What’s this?? Complete art by me??

I’m trying to get out of my uhhh year long slump so I’m gonna go out of my way to try and complete pieces. But this? I’m so proud of this girl, I think she turned out so good and I think I finally figured out some basic grass! I have a second piece I’m working on right now too.

Check out my etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/CrayonQueenCreations

I SEE YOUR RB ABT ASKING ABT OCS SO I WILL ASK >:D

What’s the toughest case Nora ever took as a lawyer? Has she ever wanted to quit after defending someone bad/or losing as case on the offence?

What’s she proudest of? What‘s CONSTANTLY on her mind? Did her favourite sweater survive the bombs? What’s her opinion on Sentry Bots or Assaultrons? WHATS SHE THINK OF FATHER?? (and does she ever think about technically being the grandmother of all synths?)

Lots of questions but I am curious!

aaaa thank you! i'm always happy to talk about nora!! (i also talk a lot about her and do ask games and such over on my fanfic blog; here's her tag!) under the cut for length because i am longwinded

oh man, nora wants to quit being a lawyer all the time but sticks it out because she feels its a moral duty. if she wasn't a lawyer, i think she'd own a greenhouse or go to school for art history, but she really struggles with letting herself relax, or feeling like she's allowed to relax/do things she enjoys. i'm gonna keep a lid on the reason why, but it'll eventually get explained in this fic i'm writing. (which i am sooo close to posting chapter 1 of!)

nora most often wants to quit after losing defense cases. prison is a punishment and not rehabilitation, help with bad circumstances, etc, and since she's a public defender most of her clients are struggling poor folks who can't afford an expensive lawyer. she tries very hard to be a servant of the common people.

she actually did prosecution for a little while but quit because she didn't vibe with it at all. in my fic the prewar legal system is skewed heavily in favor of the prosecution, and juries are pressured to convict, even in cases where there's reasonable doubt, no motive, etc. nora doesn't like feeling like a weapon of the state used to punish its own people, so she walks away.

as for tough cases: i'm still ironing this out for the fic, but i wanted to expand on the corsino case mentioned in the scrapped sanctuary hills terminal. in the end, nora never gets to see it finished because of the war, and that weighs on her.

nora tries to be proud of making it through law school, because it was a struggle for her, but she has difficulty being proud of herself (her husband does a pretty good job of being proud for her, though). deacon talks her into being proud of the work she does for the railroad, even though it never feels like she's done enough.

unfortunately nora sometimes spirals in her thoughts, and one thing in particular is often on her mind: that she should have carried shaun that morning. fic snippet here, tw for graphic violence, suicidal ideation, and general bad brain stuff. she has a very unhealthy relationship with her perception of her actions that day, and it eats away at her.

her favorite sweater did not survive the bombs; none of her clothes or personal items did (save for the holotape from codsworth and her and her husband's wedding rings). she misses her wool peacoat immensely. mama murphy does knit her a grey sweater that she wears pretty frequently, though.

oh god, assaultrons and sentry bots both scare the hell out of her. her first gunshot wound is actually courtesy of a sentry bot she and her companions accidentally activated. she gets clipped in the upper arm and it leaves a nasty scar and puts her out of commission for a few weeks while it heals. [here's a fic snippet of just after she gets shot, and another where she's got cabin fever and disassembled nick's office (under the "anger" heading). tw for blood and injury in the first link!]

that obviously is a pretty awful first introduction to sentries. she tries very hard to avoid fighting them when possible. she feels the same about assaultrons. nora's main advantage in combat is her speed and stealthiness, and she really hates having to fight things that are faster than she is and can find her. (she likes kleo a lot, though, and considers her a friend.)

oh, father. god. okay he's a huge part of why i'm even writing this fic in the first place. nora genuinely loves him and tries her best to convince him to change his plans and... it doesn't work. she's just another experiment to him and whether he cares for her or is lying to string her along is unclear, but she loves him and so she can't let go. it's an emotionally abusive relationship on father's part, and part of nora recognizes this but... that's her baby, y'know? as awful as he is she can't help but love him.

how she resolves this is uh, spoilers, sorry. it's one of my favorite moments in the fic, though.

she soundly rejects the idea of being a grandparent to the synths. she does consider many of them family (danse, x6, and shaun in particular), but in a found-family way like she considers her postwar human friends family. i talk a little about it in this post, but to sum up, she thinks father's take on it is very paternalistic, especially given that he doesn't see synths as people. biological relation doesn't mean very much to her.

