#I've seen more and more people playing their game on my dash

[dizziesims]

Sims 3 Gameplay Mods

I was going through MTS looking for mods to improve my gameplay and thought I would share the ones I downloaded!

Livestreaming Mod - Allows your sims to livestream from a PC for tips, blog followers, and celebrity points.

More Pregnancy Interactions - Adds more options for the pregnant sim and more social interactions with all age groups!

Yoga Mod - Allows your sim to do yoga and also lead a yoga class for simoleons.

Laundromat Fix - Actually empties the laundry hamper on your sims home lot when using a washing machine at a laundromat.

Dirty Laundry Mod - Gives your sim a negative moodlet when dirty laundry hasn't been washed in a few days. Gives more incentive to do your sims laundry!

Layoff Mod - Gives your sim a 2% chance at the end of every work day of being laid off. Depending on their work level they may get unemployment benefits.

Nicer Vendors - Overrides the default animations when interacting with vendors, looks more friendly.

Acne Mod - Gives teens-adults a chance of waking up with acne. Adds washing face options and applying acne toner at sink.

Sunscreen - Allows you to buy sunscreen from the store, will protect sims from getting a sunburn with Seasons installed. Works on vampire sims as well.

Restaurant Host Career - Allows your sim to work part time at diners/bistros as a host. Only 1 career level.

TSM > TS3 Facial Expressions - Overrides most s3 facial expressions with the sims medieval ones making them a lot more realistic and natural looking.

One With Nature - Allows your sims to sleep outside on ground, wash themselves in bodies of water, and go to the bathroom outside. Needs Nraas traveler mod to work. (Good for apocalyptic gameplays/adding realism?? haha)

Walk Cycle Edits - Overrides original walk cycles so there's no forced smile, allowing your sims to make facial expressions based on mood/surroundings.

The Randomizer Mod - Triggers more random events that effect your household. Adds more realism and can effects the relationships/friendships your sims have. (Can choose between which random event modules you want in your game based on play style!)

More Negative Moodlets - Negative moodlets cause a greater effect on your sims mood making it a bit more realistic.

[tau1tvec]

S/O to a few of my favorite TS3CC Creators

I know this community is small, and therefore doesn't get as much love and attention as it deserves, but know that it is alive and well, much like my love for it, and it's many thanks to these ppl for keeping it fresh and fun even today.

@simtanico literally what would my sims be without you and your amazing sliders, slider fixes, and conversions.

@rollo-rolls you always work so hard to keep our sims looking stylish, I know a lotta people in this community appreciate you as much as I do!

@johziii you put so much love into your CC as you do your sims, homes and gameplay, you're truly the whole package!

@sim-songs an absolute legend for helping revive the Maxis Match ts3 community!

@nectar-cellar an absolute legend, period.

@imamiii idk how you do it, but you make this game look how it probably would had it been released today. Whether it's your gameplay posts, or your CC, I know when I see your post on my dash, I'm bound to be blown away.

@sourlemonsimblr still can't tell whether we're playing the same game, bc everything you post looks like The Sims 10, but I am so glad you're willing to share your CC with us, so maybe one day we will be playing the same game, lol.

@pleaseputnamehere just thought I'd let you know that I kiss your nosemasks goodnight as I tuck them into bed.

@xiasimla an amazing talented and devoted creator all around, every download post is a WIN.

@martassimsbook you keep my love for ts3's buy/build mode alive!

@billsims-cc ty for never giving up on us. 😭😭😭

@bioniczombie for sharing your amazing conversions, and helping run one of my favorite ts3cc finds blogs!

@satellite-sims although you aren't too active right now, I miss you, and I love your conversions sm. The extra work you put into making them the absolute best quality, just like all your posts is so loved and appreciated.

@simbouquet your mods and fixes are such a MUST, you always know exactly what this game needs, and execute it like a pro.

@phoebejaysims another amazing modder keeping this game truly interesting, ty so much for your dedication.

@criisolatex you're like some ethereal being sent to Earth on a mission to make ts3 the best it can be, and you're kind enough to share it with us.

@nemiga-sims-archive you pop out every once and a while like an all year round Santa giving us presents to throw into our games. TY!

@olomaya you work so hard to expand and improve and also make the gameplay in ts3 a lot more interesting.

@twinsimming you know you carry ts3 simblr, right? 💕

@thesweetsimmer111 besides being just the most talented animator I've ever seen in any modding community, your dedication to the youngest and ignored age groups is most admirable, ty.

@flotheory yet another talented and devoted modder giving ts3 the love and attention it deserves. I just know the devs would be so proud.

@greenplumbboblover you've always got something big up your sleeve, your ambition knows no bounds, and the ts3 community is so lucky to have you.

I'm likely forgetting some folks, so I'll probably add some more when I remember, and ty again everyone on this list for working so hard to keep this game alive, and fun, and freeeeeee!

[lionheartedmusings]

bear with me bc this is gonna be a bit of a long one, but i've seen folks talking about how they're excited to get the horrors back on the qsmp and while i totally agree that i miss those blood-curdling, creepy, uncanny valley sort of scenes... i think the beauty of the overall storyline (as much as it's execution can be criticised ) is that we as the audience are seeing things in a vacuum.

the qsmp storyline is a living breathing player alongside our povs, and while we're aware of that, we're also not always engaging with it. we're getting swept up in the day-to-day of it all and getting lulled into a sense of security that ultimately makes us unable to truly comprehend the horror of the last few months until we take a step back and analyze it bit by bit.

children went missing in the night, leaving only their identifiers behind on empty beds. there were no leads. people looked and looked, and found nothing. parents were mad with concern and grief, and the all-seeing, all-powerful entity that rules their lives trapped in this hamster wheel of an island has no answers.

then, the items left behind on those beds vanish too.

then, there's mind-controlling, happiness inducing drugs being pumped into people against their will. still no news of the children. people are falling apart at the seams.

people are led to a maze where a wheel is spun and everything they have left of the children of this godforsaken island is gone. burned up. what does it mean? no one knows. they have to live on.

suddenly, a game is played. a clone of a dead child shows up, leading some of them into the same maze, forcing them to walk through a maze of doors and corridors, only to find a game of dice orchestrated by an unknown entity.

new people arrive, bearing witness to the hopeless, grim, sad reality of everyone who was already there. there's hope — there's always hope — but my god the pain is overwhelming.

there's clues, but there's not. the government keeping them trapped here against their will still has no answers, nothing to point them in the right direction.

faceless bears go missing.

faceless bodies show up on the streets. bloodied. dead. eaten.

suddenly, there's thunder and lightning and oh! oh, their children! of course they'll get on the train, that's where the children are!

but they're hijacked. stolen. once again, their autonomy is stripped entirely as another entity with power they cannot comprehend forces them to split into factions and compete for... something. their children's lives are on the line and they maim and kill those they call family because they fear they have no choice.

everyone went through hell — purgatory was a bad title for what they went through. it was hell, with no salvation in sight.

when all is said and done, when all the murder and backstabbing is over, they see their children through glass they cannot break. one escapes because chance said so, and the rest are left behind as the ceiling collapses on them.

the world is ending and their salvation is one singular boat a thousand blocks away. lovers can't say goodbye, friends run for their lives together, a father and a son dash desperately with no hope in sight. some stay behind, through choice or chance.

