#i also put way too much into environmental storytelling

[the-priestess-of-dawn]

So hey the Hero-King Marth that Ylisseans claim is from Altea which is in modern Northern Plegia (right under the Feroxi border wall). Given this, can you imagine the political strife and potential religious conflicts happening over this? Because Marth is 100% the ancestor of the Ylissean Royal Family, but historical Altea is Plegian ground. How hard would the Hierophant play with this if allowed?

I am delighted to be asked this because I think about this little detail all the time. Because Chrom and the Shepherds do go to the location corresponding to historical Altea. It's where Chrom defeats Gangrel and ends the war between Ylisse and Plegia. We know Chrom isn't exactly in high spirits ("We've won... Somehow I don't feel like celebrating.") and though the game itself never brings it up, I can't help but wonder how much the location itself contributes to everything weighing on him.

This location is also listed as "Border Wastes." It's a wasteland, and Marth's Altea definitely was not. Again, the game itself doesn't say a word about it, but... Is it not easy to imagine how it might have got that way? Somehow I doubt the exalted line, proudly descended from the Hero King, WANTED to give Altea to Plegia or was ever satisfied with Plegia ruling it. Awakening thematically grapples with cycles of violence, and though this geographical detail is so minor and is never directly addressed in the text, the environmental storytelling seems to me to speak volumes. I think Plegia and Ylisse have been mad about this for as long as they've both existed.

And the thing is, I can easily imagine Plegians taking pride in holding this land, too? Marth is not just special to the Halidom of Ylisse. He is a hero to the entire continent. He saved EVERYONE. "Marth was Plegian" is not exactly accurate, because Plegia would not exist until a thousand years after him, but I bet there are plenty of Plegians running around whose features resemble Marth's as much as Chrom and Lissa and Emmeryn's do.

(Remember, Ferox suspects Chrom of being an imposter when he first arrives at their border, and Cynthia's paralogue involves a guy successfully impersonating Chrom. I don't think you can tell just by looking at him that he's not Just Some Guy, and specifically, you can't tell that he's not Just Some Plegian Guy, either.)

It's interesting to think about what if anything Grima would do with this... Grima was after Marth's time, but that doesn't mean they can't put words and ideals in his mouth just as well as any other political figure.

Moving more deeply into pure headcanon territory... As you may be aware, I think Grima ate the earth dragons that Marth sealed at the Dragon's Table, and honestly if they did, I can imagine them twisting that act to be like.... Obviously what Marth Would Have Wanted, because you see, he didn't have the power to do anything more at the time, but OF COURSE he wouldn't have wanted the beloved people of his precious continent to have to fight the earth dragons again. The Fire Emblem can't do enough. Let Grima eat the dragons for you. (Meanwhile, you've got the First Exalt, actual descendant of Marth, arguing that um, HE is right there, totally ready willing and able to seal those dragons right back up, guys come on we KNOW this will work. Yes I do like to think of this as a reverse "let Chrom deal the final blow?" situation. One in which Grima refused to back down.)

So in that regard, I don't know, I feel like "Grima is the Hero King's true successor (in spirit)" is something that at least some people could actually believe. That would be fun to work with. It's a little hard to see how to get from there to "and now Grima destroys the world because humans are bad" but... given how Plegians value loyalty, it might honestly be enough for some people simply to say "we side with Grima no matter what because we always have before and we aren't filthy traitors."

#ask #grima studies

[inposterumcumgaudio]

tell me about Reg Cutty

People are missing so much of the story with him.

And I kinda get it because the way the dialogue is in "The Slaughterer's Apprentice" implies a narrower story than there is, but the clues are there to be seen.

As is, people interpret Reg's story thus: when the Germans invaded, he started dating Marta, a German woman, and had a son with her. Additionally, he was especially cooperative with the Germans, which the locals found distasteful. When the Germans left, Marta and their son left with them, but Reg stayed behind out of cowardice. Afterward, he attempted to join the Home Army, but due to his past collaborationist behavior, they are unwilling to accept him.

But there's pieces that don't fit in there story, loose elements that look like editing errors or dead-end mysteries... unless you're looking at the whole picture.

We Happy Few, in addition to its overwhelming amount of text and dialogue, also relies very heavily on environmental storytelling. You miss a lot if you're not looking.

Cutty & Son

Cutty Family Butcher

Cutty's & Sons founded 1912

Reg is older than Arthur, old enough to be dating and having children in the 40's. 1912 is a little long for two generations, but a little short for three. So I think it's a fair assumption that Reg's father started this butcher shop and if it's Cutty's and Sons then Reg must also have a brother.

A brother who is - very pointedly - no longer part of the business.

But before we get to him, let's talk about Cutty Sr.

In the note "Thank you for your contribution", the recipient is actually someone named Bill, not Reg.

Dear Mr. Cutty:

Thank you for your contribution to the Next War Effort. The troops greatly appreciated your sausages. We all think your patriotic efforts are smashing.

Do keep up the good work, and we will seriously consider your application to join the Home Army.

Yours very truly, Lt. John Fortescue

(written longhand) You don't need to buttonhole me every time I come into the shop, Bill. It's not a matter of what you did or didn't do during the "late, great unpleasantness." We all know that citizens were under a lot of pressure to cooperate with the G, and even if, at times, you seemed a little extra enthuseastic, we take at face value your protestations that that is just your manner. However, you are on the old side for a soldier, old chap. It will take a little while -- and perhaps a few more sausages -- before the boys are quite ready to "put you through your paces" as you put it. ''

I think this dialogue during the quest misdirects the player to conclude that it's an editing error.

Arthur: I found your letter.

Reg: You were a child then. You wouldn't understand.

Arthur: Oh, yes, it was a happy, carefree time for us kids.

Reg: I loved her. We were just two young people caught up in something bigger than ourselves.

Arthur: That doesn't sound like what the Home Army's onto you about.

Reg: You don't understand. I thought they would stay forever. I had to sell meat. We had to get on.

That Reg takes individual responsibility for gettin' cozy with the Germans makes sense if his father isn't here to own up too. Reg is the only one in the situation who's standing accused anymore. But the letter was sent to Bill, and I think that means it isn't Reg who was trying to join the Home Army, but his father.

And why should he want to do that after the fact, well after the war was over and the Germans had gone home?

To redeem the family name, which was tarnished by Bill's collaboration (and Reg's fraternization) with the Germans.

Ollie has a cut line when standing on the set of the Uncle Jack show where he specifically calls Reg out for being a collaborator:

"Did you know that you can get extra rations if you betray your country? That’s right, all the schnitzel you can possibly eat. Just ask Reg Cutty for the Deutschland Über Alles special."

Ollie remembers because he's never been a Joy user. That this little piece of trivia escaped his dose of Oblivion is not surprising either since he has a lot of opinions about people who cooperated with the Germans.

The rest of Wellington Wells has mostly forgotten about the Cutty family taste for schnitzel by '64, but Lt. Fortescue and the Home Army certainly hadn't forgotten about it when that letter was written.

Reg writes in his letter to Marta that he cannot send that "I wish I had not been a coward, and I had joined you on the last train. It seems I am one coward after another." And maybe it was cowardice, but I rather think he stayed out of a sense of obligation as well.

There seems to be a bit tension around the "& Sons" part of the Cutty legacy, you see.

Reg must have a brother, but he is not working at the butchershop. Reg would not need Edmund to help him if his brother was working there. And that Reg has crossed out & Sons on the poster at the lunch counter, but left the "& Son" on the lettering under the awning...

You can see here that the sign used to say Cutty & Sons, plural, but the S on the end has been scrubbed off. The lettering with the S would have been perfectly centered over the window otherwise. It's a little short on the right side without it.

I think Reg didn't remove the "& Son" entirely because to him, the Cutty in red isn't him, it's his father. In his absence, without a Cutty Jr. to run the shop, his father's legacy disappears.

Reg makes a lot of being someone who can "look at the blood, and the flesh, and the bone." He has all these metaphors about how people like their meat wrapped up nicely in brown paper so they don't have to think about how it got there. He delineates himself from others this way. I will bet you all the money that his brother was squeamish and that's why he's not working at the family shop and preserving their father's memory.

But more than that, I also think Reg's brother left the fold back before everyone forgot who the Cuttys were.

There's a corpse in Reg's basement. Spawns in every time, but not with a random name like most corpses. This one is always named Michael Cutting. There's also a programmer on the staff with that name and that's probably not an accident, but it is left as one of those apparent WHF go-nowhere "mysteries".

But, taking all of the above into account, maybe Michael Cutting is Reg's brother who was not only too squeamish to work in the family business, but also cut ties and changed his last name just enough to distance himself from his collaborationist father and brother so he could get along with the rest of the town.

There's no way to know how long Michael's been in dead in Reg's basement. It's entirely possible that Reg killed him ages ago. But I think it's a better story if Michael only braved returning to the butcher shop because Edmund's been saying strange things about Reg's new machines at the pub and Reg had to kill him once he realized Michael wasn't impressed but horrified, even if his machines keep all the gross stuff inside the package. It would tie up nicely with this piece of dialogue:

Arthur: Why don't you tell the Executive Committee? I'm sure they'd give you a medal.

Reg: That's just it! I don't think they would.

#reg cutty #michael cutting #bill cutty #we happy few

[sorcerous-caress]

My writing used to be really descriptive and environmental, but I've abandoned that for more a narrative heavy storytelling where a narrator is your window for the world.

And honestly idk, the narrative comes naturally to me, and the descriptive has to be actively put in, I have to train myself to write it each time and squeeze my brain.

It also gets dull with time. there are only so many ways and times I could describe the sun shining in the morning before it gets redundant. but the same can be said for how much I love narrating longing and end up resusing the same phrases.

So far I only describe what I think is important to the environmental telling, unless it has a purpose then I leave it up to the reader to imagine what colour the couch was or what sheets the bed had.

But I didn't realise that readers' default response is just... to keep it blank. if I don't tell them there are curtians then they'll never imagine it, If I don't spell the way the food smelled then they'll never find it delicious, if I don't describe the ways the tree swayed then they'll never get a meter of how windy it is.

