to the camera, but I still think it’s funny.

It’s hilarious how everyone is arguing about how tall Astarion is, as if it’s some sort of crime if he’s not over 5’9”. My tav is six foot fuck off tall, and everyone has to look up to talk to him. The only person I’ve seen so far at his eye level is Halsin. It doesn’t matter to me exactly what you guys want to argue Astarion’s height is, to my tav he is a short king and I love him for it. I dunno why you guys need him to be so tall. Let him be short goddammit. 5’9” isn’t even short.

Here he is not being much impressed with Marcus, what the heck is this little pouty “hmph!” face lmao:

And here is my dream guardian, what a beautiful bastard:

Act 3 is notoriously buggy and the quests are notoriously broken. Here’s hoping that I don’t run into any game-breaking problems, because I am SO EMOTIONALLY INVESTED in this playthrough and if I can’t get to the end I am going to cry.

#bg3 #baldur’s gate 3 #bg3 playthrough #bg3 spoilers

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dzpenumbra · 1 year

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2/12/23

Today was really disappointing. I was going to say emotional, I typed it out and everything, but honestly, I've had much more emotional days than today this week. This was just... disappointing and hurtful and... full of things going wrong. Like a Murphey's Law kinda day.

I was up until about 2 because my upstairs neighbors were stomping around and talking really loud. Like... "if I paid attention I could likely have eavesdropped their entire conversation" loud. And that wasn't the end of the world, I got to bed at a decent-ish hour and got to sleep quickly. I had vivid dreams, but I don't remember them, maybe I'm overdue for dream journaling again? Hmm...

However... I was woken up at... 8 AM. By the same people. Again, stomping around and carrying on at full volume. On a Saturday morning. I tried to go back to sleep and failed. I made some cereal and went downstairs and passed out in the comfy chair for a bit.

Once I woke up rested, I started the day with some yoga. It was absolutely punishing. I was dripping sweat. I couldn't even do two of the poses because my hands and feet couldn't grip because they were too sweaty. It was really good in the end and I'm glad I did it, but man, that was super intense. I'm not sure if I like that kind of like.. really fast paced yoga. I dunno, it's the same thing but it just feels like... frantic, I guess.

Welp, once that was over I was just... starving. Even after my early breakfast and gigantic dinner last night. I got more food and sat on the floor, ate and watched the Subnautica playthrough. I wanted to stretch my hips out while eating, I think all this sitting in a chair all the time is really what fucked up my hips, neck and back. So I want to try sitting on the floor more. And it kept me from like... losing track of time sitting there and watching for 2 hours.

I hit the showers, then went straight to fill out my disclosure consent form so my new GP (who I have known a total of 15 minutes) can talk to my therapist about my potential ADHD screening. It took no time at all and I got it done. Then I went and finished writing an email to my old therapist to see if he would be willing to consult on all of this in some capacity, just to get as many good people on my bench as possible. Then, when I finally felt comfortable sending that, I looked at the clock and it was 4:30 PM. I was like... "shit, I better make sure I get to the health center before they close", so I checked their hours. They closed at noon. I was given this form on the 6th. And I had this whole plan how I was going to drop this form off and have a super productive day and then drop by any thrift shop or Goodwill or anything I could find and no matter what come home with a bookshelf or a worktable. And... everything just completely fell flat.

All of the places I wanted to go to were going to close at 5, or were closed already. Health Center won't be open again until monday. I was just... my motivation just crashed. And I blamed myself.

I got really upset with myself for somehow losing time, somehow letting the whole day get away from me. I couldn't place it. I had no idea where the time went, I was getting upset. But I was also really hungry still... I have no idea why I've been so damn hungry today. So I made ramen just to carry me to dinner, emergency shit food. And as I was nuking the ramen, my mom called.

After a little bullshit small-talk about like... problems in the workforce in my country right now, and the blatant disregard for quality of life and shit like that... eventually we got past all that... and I started to really explore for the first time where my time went today. And I do that just as authentically with others as I do with myself. I get very frustrated and very hurt and confused. I lament about how I don't know how I can improve if I don't know why this keeps happening, or even what is happening. I don't know how I can go from starting yoga at noon - yoga is 20 minutes, then eat food... probably 30 mins... then shower... 30 mins... then fill out a form that is literally two addresses and a signature... and then add a paragraph to an email and proofread it... and then POOF, it's fucking 4:30 PM. Like... do the math. 20+30+30+15? = 95 mins? Just over an hour and a half? So... am I supposed to believe that I was proofreading that email for 3 fucking hours? Am I supposed to believe I was only able to write one paragraph in that email in 3 hours, and I write this every night and it rarely takes me longer than an hour? Like... please, please tell me at least one other person would be freaked out by that.