the government official that has made their life hell returns the children to them, and brings some new ones. those new children get carted off to new parents without option (again) and suddenly everything's supposed to be fine! nevermind your friends are gone! nothing to see here!

behind the scenes, the all-seeing all-knowing government is breaking apart, there's something far more horrifying and twisted at play in the background... but it's nothing the islanders can help with. nothing they can do. they have to live on and pretend their golden cage is fine and dandy bc at the end of the day, it's their only option.

one-eyed creatures show up demanding something "of theirs" back and bc humanity is strong, one islander refuses to hand someone kind and innocent off to them.

it dooms them, as their humanity has every single time.

now, they're under attack and they can barely defend themselves despite months of prep and having amazing gear — again, they try their hardest but everything is stacked against them. they fight, and fight, but their children are on the line and that's their main concern.

every fight? there's bodies littering the ground and panicked screams. explosions. chainsaws revving, and worry, and it's a war ten times a week.

a child loses a life, and now it's personal, but what can they do? no one listens to them, no one has ever listened to them.

and in the middle of all of this? their family is still gone, trapped in a wasteland, or missing, or... dead.

there was no funeral for q!maxo bc there's no stopping to smell the roses on quesadilla island, not really. where's slime? where's pol? where's the people who they haven't seen yet? gone, yes, but they don't have time to stop and worry about them. they don't have time to mourn losses and grieve their dead.

luffy, who came to try and help their friends, was stolen and hurt.

those eyeball workers? they were people once, maybe good people. maybe the best people we never got to meet, but they got shifted and changed into something monstrous and out of their control.

my point being: the story that the qsmp is telling is innately horrifying. it's not just creepy — it's twisted, and tragic, and absolutely terrifying. it's about loss of agency and running on an endless hamster wheel of someone else's making, and how you just sort of... live with it after a while.

and i think that's really fucking cool, because like these characters we too get used to the tragedy of life, little by little, and forget to see the whole thing from a bird's eye view (pun intended).

[ponett]

ive seen you post about doctor robotnik's ring racers occasionally on twitter and would like to hear your overall thoughts on the game

I'm enjoying it a lot! It plays well, has a ridiculous number of unlockable characters and tracks, and is generally just really polished. This would be impressive even for a paid indie kart racer that cost like $20-$30, but for a freeware fangame that's somehow built off of Doom? It's nuts. So much love and care went into this. I've been having a lot of fun playing through all the Grand Prix cups and clearing out the challenge board, which I've only completed 47% of it even with over 15 hours of playtime logged.

It's absolutely one of the most hardcore kart racers I've ever played, though, and that's gonna turn some people off. While playing solo even easy mode can be difficult, especially thanks to the rival system that gives one CPU buffs over the others. Anything below 150cc is a complete joke for me in Mario Kart, but even playing on the "normal" difficulty in Ring Racers (now renamed "intense" in the 2.2 patch) kicks my ass, and if you place poorly in a Grand Prix race it gives you a game over and makes you redo the race. I can't even imagine touching the higher difficulties at my current skill level.

This is compounded by how technical the game is and how many options are at your disposal. Spin dashing, tricks, fast drops, collecting and spending rings, an item roulette that can be manually stopped, a high risk high reward chargeable melee attack when you have negative rings, the ability to harass and be harassed by other racers while positioning yourself before the start of the race, gates that can only be passed through when you have a high level of boost, lots of items with different quirks that reward skilled play. And of course, perhaps most daunting of all to new players, there's the game's unique slope physics designed to mimic how they work in the 2D Sonic games, which will often require you to either spend rings for a small boost or stop and charge up a spin dash to get up a steep hill.

All of these add a lot of complexity to the game that can be pretty daunting early on, which is why it has an infamously long story-driven tutorial to introduce all of these mechanics. I'm not sure said tutorial actually does the best job introducing how those mechanics will actually be put to use in races, but I can't blame them for thinking the game needed it. (I do have to admit I am annoyed by the game's insistence upon framing everything via Sega Saturn inputs, though. I had to open the settings screen to figure out what buttons the tutorial actually wanted me to press.)

Some of these things have already been addressed in the first couple patches, of course. You can now exit the tutorial way earlier, some unlock requirements have been relaxed, there's an option to let the game automatically use your rings for you, easy mode has been made easier, a handful of problematic courses have been tweaked, etc. And I'm sure they'll continue to refine the game based on player feedback. But it's probably always going to be a fairly hardcore game. It's hard and has a high skill ceiling by design. Nintendo's never gonna make a super technical new Mario Kart for sickos - not on purpose, at least. They need it to be a pick-up-and-play party game that sells 70 million copies. But a freeware fangame not beholden to shareholders can experiment more and try to cater to that more hardcore crowd. Say what you will about Ring Racers, but it absolutely has a specific creative vision of its own beyond "Sonic Mario Kart," and I respect that even if the game sometimes frustrates me

[utilitycaster]

anyway this is obviously a wild shift in the topic of conversation, but I was talking about it in the group chat last night as a distraction and would like to continue the distraction if I am being honest, so, with the caveat that this is based off of Fandom Osmosis Observations and a few reads of reviews and I have at this time played neither of these games, some thoughts about BG3 vs. Veilguard and what I've seen. many thanks to @captainofthetidesbreath for actually knowing things about video games and answering my many questions.

also just putting this up front with all said caveats: if you disagree that is great, I am very open that this is an outside observation and I could be very wrong but I am going to block people who get hostile without warning, and make this nonrebloggable if too many people get hostile. You are always permitted to disagree but like, I don't really care about your opinion if you're not someone with whom I have a pre-existing rapport unless idk you're like, actually a BG3 or Veilguard official story writer who happens to be on Tumblr. If you're a player? You have all of your own biases and they are not mine. Save it for someone who wants to get in a fight about this; I am not that person.

Essentially, what I've seen in terms of criticism from Veilguard that isn't just rampant transphobia comes down to the following:

why am I not playing my previous character from Inquisition again

why am I limited to a fairly consistent through line for the story

But first, I'm going to talk about BG3. What's funny is I seem like a much more obvious candidate for playing BG3, as a longtime D&D player who has come around on Forgotten Realms as a setting. However, while I looked at it for a while, I eventually lost interest for a couple of reasons. One is that apparently all the characters are WAY too eager to romance you which is like, a fun fantasy for 10 minutes but would probably annoy me in the long run. Another is that everyone who watched early reviews and kept abreast with the game told me that there was a clear favorite companion (Astarion) and that many of the characters had most of their interesting flaws sanded down (eg: Wyll was apparently much cockier originally; Shadowheart even more petulant; and as these are perhaps the two characters I was most intrigued by, reducing them to something blander destroyed much of the appeal). But perhaps the most interesting one is that as a boring goodie two shoes sort of person, my thought back when I was like "yeah, perhaps I will play this" was "oh, I do not want to have a murderous urge within me."

It became very apparent, through watching people play through and post on my dash, that if you didn't specifically play as the Dark Urge, and didn't specifically resist that urge, the story didn't really cohere. I have to admit, I know the premise of BG3 very well (tadpoles), and I know a lot of shipping trends (put a pin in that), and I know some of the more obvious points within it (Astarion is a vampire, Gale and Karlach both have bombs in their chests somehow, Shadowheart bleaches her hair) but I don't really have a great sense of the ending, and I did not avoid spoilers.

