I just finished playing stray and I just have a lot of feelings for it.

while in one spectrum, it criticizes how humans divide themselves through social hierarchy and control and the ramifications of it all. how the desire to break that status quo and search for that freedom, but being forced to stay for "their own good" echos a lot if what is going on around the world. where people are fighting for their rights and freedom so that their voices could be heard.

on the other hand, it also shows the imprints humanity leaves behind when we're all gone. robots are dancing and playing instruments and painting and so much alive. they talk about humans as the predecessor and mimic their behaviors that makes us good. that makes us human. that reminds everybody what we leave behind will transcend and outlive each and every one of us. the inevitable will come for us all, so let's leave a little something for history to discover

plus the cat is an added bonus and I love me some cats.

“At only 23 years old, Jake Oettinger set the franchise record for most saves in a single playoff game. Because he listens to that inner voice. His … motivotter.”

some sort of boy bride if you will

anyways i played slarpg, i want to get around to doing some serious art eventually but for now i will be Silly with it

↪ 04/29/2023 ― post-game ( rangers vs. devils ; scp rd. 1 )  

1931 Emmett Brown my absolute beloved

FMK: TLT Milfs edition*

*I am excluding Pyrrha because she's too main character it feels unfair

my previous nightshade post got WAY more traction than i thought it would so here’s more food 4 thought

ian feeling like no one ever understood his creativity and the visions he had in his brain (and losing the one person who did, his mom) and deciding to become a video game creator so everyone could finally see, and validate, what happens in his brain. poppy having no one to share her love for games with and being made to feel like a freak for spending all her time playing games and then deciding to go to school for programming so she'd be surrounded by people with the same interests. each of them finding out that, despite their efforts to feel seen, the validation ian received was never enough and poppy never found anyone as passionate as her. until they find each other. now ian has someone who truly, from the beginning, appreciated and loved his work and poppy found someone who loves games as much as she does and didn't see her as a freak (or saw it and still liked her). the fact that even to this day they're still the only people who fully and deeply understand each other because of their similar feelings of loneliness from childhood, even if they don't talk about it. and the fact that despite them butting heads all the time, it's still their partnership that's at the core of mythic quest and should be the core of grimpop if they're smart enough to realize it before everything blows up.

wip whenever

tagged by @redwayfarers and I do actually have a bit more to share now! it’s another excerpt from my stormblood-era sidalia wip (spoilers for the DRK 70 quest) that still has me spiraling as I chip away at it. not tagging anyone else this time, but if anyone has any creative work to share, I def want to see it c:

Sidurgu faces away from her, his attention too preoccupied with the threat ahead of him in the form of an anguished elezen boy and magic born of stolen aether. His armored body shields Rielle, hunched over the girl’s limp form sprawled beneath him, and by the way that he leans on one knee and shakes with each heaving breath, she can’t be certain that he can stand. Fear catches in her throat.

Not them. Please, not them, too.

A hoarse cry escapes her chapped lips as she rolls to push herself off the ground. Rosy hair tumbles around her ears and face with the motion, falling loose from her haphazardly tied bow, and staggering in a pathetic arc to meet Myste’s gaze, she finds it not unlike the boy’s cascading blue hair and wild, bewildered expression before her. As the familiar glow of aether envelops him in preparation of another summon, she grits her teeth and braces for it.

Oh, what a fool she’d been not seeing through the ruse.

Before they had ever picked up a sword, her hands held a grimoire. Hers is the world of egi, simulacra, and trances, aether brought forth by crystals and arcanima, primals felled and their power borrowed at her hands, years spent honing the once thought lost Allagan art. ‘Twas she who the boy had got it from, after all—her aether, her knowledge, and her strength wielded by her own grief made manifest.

And now Sidurgu and Rielle may pay the price.

Hello.

You and gay-jesus-probably have successfully made me question everything with your view that Tears of the Kingdom is imperialist propaganda, so that's been fun.