I never got criticism or hate comments for it, the opposite, I got compliments on my descriptive works saying how much they could imagine the world clearly, praising how well I've painted it. And those compliments motivate me to try more and put in more effort than a wall of criticism ever could.

I guess I need to hit a balance. "a beautiful webbing" was one of my works where I hit that perfect spot of balance between narration and environmental telling, but also that fic was a special case, a project I held immense passion for and it seems exhausting to have to do that to each fic especially with how i need to post at least once every three days.

ik quality over quantity and all but let's be realistic, this is fanfiction and not every story is a one I want to be top tier quality. not everyone wants to read an S tier fic, sometimes the B and C tier are absolutely preferable and easier on the mind. like a snack, there are many of them and they get to the poin faster.

I hate people who claim they're hard to please in fanfiction and only read completed works with 20+ chapters and 60k words. Who demand perfection for free and are proud of it whilst being willfully ignorant of how each type of fic shines differently. Not everyone wants to tell a story the same way, one shots are not less superior than multie chaptered works.

Your preference isn't superior to everyone else's, that one shot you glossed over could've been the most in character thing every written in the history of the fandom. Could've told a complex story through a couple lines. I've always admired people who can say so much in so little, who can summerise long paragraphs in multiple words.

It could also just be an average normal one shot, and that's fine and okay and is absolutely someone's preference. A lot of people like comfort snacks to enjoy.

Anyway the point is. I will try to get more descriptive, i try to avoid watching writing guides or reading about writing tips and tricks. The advice they give is really generic and I find that it boxes you in this regressive view of how writing should be. No matter how good the advice is, If it gets too overwhelming and it feels like you're doing nothing right then please take a step back and ignore everything everyone else has ever said.

Art is you, it's expression and communication. You want to feel it so you make it, you want to tell it so you share it. That's all, that's the end.

Be it erotica, crack fics, alternative universe or whatever. No one in this world can make it like you, it's fully personalised to your own mind and no one in this life could tell that story but you.

Oh I also have a clear lack of dialogue, I feel like it's one of the trickiest things to write because how easily it could break characters. How I have to keep spreadsheets analysing the way each character speaks.

Which, there are no spreadsheets, btw. I keep it in my mind.

Take Minthara for example, she is direct, forward and orders things. She never says "I think" or "maybe" she never asks either, she demands.

She wouldn't say "I hope we don't lose" instead she'd phrase it as "We will emerge victorious."

She likes using complex or flourishy words but never like Gale or Wyll, their type of flourish is entirely different and means to honey the words, whilst Minthara's mean to make the sentence more regal, aristocratic rather than noble. She uses them deliberately to show off statues while Gale uses them to show off intelligence, and Wyll does it for charm and theatrical poetry.

She doesn't take shortcuts either. She doesn't say "don't." Instead she separates it to "Do not." And forces you to listen to her long phrases, a small form of power play where she never makes herself or words smaller, she always uses them fully as they are.

And I have to do this for each character, you see how exhausting this easily can be. How every character also speaks as if they're from a different time. Karlach speaks more modernly but it's never like the common people talk in bg3, so she just...has access to modern dialogue and phrases for some reason?

Astarion never speaks like he is 200 years old either, not like an elf either. Halsin speaks like an elf, Cazador speaks like an elf, but not Astarion for some reason, and I have to keep that in mind.

Wyll is the easiest to write because his way of speech flows so well with my own writing, they compliment each other. Unlike how jarring Karlach dialogue in one of my fics.

Shadowheart is a character who uses filler words a lot, stalling or just uncertainty? She uses "I think, Maybe, is that so, I don't know but, I guess." Inbetween her sentences.

Maybe it's bc of the gaps in her memory? But it works in her favourite because I just need to remove the filler words whenever I want her to appear serious or whenever I want to flush out an important moment, it brings attention subtly to how reassured she is of her self.

Lae'zel speaks her heart in a way, she vocalises her observations to others and they take it as either criticism or praise when it's most likely that she meant neither and is just observing. Honestly to make it simpler, Lae'zel speaks autisticly which I relate to a lot, and which is why so many misunderstandings happen around her character when people assume she is mean or making fun of them when in reality she is indifferent and saying her thoughts loud and clear as they are.

People don't usually do that, they don't express their feelings as directly as Lae'zel. They hint it at, subtly or they play it down or exaggerate it. Lae'zel does neither, she speaks directly from the source and every word is deliberately chose and is exactly what she meant it.

But people aren't used to that, taking words at face value. And because they're used to people exaggerating or down playing their words, they assume Lae'zel is doing the same and filter her words through the same social protocol which ends up making her look too horny or too mean when she is neither. They needlessly attach meanings to her words that weren't there and complain about the results that they themselves made up when she already delivered the final results herself.

Astarion speaks like a 13-year-old who just learned what irony and sarcasm are. But put it through a modern dracula adaptation Snapchat filter, and you get the final results. He thinks he comes off as smooth, and sometimes he does, but it mostly falls flat and he comes off as johhny bravo.

His looks are what's important here, since they more than make up for his failure in words. Much like most of Edward Cullens lines were absolutely wild but because a sexy vampire was saying it then suddenly it becomes palatable.

But Astarion has his moments in relatablity. He is by far the most relatable character in dialogue. He says what we all wanted to say, but we didn't just to save face. He makes the crude jokes, he makes the sex innuendos andpenis dagger lame puns.

He also screams at the word and calls out. He also curses back at the gods who dammned him. He embraces his rage and resentment and expresses it without any shame. He lets the smooth facade fall and claws at the other performers on the stage of life as his own masks start to crack down. The only thing Astarion has ever been fully honest about is his own wrath, it's the single unpolished spot on his perfect surface, the single crack in his procline mask.

And there is something about how a one can't describe Astarion without resorting to poetry, how it writes itself at certain points because just like the sea, he is as beautiful as he is ruthless, as tender as the crashing waves against the jagged rocks, as fleeting as the dissipating sea foam receading back from the shore.

He can never be broken much like the fluid water can never snap. And it's this burning flame behind his failed flirting that pulls you in, the sparks of his passion that slip through that make his lame lines actually work, that make him so enticing.

#♡writing #♡character study #♡Astarion #♡Dialogue study #♡Minthara #♡Shart #♡Wyll #♡Gale #♡karlach #♡laezel

[autolenaphilia]

I like linear games, despite “linear” becoming something of a dirty word about video games, especially in the open world craze that has dominated the mainstream game market for years now. And that’s a shame, because linear game design is an artform.

The great advantage of linear game design is pacing, structure and focus. Linear games are often not that long, at most often only 8-10 hours or so. You can’t really expect much more meaningful content out of a game developer, not without exhausting their well of creativity and how much of a single game a player can endure. And linear game design is putting that gameplay content in a coherent sequence for the player to experience.

Much of this design relies on pacing, creating a good gameflow, where each successive element builds on the previous one.

The most obvious is probably pacing the difficulty, going from easy to difficult. A good game usually introduces its mechanics in a simple and understandable way, gives the player easy challenges at first, and as the player develops their understanding of the gameplay mechanics, the game ramps up the difficulty to provide a consistent level of challenge. So in the end the game is not too easy and not too hard (depending on the difficulty option chosen). And instead of introducing mechanics all at once, the game maybe introduces them gradually during the early game, so that you learn one mechanic, and then another, instead of being overwhelmed by mechanics.

There is also pacing the gameplay to avoid monotony. Even action games can become too much if they are all fast paced action all the time. It can be important for an action game to have variation from the combat with exploration sequences or puzzle solving. And point-and-click adventure games may need to have variation between dialogue and puzzle solving.

Linear game design also allows for more coherent and complex storytelling. Story can matter in video games, and linear game design helps with that. Linear game design means that the developers can pace the development of the story alongside the gameplay. It allows the parts of the story to build on each other in a coherent and well-paced fashion. That doesn’t mean cutscenes, necessarily. Half-Life uses mainly environmental storytelling to tell an interesting story, and it does so in a very linear fashion.

Indeed the linearity of Half-life is part of the story. The game’s linearity reinforces how Gordon Freeman is ironically not a free man, but follows a path laid out for him by the G-man’s manipulations. The Max Payne series has similar themes about determinism and free will, reinforced by the linearity of its design. The second game has multiple levels taking place in an abandoned funhouse and the game makes those themes explicit by having him monologue that “A funhouse is a linear sequence of scares. Take it or leave it is the only choice given. Makes you think about free will: have our choices been made for us because of who we are?”

It’s a good comparison, a linear game is like a funhouse, or an amusement park ride. You get a linear sequence of gameplay and story, and you either take the ride and enjoy it, or you do not. It’s not lacking in interactivity, the player still get to actually play the game, they just don’t get a choice about the sequence of events. But if the game is well-designed, the sequence the developers offer makes sense, creates a coherent and well-paced experience, so you don’t care. Player choice is not everything, and offering a coherent tightly designed experience is a good thing for games.

It’s something that open world games can’t offer. They lack the focus and pacing of linear games. In your average open world game, the actual interesting gameplay and story content is often spread out haphazardly throughout a huge map, with lots of boring traveling. This old Prozd sketch pretty sums up the average open world experience, lots of walking between when actually interesting things happen. And non-linearity means that the various gameplay and story elements can’t build of each other in the tightly paced and coherent fashion of the best linear games. Often open world games boast of dozens upon dozens of hours of playtime, I’ve read boasts about a game having one hundred hours of gameplay. Yet because of human limits on time and creativity, the games don’t offer much more actually meaningful content than the “short” 8 hour linear games of old. Instead the rest is taken up by filler, such as travelling, and meaningless busywork sidequests like “fetch these materials” and “kill those enemies.”

I think the open world genre is part of the decline of mainstream “AAA” game design over the past fifteen years or so. Massive open world games with highly detailed realistic graphics require massive resources to create. It’s one thing that can justify the massive budgets of big game studios, and provide something that small indie devs can’t. That’s why it’s the only type of single-player genre that mainstream devs release nowadays. But it’s quantity over quality, replacing carefully tuned game design with just more content. Filler sidequests are often churned out by over-worked developers being ruthlessly exploited.