It feels like BG3 is designed for people who have one of those massive spreadsheets of D&D characters they haven't had a chance to play that are meticulously kept and thoroughly realized...and don't really leave room for modifying to fit the campaign you will actually be playing in. It feels like an OC sandbox simulator unless you do actually pick the choice the writers actually wrote for (Durge), and while it's not technically playersexual...it kinda is. I mean, I am a big fan of the trend in video games towards making it possible to romance anyone because it conjures up the idea of a world of high-powered bisexuals running around, which is very enjoyable for me, but the criticism of the Mary Sue archetype originally was never "how dare you fantasize about being cool." It was "wow, the characterizations are all warped beyond recognition solely so that everyone is in love with this character, and that makes for a dull and unsatisfying story." If you're everyone's type, and it's for romance and not just sheer lust, then either everyone around you is boring and wants the same thing, or you are sort of bland and inoffensive, or else the story is bashing characters together without a good basis for a compelling romance. This is also compounded by the fact that the companions can't get together with each other if you're playing your own character and not an Origins character.

None of this is to say it's bad to like BG3 and again, I didn't play it; but it is why I ultimately said "you know, given the effort involved to play it for me, a person without a gaming system, it's not worth it."

Veilguard has specifically intrigued me for going against a lot of this. You have a lot of choices in your character build, but they're all fairly thematically consistent: you did something within your faction that was well-intentioned but upset higher-ups and so you need to step away for a while. This establishes a personality for you! We know why you're part of a faction but also something of a free agent at the moment. We know why you're here and why you might be a good candidate for the current mission.

I'm not going to go into detail for the choices because while I'm not avoiding spoilers I don't want to spoil a relatively new game for others, but a lot of choices are fairly parallel, not in an "illusion of choice" way - they have consequences - but in terms of hitting similar themes. You can only save one city and both are places you have seen and places your companions have connections to; while the exact details may differ you are telling a consistent story.

I also think the fact that the companions can romance each other in your absence is important too! They exist even when you're not there. They are not just here to woo you, and indeed, they might be a better match for each other. I've been informed this is true in Inquisition as well, and I think it's a much more rich world if you, as the player, as the person who can ultimately decide the fates of your companions, aren't the center of their personal life. I also think it prevents the ability to sand down companions to be more agreeable to you as a player if you have to make an NPC/NPC romance compelling (and I will freely admit that, in a move that is not at all like me, I was pretty well sold by a potential in-game NPC/NPC romance, which is usually not the thing that gets me into works of fiction).

I'm not the right person to speak to the Inquisitor not being a significant character because I did not play DA:I, and I get that 'well, this is a new game with a new protagonist, as there has been for every Dragon Age game' is still not necessarily an adequate explanation. Nor is "hey, maybe it's good to attract new players" even though as someone who is highly attracted as a new player that is my opinion. However, I want to go back to the point about Resist Durge being the strongest option in BG3 in terms of story by a long shot. When I was trying to learn more, I said "ok, so just like how you're Tav in BG3 and Rook in Veilguard, you're Lavellan in Inquisition, right?" and was told that you are not - that's just the elvish Inquisitor option. Obviously this is anecdotal, but the fact that one option was far and away the most popular and thematically resonant is an indication that perhaps bringing forth the Inquisitor is carrying over some of the limitations of that game, whatever they may be. The true argument is "they are trying to tell a specific story here, and it is about a different POV than the one you previously had."

And that's really my point. I know I'm not an expert here - in fact I'm usually quite hesitant to write meta about things in which I'm not highly steeped, and very critical of those people who do - but I think an outsider perspective is useful here. The thing that is drawing me to video games is a new way to experience a fictional narrative (the other game I have been meaning to play - and even own on Steam- is Disco Elysium). That's not what everyone wants! But it is what I want. And so I want to be put into a developed, thoughtful narrative, and I don't mind if my choices are restricted in order to support it, and if I am playing a person I did not entirely choose. In tech, there is a saying of "make it easy to make the right choice (and hard to make the wrong one)" and so if you need your protagonist to hit certain beats, you should make that the required protagonist.

I think a story is stronger if your choices matter but if there is something of a foregone conclusion because it gives the writers thematic throughlines. This might sound a little silly given that this blog is largely dedicated to Actual Play but the thing is, most actual play does have, if not a foregone conclusion, at least a strongly intended conclusion of "work towards uncovering this mystery and achieving this goal", though the success of said goal is not guaranteed. I would argue that when a campaign lacks that, it tends to suffer in all aspects. RPG video games almost always have a foregone conclusion, but that's its own liability. In actual play, lacking a forgone conclusion means you spin off in any direction and it's anyone's guess if it's coherent. In an RPG, having this conclusion but not supporting it through the rest of the game will make it feel contrived. I feel a lot of Veilguard criticism is focusing on small contrivances early on that really mostly matter to a highly specific subset of potential players that prevent much larger and less forgiveable contrivances later on.

Anyway. Again, I am an outsider here, and I'm not here to say that it's bad to have a more open-world, sandboxy game with a self-insert-y OC type; but I have to be honest, I'd rather explore that in a true sandbox of fanfiction or original fiction, which is significantly cheaper and in which I can actually tell the entire story I want to tell. I don't want to be given more choices if a lot of them will be profoundly unsatisfying as a narrative. I don't want to cut through the world like a hot knife through butter. I want to be affected by it, and that's very hard to do with a character whose only trait is "self-insert whom everyone wants to fuck" or "guy that already carries the baggage of years of personal headcanons and highly variable choices that are hard to account for for every single person who ever played the previous game."

[blubushie]

have u seen/played mouthwashing? thoughts?

I'll be honest I have the tag blocked.

I don't hate the game or nothing, I'm sure it's great, but I look a lot like Curly pre-crash (blue-eyed, blond, with the exact same haircut except Mine's a little longer at the back cuz mullet, hell my fringe even parts the same way) and I'm also a burn victim so I'm sure you can understand my discomfort.

That said it's not really Mouthwashing itself that makes me uncomfortable but rather the fandom around it. From people giving a fucking human being dog buttons and thinking it's funny like he isn't dehumanised enough in the game (and the ableism by Jimmy kinda being a focal point of one of many reasons Jimmy sucks), to people saying Curly DESERVED to be disabled in the crash like disability is a fucking punishment of some kind that people must have earnt, to people saying Anya should keep the baby...

Also as a more-or-less recovering alcoholic (I'm managing ok) who's been desperate enough to drink hand sanitiser for a fix, uh... The whole "drink the mouthwash" thing strikes a bit too close to home. My ability to be tolerant of that aspect varies by the day though. The only shit I can't tolerate is the fandom and how it treats these characters. And yeah I know characters aren't real bla bla bla but I'm not talking about people writing fic or something I'm taking about how the fandom's behaviour is indicative of how they view rape victims and disabled people and people with substance abuse disorders and other marginalised people. You get it.

Oh and also the rampant infantilisation of Daisuke in the fandom like East Asian men aren't infantilised enough.

Or people showing Anya, a fucking nurse, hugging/touching a patient with third degree burn wounds. But that's more the doctor in me bitching about infection and how she's a nurse and would know better.

I think I could bitch for hours about shitty takes I've seen on my dash and all of my bitching pertains only to the fandom and not even the actual game. We're reaching levels of "dislike by association". Which I really try not to do because I think the game can speak for itself but if I see one more untagged Mouthwashing shit take on my dash I'm gonna start putting people in blenders and drinking it.