The first time I started consciously noticing lost time like that, I assumed I was just blacking out and didn't notice it or something. I had zero proof of this because I lived alone, I just had no other explanation. And I told the Counseling Center in my town my theory, I trusted them with that, and... without any confirming stories or tests, they diagnosed me with epilepsy and put me on anticonvulsants and mood stabilizers.

So... this is a problem that goes pretty far back. And it affects my ability to function in society, as I'm sure one could imagine. And all I want is to just find out what is happening. Did I get distracted by something and I don't remember? Did I hyper-fixate on the email and proofread it over and over and over dozens of times, and it just felt like a couple times? Did I fall asleep sitting up and not notice or something? Like... I legit have no idea how that big of a span of time is just... gone. It freaked me out.

What's worse for today... not just that scenario happening... but talking about it with my mom... she just had no idea how I was reacting to it or why. No clue. She tried to offer to call doctors' offices for me and figure out forms and stuff, which is kind of course and... not really... the problem? Like not even the same ballpark as the problem? I tried so hard to communicate that, but like... she just wasn't getting it. And I just kept repeating over and over how overwhelmed I was by the concept and how I just wanted to know what happened, and "isn't it weird?", and shit like that. And she seemed like she was just standing there like "which bag do you want me to carry in from the car?", not like... actually genuinely concerned about this problem and wanting to investigate it.

Not to mention... after like an hour of that, the impostor syndrome starts kicking in, convincing me that I have no real proof that I'm not subconsciously faking this entire thing. And I'm pestering all these doctors and shit to give me meds that I don't even really want to take for a condition I haven't been diagnosed with since George W. Bush was in office. --- some college kids were running in the hallway outside my apartment being really loud, it's 2:15 AM. I started grumbling and muttering. Oh god, I don't need to be that guy, they're just having fun, it's a weekend! I said to myself, "those are the people posting on the local subreddit," and it made me chuckle, because it's most likely true. A lot of college kids around here.

So yeah, my freaking out led to my mom doing what she calls "trying to fix it", and then fighting with me when I tell her that her solution doesn't even address my problem. After at least 2 hours of that confusion and frustration, we came back around and she helped me explore my theories. I'm just trying to figure out what this underlying thing is underneath my depression, trauma and anxiety. My... emotional overwhelm. The thing that makes me look at tasks around the house and go "that's way too big". Like... okay. PTSD/trauma stuff is... associative, it's trigger-based. I used the skate park in an example with my mom, so I'll use that here, probably not for the first time. So I've thought long and hard about it and I do not have any trauma associated with the skatepark. Anxiety? It's honestly easier when I'm in-the-field. I've said for a while, my anxiety is mostly about the anticipation, the build-up. I can just hit "Go Live" on OBS and I'll be fine after the first 30 seconds. I can handle being in a conflict with a good friend and stay calm. I can handle being lost in the woods when it's getting dark in the winter on a trail I've never been on before, while my therapist I'm with is freaking out about getting stranded. And those aren't just puffing out my chest and bragging, that's legitimate confidence in my ability to handle those situations, and well-founded too. Those are skills I do actually have. And Depression? Depression saps my confidence battery. My motivation and my confidence. Depression is a shitty voice in my head that I'm pretty sure is a driving force behind the impostor syndrome stuff... that kind of effect. But what is getting me... is like... the scope.

This was what I was having a hard time articulating. The scope of these emotions. Some days the exact same issue - going to the skatepark - is like... "well duh, sure I'll go." And some days it's "that would take moving mountains, and the payoff is peanuts." That's what I kept saying, huge investment, little payoff. And what I've been suspecting is that the emotional overwhelm component... the scope of the emotional impact... and how the emotional overwhelm can completely incapacitate me... that feeds the others.