It’s also a way to justify predatory “games as a service” monetization with DLC, as it is easy to just add more content to an open world game (for a prize) compared to a small linear one. It’s easy to see when you compare modern game DLC to the expansion packs of linear AAA single-player games of old. An expansion pack in the 90s and 00s was often a short but substantial game of its own, with its own campaign and story taking about 3-5 hours to justify its existence.

Things being better in the past is often a conservative lie, but triple-aaa game development sure was. I love to play mainstream games from the 00s, and it’s stunning how well-designed they can be. And it’s partly because these developers were good at linear single-player game design, something we tend to only see in indie games today. The open world genre has proven to be fertile ground for triple-AAA games to grow its worst habits into the shambles it is today.

#my writings #video games #game design #linear games #open world games #thoughts raised in me by playing doom 3 #which is a very linear corridor shooter from 2004 #and it's pretty damn good

[mel-addams]

Seeing Redfall get absolutely awful reviews is like watching one of your best friends get actively worse because of their possessive partner who isn’t right for them at all

Hey Anon, I'm not sure I totally get your metaphor—I think Redfall is the friend, and reviewers are the partner who "isn't right" because it's not their type of game? But yeah, it does suck to see, and I'm skeptical of a lot of them. So many having short playtimes, and/or criticisms so vague that it's unclear what their actual issue with the game is, feels a little suspicious to me.

I'm not saying the game's perfect—I've had some minor bugs myself, and sometimes when I get to a new area/run far enough it'll freeze for a second as things load—but what big game doesn't launch a bit buggy? There's too many moving parts, and too much variability in folks' computer configurations, there's always gonna be something. I do look forward to some patches to see if it fixes the freezing for me, but I find it playable enough to still enjoy until then.

I also play games for story, rather than gameplay, so that could be another differentiating factor for me. While I do generally enjoy getting story via cutscenes and don't mind loading screens, so I'd also personally have been fine if it wasn't open world, I do also like good written lore and environmental storytelling. There's been some interesting highlighted notes about what the folks in Redfall experienced, some cool in-universe fiction I know Dev's book is out there and I NEED TO FIND IT, and even some not-highlighted written stuff that adds even more to the setting. I've also seen both amusing and heartbreaking environmental storytelling.

For example, in the Shadetree Supper Club parking lot, there's a stack of boards that make a ramp up to a low barrier, with an overturned golf cart on the other side. In front of the golf cart was a bottle of vodka—so someone got drunk and tried to launch a golf cart off a ramp, which failed hilariously. But there's no blood, so they walked away from the attempt. Further on, in the building, you can find a written note (the title's something like "Don't be Afraid #1"), with two sleeping bags set up next to a large bike and a small bike. Are they okay, that adult and the kid they were trying to help not panic about the dentist? I don't know, but probably not, and it breaks my heart. Further in, at the bar, there's two dead civilians—but also a few dead cultists, which you don't see often, so those folks actually managed to hold their own for a bit when the shit hit the fan.

And that's just in that one key area. Sure, there's open space on the roads and forests, plus totally boarded up houses. Given what's been happening in the town, I find all that fitting. But if you take the time to look at the areas where there's clusters of cars, or spot something among the trees, or observe the placement of things while you're inside buildings, or read posters and notes that aren't highlighted? There was a good bit of deliberate attention put into all of that, to show what life was like over the past several weeks in Redfall. (And if you haven't yet, give a go at staring at the in-game eclipse every now and then.) Hell, even the currency is called "support," and the junk you pick up is stuff that would actually be useful for the survivors. So even some of the mechanics are arranged to underline that the point of the story is centered around trying to bolster and save Redfall's community.

There's plenty of story to absorb, and emotions that it can evoke, if you approach it the way they've presented it.

#redfall #not art #hell I took a while just absorbing each of the PCs' respective bed setups #there's a solid amount of identity in those too #Remi's got running sneakers and a water bottle nearby #Layla's got cool posters and a ton of fiction books #Dev's got hilarious/nerdy posters and medical books #Jacob's got a target practice poster over a dartboard across the room #and a box of tissues? which makes me worry his eye's infected/not healing right and gets leaky sometimes #the key NPCs also use PC names in standard greetings/goodbyes #which feels like a rarity to me especially in multi-PC games #it's just that little extra bit of connection and I like it #I'm even trying to avoid using environmental hazards in combat #to keep property damage/casualties to a minimum #because I don't want to leave the survivors a blasted-out town #I wanna get through saving them with as much intact as I can manage

[thirsty-4-ghouls]

What frustrates me the most about liking the fallout games and elder scrolls games (I still need to play more of them and there are CERTAINLY exceptions) is that i don’t actually know what it is exactly that i like about them. People will be like “Bethesda games suck” and I’m not going to disagree that having mammoths fall from the sky and my gun sink into the floor forever is good game mechanics, that it’s a work of art in the coding department, but i don’t know what it is that makes me love the experience of playing them. People will be like “oh, you like that thing? Try this” and what they suggest isn’t bad, but it doesn’t have the same, idk, combination of things? I just wish I knew what the exact combo was so I could look for more of those things. I can’t put my finger on it and I’m not sure I can find the same combination of those things anywhere else. I don’t really care that the fighting isn’t super dramatic every time, hitting things and blowing things up is fun by itself to me, i don’t need a work of art there. I like the characters and the way you can just go do shit, especially when you don’t have a super pressing timeline. I can build a house before stopping the end of the world in Skyrim (multiple times) and it doesn’t actually make the time more stressful. If I want to take it super seriously I can try and grind through the main plot and after that I’ll still have a bunch of stuff to do! And the things I do will affect other things, but in a certain way I can’t explain? I can’t put into words. I know that they aren’t the finest masterpieces and I’m sure that there are games with things i like about these games but done better, but do they have the combination? The one I can’t put my finger on? Probably not. I play games to have fun and there is so much fucking around I can do! There are little details in the environment, little things to npcs. There are certainly things that left me unsatisfied, but there is also a bunch of things that do? I’ll admit to not playing their newer stuff though. I’ll consider eso but my brothers have already tried some of their other new stuff and left me with some not great reviews. I kinda wish people would stop trying to recommend me games because “oh, you like that part of that game? Here is one that is so much better. You’ll see how terrible the one you’re playing is” because I’m playing the terrible one for a reason. I like it, even knowing it’s not the best, and i would love to see more games that do that thing, but if you are recommending them because they are “better works of art” or “better mechanically” are you also recommending them because they are fun? That’s why I play games. I have my limits, and I respect other people who play games for the sake of the art form alone, but sometimes terrible or just okay is fun too, sometimes with less stress, and fun can keep me occupied for hours. I’m not saying I never play a game for a story, without much of one I often do get bored. I wouldn’t play the ace attorney series if I didn’t like stories too, but i loooove sandboxes and i can’t put my finger on why i like those Bethesda sandboxes so much. It’s infuriating because I really do want to find more stuff that scratches that specific itch, but the vibes are never quite there. I don’t expect the exact same thing, but I do want to try more of that sort of thing, yet I can’t put my finger on what it is about the thing that I need to look for! Very frustrating.

I like lore and environmental storytelling and interesting npcs and sandbox games, i don’t enjoy super complicated combat because i am stupid. I like being able to pick and choose things and seeing one thing affect another but not needing to do things in a specific order. Is that all? I don’t feel like it. There is something more and I can’t put my finger on it. There are obviously games I play that do not check off every single box of mine, look at the ace attorney series! But those ones don’t really take as much of my time. Once you finish the story you just kinda, leave it for awhile. You’re done. You might go back later, but probably not right away. With the games like Skyrim and fallout I can just come back after a busy day and do random low stress tasks and activities, or I could go hard at it for a bit, either way I have fun. I don’t know how to replicate that. I also like when they add some elements like the sims. I know some people hate it, but it gives me even more shit to do, and I can have a part of the map that feels like “this is MINE!” and I can leave my stuff (and some npcs) there and feel like I’m not just shoving it wherever. Sure, you get beds when you join certain groups, but in Skyrim and fallout 4 you can have your own space. If i don’t want to go on some adventure after a long day I can just garden or something, even when it’s winter irl! (Although the gardening isn’t like irl gardening, it still feels better than nothing). I know a lot of people hate how they put certain things I listed into a game that is “supposed to be about the story, or fighting” but i like the eclectic combination of activities, and i feel like they manage to do it without the things feeling like a completely separate game. It still feels tied in, unlike some games where it feels like they just shoved it into the game on the side without any connection I guess. I’m not explaining this well and I’m sure there are people who absolutely hate the things I listed, but there are plenty of games without them, I’m trying to find more with them.

And it has to have interesting npcs, even just mildly interesting ones that you can fill in the blanks for in your boredom. I can’t stand the feeling of being in a completely empty world (with the possible exception of Pokémon go, but they have added so much stuff that it feels parallel to the real world, not completely separate and empty) although, when it comes to Pokémon go, I actually did stop playing for awhile because it felt so empty, now you can at least interact with other players a bit more (even if I’m not great at finding others to play with) and they have added more npcs. I play that game so i don’t get bored at the grocery store and can convince myself to go out and walk around sometimes, so it’s not the same. Idk what I actually really want from a game, I can’t put my finger on it.

#emma posts #maybe it’s the ability to take up so much time without needing any other players #maybe it’s something about being able to do whatever I want in a lot of different orders #maybe it’s just the ability to completely ignore certain side options #maybe it’s about the npcs #or the environmental story telling #I don’t know! I’m so mad about it #fallout 4 #skyrim #long post #I play other types of games too. but when I want more of that specific thing #I don’t know what I want more of #and I am so bad at figuring out super complicated fighting so I’m always like ‘plz be gentle’ #when a friend recommends something new #and everything always needs the internet now #what if my internet service is bad? What then? because it’s slow a.f. and sometimes spotty

[singingkestrel]

tag game (Horizon)

stolen from @foibles-fables / @finrays.