tysm for the ask!! <3 i could talk about her all day

ok, so this is my art blog, and several people followed me after i posted a few madness combat jokes, and i feel bad right now because madness was my special interest for like a year and a half and i feel like i very suddenly just stopped being able to get happiness out of it a few days ago. tl;dr my special interest is likely dying or at least i can't tolerate the feeling of obligation to draw it and i feel guilty for attracting people to this blog expecting that only for me to likely abruptly stop posting about it, so if anyone wants to unfollow over that i understand and won't be offended. sorry. also sorry to everyone who followed me from the start and has to deal with me making tons of fanart for stuff you don't care about whenever i get a new interest. i know it's not actually a big deal but it simply feels that way because i am autistic. thanks.

like i realized i was putting all this energy into caring and basically pathetically simping and getting emotional about missing the premier and then my body just rejected it. i was like why am i suffering so much, why am i doing this? and some part of me i guess got disgusted with myself and decided to just run away. obviously it's actually my mind that rejected it but i'm using the "body" language because that's the way it felt, like just an overwhelming reaction. and i'm actually pretty upset about it because i was pretty deeply emotionally attached and still am and yet my body is rejecting it because i used everything it had to give me up and/or feel trapped or something. really hard to explain. it's also about my feelings of throwing my life away not making good enough original art and not respecting myself enough as an artist to seek out original self expression etc.

i think maybe what happened overall was i committed myself to this one interest for a long time because i was attached and really didn't want to let go even though i should've let go before and then my brain suddenly forced me to stop and also i'm still attached and there's a chance i'll get re-interested but then this will just happen again and it will be a cycle of pain which coincides with the previously-unrelated-but-now-related mood swings i've been having for the past few months. another thing was that i worked hard to reclaim it as an interest over the course of this year because someone kind of involved it in abusing me (that wasn't the main factor, it just became involved because it was my special interest during the relationship and then was used to hurt me at one point) and i had to retrain myself to not associate it with that and this made me more attached as well.

i still haven't watched the live action trailer yet because i like felt pressure to be emotional about it and i'm like not up to making myself get emotional and/or failing to get emotional when i should. like i was excited about it and now it's been out for days and i haven't even watched it because it will hurt. i hope i get truly re-interested in a while, years or something, and then get to watch it and really enjoy it, but i'm scared that, since this happened, i will never be able to enjoy it again??

i hate that the nature of my brain is to love things really hard and then inevitably get tired of them and all that emotion is like... like it was never there and was always meaningless and just a dopamine factory. i know it wasn't meaningless but like i feel committed to things as if they were people and eventually i start to go crazy from feeling trapped due to doing this to myself but it's like i'm incapable of just having a bunch of casual interests and instead one has to become my whole personality for an extended time. god if you're out there i would recommend nerfing autism/ocd combo. awesome to be a person who by nature wants to do the same thing forever but also is extremely sensitive to feelings of being trapped and also can't stand the uncertainty of knowing if losing something will be permanent 😎 <- imagine that is the carter amelia davis version of that emoji

but yeah i really love madness but i like can't keep performing interest anymore or i will go insane. i need the amount of interest that exists naturally to be my only reason for caring and to feel safe with the possibility of that amount dwindling to nothing.

Horizon Zero Dawn Review

The game that critics have been raving about for years and I just haven't played. I heard a lot of people say "this needs a movie" but they say that about any game that dares to be a little bit cinematic because I personally disagree.

That first part is rough, the story seems so in your face, predictable and bland but I think the problem is that it didn't know how to put in its exposition. I think it naturally builds up as it goes on, getting bigger and broader, it's just those first experiences that can be a slog because you're pretty much learning what style you're going to play in.

I got more or less everything I expected, crafting, a skill tree, various weapons. What I didn't expect though are dialogue options. You can choose normally up to four paths, an intelligent one, a compassionate one, and a straightforward one. You don't have to worry about the stress of trying to reach a specific ending because there's really only one, the only thing that affects it is the amount of people that are in it. So does that make the choices irrelevant? Yes and no because there are different dialogue options and like I said, which means that you can get certain characters to like you more given the option you choose but not in the same way that relationship points work and I definitely felt the draw to do that whenever I came across my first side-quest.