[copperbadge]

Endeavor OTC game for ADHD

antidoteforreality

is it really different from a standard FPS game? I’m curious about it!

Hope it's okay that I popped this into its own post, I found I had a lot to say :D

Context from the earlier post: EndeavorOTC is a paid app based on EndeavorRX, which is a prescription game for kids with ADHD. RX is FDA-approved; OTC is the version that hasn't gone through FDA approval, but it's a fork of the same code. It's fairly repetitive but that's because it's a training module shaped like a game, not a game that happens to do training.

It's less of an FPS and more of an infinite runner, like Sonic Dash or Temple Run. You're in a little ship that flies along a waterway, and you're supposed to hit "energy fields" which help you speed up to catch a critter you're chasing. You can't control your speed; you tilt your device to swerve left or right to hit the energy fields, but that's it. This is the "Steering" skill.

Your other, simultaneous task is to shoot critters that jump out of the water at you, called "targeting". It's a misnomer since you don't tap ON the creatures, you just tap anywhere on the right side of the screen and it shoots them for you, no aim required. These critters come in three colors, and at the start of every mission they tell you only ONE color to shoot. If you shoot the wrong color or miss an energy field while steering, you slow down very slightly. The goal is to speed up so fast that you catch the critter you're chasing, which is, to be fair, quite challenging.

You aren't ever penalized, really; the critter sometimes gets away, but you get points for trying. You don't have "lives", but you are time-limited -- once you've played for 25 minutes (a "dose"), the game locks down for the rest of the day. Something I REALLY like is that once you've paid the subscription price there's nothing else to buy: no ads to watch for bonuses, no microtransactions, no loot crates. You can earn coin to buy different outfits for your avatar, but that's it, and you can't buy coin, you just get a set amount per day for completing the dose. Every 15 missions or so, your ability to steer-target is evaluated and your score adjusted, which lets you know how you're progressing in terms of treatment, rather than skill at the game. You're supposed to play at least five days a week for six weeks as an initial treatment.

The reason I was willing to give it a shot was that the "targeting" aspect is based on the Go/No-Go Task, which is a legit tool they use in ADHD testing, and the aspect of the test I bombed the hardest when I was evaluated. Ongoing Go/No-Go task training has been shown in some research to help emotional regulation, although it's cognitive and not mindfulness. Overall the game is meant to improve focus but it was the Go/No-Go aspect that I found most compelling as a reason to try.

It's not cheap; you can get a 7-day trial but only if you pre-emptively subscribe, and if you don't cancel the subscription at the end of the 7 days you are charged $130, which I admit is a sneaky move to pull on a population not known for remembering to cancel subscriptions. The first thing I did after signing up was go to google play and cancel the subscription -- I still got to keep the trial -- but honestly when my trial is up I'll probably subscribe, it's a fun little game and I'm willing to risk the money to see if it helps (but I'm also in a position to spend $130 "just to see"). You can also do month-to-month for $25 but obviously the $130 yearly sub is much cheaper in the long run.

I've seen a wide variety of reactions to it, from delight to frustration, although a lot of the frustration seems to be from people who are more accustomed to intense gaming and are treating it like a video game and not a training tool. I'll keep you guys posted on how it goes.

[starkid256]

alr im doing this. i've seen people make post like these but i promised i wouldnt make one because theyre just reblog bait under a "healthy" blanket. but honestly i dont care about notes and i just need an excuse to get shit done. max is 25 reblogs and comments each per person, if you really want me to get off my lazy ass and make shit then i wanna see some pings in the notes.

15 notes - ill actually work on packing and cleaning my room

50 - i'll work on my school project instead of procrastinating on it (for context, the project is something i get to decide what it is, as well as the starting date, end date, and how often i work on it.)

100 - ill work on a geometry dash level and try to get a star rate

200 - ill try to get back into making art and roleplaying instead of playing video games all day

500 - ill try to get my life together. i dont know what this entails but probably working out a bit, being more organized, and focusing on school more

1000 - ill start actually making and releasing music.

picture to differentiate this post from the others in my notes:

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Theoretical Candle Communication Spell

So part of what we're starting to do in the Jasper's Beans Discord is to play these games where we come up with different magical solutions or ideas based on our crafts for a central problem. I decided that the one I came up with earlier this evening would be fun to toss to the dash and let people chew on it for fun. Feel free to analyze, dissect, review, or gnaw on as you please!

The prompt:

You have a good friend who you know enjoys your company but you haven't seen them in awhile and they haven't been responsive to texting or other ways of communicating for a few months. You know that this is something that happens when they are v busy with life.

What are some magical solutions you could do to have more consistent communication with them?

My response was as follows (please note that it took all of 15 minutes for me to put this together):

I've always said that communication is the first thing that fails. Just...generally.

So, for me, this would be an air-aligned spell first and foremost. This is because air is associated with the intellectual realm in my paradigm, and communication is always easiest when you're thinking straight.

My next step would be determining my angle. Would I want to do something involving one of my pop culture sources? If I went the Pokemon route, I could do Psychic or Flying types as the basis. With MTG, Blue might be of the most use to me. But I could also go about it without pop culture influences and dig through my correspondences binder until I found something that interested me.

Let's say, for this hypothetical, that I wanted to cast a one and done spell. How about a candle? For opening communication, I'd probably pick a lovely yellow or a light blue, since I have so many of those and they're decently friendly colors in addition to being associated with air (again, in my paradigm at least). And I have fake craft feathers, so I can use that in some way to bring in more of the air element.

Since most of my magic is done using my own energy, I don't feel the need to get super specific with the taglock, but I guess I could use whatever it is that I communicate with this person on and pull up their profile or contact information on that platform. Finally, I guess I'd throw in a sigil I could make to open up communication. Draw it into the candle or burn it along with the candle wick, I dunno, haven't gotten that far.

So I'd get everything together, draw the sigil where needed, light up the candle, use the craft feathers to waft the smoke vaguely in the direction of my taglock, and cap off the spell by leaving them a text like "Been thinking about you! Hope you're doing alright!"

[nerdalmighty]

hey! so, i just recently started playing baldur's gate 3 after seeing people put it all over my dash for months--and you're one of the people i've seen reblogging a lot of posts about it LOL. so if you don't mind me asking, i was wondering what kind of character do you/did you play as? and do you have any sort of backstory for your tav that you'd like to share?

Hoooooooooooooh my god thank you so much for asking. I have a friend who comes over to watch me play on Thursdays and I make a powerpoint every week to catch her up on what she missed - this week's powerpoint literally has slides about my Tav's background (more on those later). This is about to be long, I'm about to drop ALL my lore so buckle up! AND THANK YOU FOR PUTTING UP WITH MY BG3 BRAIN WORMS!!!!! I'm glad they convinced you to play 😈

So to begin, I've been in my first ever dnd campaign with a group of friends for a little over a year now. I didn't know much about Baldur's Gate except that it was a dnd video game and that you could romance people. Me, being a Big Fan of Romance And Fantasy was like "okay well I'm in" and my friend actually let me start a game at his house. Through that, I met Shadowheart, Gale, and Astarion.

Backing up a bit to my character; I decided I'd put my character from my irl dnd campaign into the game since I already knew her whole deal. I get pretty overwhelmed with making decisions, ESPECIALLY with big open world games like bg3, so knowing who/what I wanted to be really helped me out.