1.ride or die ship (your otp): Ereloy fics and art give me so much serotonin it's unreal.

2. most annoying ship: I don't find any ships annoying. There are some that are not for me, sure, but if people love it who am I to judge?

3. second favourite ship: Ugh, I dunno. Beta/Milu is adorable, Aloy/Ikrie is classic, Niloy can make for some very interesting reading, but I guess Hawk and Thrush makes the most sense.

4. favourite platonic relationship: It's got to be the Erend and the guys in the Vanguard. Their endless jibes and grumbling at each other are very reminiscent of some of my very best friendships. Varl and Erend's interactions are great, too, they're just so easy with one another.

5. underrated ship: I really like ships that involve minor characters - the recent rair pair roundup has been delightful for me. I long for a fic about some of the Oseram salvagers getting to know the Tenakth whose land they've invaded.

6. overrated ship: see no. 2.

7. one thing i would change in canon: Like, a lot. There were some pretty big chunks of HFW (and Burning Shores) that just didn't sit right. I don't think I can better the responses of @foibles-fables and @finrays (both of whom might be actual geniuses), but I'd settle for the returning characters (Varl, Erend, Talanah, Avad) to be treated better!

8. something canon did right: I think the Horizon series is best when it focuses on poignant storytelling over action. The way the history of the metal world slowly reveals itself at the Grave-hoard and in the Zero Dawn facility below Sunfall is hauntingly beautiful; I'd love to be able to play them for the first time again. In HFW, the quests in Dunehollow to recover POSEIDON were practically perfect, and Gildun's return in Burning Shores was the best part of the DLC by a country mile. In both these cases you get to peek into the lives of a person from the past via emotionally impactful datapoints whose recorded thoughts parallel the people you're trying to help in the present, yet it never feels too on-the-nose. Of course it helps that the people you're trying to help are some of the best realised characters in the whole game.

9. a thing i'm proud of creating for the fandom PLEASE BRAG ABOUT YOURSELF I WANT TO SEE/READ YOUR ART: Eh. Alas, I'm not artistically talented. I just take virtual photos of stuff I like. I put a lot of effort into my machine headshot series, though. If you go to @singingkestrel and search for 'headshots compilation' (or 'hfw machines') they should all come up.

10. a character who is perfect to me (wouldn't change a thing): None of the main cast were treated 100% right in HFW. I mean, there are some things that make me genuinely angry if I think about them too much. Varl dying for no good reason, Erend being turned into a bumbling oaf, Regalla being criminally underused... ugh. UGH I SAY!

But you know who is perfect?

Morlund.

I love his optimism and his determination and his intelligence and his companionable nature. He's a nerdy mad inventor and a very strong candidate for the most overtly hopeful and kind chap in game (I mean, there is also Varl. And Gildun.) and I just adore him.

11. the character i relate to the most and why: I look at the Oseram in both HZD and HFW and see myself, my friends and my home. I adore their aesthetic with all of its chunky wood and sturdy iron, I love their down to earth attitude, their culture of hard work and social drinking and affectionate insults, their adventurous wanderer spirit and inventiveness and willingness to argue about everything. Are they flawed? Sure! Like me, they're loud and blunt and often speak without thinking, thinking they know best. Unlike me (I hope), they're too dismissive of other cultures, their lack of environmental awareness is deeply concerning, and we all know 🕯The Claim🕯 is going to be a hideous hotbed of rampant sexism - one that I will gladly watch Aloy tear to pieces like a tasmanian devil with a grudge. I don't think I can pick a single Oseram character I totally relate to, though.

But I do relate to Tom Paech. As soon as I heard those broad antipodean tones swearing about wanting to inflict actual bodily harm on Ted Faro I knew I'd found the scientist I was supposed to identify with. He was hot-blooded, as he put it, whilst also revering nature, the 'miracle of life.' And him wanting to help, despite significant reservations, and then not wanting to live on once the job was done? Exactly how I think I would have reacted. Plus as a marine biologist/ecologist (assuming I'd be in any way qualified!) I'd end up working on ARTEMIS too.

12. character(-s) i hate the most and why: There are characters you are meant to hate. It's fun to have a villain. Ted Faro, Helis, the Ceo... but the hate is both intentional and enjoyable. They're good characters. If I had to pick a character I disliked where this wasn't the aim, however, I'd have to pick... hmm. I'm not sure. Amadis seemed largely pointless and annoying in HFW though. Talanah deserved better.

13. something i've learned from the fandom: Before HFW came out, I hadn't been involved in any fandom for about a decade (maybe longer, eek!) - I was a solitary creature. Coming back made me rediscover the joy of sharing my obsessions with others. Also that it doesn't matter how small your contribution is, someone will enjoy it.

14. three tags i seek out on ao3: That's between me and my ISP.

15. a song i strongly associate with my otp/favourite character: I don't, really. Bit weird, considering how much of my life involves music, and how readily my brain seems to play musical association with images. But I can't think of a single one. Sorry 😕

tagging: No pressure, but I didn't tag anyone in the last one so I thought I should do it this time. @mehoymalloy @robo-dino-puppy @meep-m33p @maybirdie @nerd-artist @astralpaint @i-lavabean @pikapeppa @banukaihelpme aaaand anyone else that wants to.

#tag game #horizon stuff #my thoughts

[alienssstufff]

If you get the time and inclination pls do share with us your beef with the existing zombie apocalypse genre, I have my own feelings about it (I think it overshadows other types of fictional apocalypses a bit too much in most ppl's heads) but I'd love hearing someone else's take on it (and also how you would improve the genre if you like :3 )

oh ABSOLUTELY it does! One way its probably the easiest type of apocalypses to write abt just cuz there’s already so many and such an established I guess wwww scenario and tropes to it (?) In consequence bc of how ‘easy’ it is, it becomes so damn samey and the zombie apocalypse genre (and apocalypses genres as a whole) gets such bad rep for that reason. [The rest atp is me ranting abt zombie apocalypses specifically those are the ones I have beef with]

When I ask ppl why they don’t like apocalyptic stories most answers is just the amount of carnage that’s in them it’s horrible— to put it better: unnecessary violence in an already terrible world is what they think abt. When people think of apocalypse stories they think of the movies made in Hollywood. Muscular, American white man whos good at everything who kicks ass and saves the world singlehandedly. And the rep for zombie-driven games aren’t any better either… Not saying that stories of kicking ass taking names are ALL bad but most of it is very surface level reasoning as to why . That being said I wish there was more focus on mental health in zombie stories, realisations that the world ended and they’ll never go back to how it was before, instances of the struggles of learning how to adapt to this new way of living. There’s many topics that could be discussed and so many themes that haven’t been fully developed (or done poorly) in zombie apocalypses but seldom media’s deliver u_u

I think the zombie stories that stand out to me the most are the ones that revolve around normal people. There’s an vid essay somewhere that talks abt the success of Train to Busan as a movie, it’s still just as action packed as the ones above but it’s also rly freaking emotional as the characters and cultural themes they represent can hit p close to home for the target demographic. Also I cannot recommend enough Gakkou Gurashi (School Live)! It’s almost never talked about solely cuz of Episode 1 and even now I’m trying to be as vague as I can Please watch that anime/manga you will not regret it.

And finally worldbuilding always a sucker for worldbuilding I need more of it. Not how to stop it but more of How The Hell we fucked up that badly to ended up in this situation. Give me zombie stories of patient 0s, pov scientists fumbling in the lab etc I want THAT. I freaking love the worldbuilding in The Last of Us , such a unique way in designing zombies inspirations from real life (I believe funghi that controls dead ants). That freaking hospital part in TLOU2 will always have a lasting impression on me the environmental storytelling of the flooded hospital and the whole backstory of how the Rat King came to be an amalgamation of all the victims of Seattle’s Patient 0 zone forced to fuse because of the such claustrophobic and wet conditions of the basement OHMYFUCKINGVGG its so well thought out.

Overall my frustrations with apocalypses is just - the amount of untouched potential and themes that SHOULD be addressed but aren’t - to get creative with it. And even without mention of the worldbuilding stories of the average joe like u and I trying to do smth as ‘simple’ as going to the store but there are mental and physical struggles along the way would be fine too - u don’t need to fly a jet and shoot a rocket launcher to make things interesting. Relatability and/or creativity is what I wish.

[this was so fun to think abt anon if u have things u wanna share feel free to shoot another ask I’m all ears!]

#ask stufff #stufff rambles #long post #for a hot min thought u asked abt apocalypse!vintage beef and I was like irl: #HOW DID YOU READ MY NOTES???!! #this is… SO LONG -but I’m determined (finished this at 3am) #I’ll check it again in a few hours but remind me ti add a Read More when I get back xwz #forgive if these make no sense im sleepy

[elleenvs3000f23]

Blog 10 - Where I started, what I learned and my personal ethic as an interpreter

Why I wanted to learn about interpretation

I first started to consider the value and role of science outside just curiosities sake seriously in first year. I was working as a research assistant to a prof and in the early days of lockdown was waist deep in trying to outline and plan my research project on hydrological connectivity. My professor kept talking about how we needed to find our story - did we want to make research that talked about agriculture and changing land use? Did we want to make a new piece for the climate change puzzle by looking at how incoming precipitation changes would move around the watershed? Did we want to comment on urbanization and the changing structure of our landscape? 

I realized very quickly that my research and work as a scientist was going to be much more complicated than the experiments I did in highschool labs, or even the modeling I was currently working on in GIS. Science for science's sake is fun - I think a good baking-soda volcano is a testament to human creativity and the wonder of the little things. But experiments alone don't exactly draw funding and publications - or better yet, inspire real action and as our school would put it "improve life". Learning how to communicate my work as a scientist has since become a goal in my undergrad and was what led me to this course. In a scientific paper, sometimes you read a few sentences about the background of a place or the people that might be impacted by X phenomenon but the papers are never actually written for those people. I think interpretation can be a vehicle for bridging academia and communities in a two way street. 