Even now, I feel like I'm full of shit. I feel like I'm looking for a fucking ghost. I feel like I just have PTSD, anxiety and depression mixing together and that's just what it feels like for me, and that's just that. That I struggle to go to the skatepark because of low self-esteem, because I'm anxious people will judge me or something. But like... I'm not. Like... I would say that here if I was, honest. I really don't give that much of a shit, it doesn't register so high on my radar that I'm going to straight up not skate at all, or avoid the skatepark. It just feels like a titanic undertaking to do this task, and it feels like the payoff better be worth the investment. And the investment looks huge and the payoff looks small. So... why is the investment huge? Why is it this whole big thing to go to the skatepark?

It's been years and I still don't have a clear answer for that. And people just treat me like I'm being defiant, like I'm being difficult and deliberately making my life harder. It's an emotional thing. It feels difficult. It feels complex. Like doing the dishes.

Oh my god, I've figured this out before. I've heard people talking about this. Wow, this is a cool moment. So... a thing that happens sometimes... often, I should say... is that once I get started on the dishes or cleaning the bathroom sink or something? I just... I mean, while I'm up... I'll just clean the countertop too... I'll just wipe down the mirror... and then one thing can turn very quickly into laying on my belly on the floor scrubbing dirt out of the grout around the bathtub for an hour. Am I trying to like... be careful about that? To make sure I have a detailed plan or someone around to make sure that I don't get lost or distracted in something? Or am I just used to small things getting inflated into things much much bigger? I don't know, I felt a connection to that.

Agh.

This is what I'm saying, like... I'm too biased to be able to judge this. Yet... I live alone, and have for a very long time, so I have zero perspective to confirm or deny any of my theories. Like... I've come to embrace that I will never have a normal life, but like... I need to figure out some of these things so I can have a more functional life. If I set aside 4 hours to proofread an email... just in case, because "remember what happened last time, and no one will check in to like... snap you out of it"... I'm just going to have to dedicate half a damn day to... sending one email. That's a problem.

It came back up today, my mom thought I was kidding... or like... being melodramatic or something... but I said it 100% serious. If I was smoking cigarettes still I would likely not have this problem. I had myself trained to get up and go outside every... 2 hours or so? Even if I didn't want to smoke, I would drop whatever I was doing and go take a smoke break. If I was still smoking, the email situation would not have happened. And the stimulants in them would likely be helping me focus my thoughts more, as well. I was bummed to come to that conclusion. That, currently, it would be significantly better for my mental health to take up smoking again after over a year off of them (after 18 years of smoking) than for me to be pursuing ADHD meds prescribed from a doctor. Something is not right with that.

I don't want to talk about this anymore, it's stressing me out. I don't have answers here and I'm just tired.

Later in the conversation, we had another... episode. She went off on me. Over something really stupid. I was upset the post office was charging me to forward my mail. I was venting. I felt like the post office kinda has a monopoly on physical mail, and i thought it was a government service? But apparently it's just a private service, despite everyone being required to have a physical mailing address for like... literally anything - a job, an ID, proof of residence, etc. Like, to be a legal citizen you need to have a mailing address... but that mailing address is owned by a private company that has no competition. I don't know, it was weird to me. And fuck me for asking questions on that, because I got laid out for it. And I don't want to get into that, of course. It's not my problem to discuss, I was just on the other side of it.

But what I will mention is that I did a good job of saying very outright when the conflict went way too far, and expressed that I would have to leave if things continued that way. Boundaries, I set really firm boundaries today. And they were kinda... not taken seriously at first, but after a bit it seemed to register. So that was good. And she did regain control of her self after a bit, which is very good progress, and we discussed options on how to reflect on that and address it.

So... not all shit today... just... everything went wrong.

So I made fried rice from scratch after. And my canned peas that I left open in the fridge were off... and I said fuck it and washed them and put them in anyway because they really make the meal. So... hopefully that wasn't Murphey's Law too.

I am completely emotionally drained, and I'm actually having trouble keeping my eyes open. Bed is screaming my name.

#diary #journal #online journal #stream of consciousness #stream of thoughts

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lukedanger · 2 years

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Dragon Age Promptober: #7

A prompt that I’d written after finishing my Origins playthrough that I’ve adapted for serenityfails’ list of October prompts for some DA shorts, answering Prompt #7: Dreams.

https://at.tumblr.com/serenityfails/a-dragon-age-prompt-list-for-october-i-tried-to/m3z7zj7y358k

The Fade dream being Duncan for all Wardens had me thinking: why did Sloth go with that instead of something Origin based? And combined with realizing that having this shortly after Alistair gives the Warden all the details of what Duncan shanghai’d you into and Alistair wanting to do some sort of memorial for him post-game... it combined into this idea.

