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owlswatch · 24 hours
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whilst I was supposed to be paying bills or something I put two hours into The Frozen Wilds instead. the vibes remain vividly wintery and fantastical, and the story begins to display all the weaknesses game 2 will really lean on until they crack. I love imagining how Aloy compares the mountains here to the ones where she grew up, watching the snow devils spin by, and seeing everywhere that techno-magical blue light that killed its first wielder
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owlswatch · 1 day
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my day job is never going to be under-stimulating again, this post was a monkey’s paw curse
might mess around and post about how I’d rewrite the frozen wilds if my day job is under-stimulating enough
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owlswatch · 1 day
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horizon forbidden west | sylens 7/?
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owlswatch · 1 day
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Horizon Forbidden West
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owlswatch · 4 days
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situation: helping someone remove an accessory/article of clothing/armor/etc. not often removed? (i was thinking of necklaces, but...)
ah, friend, I asked for cute prompts, received many lovely ones including this one, and immediately started writing for you the aftermath of bloody violence. there are some cute parts in this, perhaps. I did not consult my fanfiction medical expert except to say like "I got this," so any mistakes are my own. for anyone who has been following my hfw opinions closely: burning shores exists in my headcanon only under certain conditions. this is one of those conditions. similarly, this story is not in signal-verse, although perhaps if I had written about one sentence longer it would have had to be, since these two need about thirty thousand words of buildup to get to the kissin. shoutout to the playstation cosplay guides, which provided turnarounds and useful information about materials and such.
aloy/sylens, 800 words, pre-ship 
*
Sylens slammed to his knees in the grass, green staining up his pant leg. The verdant jungle colors clashed with blood so red and free-flowing Aloy thought for a moment the machine might have taken off his hand.
Aloy and Sylens had gone to the jungle shore tracing rumors of a surviving Zenith mobile platform. Now, Aloy left her spear in the machine’s guts, seeing by the shudder and collapse that it wouldn’t rise up again, and hit her own knees hard. Craned to see whether she was about to have to figure out a prosthetic for the only person on the planet who could reverse engineer a Zenith shield.
Sylens winced and ripped a strip of cloth off his wrist. Repositioned it to staunch the blood pooling over the back of his hand. His metal brace hung at a broken angle; the machine’s flail had cut up and under the brace, through leather and linen. Aloy’s voice clenched in her throat. This can’t be what kills him. Not after everything. 
She wouldn’t fuss over him, and he wouldn’t want her to. But her throat relaxed when he spoke. “Need to elevate it —“
So he hung his head against the machine’s strange, smooth chassis and stretched his arms up, one hand clasping the other wrist. Closed his eyes and breathed hard. Aloy, breathing hard too and wanting to close her own eyes, started tearing the machine’s wrenched-apart limbs into scrap. Sylens wouldn’t necessarily tell her if he was hurt badly, but she’d be angry if he didn’t, angry that he valued his aloofness more than their shared venture, angry that … well, scared that he’d leave her again. They’d just gotten used to each other. They’d just started sharing meals with Beta at the base.
“Tell me that cut isn’t as bad as it looks,” Aloy finally said, half-way finished with material recovery. 
“It is not as bad as it looks.” Sylens struggled to unpeel tangled cloth from the metal brace as blood dried and turned tacky. 
“Let me help you.”
“The wound shouldn’t be moved now. Surely, you know that much.”
Aloy climbed on top of the machine. Flopped down on her belly and eased his palm off the metal from above. “It’s tangled.”
“I know.”
“Do you mind if I move this?” The brace — a strut from a Ravager, most likely — had nearly fallen loose from the wrappings. 
He sighed, exasperated, and she pulled back. Battlefield care was one thing. But the blood was clotting, the emergency ending, and she hoped to show some respect for him. She wouldn’t help if he didn’t want, out of both that respect and many years of anger. Grudging as it was, their last serious conversation — after her return from the Burning Shores — had left her with a smile and some mutual respect, and had left him working in her room, as comfortable there as he was in his own skin.  
“If you must,” he said.
She untangled the brace, pulling strips of blue linen with it, and tied it to her belt. After that he was quiet and watched her. The leather wrapping hooked around his thumb was ripped down to the big veins at his wrist.
“I have to cut this off,” she said, “Or it’ll stick in the wound.”
Sylens nodded. 
“This angle will make it difficult,” Aloy said, realizing as she spoke. “Put your hand down. The blood is clotting.”
He nodded. With both of them standing in the green clearing she could lay the golden edge of an arrowhead against his wrist and tear. The battlefield healing was nothing new to her — she’d helped other people with wounds after the battle of Meridian, and after some Tenakth or Utaru skirmishes — but since Sylens had always held himself so aloof, it was strange to see the calmness with which he presented the underside of his wrist to her weapon. Aloy found herself holding the back of his hand in the palm of hers to wash the wound. He kept his fingers curled up so as not to touch her. The flail had laid open a thin layer of fat on his lower arm, but at the back just below the first set of piercings, not near the vital veins. She had done all she needed to do now; he could do the rest. But … 
“I have herbs,” she said. “Let me fix this up before we start a long ride back.”
So she packed the wound too, and this let her feel the warm weight of his wrist in her palm for a while longer, let her look at the proportions of him and feel the pulse point under her fingertips. She hadn’t noticed such details before, the hair on his arm or the lines on his palm. All the while he looked at her with the new openness she had seen since he started living at the base, a sort of surprise that softened his face. People think Avad looks regal, Aloy thought, because they’ve never seen Sylens … 
His hand trembled slightly. Aloy had packed the wound all she could. She handed him the brace and the torn linen strips, which he took in a firm left hand. No tremble there at all. 
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owlswatch · 4 days
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ALOY in HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST (2022)
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owlswatch · 4 days
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[DAZED FROM BLOOD LOSS] hey not to kill the vibe completely but i think i am in love with you
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owlswatch · 5 days
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*gnaws on my screenshots*
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owlswatch · 5 days
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owlswatch · 7 days
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Horizon Forbidden West launches on PC tomorrow.
Enjoy the ride, PC gamers!
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owlswatch · 8 days
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Horizon Zero Dawn
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owlswatch · 9 days
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horizon forbidden west | cinnabar sands 5/?
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owlswatch · 12 days
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forbidden west's racing mini-game has a tiny little story, and also what a delight that as more people tame machines, some anarchists decided the best thing to do with them is tear around the desert in robot mario kart
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owlswatch · 14 days
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visiting the naming cliff
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owlswatch · 15 days
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owlswatch · 15 days
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owlswatch · 15 days
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tireless
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