In our reading for unit 10 we watched a video conversation between David Suzuki and Richard Louv. One thing Louv said that really resonated with me is the impact our imagined futures have on the world. If people think that they are separate from nature, or that environmental movements are futile, we are bound to head towards that envisioned world. I think being able to share research and nature itself with general populations is crucial to making sure we as a community are on the same page about what we value and what we want the future to look like. 

What I brought with me into this course

I come from a family of storytellers. My mom writes children's stories, my brother is an actor studying journalism, I do improv theater - family dinners are always a riot. Early in the course I would always try to anchor my blog posts to a story or experience I had - it felt like a way to make my work both unique and relatable. I think this anchor in storytelling is natural to me and I love the work I produce as a result of it - I think it is crucial to my approach to interpretation and I don't plan on losing it anytime soon. In the video of Louv and Suzuki linked above - they also both start the conversation with personal stories that connect their lives to nature - it is clearly a powerful tool to build engagement and emotional connection. 

My moments of connection to nature are often grounded in my workouts - running and kayaking. I think the fact that I see nature as a place to push myself and let go of stress is important to how I interact with interpretation and would share nature with others. We talked about risk and interpretation in unit 3 and how being exposed to some level of uncertainty and hardship can push us to build resiliency and discover new abilities in ourselves. That unit also taught us to think carefully about what thresholds of risk are acceptable and how to know when to step back and re-evaluate. I have been on both ends of this rope - having some of my best times being recorded because I got lost during a run but also reaching a point where I pushed too hard and had to call a friend to pick me up from the trail when I got heat stroke. I think having this experience and attitude towards time in nature as time to test limits is a unique counterbalance to my hopes of sharing more academic knowledge as an interpreter - Is there a niche for nerdy-jocks? I think that’s who I want to be as an interpreter. 

What I learned about myself and interpretation 

This course opened my eyes to how we can interpret more than just information and facts. Music and art are also crucial to connecting with and understanding nature. I have to give more thought to how I could connect these to my own interpretation; I write songs but doubt I will be confident enough to share them with an audience any time soon so perhaps art and music can be a way to bring collaborators into my interpretation. I often mention my friend Jack and his photos on this blog so continuing to talk to and share the work of local artists would be something to include in my approach to interpretation. 

Overall I think my initial impression of interpretation as a way to communicate science was narrow minded. Interpretation needs to be a two way street that connects with the beliefs and values of the people participating - maybe they can even give inspiration for new research questions as I begin to understand their needs and questions!

My responsibility and ethic

I want to

Celebrate local environments

Integrate physical activity with time in nature

Make communicating research essential to my interpretation

Connect communities to relevant research that impacts their lives

Make work that is relevant to current issues and questions and motivates action on issues such as habitat loss, water resource protection and climate change

I need to make sure

Make sure emphasis on physical activity doesn’t exclude disabled people form my work

Make sure that higher risk interpretation activities have an awareness of when risk has gone to far and have an exit strategy

Make sure I am as accurate and faithful to the science I share

Make sure I people are able to continue to engage with what they learned

A summary of my approach to future interpretation

I am a water researcher - it's been my work throughout undergrad, I will study pollution and water quality for my masters and I hope to continue to a pHd. As I mentioned in my earlier blogs, I believe that water is a great connector of people and nature. Water has great historical importance as we established communities along the shores of water bodies and traveled oceans and rivers. We can’t live without it but people are very disconnected from it as a resource that comes from taps and bottles. I want to make sure that I am connecting my interpretation to high quality science as well as the needs of the local community. In my home of Guelph/Fergus, a great deal of concern exists around protecting groundwater reserves from the bottled water industry and a key landscape feature is the Grand River so I would focus my interpretation around the history of the Grand and the environmental role of groundwater and rivers. I also think by encouraging participants to share their memories, stories and art of time in nature I could help build connection. I want to do an interpretation that is directly relevant to the issues facing the environment and communities and I believe that we can all benefit from spending more time outside and being active. In a single sentence I want to do scientifically based, community focused interpretation with an emphasis on physical activity.

#Youtube

[doorplays]

2022 Roundup of Games

Hello! This is Doors. I haven't written here in a while and now I am going to fix that by writing a bunch about the games I played this year!

By my best count, I played about 28 games this year, with 7 of those being games I didn't finish. I’ve enjoyed them to varying respects though, and now I’m here to talk about 17 of them with as little spoilers as possible!

This roundup of games is not ranked, I just listed them haphazardly. I put up a short review for each game so you have an idea of what you’re getting into, and have a rating for each! Most of these are games I very much enjoyed, and if you find yourself playing them, go ahead and message me! I’d love to hear peoples’ thoughts on these games.

This is also something I want to start doing every year, and the best time to start anything you want to start is, well, now! And thus:

Let’s get to it!

UMURANGI GENERATION

I'd describe this game as "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater except Tony Hawk was a photographer". You are dropped into various levels and environments and, within a time limit, you have to achieve the objectives set out by the game. This usually consists of you taking pictures depicting specific things and taking a picture at a certain vantage point.

What I like about this game is its environmental storytelling. And well, really, that's the only way this game tells its story. It's all around the levels just waiting for you to see and take pictures of them. You find memorials, posters, people, all instrumental in telling the grim story that the game has.

I enjoyed experimenting with lenses that I unlock as I progress through the game, and experimenting with various filters! I feel like the game captured my imagination enough for me to enjoy it.

Door Rates Umurangi Generation: 4/5

PYRE

Supergiant never misses. From Bastion with its gripping story, and Transistor with its lovely aesthetic, to Hades with its frenetic roguelike gameplay, they always know their stuff. They know their style and they flourish in it, unafraid of experimentation.

With Pyre, I'd say that they experimented too much. The gameplay felt a bit clunky for me, though that may be because I stubbornly played on mouse and keyboard instead of controller. The gameplay loop revolves around you undergoing rituals, which are more accurately described as sports games. You play fantasy soccer, essentially!

Despite my gripes with the gameplay, I was so enamored by the story, the art, and the worldbuilding. I've grown to love and care for most, if not all of the characters, and I was really rooting for their success. I even found some antagonists charming and hoped that they find success as well.

In the end, I enjoyed it a lot. Supergiant are really good at making games, and with Hades 2 looming, I'm hoping they produce another knockout game.

Though despite my issue with them experimenting too hard here, I do hope they experiment more with their next games. But that's a subject for another post...

Door Rates Pyre: 4/5

THAT WHICH FAITH DEMANDS

This game is a sort of choose-your-adventure type game. At the start you get to describe your character's background, their competency, etc. Then when you're shipped out to do the job, you discover that there's more to the job than you expect.

I am always enamored by sci-fi, and am even more enamored by fiction that has something to say about the divine, so when this game mixes the two of them I completely and utterly fucked with it. This shit? Absolutely up my alley.

You can also interact with your workmates here and discover more about them, but I find that the divine part of the game is what really pleases me. I only wish that there was more story to see and read!

Door Rates That Which Faith Demands: 4.5/5

ENTER THE GUNGEON

I started this game very early in 2022, and let me tell you I did NOT expect it to shoot up to my most played game on Steam. There’s just something about this game that just drags you in easily with its wacky randomness and fun mixups and somewhat cute aesthetic.

You start out choosing one of four possible characters, then in typical roguelike fashion you do run after run as you unlock more guns, more accessories, more characters, and even more areas to explore! It is a very fun game where you can just go pew pew pew at everything.

Door Rates Enter the Gungeon: 4/5

SKATEBIRD

You are a bird. And you have an urge... to skate. It’s a cute little game with cute little birds! You can change up their feathers, their fashion, and do some neat skateboard tricks. My biggest issue with this game though is that the controls are very clunky. But from the short time I played it I found it very amusing.

Door Rates Skatebird: 3/5

HOLLOW KNIGHT

A friend of mine gifted this to me years ago, and it only took me like... half a decade or so to finally finish it! Heck yeah progress.

Anyway, this game is a nice Metroidvania. I found the aesthetic very nice, dark yet welcoming. I couldn’t have imagined making a world full of bugs work out to be cute! The music is also wonderful and the worldbuilding is great.There’s much to discover and a variety of areas. The story is also great (though I imagine my enjoyment was a bit diminished after I spoiled myself a bit lol). I enjoyed it a lot.

Door Rates Hollow Knight: 4/5

HEAVEN’S VAULT

Another friend recommended this to me, and I instantly fell in love with a concept. Sci-fi archaeology! Learning about dead languages! Good worldbuilding! All of these tick so many boxes for me it’s amazing really

I liked the artstyle too, a mix of 2d and 3d, 3d for the environments and 2d for the character sprites. I adore it, something similar was done too for Paradise Killer, another fave of mine.

I really enjoyed the story of this game and its vibes. I replayed it some more trying to unlock more of the language since language knowledge persists between playthroughs, but my save got deleted at one point and I didn’t continue. Nonetheless, I wholeheartedly recommend this game!

Door Rates Heaven’s Vault: 5/5

VAMPIRE SURVIVORS

A simple survival game/roguelike/bullet hell of sorts, and yet it’s so addicting. A friend gifted me this game and it got me in a vicegrip instantly. In this game you go and kill enemies, get experience, and level up to get various weapons and items so that you can kill more enemies. You accomplish achievements so you can unlock more characters. You get more gold so you can upgrade your stats. It’s basically a distillation of “number go up” and how much we enjoy it! Big damage big effects. It’s like rolling up a snowball and watching it get bigger and bigger and eventually it becomes an avalanche and massacres an entire village of ghosts. Sure you crash and burn sometimes but it’s still fun building it up!

The game is very cheap and has recently released an expansion, and is even free on iPhone/Android! Go try ittttt

Door Rates Vampire Survivors: 4/5

HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST

I played Zero Dawn years ago and enjoyed it very much, and I’m glad to report that now that I’ve played the sequel, I still enjoy it a lot! The gameplay feels the same for me, and the graphics are still very breathtaking, though I didn’t have as much opportunity to take pictures here as opposed to in Zero Dawn. I enjoyed the story a lot too. I have nothing much to say about it other than it being a solid sequel, and I look forward to more entries to this series!