Plus, Lady Cousland and Alistair don’t have to see eye-to-eye on everything.

===

“So, when we were stuck in the Fade…”

Elissa frowned, turning her head at Alistair’s question. “What about it?”

“I know I was stuck imagining Goldanna, but what about you? What dream did Sloth put you into?”

She hesitated. She did not want to lie - it was nothing to be ashamed of, but she also knew how it might sound. How he might view her catharsis, especially given what they had come to Highever to do.

Alistair took the wrong hint, however well intended he was as he glanced up at the returned shield - still bearing the marks of Howe’s men - laid atop the armoire where she kept her gear. “Oh, how silly of me…”

“No, it wasn’t that,” Elissa interrupted as she put a hand on his shoulder. “In hindsight, I doubt I could break free if Sloth had gone with that.”

“Huh, so what did it go for?”

“Peace. I was at Weisshaupt, brought there after our victory at Ostagar ended the Darkspawn for good. I was asked if I was impressed, implored to settle down as the Wardens went from warriors to bards and storytellers of a darker time past.”

“And you were free to leave?”

“I asked,” she admitted. “I thought, ‘if the Blight is done, then I can turn back to Highever’. I was asked why I would want to, why would I reject the further gifts Duncan-” she stopped. This was exactly what she had not wanted to say.

Alistair, however, was not as foolish as he pretended to be. “It made a fake Duncan, didn’t it?”

“Yes. And I think that was the mistake that Sloth made. I never wanted to be a Warden, I was forced into it by Duncan. He… he bargained. With my father.”

Elissa’s gaze turned back towards the shield. Towards the thing that had saved her from being one more naked corpse in the aftermath of Howe’s treachery. Towards that dark, terrible night that made dreaming of an Archdemon seem like a pleasant experience. The Archdemon was just a monster that needed the local blacksmith to fix its teeth. Howe was a traitor who ultimately faced justice.

But Duncan? Duncan was a man that she had wanted to respect, who had been open and friendly during dinner that night. Then, without much change in demeanor, he began to extort a dying man. To demand he give up what may have been his only remaining child for a sacrifice that none but the dealmaker knew of.

She wanted to look up to him. She wanted to see a man who had his eyes on the greater threat, a man who was the protector she envisioned herself as being - who she hoped she had been. She wanted to talk to him, after everything she had done and what she had compromised, to find common ground and sympathize with the lines he had crossed as readily as she had crossed them to stop the Blight.

But there was something else there. Something that she had never been able to really address before the broken circle. Not with Alistair, who looked up to Duncan for good reasons. Not with Morrigan, whose magic she trusted but whose motives she still wondered. Not with Leliana or Sten, both of whom she still had reservations of at the time. And Rabbit, bless the mabari’s wisdom, simply sat with her knowing he could not help with those ghosts.

“Elissa?”

She blinked, brought out of her thoughts with a jolt. “Sorry, it’s something I thought I had put behind me.”

“You helped me with Ostagar’s aftermath, why can’t I do the same?”

“Because you looked up to the man I killed to get out of the Fade.”

“You mean, the lesser demon posing as Duncan. You knew it was an illusion, why should I be upset?”

“Because I didn’t really care what it was. I was betrayed.” She saw him wince at the word. “I wanted vengeance. In a way, I got it.”

“You didn’t need to come with me for the memorial, Elissa. You could have spent all that time with Fergus, catching up. You don’t have to pretend about Duncan, even if we’ll never agree on it.”

Maker, no matter how hardened Alistair became he still genuinely wanted to find a way to make everyone happy. He had grown so much, finally challenged in ways that let him confront what Eamon and the Chantry had just suppressed. She really could not have been any luckier had she been in one of Leliana’s happier songs.

“I know,” she answered. “But I had my catharsis in the Fade. And with the choices I made-”

“We made.”

“-we made, I needed to recognize the good he had done as well. He deserved that.”

“Well, at least the chroniclers won’t have an issue with that. I do not envy Leliana and Brother Genitivi trying to figure out how to write down ‘the future king wanted a fairytale ending with his half-sister so much that Sloth could trick him with it. It was a lie.’” Alistair groaned. “Maker, I was such an idiot…”

“No, you just wanted something that I took for granted. We talked about this, Alistair: there was nothing wrong with what you wanted.”

“Yeah, but still. I fell for it.”