In the campaign I'm in with friends, it's pirate themed, and I play a half-elf bard named Birdie Harp who's secretly half-siren (murder mermaid). To make a long story very short, she was born in the arctic and escaped her murderous pod during a coming-of-age trial where she also lost her siren abilities (hypnotizing voice, breathing underwater, etc).

I've watched a ton of Dimension 20 which is an actual play show on Dropout.tv (an "actual play" is where you watch other people run a campaign of dnd - like Critical Role, which a lot of people have at least heard of - HIGHLY recommend Dimension 20, as I find it incredibly funny and easier to get into than CR because of the episode lengths), and I knew that I really liked the silliness and theatricality of the bard class. I also loved the bards from The Owl House which helped influence my decision as well.

To be honest, Birdie is my first ever dnd character, so she's basically a self insert but with a MUCH more traumatic backstory than me (this IS dnd after all). As for the half-elf aspect, it was more of an "I want to be half mermaid, what's similar to that?" as opposed to a love for half-elves or something.

BACK TO BALDUR'S GATE - knowing I wanted Birdie to be in the game, I felt a lot less overwhelmed to come up with something entirely new - I knew a lot about the bard class having played one so I wanted to CONTINUE playing one (and I've learned even more since playing bg3!).

When I finally got my own game (I no longer play at my friend's house, but in the comfort of my own home), I recreated Birdie and started on my journey in earnest. I'm VERY MUCH someone who likes to be in control and know what to expect, so I've had guides and walkthroughs to help me the whole time - SUE ME! When it came to first meeting Shadowheart, Gale, and Astarion back at my friend's house, Gale actually immediately stole my heart - a kind, witty wizard who likes books and cats? Literally say less. I went home from that session with my friend fully thinking I'd be a Gale girlie until I really looked into the other options and saw The Vampire.

Blah blah blah, he's hot and funny, but he can also be incredibly soft, which really won me over in the end. So I've been romancing That Guy.

Through Acts 1 and 2, I wasn't all too sure about this version of Birdie's background - sure she COULD still be that half-siren from the arctic, but the game kept suggesting she was FROM Baldur's Gate. I LOVED the inclusion of the harpies in Act 1 and thought maybe that was a viable entry point for her backstory, but so far, she was kind of just... me? She was making the choices I wanted to make (and a few that I knew Astarion would like lmao), but she wasn't really her own entity apart from me except for her name. She also felt vastly different from that character I'd created for my friends over a year ago. For instance, my irl Birdie currently has a crush on a Gale-type character, but this Birdie is ass deep in Astarion (hey, sorry I said "ass deep in Astarion"). The thing I love about Baldur's Gate 3 is how you can really come up with your own backstories, since the in-game one for your Tav is so vague. It's totally fine to ignore tiny details in the game and mold them to your own headcanons for your Tav, but I was so unsure of what I wanted for this Birdie that I kind of internalized that she was from Baldur's Gate.

HEADS UP! The following has some spoilers for Act 3 and some side quests, so STOP reading if that's something you'd care to avoid (the last 3 paragraphs of this post are SAFE from spoilers):

When Act 3 finally rolled around (which is where I am currently, I only have the one playthrough so far because I become INCREDIBLY attached to things), I stumbled across the Water Queen's House in Baldur's Gate. Ah ha! Now this felt promising.

A temple dedicated to the Vengeful Sea Goddess, Umberlee, and her loyal Wave Servants to serve her. It's ocean themed, it has mermaid undertones, and their goddess is basically evil. Seems like the perfect place to FINALLY insert this version of Birdie. I wasn't 100% sure until I completed the Iron Throne mission and was faced with either handing a (mostly) innocent man over to the Wave Servants, or fighting to defend him.

Here are a few of the slides from this week's powerpoint that I mentioned all the way back at the start, starting with SOME background on the Wave Servants:

Ass and Shart are what I affectionately call Astarion and Shadowheart (Also I got this beautiful "Birdie" art on Pinterest which originated from someone named Dantrelium on Reddit):

Apologies for the small text here, but there are some more details about THIS Birdie here, which I literally made up/figured out earlier this week:

Essentially, this Birdie was born at the Water Queen's House as Kittiwake Crest - Kittiwakes are common arctic birds, which I thought would be a nice little homage to the original character she was based off of. She was raised by the collective of Wave Servants there, the main one being Flood Tide Allandra Grey who seems to be head honcho at the Wave Mother's House (in this reality, she is).

Since Umberlee is such a vengeful goddess, I imagine she asked her Wave Servants to commit unspeakable acts in her name, mainly drownings, which THEY see as merciful, but I think Birdie always saw as horrifying. Who were they to decide the fates of others? I also think that the Wave Servants themselves were abusive during her upbringing to keep her in line (but much like how Nocturne was a light in the darkness for Shadowheart, I don't think EVERY Wave Servant was evil). GOTTA have a classic tragic backstory.

Upon researching Umberlee, I learned that most of her servants are clerics, so in my mind, that means Birdie was raised to eventually become one, with her official title eventually going to be "Seawind Kittiwake Crest." Is she still half-siren/mermaid though? Not entirely sure. This IS a magical world though, so I'd be inclined to say yes, probably.

But when we first meet the Wave Servants, they're singing beautifully for their drowned sister, Holli. I think Birdie REALLY loved music and singing with her sisters and secretly trained herself in bard magic when she should have been learning to be a cleric. It's also a classic trait of bards to hide their pain through humor, so I often imagine the type of stupid things Birdie gets up to to bring herself joy (my favorite headcanon being when you meet Skittle the Rat in Wyrm's Rock prison - he's a rat merchant who speaks exclusively in puns. I think Birdie and Gale would excitedly throw puns back and forth with Skittle while Astarion and Shadowheart begrudgingly (and affectionately) roll their eyes in the background).

Another thing I love about the game is how you can string together your own ideas of how companions react to things between big cut scenes. For example, in my head, in my game, Astarion has really become a Big Softy thanks to how fucking Stupid (affectionate) Birdie acts in life and has drawn him out of his shell, but also runs a tag team scam with her where she plays her lute to distract people while he loots an entire place. Gale is Birdie's partner in crime when it comes to tomfoolery and loves to joke and fool around with her (so long as it goes easy on his knees). And Shadowheart is basically a sister figure who flip flops between sassing with Astarion and joining in on the fun. THEY'RE JUST THE BEST, OKAY? OF COURSE I'M GONNA WALK AROUND WITH A BUNCH OF IDIOTS. I LOVE THEM.

Anyway, back to Birdie's backstory: she always hated the atrocities that were asked of her, and she was looking for a way out, but was too scared to take that step and leave since the Wave Mother's House is all she's ever known. One night, while stepping out to quietly dip her toes in the water, the Mindflayers captured her, and that's where we start Act One, all the way up on the Nautiloid. She changed her name to Birdie to distance herself from her previous life, fully took up the bard class, and the rest is history.

Back to that dilemma with handing over that (mostly) innocent guy or fighting the Wave Servants: with encouragement from the party, they convince Birdie to face her traumatic upbringing and fight the Wave Servants once and for all. At this point in Act 3, she's basically helped every single person with their problems except her own. Here's another slide featuring Ass and Birdie:

That's right folks, Birdie faced her past! But the bad news is we don't get to see Astarion in this (audio from The Adventurous Adventures of One Direction):

(Video description - Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3 wearing the Wave Mother's Armor with the following audio:

Guard 1: Whoa, check it out.