Door Rates Horizon Forbidden West: 4.5/5

2064: READ ONLY MEMORIES

This game is by the same people who made VA-11 Hall-A, and is set in the same world and a few years before it. It’s a visual novel with a lot to say about technology, consciousness, and people. I loved the pixel art and I loved the writing! I grew to care for the characters, which was something I did not expect. I recommend this game!

Door Rates 2064: Read Only Memories: 4/5

PAPERS PLEASE

I played Return of the Obra Dinn and enjoyed it so much that I thought I should check this game out as well. Both were made by Lucas Pope. And both are pretty cool in their own way! Return of the Obra Dinn had a focused story and a straightforward objective, but Papers Please had you living life as a simple border control officer and it really shows. Day by day the difficulty ramps up as you have to look out for more potential mistakes in peoples’ requirements. And in the meantime you still have to provide for your family.

While all of this is going on, life continues, and there will be world events that surprise you. I love how this game weaves its simple gameplay into a good narrative. It is a very solid game.

Door Rates Papers Please: 4/5

FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

I started this in 2021 but only finished it early 2022. I haven’t played the original so I’m glad to play this with updated graphics! In fact it’s a huge overhaul even.

It’s lovely to see these characters in high definition. Barrett is fuckin STACKED and it’s lovely to see Jessie and Aerith. Tifa looked lovely in a dress! And it’s nice to see Biggs and Wedge having actual personalities here.

Gameplay was snappy enough and I have no complaints about it. And I enjoyed enough how the story was told. I’m looking forward to part two!

Door Rates Final Fantasy VII Remake: 4/5

CITIZEN SLEEPER

I like this game.

It’s a sci-fi RPG. You arrive at the space station named Erlin’s Eye, where many people have made a home of. You learn of its history, its people, and most importantly, how to survive in this place. While it presents itself as sci-fi, it tells a familiar tale of trying to survive in a new frontier.

The way it plays is that every in-game day, you get a certain number of dice, already pre-rolled. You have to manage these dice in order that you get to use them succeed in the tasks you need to succeed in. In a sense, it’s a mix of RPG and resource management, which is very interesting to me.

I enjoyed the story and the characters. It is a surprisingly familiar story that resonates, and the gameplay is chill enough, along with the music. It has my Seal of Approval

Door Rates Citizen Sleeper: 4.5/5

PENTIMENT

The same friend who recommended me Heaven’s Vault told me of this game. I got it on the Xbox Game Pass and fell in love with the aesthetic. Each frame looks like an art piece you can hang in a museum!! It reminds me of like. The Bayeaux Tapestry. Idk why that specifically came to mind but. Yes.

In this game you play as journeyman artist Andreas Maler. You are contracted by the Kiersau Abbey in the village of Tassing to make art. Through Andreas’s eyes you get to know the village’s history, mingling with the village folk, breaking bread with them even!

This game... this game is not just about history, not just about choices, this game is also about you living with your choices. Andreas’s regrets, successes, and the butterfly effect of his presence on the people of Tassing are told with great import. If you play this game, I urge you not to savescum or make a new save when things don’t go your way.

It’s one of my top games of 2022. Go play it!

Door Rates Pentiment: 5/5

NO MAN’S SKY

I’ve been playing this game ever since it came out, and it continues to be a treat. It was only in 2022 though that I actually played the Expeditions. And it is very nice to see how fellow explorers just help people along through them by making bases, planting markers, and just putting up some messages! I’ve enjoyed this game for years because of its variety and beauty, but it’s only now that I felt how rich its community is. I look forward to exploring it more in the coming years!

Door Rates No Man’s Sky: 4.5/5

FINAL FANTASY XIV

2022 was the year I wrangled together a static, which is essentially an 8-person group dedicated to clearing certain content in FFXIV. We were out here trying to clear the new Savage Raids, Pandaemonium Tiers 1 to 4. It was my first time being a sort of raid leader, and it was honestly an interesting experience! It was rough at times, but I nonetheless formed lasting friendships and strengthened some current ones. And it was very enjoyable suffering playing together with friends :)

As time went on though, I had to drop my subscription because of IRL responsibilities. But this game will always be important to me because of the friendships I have made and continue to make.

Door Rates Final Fantasy XIV: 5/5

MTG ARENA

Okay.

I have a love/hate relationship with this game.

On one hand, the game itself. Magic: the Gathering. It’s honestly enjoyable! My favorite format is Historic Brawl and I enjoy brewing decks for different commanders and just playing out matches conveniently!

On the other hand the economy SUCKS and it does a lot of things to make you feel that FOMO feeling.

I’m honestly waffling between uninstalling it and not uninstalling it and I probably should uninstall it? But I have to admit I do still enjoy the game...

Either way: Magic the Gathering is a great game. MTG Arena? It’s a good way to play the game, but it’d take you a while to collect the cards you want, so jury’s out on that one.

Door Rates MTG Arena: 2.5/5

SUMMARY

That’s a lot of games!!! I played some others but I didn’t have the time to include them here, but I enjoyed most of them all the same.

I enjoy the unique experience of playing games because you are not just... reading the story, you aren’t just watching an event or anything. You are an active participant in these experiences! May it be a story-rich game, a game with fun mechanics, or even a game as simple as Wordle, you are more in charge of your experience. And I find that cool!

I’m gonna try and continue to write more reviews as I play games! I’ll make this my New Year’s Resolution sure let’s go with that. Take care dear readers!

#door reviews #umurangi generation #pyre #that which faith demands #enter the gungeon #skatebird #hollow knight #heaven's vault #vampire survivors #horizon forbidden west #2064 read only memories #papers please #final fantasy vii remake #citizen sleeper #pentiment #no man's sky #final fantasy xiv #mtg arena #2064rom #ff7r #ffxiv #ff14

[jeweljessec]

Some pros and cons of Fallout 76 I personally feel after playing roughly 60 hours (and counting) in no particular order

Pros:

- the weapons are fun! I love the instrument melee picks and I hope to see more goofy weapons

- not being able to pause changed up my playstyle a bit- it was easy to use Apex as a format of putting aid and weapons to hotkeys, and made me finally use the favorites feature in Fo4, which makes things a little easier

- the map is stunning. I love getting lost in Appalachia’s forests and just… exploring things. There’s still that wonderful environmental storytelling everywhere, made even more quirky with Literal Mothman and the weirdest mutated creatures I’ve ever seen (though to be fair, I’ve only played 4 mostly, and I am making my way through Vegas and 3)

- but seriously. Frogs??? Giant bees?? I love it

- there’s still people alive and kicking, and it’s nice to have random new events and new content

-I love the new options to make tea and interesting new recipes

-having the game be default survival but not Hard scratches the itch I like from having characters have basic needs while not being punishing

-there is an option to attack other players, but I’ve only met nice players so far! There’s also a system to punish aggressive pvp players

- The Survivor Stories I’ve found from dead NPCs have genuinely made me emotional. My heartstrings are being played like a fiddle! In a good way.

-I really liked building in 4 and I’m glad they brought it back!!

-I like the radio host!! She’s sassy and sweet and enjoyable to listen to. I hope they give her many more lines and songs in the future than what she has now. And I hope we get to meet her!!

- the diseases are an interesting bit of worldbuilding and make my character feel more human like everyone else

Cons

- The Scorchbeast. Hhh

- no seriously. You know how in Skyrim how dragons generally scaled with the area difficulty? And you had tools to easily combat them?

- picture that but…. like if a level 50 dragon could just roll up on your level 15 dragonborn at any time. And also brings a horde of Dragur with it

- I Do Not Like The Scorchbeast :(

- the lag…..

-It’s to be determined if Vegas or 76 randomly crashes more, but so far 76 is winning

- especially just…. trying to log in. It doesn’t crash, it just stays in lovely Betheseda Stasis 70% of the time trying to enter the game

- the small loss of loot when you die is barely annoying enough where the feature feels kinda… unnecessary?

- Some items expire over time that aren’t food, like government supply requests, and I don’t know if they ever tell you this.

- paying caps to fast travel isn’t… bad tight now, but I could see it being an issue in the future as costs go up the farther you need to go. Why? Who are the caps being paid to?? At least have some lore reason behind it :(

- 76 isn’t intended to be played as single player and it shows… but man do I miss having companions traveling with me.

- The NPCs aren’t terribly shallow, but also… I’m not super attached to any of them either except for the radio host and maybe the Overseer. I like them! But it just feels like Bethesda put them there exclusively to give something to do with ur fallout buddies for some reason, with not much depth behind it. Bethseda, I like your storytelling too, not just aesthetics

- I hope bundles and stuff return to the Atom shop eventually and aren’t just… gone forever once the timer runs out…

Part 2 eventually maybe? Who knows!