Anyway, I decided to share this discussion with the Zelda fans on reddit, and perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of them disagreed. Here is what they said (I'm Alarming_Afternoon44):

So what do you think? Have I and all these other people just been duped by the game's manipulative framing? Or do they actually have a point?

And if you'd rather not answer this, or would prefer if I censored the usernames, just tell me and I'll delete this.

Hey! Thanks a lot for reaching out, and I'm glad it made you think stuff through!!

Honestly, as I mentioned in this post, I am not super interested about in-world conversations about who oppresses who, because what can be assessed from the game is super vague and more vibes-based than evidence-based. Within the text, of course that the Good Zonais are good and the Bad Ganondorf is bad! But that's my whole point! The narrative has been deliberately crafted so that the zonais and Rauru (and Hyrule) are as blameless as possible (and it's not doing a great job at it overall to be frank; we would not be having these conversations about how offputting it all feels for a non-zero number of people if it did do a great job). More importantly, I want to focus on what sort of real-life narrative it all parallels. Because people make stories, and people live in the real world.

Not going after everyone's throat here, gamedev is hard and the hydras that are AAA game production do end up doing super weird stuff, especially since the thematic ramifications are absolutely never prioritized (and it's also always the same kind of people who make the final calls and push out what can and can't be talked about also). And as fans, we tend to have trouble stepping outside the lens of lore and take a look at the bigger picture sometimes; not as an attack on any individual part of that decision-making process but to just pause, stop, and question our standards, our priorities and the kind of reality (or skewing of reality) the stories we tell each other reflect.

Again: do we want to take videogames seriously or not? If we do, then we need to accept they are a vehicle for ideology, just like any other artform. And sometimes, you push out questionable ideology, sometimes without meaning to, because you didn't unpack your own biases as you did. And it's even fine to do it, nobody is perfect, a 300+ people team spread over 6 years certainly will not be that. But that it wasn't prioritized is, in my opinion, a problem. As a narrative designer, I want games (at least the narrative side) to be held to a higher standard than this. It's literally my job to work with the industry so it can hold itself to higher standards of quality --so the whole TotK situation is quite frustrating to witness from a very pragmatic, work perspective where I already spend my days trying to convince people that things mean things. I have a vested interest here in not having the companies I work for being given a free pass by gamers to do literally whatever as long as it's fun, especially when we're talking about a billion-dollars company suing its own fans left and right for any perceived slight. Nintendo are not underdogs here. It's fine to point out they cut corners and maybe promoted messy ideologies, voluntarily or not.

So long story short: no I don't believe anyone here has a point in regards to what I think is actually important, which is why these choices were made in the first place. If you look at an imperialist text expecting the text to tell you that it's imperialist instead of recognizing a framing used for propaganda by yourself, you're never gonna find any imperialist text ever, obviously not!! I'm sorry if I sound a little gngngn here, but I don't know why audiences have, at large, this feeling that lore and story beat decisions materialize themselves already formed and without any human bias, meddling, intervention, internal politics or approximations (it seems that people can only conceptualize this part if they have actual names to attach to the story, but without clear authors it's like there are no authors and so no bias, which is... a very strange bias in itself). I can promise you that it does not work that way in practice: every narrative department on every big game is a battlefield --some nicer than others, but all of them very emotionally draining either way.

So yeah, I guess that on these grounds, I disagree with every point raised here. Sorry Reddit :/

But thank you for the ask and sorry if I didn't go more into details as to why. The big Why I Dislike Rauru Post and the Gerudo Post might have some more specific rebuttals, but I am not super interested in debating small detail stuff tbh. I feel like it's no use if the frame of reference isn't being understood in the first place.

The thing that's scaring me right now is how many well meaning gentiles just genuinely have no idea when something is an antisemitic canard and so they are internalizing and parrotting ideas that can will and do get Jews killed everywhere because it's couched in pro Palestinian rhetoric and all they know about this is that settler colonialism is bad and they are trusting any leftist or or professed leftists who are actually alt-right types actively using this horror to recruit. And all they knew about antisemitism is like. The Holocaust happened and right wingers are often antisemitic and that anti-zionism isn't necessarily antisemitism. So you have people who honestly do not know better reblogging excerpts from fucking Protocols and thinking it's good information that explains and supports the Palestinian struggle because someone replaced the word "Jew" with "Zionist," and misatributed it. And I know it sounds wrong to say that you need to learn about what antisemitism looks like and how it works in order to effectively advocate for the one group of people in history who are actually being oppressed by Jews-as-Jews, but if you can understand why you need to learn about and recognize transphobia in order to be an effective feminist, you can understand that.