Guard 2: Hubba hubba hubba.

Gaurd 1: Nice. I love dudes in skirts.

END VIDEO.) I don't want to tell you how many times I recorded that until I felt like I got it right lol. Also yes, I DID do a scum save where I handed the guy over ONCE just so I could see Ass in this outfit, but Birdie did canonically save Redhammer in my actual save file.

And honestly, that's BASICALLY it for now! My most recent save was after that battle, so I need to figure out if Birdie's going to go back with her party to confront the rest of (or most of) the Wave Servants, or if this chapter of her life is closed.

In an ideal world I'd LOVE to make one of those artsy gif edits of my Tav like this and this, but PS5s make it hard to download clips without uploading them to YouTube first which I don't really want to do.

Thank you SO MUCH for this ask, I had a blast writing it!! Sorry it's so long, I just love this game so much and LOVE talking about it. Please feel free to ask more questions OR chat with me about YOUR Tav! I'd love to hear all about them :)

[unripemelons64]

I just pulled off, the wildest move, In Baldur's Gate 3, EVER. This just cements my belief that Astarion is the most OP character in my squad. Hands down, I'm not lying. Bro is carrying my mismanaged team.

But let me start from the beginning. I was doing quests. And it just so happened that I needed to slay some goblin leaders. And me, not liking combat that I know for sure I would lose, and liking to oppose every instruction given, I had to find a roundabout way of killing them.

So i stealth the first one, the second one I needed to keep alive, but that I mostly did normal combat style, since there weren't too many enemies, and I had a fun strategy (Tav, Astarion, Gale as backup and Karlach, as what I like to call the strong characters, the meat shield). Then came... the one. That one bastard that aggros the whole damn goblin settlement.

After a long, long hours of, trying to first use void bulbs to suck him into a hole in the ground, I dropped off some loot to other characters, grabbed some explosive barrels from another room, painfully slowly dragged them over and set them around, then climbed back to the rafters and finally blew him up and teleported away before they could aggro on me. And it worked.

But, people who play this game, from what I've seen, know this tactic. It's standard, so that's not the crazy part. It's what happens after

Because you see... I forgot that I left the druid that I needed there. In the basement. With a horde of angry goblins waiting for me. (No seriously, who made that ruins? Who made the goblins so hard to beat? I'M ON NORMAL DIFFICULTY DAMMIT-)

Anyway, yeah, I kinda had to get back in. But you know, I'm not fighting all of them, because it's not fun (I'll get their asses once my party has higher level, you'll see…) Thankfully, I quite like stealth, so that would be fun! And fun it was! (And I don't feel bad about save scumming. They gave me the save button, so I will use it!) I made Shadowheart give Astarion a bonus sneak buff and sent my boy off. Also thankfully, my perfectionist collector brain made me explore most of the place, so I knew how to get around. I question how the goblins didn't hear the grown man jump down with the loudest thud known to man, but I'll take it. Eventually he ended up over the main door, so I went in... ... Yes, I opened the door from above. Game logic lol-

The real fun began inside. Because it was literally Astarion walking in, and every goblin in a nine-mile radius collectively turning their heads at the same time. I'm sorry, my boy, but I think there was no sneaking out of this one... But you underestimate how much I didn't want to deal with combat and sneaking the whole party past too, so I made him run for it-

Normally, he wouldn't get there. I ran out of potions at the end, and one hit, and he would be d.e.d. But you see, while exploring while the goblins were still calm, I found ~a secret tunnel~ So there was a horde of goblins, and Astarion was just dashing and dodging while chugging down health potions. He was LITERALLY ONE HIT POINT from dying :p But he made it! It looked comical, and he was pissed that he was hurt, but Astarion, your deeds will never be forgotten. Without you, my team would be a bit more crap than it is now. You carry everyone's dumb asses.

I imagine he came back looking like those Minecraft players full of arrows. I healed him, but my game might have glitched, and so he's now just permanently stuck in the pained pose. We understand Astarion, you break your back for us.

I let him carry all the party's gold from now on.

[nuhackearney]

Fic: At A Loss

For @romanthereigns and anyone else feeling a little blue over LA's loss tonight. I said I wouldn't go here, but here we are...(aka, LA Knight x Reader)

You get people drinks, you pick up towels, you watch over equipment...yeah, you're pretty much a go-fer, but you adore your job! You get to travel, meet interesting people and you work for one of the most entertaining businesses in the world - the WWE!

Sure, the superstars don't know your name and you're not famous or anything, but you're an important cog in a big machine and you know your worth.

...you also know you have a helpless, stupid, unbelievably bad crush on LA Knight.

...yeah.

You're into him.

Too bad that, just like everyone else in the biz, he'll never notice you. Hell, he doesn't even know you exist.

Or so you think.

You're on hand for Crown Jewel. The energy is high, the activity chaotic. You've never dashed around so much in your life! Water bottle for Sami Zayn here, a boom for a member of camera crew there, and so on and so on.

You manage to catch snippets of different matches, but as a whole it's hard to keep up. Right until the very end. The end where the Bloodline yet again interferes and yet again help Roman score the win.

...which means LA lost.

It's a sobering realization. You were really rooting for him - even aside from your ridiculous one sided crush - you were hoping for someone to finally dethrone the Tribal Chief.

But, yet again, disappointed.

Poor LA, you think, but you know better. He's a big strong guy, he'll bounce back, no skin off his nose. He's the Megastar, everyone says his name and everyone knows it's his game. He'll be fine.

Again, or so you think.

Until, very very late into the evening, as you go to clean up one of the messy break rooms and you come across him. It makes your breath bottle in your throat, the sight of him sitting on one of the cafeteria tables, his head in his hands.

He's fully dressed now - brown leather jacket, 'Yeah' shirt, jeans, and boots. A totally different look from what he wore to the ring tonight. He must hear you come in, because he lifts his head to turn and look at you.

You clear your throat and offer a weak wave, even as you manage a near toneless, "I'll, ah-? Come back later..."

The plan is to stealthily back out, but he sits up straight and gestures to you, "Naw, naw - come on over, y/n."

His voice is loud, but more somber than you've heard it before and he? He said your name? You carefully ease further into the room and walk towards him, your fingers sort of nervously playing with one another as you get closer, "Um? You know my name?"

"Sure. I've seen you at lots of shows. They call your name all the time for shit. Ice packs, sandwiches, hairspray - there anything they don't have you fetch?"

You shake your head because he's not wrong. Again, you know your role. Maybe that's what he needs? Your go-fer skills? And you're about to ask if you can get him something when he asks quietly, "Think you can get me a second shot?"

This makes you seize up, "What do you mean?"

He lets out a huff, "Guess you didn't see me lose out there."

You don't know what to say.

He does, "Oh yeah, a big ol' 'L'. Granted, Roman's boys stuck in their noses again - Solo making a stink at the front, Jimmy in the back, but the end results just the same."

You've never seen him so serious before, so-? Well, melancholy is the first word that comes to mind, and the thought twists your heart into knots. You want to reassure him. Say something cool or clever, but your tongue is numb as he runs one hand over his five o'clock grizzled chin, "I dunno. Maybe I've been fooling myself. Fooling everybody."

"That's not true!" You blurt it out so quickly you almost don't realize you're the one who said it. But then his blue eyes swing to you and it's like a laser slicing you in half, that intense focus of his.