Side-quests are interesting, I love tracking things in games, though it's rare that you actually get the chance to do it and here you have a good amount of opportunities. Is that all though? Far from it. I actually found myself searching for side-quests because the first two were so satisfying. It really only began to show its hand a bit more after those quests. As I mentioned, there are a lot more RPG elements than I first imagined but it starts to send you on scavenger hunts, especially that Dreamwillow one, that one I actually laughed out loud at every time I was turned away. It also starts to gatekeep to where it recommends that you be a certain level which is...odd? I mean at face value it looks like you could rock basically any combat situation that isn't context sensitive. Leveling up gives you abilities but they're more like Deus Ex on that front, where it's just for preference and upgrading, not necessarily strength. The only thing you improve on offense wise basically boils down to having the right materials or units to buy weapons then a matter of finding modifications. Other than that, leveling up seems to just increase your health. It really just depends on the quest too because I'll play one above my level and be fine then play another that's actually under my level and feel stuck.

Now I only played it on normal mode so something like "Ultra Hard" is bound to be more demanding but as far as actual side quest content, I feel like they have potential but just need tweaked, give me more stuff for major characters that affects their standing with me. Rather than having each quest be contained in its own story, have it affect you later in the game, let your actions be shown, give it rewards and consequences. There are some really great side-quests but there are also some crappy ones, it doesn't pass that threshold that most RPGs fall under or anything. However, I did find myself doing side-quests at my own free will and the ones that I didn't like or couldn't do at the time, I just skipped and focused on something else, I felt a lot more freedom with this game, like I didn't feel forced to grind or do a certain number of side-quests or really do anything. It encourages you to explore and play the way you want to play and I respect the heck out of that. Maybe it's different for other players though.

Perhaps my favorite actual side thing was the Cauldrons for those who actually played this, you'll know why. For those who didn't, just know that it's cool and let it be a surprise for when you go to one. You might expect these big set-pieces and bosses like Uncharted or GoW, but it's not really like that. I genuinely think that this is more video-gamey than it lets on which certainly takes up its runtime. One addition to side-quests that I would like to see is one where you don't know it's happening. For example, in this game, you'll come across random hunters who are attacking or being attacked by machines but rather than just going on about your day and them going on about their's, I want to fight off the machine and the person say "You saved my life, my name's Jara, I live in the town nearby and want to repay you." so you go there and there's trouble so it starts up a side-quest. Now don't get me wrong, there are PLENTY of instances of people getting attacked actually being a mission but most of the time someone in town will just tell you "I haven't seen this person in a while, can you go check on them for me?" It's the art of subtlety and also just doing a good deed and getting rewarded for it. It's a conscious choice and split decision rather than just another checkmark on your list to complete.

Now I won't bother listing the characters and rating them but there's a certain aspect that has me really enthused So, Aloy is an outcast and a lot of these side missions and scenarios reflect her, you'll see the way she can relate with other characters, making it almost poetic in a subliminal kind of way. Then they add this tribal and futuristic setting to it where Aloy acts as the medium, there are parts of the game where she questions the tribe because they cut themselves off from technology and just don't know any better and we as a viewer know that but having the main character view things in 'our' lens is pretty genius. To top that off, they give her enough personality to be her own character while giving us enough power to influence her so that we ourselves can REFLECT WITH HER. It's not her character that I'm impressed with, it's the layout of the story.

So, how is the main story? It's kind of like the Flood scenario in Halo if I'm being honest. I'm not going to spoil anything but it's passable, like I said, it's not like an Uncharted and it's not like a movie. The visuals just look good at times (I took all the pictures in this review myself and so much more!). I'd call it a futuristic/tribal mix between Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Skyrim but I see elements of a lot of things. (Also since it's post apoctalypic, you find items that we see in modern day, like how they call keys, "chimes"! They think they're windchimes because there are no more cars! I love that!)

It actually does a pretty good job at being an open world considering that there are tons of things to do on your routes as well as collect but it's not so much so that it seems unfeasible, as I said, I found myself doing a good chunk of the side stuff just because it was fun to do and I'm not even close to a completionist for any game. If you mess up, healing plants will still be there. As long as you save, enemy parts will still be there. A place can be cleared out and conquered so that enemies don't come back. The actual towns are peaceful so you can't get mangled by any bots outside of scripted instances.