“The only two of us who didn’t fall for it were Morrigan, who knows the Fade a lot better than us, and Sten, and even he was willing to stay because it was a good dream.”

Rabbit barked indignantly.

“And you, Rabbit. I didn’t think it needed to be said, though.”

A satisfied bark as the war hound settled back down.

“Except you managed to break it, whereas Morrigan needed your help to tip the scales.”

“She was well on her way to breaking it herself.”

Alistair shrugged, not particularly willing to concede Morrigan doing better than him. “Still, you’d think Sloth would’ve made a better Flemeth, considering I hadn’t even met Goldanna and it captured her appearance perfectly.”

“Maybe it could figure out what people look like, but not their personality?”

“Makes sense, we’ve all been in the Fade in dreams. And I was thinking about Goldanna at the time…” she recognized the light in Alistair’s eyes as his mind connected the dots. “And I really wanted to know I had more out there. A happy family, even if I’d never be able to be a part of it.”

“Exactly! Morrigan wanted her mother to love her, and Sloth gave her that, while Leliana was still caught between the past and future.”

“Sten carried around a lot of guilt, so imagined if it had not happened. Wynne was fresh from the tower…” he paused, meeting her gaze. “And you felt trapped by the Wardens, unable to escape. So, Sloth gave you a happy alternative.”

“But none of it was what truly held us down, just what we had been thinking of.”

“Sloth picked up the surface,” Alistair concluded, “but the Gauntlet found the truth.”

Elissa nodded slowly.

“Maker’s breath, let’s be glad we didn’t do it the other way around. Sloth would’ve butchered us.”

“Or we would have been armed to face it. Who could say?”

“True enough.” Alistair exhaled, the excitement of their shared realization of how they had escaped fading.

Instead, he turned towards the underlying tension. “So, after all that, do you still hate Duncan for drafting you into the Wardens?”

Elissa leaned back, wondering how to put it into words. Eventually, she found them.

“I understand why he did it,” she answered. “I want to believe he was a good man, or at least one who tried to be. That doesn’t remove the sting of what he did, though.”

Silence fell again as Alistair processed her answer, and Elissa’s mind wandered back to the Fade.

She knew what would have trapped her. Victory against Howe’s men, the Arl’s head on a pike in the town square having been removed by her sword. Her mother kindly reassuring Orianna as they tried to keep Oren from getting too interested in all the sowrds - swords - lying around. Her father telling her how proud he was, perhaps even sending her to Ostagar in his place so she and Fergus could face off against the Blight.

Who knows, perhaps then she still would have met Alistair? Maybe with Cousland troops, they could have broken through the Tower of Ishal fast enough that Loghain couldn’t claim the battle was lost anyways, and then they could take the fight down into Orzammar to find the Archdemon and kill it.

It was, as Sten had so well put it, a nice dream.

“I understand,” Alistair finally said. “I don’t think I’ll ever agree, but I think I understand.”

“And I understand how much Duncan meant to you.” She pulled him closer. “Now, I think it’s time we did something happier.”

“Wh- really, right now? In this mood?”

She kissed him on the cheek. “No, but I think this is enough for now.”

===

#dragon age #fanfic #my writing #lady cousland #alistair #dragon age origins

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animefreak1145 · 3 years

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The Brilliance of Break On Through

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Mission Break on Through—An Analysis

I have replayed the campaign of COD:BOCW numerous times—too many times truly. Did a whole playthrough where it was Hardened and soon I’m sure I shall do Veteran(something I have never done for any COD game. Not even Hardened.).

All missions have their own unique qualities—parts where the player gets a little rush of adrenaline depending on the kind of mission and how they choose to play it (Nowhere Left to Run just a plain shooting match while Brick in the Wall you can choose to remain stealthy like the good spy you are or go crazy like an eager homicidal maniac).

Even within the safehouse, there are plenty of little details to discover if you take the time to look around and observe everyone. Or, everything. (The radio if turned to a Russian station/correspondence, Adler changes it back immediately before Da Nang mission. Watching Park’s body language, as you talk to Adler and she periodically looks over to you two. Adler suspicious when you go to the Red Room or the locked room with the arcade. The T.V. being turned on in the Red Room)

But the amount of details, details, in the mission Break on Through is outstanding. I have played this mission more than any other due to me wishing to look at all the details. There’s so many, I think I may miss some. And I can’t show them off all to you cause I suck at creating gifs and don’t know how to transfer that from Xbox to my phone.

