This is an entirely unrelated thing, but i had an idea for a “custom” follower forever ago that, if you’d like to hear, i’ve put below! warning: its fucking long and i dont have the time nor energy to make it real beyond thinking it out.
To begin with a few precursor things: i enjoy asshole characters, as we dont often see them as followers and they flesh out the world of the game in a nice way, and i enjoy characters that are relevant to specific plots within the game. If there are personal stakes involved, like serana with her story, it makes it all the more satisfying to look for dialogue and go through to the end of the quest with them.
And i’m also DEEPLY mentally ill about three things: castle Volkihar, moral ambiguity, and a guy named ronthil.
If you’ve never heard of him, i don’t blame you: he’s a vampire bosmer within clan Volkihar that does nothing but serve as a merchant and a speech trainer. His wiki is super fucking small and the unique thing about him is that he’s treated worse than dirt within the clan, making him sleep behind a bookshelf iirc. He’s constantly staying on the good behavior to not get kicked out and making himself available to tasks. ur standard pathetic meow meow, so of course i like him.
Anyway my proposal was to turn Ronthil into a “Serana dialogue add on” styled mod that changed some of his core motivations, re-contextualizing his people pleasing personality, offering players an additional perspective into clan volkihar’s inner workings, provide players who were already vampires a different start to dawnguard (because a vampire hunter approaching a vampire and said vampire going to the vampire hunter’s lair is suicidal stupidity at best), and finally provide a moderate voice for why somebody might wanna be a vampire and stay that way.
so the proposed changes start like this: Whether or not you’re a vampire, you’ll sometimes see a man wandering about at night along the roads. If you’re a human, he basically doesn’t interact with you.
If you’re a vampire, he makes the suggestion that something of value to the both of you has come to his attention recently, and if you were to help him he’d be more than generous with the earnings. Obviously this is an equivalent exchange, as he is considerably ill equipped to take on anything nasty, so you’ll have to do a lot of the heavy lifting as far as fighting goes. If you agree, he leads you straight to Dimhollow crypt and the quest follows as normal. You return Serana home and are given the typical reward offer.
Assuming you accept, you’re given the standard speech and told to get your ass going to redwater den. If you speak to him after (you’ll find him loitering about) he’ll offer to accompany you, off the record of course, if you require him. He will then be available as a follower from that point on
If you’re wondering why a Volkihar vampire is being so charming and so helpful for no good reason, he’s not being; the truth of it is that he’s an intense social climber. He sees that Harkon favors you for the return of his daughter and you’ve already shown off your combat prowess at dimhollow, now with the added bonus that you’ve been given the power of a Vampire Lord. He suspects that rubbing elbows with you in a positive capacity will prove beneficial to him rising up that clan ladder down the line. Though, to be fair, he doesn’t at all suspect that it all leads to Harkon’s death, and you & serana effectively becoming the most powerful ppl at court.
Still, that’s really all the better for him so long as he can prove useful enough to you to be given a higher position, or at least treated with more dignity.
Ronthil in this version is basically faking all of his niceties, and underneath it all is a calculating little bastard. He wants power and status, typical vampire desires, but wants them for the protection and strength they provide, not necessarily to squash people beneath him (though he’d be tempted were the mood to strike him. I mean, he IS a vampire.) His climb to the position he’s in now, lowly as it is and even with how he’s treated, is still something he fought tooth and nail for, so he’s not willing to risk himself being stupid unless he thinks there’s something better in it for him to be that way.
aaaand i just ran out of creative juice, so thats the general idea i’d cooked up. if you read this far, congrats and also wow i sure hope you like vampires lol.
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Minecraft Wiki is independent again!!
Yahoo!!! No more FANDOM wiki!!! Find the new minecraft wiki at minecraft.wiki!!
I thought it would be good to make a little PSA post with summarised information on why they moved from FANDOM!
Why did they move?
FANDOM is notoriously a bad wiki for both readers and editors alike. This is due to the insane amount of ads, the site layout, the lag, the fact that FANDOM can just take your wiki from you, etc has made the minecraft wiki decide to move
Because of the lack of agency the minecraft wiki has over its own wiki, they had a long discussion and vote with the community on what wiki platform to move towards. You can view both discussions here and here
By moving to a more independent wiki, they can provide a much better and friendlier service.
What's improved with the new wiki?
New site look, lacking the ugly FANDOM yellow sidebar and removing all other unnecessary bloat! This also includes a dark mode option and other custom settings.
Faster load times! I have incredibly good internet, and even I notice the STARK difference between the load times of FANDOM and the official wiki!
Less ads! At the moment they have no ads, but they do intend to have at least one. The placement of which will be discussed with the community to ensure minimal disruption to the user.
Better search functionality! FANDOM's search is notoriously bad at giving you the answers you need. Now they can have a more robust search function that more accurately brings users to what they are looking for.
No age popups- Unlike FANDOM this wiki does not need to know if you're a child or adult.
Anonymous editing has returned! Users can now once again anonymously contribute to the site!
HOWEVER. THE MINECRAFT WIKI NEEDS YOUR HELP!
FANDOM refuses to close old wiki's that have moved away, and so they will continue to show up in search domains. The old domains such as minecraft.gamepedia.com and minecraftwiki.net are also permanently attached to the FANDOM wiki.
In order to help the new wiki be successful, you can help out in the following way:
Spread the word!
Don't interact with FANDOM links. The less people interact with FANDOM, the more google knows that people are looking for the official wiki and not the FANDOM one!
Dont use the old links, again for the same reason as above!
And of course, improve the wiki :D! Since you don't need an account to make edits, see what you can contribute!
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probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
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its so important to me that artists remember they can fuck around. you never have to use tools as intended. you can always skip steps. you dont have to be organized. you dont have to be neat. you can put as little effort as you want into the parts of the process you dont find fun. maybe if youre making products you cant do these things but on your own time you can do literally actually whatever the hell. it doesnt matter how long you spend on it youve made art and its complete when you decide to quit. yee haw
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