Would I recommend the game overall? If you have a buddy to play with or just like environmental storytelling more than anything else, sure! It’s pretty solid imo, and isn’t nearly as bad as what I heard about it at launch

#fallout 76 #pros and cons #fallout

[maybebabyplease]

editing tips pt. 2

people seemed to like this last time, so here are some more of my personal favorite editing tips! previous post here if you missed it and are interested.

typical disclaimer applies. write whatever the fuck you want! don’t edit it! who cares! not me! editing is just one of my hobbies/interests/essential to my career, so i really enjoy talking about it. hit me up if you’d like to chat more about editing or if you have any of your own tips to share! life is all about learning, and i am always trying to do so :)

1. check for ‘your’ words and phrases. everyone has words and phrases they overuse. there’s a guardian article that points out some of the words/phrases famous authors use, proving that even your fav could probably get a lot of mileage out of a command + F! Make a list of the words you know you use to death and then search your doc for them. do they really need to go there? or could you pick something else? keep the best and cut the rest. for me, my most overused words are ‘quite’ and ‘smirk’. and no one is smirking quite that much! there are also some words that just generally get overused – they may not be specific to you. one word that stands out to me in particular is the word ‘that” (ha, i even just used it). it’s not a bad word at all, and sometimes it’s the only option. but a lot of times, it’s extraneous and you can cut it entirely. example: ‘Em decided that she wanted to go to the movies’ could just be ‘Em decided she wanted to go to the movies’. you don’t notice the missing ‘that’ – the sentence still works. 2. the power of white space. i think i saw something about this recently, so it’s definitely being discussed around here! but this is one of my favorite parts of editing: arranging everything on the page. i actually hadn’t thought very much about this until i got ‘more white space’ as advice from my writing group on one of my stories a while back. paying attention to the use of space on the page can totally change the way your piece reads. for example, separating out a particular line of dialogue to make its own paragraph gives it so much much more weight. but this works in the reverse, too: if you separate out every line or every other line, you’re going to lose that emphasis. for maximum effect, you should vary paragraphs like you vary sentences: change up the lengths, change up the cadence. there are ‘rules’ you can look up about when to switch paragraphs (every time the topic changes, i think) but you can usually just sort of vibe it out. make it attractive to the eye and fun to read (so, the opposite of this post, where i have included 0 white space lol) 3. recycle your babies. look, i get it. sometimes you write a fucking banger sentence. it is so good. you’re so proud of it. you nailed that metaphor or description or whatever. but then you do it again, and again, and again. and now the readers are slogging through cold molasses prose trying to figure out what’s going on in the story. humans care deeply about storytelling, and you’ll lose your readers’ attention if they feel like they’re missing out on story for you to play with language. the thing is, though, it’s great to play with language! it’s the best thing! it’s the fun part of writing! so when you’re overdoing it, cut those sentences out and put them in a separate doc to save for later. we’re not killing our babies anymore! we’re just, you know, being environmentally conscious. reduce/reuse/recycle. 4. just say ‘said’. a lot of people already know this one, but i also feel like a lot of people were told not to overuse the word 'said'? and like, do whatever you want. but if you’re using a synonym for said every single time, they aren’t going to pop. 'said' is one of those words that the eye/brain doesn’t notice when you’re reading. it basically doesn’t count! all the synonyms are super noticeable, though, and if you overuse them, readers will be pulled out of the piece. plus, the less you use them, the more work they can do for you when you do decide to pepper them in. that way, when your character ‘announces’  or 'explains' or 'divulges' something, it will stand out to the readers and they’ll pay more attention to that particular bit.  5. chop your first/last paragraph(s). this one takes a little knowledge of who you are as a writer (person?). you may do your best writing in the first/last paragraph! personally, i tend to struggle more with writing my way into stories than writing my way out of them. i can usually guarantee that i’ll need to cut at least the first paragraph of anything i’m writing, if not the whole thing. and then if i do end up having trouble with an ending, i’ll purposefully write ‘past’ it and then cut all the extra. but don’t be afraid to cut! you can always recycle things (see above) or, you know, save it for the sequel… 6. raise the stakes. this one sort of depends on the type of story you’re writing. some fic (and original work) is more vibe-centric, and your readers might not necessarily care that much about the plot/story. when i re-read over my work, if it feels boring, it’s usually because not enough is at stake. the characters don’t want enough and the consequences aren’t big enough. if you just go through and make everything a little bit harder, a little bit worse for them, you might find yourself with a more interesting story. you can introduce a whole new challenge, an unforeseen obstacle, an unsolvable mystery, a hurricane of emotional turmoil...the possibilities are endless! 7. put the piece aside, read your favorite book, and then come back. if you’re struggling for inspo, look at what the writers you like are doing. writing is thievery, after all (not plagiarism. thievery. take that set of fancy silver utensils and melt it down and turn it into a bowl, don’t just slap your name on all the forks). come back to your own work refreshed, inspired, and ready to make changes. 8. add a character/drop a character. so something fundamentally isn’t working in your story! you want to fix it up! you can’t figure out what’s wrong! one thing you can do is take a look at your cast of characters. each character brings something to the story, unless they don’t. is there anyone who drags down the scene every time they’re in it? or would the inclusion of another character change the motivations or actions of the characters you already have? it’s something to consider if you think your story falls flat.

ok that’s plenty for today, i think. would love to hear thoughts if anyone has them!

#writing advice #editing tips #the writing process #on writing #on editing #blah blah blah is she qualified to say any of this #no obviously not #i didn't edit the last piece i posted on ao3 at all actually #am heavily editing my multi-chap tho and using ALL of these tips #love to cut paragraphs #might even be cutting entire chapters who knows #em writes

[thezanyarthropleura]

Film Ranking and Retrospective

So, after evaluating all twelve Gamera films based on purely objective metrics like turtle spin velocity, character development, how much I cried, number of potential sapphic relationships, and least amount of tapeworm, here they are from favorite to least favorite:

Gamera the Brave

Gamera: Guardian of the Universe

Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris

Gamera 2: Advent of Legion

Gamera: Super Monster

Gamera vs. Zigra

Gamera vs. Guiron

Gamera vs. Barugon

Giant Monster Gamera

Gamera vs. Gyaos

Gamera vs. Viras

Gamera vs. Jiger

Gamera the Brave takes the top spot for being so much more than it needed to be, perhaps taking a few steps outside what makes a typically good monster movie to just be an all-around great film. Of course, the Heisei trilogy still aren’t far behind, balancing the two a lot better than the Brave does and building an excellent cast of characters to the point that the hardest decision on this entire list, and the one I’m most likely to go back on at any moment, is ranking these three films against each other. Super Monster reaches for the stars just like the Brave does, daring to be something wholly unique despite its objective flaws, and is held back only by a gut punch ending after the likes of which I can’t actually make myself put it higher than the Heisei films. And of course, the rest of the Showa films are still going to end up ranked lower by being products of their time and having a relatively limited approach to in-depth storytelling, but there are still some I find exceptional for more unique reasons than I once thought I would. I even genuinely like most of Jiger, it’s just so much sensory hell it can be tricky to watch.

But my goals during this extended fixation weren’t really centered on pitting the films against each other - there was a lot of discovery, too. About halfway through March I did something I hadn’t expected I’d want to at the beginning, and bought myself the Arrow Video complete Showa era collection, mainly to get a physical copy of Super Monster but also with the bonus of getting to see Japanese versions of all eight films. In fact, I’ve now seen the Showa films probably just about any way one can see them, be that the subtitled original Japanese version, the AIP dub or first import English version, the Daiei pre-international dub (which I’ve learned is a more accurate term than “Sandy Frank”), the MST3K edition, the MST3K KTMA edition, the MST3K Fanmade edition, or specifically in Gamera: Super Monster’s case, the Elvira’s Movie Macabre edition or the Cinema Insomnia edition that’s missing a whole third of the movie.

That’s quite a lot of watching the Showa movies, and I think really a big theme for all of this was gaining a better appreciation of those films, specifically Noriaki Yuasa and his vision. He imagined Gamera as a hero for children, specifically because, as a child himself, living through the second World War and its aftermath, he came to believe adults were untrustworthy and too easily swayed by propaganda, and if that doesn’t make him the most relatable kaiju film directer of all time I don’t know what could possibly top it. Screw Gamera: Rebirth, the next one should be Gamera vs. Fox News.

Oh, right, speaking of which, I haven’t talked about that, either. And that’s because most of the major reasons I like the existing Gamera films so much tend to be more happenstance, and have little to do with how well they’ve followed the franchise formula. So far, nothing about Gamera: Rebirth has told me anything about how well it will handle its human characters, whether any of their stories will be relatable to me personally, whether it’ll have a strong environmental stance like Zigra, and actually with what we’ve seen of the cast, it seems like there aren’t going to be too many women in this series at all. Of course, that could always change, and there’s always a chance the one lady we’ve seen in the trailers could be compelling enough on her own to still make it a favorite, like with Mai in Gamera the Brave, but we won’t know anything for sure until release. But if, as seems most likely, Rebirth really is just a throwback to the early Showa era, I think now I can be a little more okay with that.

(I do actually quite like the monster designs revealed thus far. If I ever go back and write that possible Gamera vs. the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sequel, there’s a good chance of that magenta Neo-Jiger showing up in the Triceraton arena).

I think, if I were to put into words what makes Gamera unique among kaiju cinema, it’s that Gamera is most consistently a story about a giant monster interacting with humans, in most cases one or more specific humans. When I write for Toho kaiju (and by that I mean Battra), I’ll admit I’m basically just using yet another combination of the 37853590434 creative ways people have come up with to tell a story that’s still really about humans but using the monsters as the characters - and we do this because the monsters do have character. Unlike most giant creatures in the west, Japanese daikaiju represent things, they have emotions and personal values and life purposes, and often unique dynamics in interacting with one another. But you can’t really do much with just this side of things for the Gamera franchise, since there’s not a single monster in any of the full-length films whose relationship with Gamera is anything but antagonistic. But Gamera is already about the relationship between humans and monsters, and that was what I wanted to specifically take these couple of months to explore here, as it’s very similar to the stories I've already been straying farther from canon in order to tell with the friends and enemies of the other Big G.

As far as most of the western kaiju fandom is concerned, having such a focus on humans might appear to be the biggest risk the Gamera movies ever took, given how many fans I often see dismissing the human characters as unimportant at best, annoying at worst. Personally, I beg to differ, and the more I rewatch these films, the more I’ve begun to appreciate how remarkable it is that this one subset of historical foreign cinema, with the characters it portrays and the values it represents, became embedded in western culture all because there happened to be a market for imported special effects films. There are actually quite a lot of kaiju movies whose stories inspire me to want to write about the humans as well as the monsters. But the top of that list, if I wrote it out, would probably be stacked with more Gamera movies than anything else.