To lighten it up a bit, I won’t focus on the four different scenarios you go through—at least not each one. That would take too long and I do not have gifs/pics to show it off since Tumblr limits it to ten anyways.

I will, however, try to guide to what parts of the game you all can explore if you choose to do so. As well just how detailed they did this mission.

I am going to start with the different statements Adler says to you throughout all the Scenarios(17, 6, 11, 1). We only go through four in the actual game—but the fact it goes up to 17 or possibly more shows just how far they went in and messed with Bell’s mind.

Now, Adler seems to be a bit bipolar on how he talks to you whether or not you listen to him and all his directions. Either totally blasé and cold to giving you and pumping you up with more MK or meds, or actually a tad concerned and patient as he guides you through.

If You/Bell Stands Still/Does Nothing:

Example 1

“So you did nothing? What were you, in shock?”

He throws the words callously, mocking. As if Bell isn’t confused and lost at what is going on. He even sounds irritated that you might actually be in shock due to these memories that are just fake—not even real. Not like what he has.

Example 2

“What’s wrong with Bell?” -Adler

“I’m not sure. . .” -Park

“I guess we’ll just wait on you to proceed, Bell.”

The contrast is dizzying. He sounds concerned when he asks Park on what could be wrong with you. If he pushed you too far and now you’re just frozen. And, instead of rushing you due to how the fate of half of Europe is at stake, he decides to give you space. Just wait for you and you’ll come out of it soon enough.

He does these sort of reactions numerous times. Jumping from intimidating to the Adler we knew as the player, as Bell—kind and always in your corner that believes in you. He switches tactics based on what he believes will work really—or he just felt really on edge at times and threw the farce that you two were friends out the window.

Other examples include:

Scenario 11–Napalm Strike-in the lab in the room where you were brainwashed

“Christ, what’s happening with them?”-Adler

“A mild seizure. Sims, past me a benzodiazepine.” -Park

Again, concerned. Worried. Almost…at unease?

In the lab—tripped up on drugs. If you run through the tight shrinking hallway back and forth like so(I suck at making gifs, I’m sorry):

“Why is Bell repeating themselves?”

“Bell, stop speaking in circles.”

Now, as others may have suspected, Bell is talking to everyone as they’re stuck in this horrible loop of mental torture. Most likely muttering, hands clenching and arms pulling against the straps of the gurney, moving their head back and forth depending on what they’re seeing. I always saw Bell as muttering quickly in Russian as they go through all of this—their mother tongue where it may comfort them as they’re panicking and speaking to Adler.

It’s just a nice detail showcasing how exactly Adler knows that Bell is on script—Bell saying what they’re seeing and doing and what’s going on. It shows also just how hard they put Bell through the ringer(badum tss. I’ll leave now).

All the details too when the game shows how the drugs they put in Bell affects you. Like so. The hallways appearing long. The lights looking yellow. You feel so fast—look how quick you can run. Run towards the Red Door that Adler so desperately wants and maybe this can stop. Ah, why is it running away from you? What’s going on?

I don’t know about you, but I was so lost and confused at what was going on my first playthrough. For the majority of this mission, the possibility of me being brainwashed didn’t reach the BACK of my mind till probably I actually saw the flashes of scenes about Vietnam and calling Bell a subject. So like right here.

I personally thought that I had a repressed memory or something due to me going through the Vietnam War. That whatever I saw with Perseus, I—or rather Bell—repressed it from our mind due to how violent or horrible what we saw or experienced was. And that Adler suspected and just really wanted to know about it.

I didn’t expect for the man to actually brainwash my character—us—Bell! The game made Adler your mentor, who always defended you from Hudson and believed in your skills very highly. How he and Bell were basically perfect partners when the two of you were together.

It’s amazing—cause I think that’s what the developers were going for. The absolute trust. The loyalty. The denial that ‘maybe Adler is being a little harsh but hey, this is to help Perseus so it’s okay?’ It’s perfect. Because I’m sure that is what Bell actually felt in real time.

Yet, if you go through the total rebellious choice of not listening to Adler, some thing’s make sense. The Rebellious Side shows you way more than if you just listen to Adler like a Dutiful Soldier.