You clear your throat and feel your cheeks heat even as you keep your eyes averted when you talk, "You're-? You're the real deal. I know it. I feel it."

You know he's still looking at you and you feel a little sick and your heart is beating double time but you press on, "Yes, you didn't take the gold this time, but everyone is still behind you. Everybody is still saying your name, chanting for you - you're a superstar, you're a champion!"

"Yeah?" And he asks his normally rowdy catchphrase in a wry, teasing way that only makes the heat in your cheeks worse and god, this is torture. Does he know you have a crush on him?!? Is he possibly teasing you to death?

Being on the business end of one of his BFT's would be kinder...

"Yeah." You cough into one hand so that you can try and subtly rub away some of the heat from your skin, "So, y'know - you'll win. Get the gold you deserve. It's only a matter of time."

"Matter of time, huh?"

You nod and finally risk looking at him. He looks deep in thought and it's almost as if you can read his mind, "I-? I know you have been waiting for a long time already. But... it's going to happen. I promise."

There's a beat of silence between you and then, out of nowhere, he throws back his head and laughs. It's a happy sound and attractive laugh lines appear under his eyes as he reaches out a hand to you and ruffles your hair.

Such a simple and silly action shouldn't be so stimulating, yet here you are, practically melting under it as he rubs warmly and gently at your scalp, "You know what, y/n? You're right. It IS going to happen. YEAH."

The last is said loudly and with his classic jovial tone as he withdraws his hand and he stands up to get down to your level, albeit he still towers over you, "Not only 'cause you promised me, but because I promised myself! I just needed the reminder!"

"Oh!" You offer weakly, breathlessly, "Uh, good! Glad I could help!"

Your next plan is to turn and scurry away because you're sure that's what he wants, because that's what everyone wants after you've helped, but he freezes you with a, "Now wait a minute, you ain't leaving, are ya?"

Your eyes go wide with confusion even as he offers you the kind of saucy grin you've only seen from afar, "'Cause I could still use your help."

"Y-you could?"

"Sure." He eyes you up and down, "I need somebody to go out and eat with me tonight. Need somebody to test my kavorka on. Make sure it's still working."

It is, trust me! Almost pops out of your mouth immediately, but this time you manage to hold the words back, instead giving him a demur, "Alright."

"There we go." He throws one arm around your shoulders and gives you a little squeeze, "Hey, stick with me, kid and I promise you, you'll get what you deserve!"

While you're positive that he thinks you deserve a better job or pay or something along those lines, you honestly hope that you get what you want more than what you deserve.

Hell, you're actually getting what you want right now.

A night out with LA Knight?

YEAH.

[enakane]

Hi, I figured you'd have an interesting take on this, as the #1 The Emporer fucker (affectionate) on my dash. I've always seen Ansur's attempted murder of the Emp being less "you're a horrifying monster who I must kill before you turn on us, even if it kills me to do so" and more "the man I knew would never want to live as a mindflayer, the man I knew would be horrified at what he's become, the man I knew would rather die" but he didnt consider that the man he knew was dead the moment he turned into a mindflayer, as it's (I think) canon that mindflayers feel and think differently than other races, so the 'man he knew' had been fundamentally changed in such a way as to become unrecognizable in his thought process, and thus, would no longer agree with his past-self. So while I don't think what Ansur did was right, I don't think he's the out-and-out villian some people paint him as, just someone so blinded by grief and fear and sadness, that he doesnt realize how changed Emp was. And then when you show up, the Emp at your back and an elder brain on the rise, I think Ansur is blinded by rage, and grief, and betrayal. He thinks all his worst fears about Emp have come true, and that you're, at best, a pawn in Emp's game, and at worst, a thrall, so that's why he attacks. Havent played that section in a while, so I might be talking out of my ass, but that's my take based on what I remember. Thoughts? (Sorry this is so long, I am a Verbose Bitch.)

(brb gonna get "#1 Emperor fucker" tattooed somewhere on me, truly an honor)

I totally agree that Ansur's intentions were first and foremost to enact what he thought would be Balduran's wishes! As far as he knew, he was dealing with an illithid puppeteering Balduran's body, and after failing to bring him back to the way he was (if I remember well, Ansur tried for some time to restore Balduran to his former self but failed), killing him was equivalent to putting down a zombie.

Mind flayers indeed canonically think differently from other races, plus (depending on the source), the host's mind either mostly or completely disappears once ceremorphosis is complete. There was a high chance he was dealing with a master manipulator that only pretended to remember who it used to be to be set free. Ansur was hardly evil for wanting to end Balduran's cursed existence/kill the thing pretending to be him, and Emp was hardly evil for choosing to live.

(If I start talking about how the Emperor wanting to live despite everything ties in perfectly with the game's theme of choosing to live in spite of irreversible changes + the I Want to Live song, I may never shut up, HE'S JUST LIKE US FR-)

Ansur remains as a ghost due to his unfinished business, so when he feels Emp near and speaks to you and him... The situation hasn't really changed for Ansur. Either Balduran is still an illithid or there's still an illithid pretending to be Balduran, and like you said, the chances that you're either a thrall or being manipulated are very high, so why wouldn't he try to finish the job and consider you an unfortunate collateral damage? There's no more evidence that Balduran is actually in control than there was the first time. Plus, I'd never considered that Ansur might feel the Elder Brain nearby and assume Emp is responsible; that would indeed make him feel betrayed and more willing to attack.

I definitely understand why people aren't too keen on the idea of trusting the Emperor bc mind flayers have a Reputation(tm), but how people came to hate Ansur is kind of weird imo? He's not a villain at all, his decision to kill Emp was a desperate last resort, a way to free Balduran from his torment and save the many people who were gonna get their brains eaten if he got out. I know some people dislike that he possesses Tav, but I played that scene before reading about it and it never bothered me, I mean... he's a ghost. If I'd played through bg3 without getting possessed at least once I'd be lowkey disappointed.

Thanks for giving me an excuse to ramble about my bg3 fave, I hope I'm coherent lol

[blind-alchemists]

sorry, Zagreus, I've had your sister for five hours and I already like her more than you.

anyway! I did treat myself and bought the game early and. it's just very good!

in somewhat chronological order, my thoughts after yesterday's session

the music! the music is even more amazing than in the first game and if I'm done, I need to listen to the whole OST on loop

the art!! also even better than in the first game!!

Melinoë is a great protagonist

it's incredibly funny the first god we encounter is Apollo, because Apollo is the guy people modded into the first game years ago

... boy, I wonder what the speedrunning meta will look like for this game (I have very obscure knowledge about Hades I speedrunning meta)

I love the little backgrounds that pop out with the art

oh, right, I jumped into the Hades I EA late, so I never saw the place holder graphics in-game before

the environments!! beautiful.

I shouldn't have played the first game last week. It's fucking with me. where's my second dash??? Why do we start with 30 HP??? where are my death defiances??? weapon mechanics???

of course there's a fishing mechanic again.

I like Hecate's design.

saluting??? what's the lore behind that?

OH. this tone of the story isn't ... quite what I expected. A lot more serious. a lot more severe.

Melinoë doesn't remember her family??? Hello??? what the fuck???

and she keeps talking about her task with such a dutiful determination ... no, I'm not crying. But. That's such an interesting conflict.