Rootless cosmopolitan tropes, dual loyalty tropes, blood libel, accusations that (((they))) control the media, banks, or governments of other countries, assertions that it's all rich white privileged landlords from nyc/jersey, accusations of making up atrocities or causing their own oppression or using misplaced sympathy to silence criticism for nefarious ends or always lying doesn't stop being antisemitic just because someone used the word Zionist instead of Jews. Go read "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere" so you can avoid becoming Jackson Hinkle's stooge on accident.

tagged by the beloveds @leviiackrman & @risingsh0t to make some of my ocs in these three picrews – thank you both so much, this was so fun and i live for symbolism and motifs! ♡

🐍 diana wesker (resident evil) / 🌻 mehlia tabris (dragon age) 🚁 dani haines (resident evil) / 🐺 ithrenil (the elder scrolls) 👑 reina (saints row) / 🪦 tereza ionescu (resident evil)

tagging: @aartyom @aceghosts @aelyosos @brujah @calenhads @cultistbase @denerims @druidgroves @faarkas @florbelles @girlbosselrond @indorilnerevarine @jendoe @leopardmuffinxo @lightwardens @liurnia @malefiicarum @morvaris @nadineross @nocticulas @nuclearstorms @phillipsgraves @shadowsofrose @solasan @swordcoasts @steelport@veisshaupt @voerman @wrymbloods & you! apologies for so many tags... as always, no pressure and let me know if you'd prefer to not be tagged in these things! ♡

There are a lot of things about reading the hunger games as an adult that fucked with me (did anyone else forget that Finnick was only 24?? 24?????????) which I plan to get into later. But unfortunately I gotta say the most vindicating part for me as an adult has to do with the stupid love triangle.

First of all, I had forgotten that basically any time anyone brings up or alludes to the love triangle Katniss’s inner monologue either says “Kim there’s people who are dying” or straight up “I’m too sleepy for this” which is fucking hilarious.

Second of all, when me and my crew were first reading the series as pre-teens/young teens it was basically understood that if you preferred Gale you were exciting and fiery and mysterious and cool, and if you preferred Peeta you were lame and boring. This was very embarrassing for me as I strongly preferred Peeta. So to read the series as an adult and realize that in book three Gale basically turns into an angry internet leftist man incapable of a nuanced opinion is very affirming for me. So basically if anyone from my middle school is reading this I was right bitches.

There’s a lot more to say here about Suzanne Collins’ masterful portrayal of the cost of war and revolution which I’ll maybe get into later but the exchange where Gale can’t even comprehend why Katniss doesn’t want her prep team, three human beings who she has spent significant time with and who genuinely care for her regardless of their background, chained to a wall in a puddle of their own piss broke my brain.

[A screenshot of dialogue from Disco Elysium, transcribed below;]

[ ESPIRIT DE CORPS [Legendary: Success] - Get the gun, lieutenant, it's okay. It's safe, he thinks. Just get it.

HAND/EYE COORDINATION [Formidable: Success] - Alright, here's how we do it: As soon as that gun isn't pointed at you again, you dash right, then immediately close the distance. Left hand grabs the barrel, right one breaks the wrist...

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Formidable: Success] - ...fingers lock behind her head, knee to the face, knee to the face, crush the ribcage, side-step and drop her with the hammer kick.

HALF LIGHT [Formidable: Success] - OH MY GOD, YES!!!! ]

me writing childe as a delicate lover and ignoring how violent and bloodthirsty his true nature is 🧌‼️

what did you think of the new totk trailer!!

It was too overwhelming after all the underwhelming promos lol