#gamera #kaiju #tokusatsu #yuasa noriaki #noriaki yuasa #gamera the brave #gamera super monster #gamera vs zigra #a lesbian reviews all the gamera movies #gamera march #gamera april

[amethystblack]

Now that it's been three months since Reborn's public release, may we see the un-redacted version of the ask where the dev team talk about their favorite parts of the game? Thanks! -Yeshua

oh, sure, why not.

ikaru

i mean let's be honest it's probably going to be celebi or the ending(s) but if i had to mention a part everyone (can) knows i like all the characters' internal monologues in the void and most parts involving titania. granted i am not familiar with 80% of postgame also the elite four + champion

crim

most parts involving ace i mean what? haha actual nonspoiler answer for pre-postgame is labradorra, i think it's hard not to just say "everything" i'm rlly fond of most of the story;; love shelly in labradorra so much;;, the different PULSEs are hella neat and manage to feel really unique despite basically being one after the other, i love the gang all pulling up and storming, it's just a really fun segment and i love the aesthetic of the map as a whole also tournament starlight colors was so pretty no bias

postgame i think lati quest, hoopa was a lot of fun, jirachi is maybe not your traditional definition of fun but gutted me pretty hard so i have to add that one, celebi bc first quest i worked on so more bias, and tao bc im biased once again

this answer is like 99% spoilers im sorry this is not a helpful answer but if it's a part people know def coming back to the city after it's rebuilt and seeing it all cleaned up and there suddenly being a ton to see and explore and it's all pretty was almost jarring the first time i played through and it still always makes me smile or the void the void is a good one

azzie

I'm going to surprise exactly no one and say I love the tourmaline arc- especially on Reshi but also on Zek, there's a lot of environmental storytelling out there and I really love the Train Towners

I've also got a soft spot for the entire glass workstation arc- I think the storytelling there is masterful.

Apart from that… I like (redacted: the maingame ending where Anna gathers everyone's good thoughts and hopes to help you reach Lin; that made my heart just shine), (redacted: Celebi), (redacted: Hoopa, that was a freaking riot), (redacted: dialkia because there are BABIES and also neat lore), (redacted: Darkrai, it's mean but in a very good way), (redacted: the entirety of Xernyvel. Noel my beloved; puzzle my beloved; Shelly my beloved) (redacted: tao, all of it) and probably other things I can think of when it's not almost 3am, but they'd all be redacted too. Oh yeah definitely the e4 too Victory Road itself was fun too but more because I liked the puzzles

oh also i haven't seen it ingame but shade and anna's ending made me cry when i read it so there's that

autumn

While my favorite aesthetically will almost certainly be the Diancie quest, but my favorite part that exists:

Gameplay wise: The garchomp, finding silly ways to beat it every playthrough is one of the biggest deliberations i make.

Meanwhile Doctor clownall getting hyper beamed through a wall was excellent

smeargle

it's spoilers but kinda not if I just say El's elite 4 room, That doesn't sound spoilery does it like it's known he's in the E4 right? I'd also say zeraora's quest just because I had fun making that one

marcello

I'd love if you could just put a massive essay and redact the entire thing for me But joking aside I think the Glass Workstation is very funky

#reborn asks #ask ame

[1ore]

Do you have any good sites/pages/reads about deserts?

Oh my. I put a pin in this to come back to it after final’s week and then I completely forgot about the pin. I am so sorry this is so late, but here it is!!!

Pretty much anything I recommend is going to be focused on the Sonoran Desert/surrounding areas. The stuff I know about deserts I haven’t personally visited is spread out over too many websearch deep dives to point to a single source about with any sense of authority, so I will not be very helpful there, hahahaha… (in fact I don't think I can point at anything with any authority, but at least I feel better recommending stuff that I can look in my backyard to verify.)

Still, I hope learning about the specific can give you a better understanding of the general. I think you'll find there’s some emergent themes with deserts and aridlands, particularly when it comes to issues with water and environmental degradation that a lot of them are going through today.

Ok. ANYWAY!

First, the books.

These are sorted by increasing specificity/scholarly-ness. So more accessible/general reads are on top, and more dense/topical ones are further down.

A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert

Exactly what it says on the tin. Published by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a *really* cool institution to visit if you are ever in the Tucson area. It’s written for general audiences, and the 1st edition is available to read for free online, pretty much in its entirety?!!? (I will recommend the 2nd edition if you can get your hands on it, because I think the online version is missing some personal anecdotes that IMO make the reading experience a lot more fun for people who maybe haven’t visited, or don’t have a vested interest in reading about, say, soil ecology recreationally.)

Oral History of the Yavapai by Mike Harrison and John Williams

I don’t know where to put this, exactly. It’s very specific to central Arizona and the Salt River Valley, and if you’re not familiar with the area, I think it might be difficult to wrap your head around it. That said, it’s a no-nonsense transcription of oral history told by two Yavapai elders, Mike Harrison and John Williams. It does not read like a history book at all, and I mean that in a very good way. It’s intimate and conversational and Mike and John are *very* talented storytellers. This is also an unflinchingly honest perspective on ~late 1800s-1900s settler history that I think is very difficult for most people to get, even today. For this reason, it is an emotionally difficult read but a very necessary one IMO.

Mythical River by Melissa L. Sevigny

This one I’m still working through, but it traces the history of water issues in the Southwest from colonial times to today. The name delivers on everything it promises, by the way:

"Mythical River takes the reader on a historical sojourn into the story of the Buenaventura, an imaginary river that led eighteenth- and nineteenth-century explorers, fur trappers, and emigrants astray for seventy-five years. This mythical river becomes a metaphor for our modern-day attempts to supply water to a growing population in the Colorado River Basin. Readers encounter a landscape literally remapped by the search for “new” water, where rivers flow uphill, dams and deep wells reshape geography, trees become intolerable competitors for water, and new technologies tap into clouds and oceans."

These People Have Always Been a Republic: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1598-1912 by Maurice Crandall

Another book I’m still working through. Crandall paints a *wildly* detailed picture of how these systems of governance actually functioned. There’s also an angle of how colonial systems of governance imposed onto the Pueblos, Hopis, Yaquis, and Tohono O’odham were variously subverted, adapted, or rejected by its constituents, and how those systems fit into Spanish, Mexican, and American power dynamics.

Shorter reads

Other stuff that's stuck with me over the years, as well. My bookmarks are a junk drawer of this sort of thing but maybe something will grab your interest?

Five Years Later, Effects of Colorado River Pulse Flow Still Linger – Article about the short few weeks when the Colorado River met the sea for the first time in decades.

Mark Thomas’ Geology Blog – just a grab bag of really, really cool phenomena in and around Northern Arizona.

History of the Poston Memorial and Poston Japanese American Internment camp – A little-known interstice of Japanese American and Mojave, Chemehuevi, Hopi, and Dine history that’s close to my heart.

Native American Farmers are Growing a Sustainable Market – Article about native-owned farms in Arizona that challenged my (admittedly still sour) opinion of industrial ag in Arizona, hahahaha.

Borderlore – Exactly what it sounds like. There’s a lot of great stuff going on in here.

Arizonensis – Oldie but goodie. Critters and plants and places of interest in the Sonoran Desert.

Other sites I like to hit for this, that, and the other thing:

SEINet

Southwest Desert Flora

Native American Ethnobotany Database

iNaturalist (of course)

I.e. plants. Plants. So many plants. I am Always needing to know things about plants in my area, so these are some of my best friends for that. They’re a nice jumping-off point for learning more about them than just their scientific name and what they look like, too.

SEINet is more like a traditional herbarium with field guide excerpts full of botanical lingo. Southwest Desert Flora is a little more for general audiences, but also has some information about plant ecology and other schtuff.

I like to use iNaturalist to get a better idea of where things are spatially. And also to locate pictures of (certain) weird and obscure species. Or species that are so common to the point of invisible, people don’t think to share nice pictures of them.

NAEB is there because I like to know human relationships with plants, too. It isn’t just restricted to the southwest, so if anyone else in ~north america is curious about ethnobotanical uses of plants in their area, definitely check it out.

.... Deserts! Whew. That went on longer than I thought it would. I hope something in here is useful to you. Thank you for asking this question and being so patient for the answer, it is really touching to hear the interest and to be able to share this info ;m;

#love this desert #..... links time

[macbethz]

Saw your recent posts about deathloop and I've never heard of it before but oh myyy goddd it sounds intriguing, considering getting it but I know next to nothing about it really tbh. Do you think you could like give a summary of it or what you liked about it? Sooo fair to be like no go Google it instead lmao, I just love hearing first hand accounts of people playing a game yk, it gives me more of an impression of the game sometimes but also I know people don't wanna explain shit all the time haha

I will never in my life tell someone to google something instead of explaining what i like about it because i love to talk about things i like <3333

I definitely recommend getting it!!! It's one of my favorite games of all time and imo so incredibly underrated. The vague plot summary is you are an amnesiac assassin trapped in a time loop attempting to break the time loop by assassinating your targets, all while being targeted yourself by a woman who claims to know everything about you. I don't want to say too much because I think it's best played going in as blind as possible, but it engages a lot with cycles of violence, capitalism (my favorite trope of rich idealists fuck off to an island to build a better society and realize they can't stand each other), violence as intimacy, and the complexities of family relationships.

I personally love deathloop most for its character relationships and environmental storytelling! The relationship between Colt (you) and Julianna (the assassin targeting you) is the engine the whole game runs on and the voice actors have this really believable conversational chemistry. But each of the side characters also have their own unique relationship with Colt and each other, as well as their own secrets and psychological issues that you can dive into as deeply or shallowly as you want. And the environmental storytelling is on a level I think many AAA games are still trying to find in that it goes beyond just finding notes on the ground or whatever. The whole game is set on an island that has layers and layers of history that you can see through the changing architecture and faded signs and graffiti, it's incredibly cool.

As you can tell from these descriptors it's definitely a game that gives back what you put into it - if you wanted to you could breeze past all this and just play it as a straight immersive sim shooter but imo that is not as rewarding. You also probably won't enjoy this game if you don't want to find new ways to play the same levels over and over - it's set in a time loop after all! I personally am the kind of person who loves to explore and master game environments so it fit right into my natural playstyle. I will say multiplayer is completely broken and unfortunately the lack of fans means it's probably not going to be fixed any time soon, but the base game is so strong it's really just a fun extra.

anyway. play deathloop. goodbye

#THANK YOU FOR ASKING I LOVE HER SO MUCHHHH #warlock wartalks