NEMESIS!! She's holding her sword aspect!! her design!! her resentment!! her vengeance!! her rivalry with Mel. how Mel calls her Nem. please. tell me she's a romance option. PLEASE.

oh, hi odysseus.

hey, there's hypnos! ... why's he sleeping??? (funny thing is, I got the Charon dialogue that implies he's more useful this way lol)

I cannot. Take. Skelly serious. It's worse because Mel does.

I like Moros' design. The long hair going over the horns? Yeah, that's good.

Mel gets an AXE??? a heavy, double-bladed axe??? (I love women wielding heavy weapons, and as long as the rail doesn't make a return, I'm good with anything after enough time)

I like the new art sprites for reoccurring characters!

ahhh, the good old "we don't trust Olympus so we're not telling them everything" line. understandable, but I figure that's going to blow up sooner or later.

I love Mel's bond with Artemis and Selene and the implication that both helped raise her.

... and I like the predominantly female cast so far

Nemesis can show up in Erebus???

BABY MELINOË omg

why does every chthonic goddess / titaness sound like they have a thing for Persephone. Nyx already had a few lines like that in the first game. Why does Hecate also have these kinds of lines.

the Hecate fight frustrates me to no end, because I'm very used to more dashes, more health, and more death defiances, and very different weapons :( (I have bet her twice in total so far)

unrelated, but I didn't know I needed a sheep in the Hades art style but it's so damn cute and I want a large art print of it

Archane!! I love how her silks change Mel's avatar

Oceanus is beautiful

... except for the traps. Really not digging the traps. or the maps.

CHAOS??? why are you holding your old form's head??? and why is there an embryo coming out of it??? why do you have wings??? why do you wear a suit??? the new design unfortunately checks all the boxes but upon reflection that is because it fits into that very niche character design trope I've seen in manwha recently and I couldn't put a name on it if I tried

on that note, I also adore Aphrodite's new design!!

not quite sure what I think of the gathering / farming mechanic yet

I do like the incantations, magic, hexes, and arcana though!

HERMES! I also adore his design.

wait, what? Mel's going to Olympus? You're telling me one part of the game is descending into the House of Hades and the other is climbing to Mount Olympus?? (that's my speculation, at least.)

god, I hope the cast of the first game is alright/alive. :(

I hope we also get to see Athena, Ares, and Dionysus at some point :(

on that note, I can't wait for Mel to meet her brother and realize he's the opposite of her lol. I love siblings and mirrors.

[crossdressingdeath]

Slightly calmer, my thoughts on a lot of the DAV negativity I've seen float across my dash are... yes, the game will have flaws. Games always do. Bioware games certainly always do (*squints at DAI's writing*). But the complaints I see most often are things like "Oh the art style will be super ugly" after the first trailer (complaints that, surprise surprise, pretty much vanished as soon as we saw the gameplay), "The writers won't care about Davrin" (given what we've seen of him so far they very much do, and this is an especially egregious example given it's based pretty much solely on another studio's actions), "The gameplay will suck" (obviously this one's more subjective, action RPGs aren't for everyone, but the gameplay from everything I've seen and heard is a thing of absolute beauty as long as you don't actively dislike action RPG combat), and most recently things like "We won't be able to decide how Rook feels about their faction" (which is based on... literally nothing, why would Bioware let us decide how Rook feels about their faction in the CC—which is all we've seen of Rook's faction outside of maybe a couple of individual dialogue options—when they have literally never had emotional characterization decisions for the current protagonist in the CC before) and "We won't be able to make any meaningful choices about the worldstate" (which is based on the what, two, three screens of the Quiz and worldstate customization—which they were specifically not allowed to show us any more of, remember—that we've gotten? Guys, if that was it Bioware wouldn't have forbidden the playtesters from showing us more, not to mention it's a wild accusation to throw at Bioware specifically based on so little after the amount of worldstate customization in the previous games and—from what I understand, I never played it myself—ME). Basically it's all complaints that really shouldn't be made without seeing the full product. As we saw with the art style complaints, a lot of these things will go away as we get more information and see more of what the game has to offer. It's one thing to express concerns (god knows I have my share of those), but there's a difference between expressing concerns and just... writing off whole aspects of the game over a month before release because Bioware hasn't shown us every little detail of how they work. We do not have enough information to judge. People are at best overreacting to and leaping to conclusions based on the limited glimpses we've been given. Basically can people stop doing that and just let Bioware cook, the game's coming out in a month and we'll see where the issues are then, not now when we're deliberately not being given the full picture.

[sob-dylan]

I’m the passenger ending anon and I was more curious abt the last 3 minutes or so that’s all in a rosy “things are fine :)” kind of glow, it just seemed so disconnected from the rest of the movie. I LOVED bensons end scene I was eating it up Then hard cut to Things Are Ok :) Idk ! that’s why I asked bc ur no 1 passenger scholar on my dash

lol my bad, i probably should have realized that by "the ending" you meant the part that comes at the end 😅

i'll give a middling answer: it's alright. i mean, let's be honest, the passenger's strength isn't it's screenplay. there's a lot of good story in what mr. jack stanley wrote, but some of the pacing's a little bit awkward and a few things here and there don't make a ton of sense. that all kinda comes to a head in the last scene. but i don't want to throw too many stones, because i'm definitely no great writer, and i've alway found endings especially difficult. and ultimately, i do think the ending works.

even though it's a rough transition from the penultimate scene to the final scene, i appreciate that they took some time to show the positive aftereffects of randy's no good very bad day. there's a definitely a lot of information packed into that very short scene, and some of it feels cool, some of it feels weird. i'm glad that randy's standing up to his mom and going to hang out with friends. but who are these friends? did he have friends before that he just didn't mention? or did he make new ones between his kidnapping and now? his arm's still in a sling, so it feels like not that much time has passed . . . i like that he's kept in touch with ms. beard, but i hope he's doing a little more job-wise than just babysitting for her. his scene with hardy in the beginning showed us that he's in dire need of imagining a substantial future for himself. maybe he could teach! or become a librarian! i do like that they brought in ms. beard's daughter tessa, because for me the movie is all about children. it's about hurt children! and it's about how we need to do a better job of loving and helping and protecting our children! i know some people think it's pretty morbid and fucked up that randy teaches tessa the game that took her mom's eye out, but i actually think it's great that randy can accept that, yeah, it was just an accident, and he can trust himself to play this game for children without history repeating itself. and if it does, if tessa takes his eye out, then he can help her be strong and forgiving of herself like he's learned to be.

i'll admit that's it's all a little bit too tidy and saccharine. so i'm grateful that there are hints that randy's isn't totally fixed. if anything, he's got new, sexier, and possibly even worse problems. this is evidenced in three ways: he's got benson's jacket, someone was doodling a picture of two guys in a car (i've seen some people posit that randy drew the picture, but i hear that and think *jenna maroney voice* "did you draw that, randy? you might need help, because that is awful for an adult." i also think it's hilarious and sad and wonderful if randy found a way to tell tessa about him and benson and she illustrated it), and then finally we get the last shot as icing on the "oh boy this guy's gonna be fucked up forever" cake.

yes the ending is a bit clunky and perhaps even tonally out of step, but the last shot kinda made the whole movie for me. when i first saw the camera pan over to the stuffed animals and "supersoaker md50" kicked in, i SCREAMED! that was so killer! it was heart-wrenching! it was funny! and it was a good time! just like the whole movie! so yeah, the entire end scene maybe isn't all that great, but that last shot was. idk how i would have made the ending any better, so one great final shot is good enough for me.