The graphics are pretty good but I can see some error here and there, nothing necessarily game breaking but the animations and AI are definitely janky at times. It's pretty obvious from the get-go but I'll do my best to specify and give constructive criticism on what I found wrong with certain aspects of the game. Rost is slow, like slower than walking speed but that's not to speak for all NPCs, some run, some you don't need to follow, it was really just him. I've had NPCs who fight but miss every single time on simple enemies (that might not be a bug, that might just be a funny bit that someone decided to add in). Sabretooths have jumped through walls (granted the walls were kinda broken but I'm not sure if those big boys can fit when they can barely find the entrance) I found myself jumping to a ledge or on a rope but not land it and just drop (it really boils down to loosening the hit box for that). Which to add on to that, I would like more places to climb and jump to in general (other than stupid mountains). I felt like there wasn't really enough that I could climb and the places that I could, could've been a bit more obvious that I could, maybe even make it viewable with your focus if you don't want it to be visually outstanding. There's a day and night cycle and while I like that, I found some of the contrast to be annoying because I could be staring a ladder right in the face and not even know it sometimes because it would be so dark. I'm not going to complain too much about it because I didn't turn my brightness up, I just left it at default and I would assume the PS5 version fixes some of those little things.

Now, this one is kind of a gray area: Hiking up mountains. Skyrim, Fallout, and Death Stranding went too far and gave little to no barriers. They had you looking for sweet spots that weren't there in order to cheese your way through an area either on or off a beaten path. But I would compare this to something like GTA where it's not as bad and does have its limits but might need tightened up some more because I can certainly get to places that lead to nowhere.

I've made headshots that don't make contact or damage while using precision. Part of that problem was that they could be high up in a tower (which have spikes sticking out) and I would hit ABOVE the logs, to make a headshot but since it was in that vicinity, it registered that as the spikes' hitbox so it wouldn't cause any damage and just alert the enemy (same if I was in the tower, looking down). Input lag where I hit up button on the D-Pad to regain health and I have to keep pressing it. If I had to guess, you have to meet the requirements of not taking damage, staying still, etc in order for it to actually work but it doesn't really have a reason to do that and it doesn't "tell" you that those are the requirements (as far as I know).

During the final boss, one of the enemies hit me into a rock wall, trapping me inside of it and the boss was already half health so I really didn't want to have to restart (I also didn't know how far back the checkpoint was) so I kept shooting stuff and eventually the boss destroyed the wall, allowing me to get out (timed section, by the way). There have been a few times where a tree or leaf or something is obstructing a cutscene and sometimes there will be a mech in the background screaming over the NPC talking, which I'm sure is due to the cutscenes being real-time which is still pretty impressive. Now are these errors all the time? No, not at all, I'm just pointing out that some times these things happened and that I felt it needed ironed out but I wouldn't call this half baked or an unfinished product or anything, it's nowhere near that level. I get that there are so many NPCs that it's hard to account for them all with facial animations but whenever they're talking, it seems pretty static and sometimes the lips don't line up. There's this one guy who says that he got lost in a sandstorm but he's standing in snow. Again, little nitpicks in an otherwise great game.

Now, I got this game for free as a Playstation promotion but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll be great, I played a little bit of that Ratchet & Clank reboot that was offered and I wasn't impressed, I quit after the first few worlds and was glad I didn't buy it at launch, (despite being a classic PS2 R&C fan) but we're not here to review that. I also played Abzu and loved it but it was short so it was definitely worth a play but maybe not 60$ (I actually think it's 20$ at this point though). With this game, it's the whole complete edition with DLC and everything, it has the length, so it really just boils down to "Would I have spent money on it otherwise?"

I think I would've if I knew more about it because I think it just got better and better after that first part of the game. It's marketed a bit differently than what I ended up getting but I found myself pouring hours into this game and loving it for one reason or another. I actually bought Shadow of the Colossus along with it (which is considered a cult classic) but I liked Horizon so much better, definitely worth its full price in my opinion. (So your promotion worked on me Sony, congrats) It has its problems but the potential is there and I feel like a sequel would probably iron out a lot of my troubles with it, so it's definitely a franchise worth investing into.

If you're interested in what I thought of the DLC alone (if you didn't get the Ultimate edition and are wondering if the extra content is worth it) I have a separate post that goes into that here.