You go through this room if you choose the rebellious route, the T.V.’s automatically turning on the closer you get. Of Vietnam. And now, all those T.V.‘s that turned on by themselves(the Red Room, Lubyanka, Cuba) make sense. You were actually being brainwashed. Poor Bell probably can’t ever have a turned off/broken T.V. again. The trauma.

Said trauma being shown multiple times too. Not just the T.V.‘s. But the absolute terror that Bell felt, before they became Bell, with Adler.

Like do you see this? This terrified me when I saw it at the end of the hallway. I just saw a red shadow in the distance and I legit thought I was about to be chased. Call of Duty became a horror game(I also went through the door to the ground too my first playthrough, so before this I went through zombies and I think my heart was going to jump out my chest) I thought. I didn’t want to get closer. I had to, with each step I see that it’s not a shadow but a body. And than I see the familiar jacket, the sound of whirring in my ears and see it’s Adler’s head being twisted back and forth, side to side, up and down, in a speed that in inhumanely possible.

Makes one wonder if Bell themselves sees Adler as inhumane. Not human. Adler seeming to just be a god in their head. All the Adler shaped rocks/boulders you go through and see. Even one point the V.C. becoming Adler and you killing him over and over and dead bodies of Adler being everywhere.

The man has entered Bell’s head and won’t leave. Just like Adler won’t leave Bell alone.

Heck, there’s one point in my playthroughs of this mission I was by the bridge yet there were parts of the lab by it. I jumped towards it, noticing down below there were different floors of the lab that eventually reach the ground. I jumped to reach the next floor and missed and I died.

And Adler mocked Bell committing suicide.

That was the kicker really that Adler truly is indifferent towards Bell. Like complete disregard. I know it’s fake. We know it’s fake. Adler knows it’s fake—but to Bell, it felt real. That’s the crazy part. All of this—this whole sequence feels real to Bell so each time they die they actually feel it. It’s insane. It’s cruel.

But we all know that Adler isn’t known for his kindness. Still like his character though, he’s layered.

I don’t have the exact quote he said, didn’t wrote it down like the others. I was shook he said it at all.

Moving on to the final details I’m going to talk about.

When you go through the room, I believe this comes out for both rebellious and dutiful, really depends. You see it filled with post it notes, articles, plans, and newspapers. And you see once more just how Bell has been scarred.

I don’t know Russian or German, but I imagine the notes are similar to what the English one’s say. If I’m wrong, please point it out.

There’s also post it notes which I believe is in code as well due to all the numbers—I’m not sure what those could mean since I am no decoding expert.

Poor poor Bell. And with all these pictures and plans—of Adler included—it begs the question that Bell may have been warned about the famous America’s Monster beforehand. Had to have—since Adler is basically Perseus’s adversary due to how stubborn the American man could be. It just adds more to the story, despite Cold War having quite a short campaign, they made it up somewhat with all these details everywhere.

When you finally and actually reach the room.

As you grow closer to the table, to your chair in the conference room while everyone else seems to have their own spots, there’s something I noticed.

There’s glasses. As well as a hat. And it’s Bell’s. Or at least, it used to be. Why else is it on their side of the table? By their chair? I believe it might be reading glasses due to all the decryptions Bell does, whether on paper or through a computer, it’s hard on the eyes. (I’m sure I’m not the only one who noticed this. For look at @second-vtoroy ‘s Bell)

I believe through the brainwashing, Bell might not need glasses anymore. After all, apparently they were a smoker like Adler before too but they took that out of you. What else they changed of Bell? It makes one wonder how far they truly went into molding a person.

Which just adds onto how mind boggling this mission is—this game is. This is my favorite COD game, despite how short it is. The details and choices and interactions with everyone and able to create your own character(albeit it’s very standard and not specific but it’s good enough for me) is AMAZING. I’ve always been a sucker for RPG’s and able to get that even a little in a COD game? Truly wonderful.

I couldn’t touch on everything because it would’ve gotten long, but the fun of the Break on Through mission never gets old. It’s genius multiple ways you can do it. All the details. The feelings you feel as a player as you go through it.

They truly did a unique job with this and I hope they continue with this type of game storytelling. Hopefully longer as well.

Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed this rant basically!

Gifs made by me and used the video down below to help.

https://youtu.be/t6QkmkGGHSQ

youtube

#russell adler #call of duty #cod #black ops cold war #call of duty cold war #cod cold war #cod bell #cod analysis #cod:bocw #call of duty analysis #bell call of duty #Adler and Bell #Cold War

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