#OH ALSO this is my pc from skyrim

[thedeafprophet]

If you don't mind me asking, who were your tes ocs?

Ah im being visited by the ghost of Hyperfixations past. I'm giving a warning that the art here is older, some more so then others.

SO I had a few characters.

behold: old pinterest boards [this is not all of them lol]

But my main oc who I've had since i was like 13 is Eliana. She's changed a lot over the years. I was, suffice to say, pretty obsessed with her for quite awhile.

She was my main PC for Skyrim, and she primarily did the Dragonborn stuff alongside Dawnguard and the like [i split up the different plotlines among different characters]. She's a battlemage, uses a combination of fire magic and sword work, and tends to wear more lighter armor for dexeterity based moves. Originally from Hammerfell, she came to Skyrim on a rather personal mission before, yknow, all hells broke loose and oh boy! Suddenly you're expected to save the world and also you're not entierly mortal, have fun with that.

(Also fun fact, while obviouslly not by name in universe, she has type 2 waardenburg syndrome, which is why her eyes are discoloured + has hearing loss)

El's generally a pretty friendly and sweet girl, but she very much tends to get caught up in her own head, and struggles a lot with the balance between power and responbility, and uh, quite a lot of ptsd and stress by the end of it. theres a lot more but uh, we would be here forever lmao.

and uh. i guess ill give a brief overview of the others under the cut. I had vague ideas of a lot of them exisiting in the timeline and their interactions overlapping.

Laymus is an imperial who originally grew up on a farm with a lot of siblings. He struck out on his own in hopes of taking a stronger control of his own life, and because there wasn't really much for him there. Primarily a hunter, Laymus had an unfortunate encounter with a werewolf... which, left a substiantial impact on his being. He specializes in archery and fighting from a distance... at least, most of the time. [yea he's a werewolf lol. i was gonna do the companions quest with him but never got around to it. i usually play as him when im playing with survival mods, its very fun. he was also one of my earliest forays into having a transmasc oc ]

Faelynn is a bosmer, but was actually raised in Cyrodiil by her adoptive father, who ran a tavern there. She is considerbly older then some of my other characters, and long since outliver her human parent. She had a fascination in poisons from a young age, and after an... incident, became far more invested in them. She is the character I play through the dark brotherhood with, specializes in daggers and poison, alongside alchemy.

Erion is an aldermi character of mine, someone who's family has ties to the thalmor, an area of which he does not connect to. He has a rather.... unfortunately complicated history with his family, that was made all the more interesting by an encounter with Nocturnal at a young age...

He focuses on shadowy skills, a master of sneaking and not being seen when he doesn't want to be. He is the one i do the thieves guild questline with.

Adra is a dunmer, and grew up with a particularly strong set of daedra worshippers, which, suffice to say, has some complications with her background. She vaguely remembers her mother, but has little concept of who her father could even have been. She struggles a lot with self esteem and has a tendancy towards jealousy of those she percieves as doing better then her.

She specializes as a mage, primarily in destruction magic, with a knack for electricity and lightning. She is a student at the college of winterhold.

and that covers the main ones! Or, at least the ones i play the game with anyway. Honourable mentions are Valia and Ashanta, who are Eliana's mothers.

These two met during the battles between Hammerfell and the Aldmeri Dominion, of which Ashanta was a warrior on Hammerfell's side, and Valia was a healer of whom defected, their paths crossing. Its quite a tale in and off itself!

Valia died prior to the start of skyrim.......... the aldmeri are particularly kind to defectors, we shall say.

And then i have a few others. Anja is a nord background character concept I made, who runs a bakery in Riverwood [inspired by me learning about the history of bread making and the important of a baker in a town]. She also ends up adopting some of the orphans in the game lol. Allian is my oblivion character who wasnt ever super developed, i should get back to that... he's an imperial, and is actually Laymus' uncle.

I'm pretty sure I have a few more somewhere but uh. yea! thats the base up of it. hope you were prepared for my great overview XD XD

[the-elder-polls]

Happy TCS Friday!! I want to share my most hilarious but also most tragic OC ever.

My Hero of Kvatch is a Breton named Alistair. And he has spent his entire life in the Imperial prison. His mother was thrown in there for some unknown reason and she gave birth to him inside that cell. She later died, and the Empire forgot about him.

Alistair knows very little about the outside world. But what he does know is that he is receiving... visions. Visions of a great leader's death. Visions of a giant fiery dragon. He doesn't know what they mean but he takes them as gospel, as prophecy. Nobody believes him, of course. The dark elf across the hall only ever berates him but he's the only person who even knows Alistair exists.

Now here's the funny part. When he finally is released, this man understands absolutely nothing about societal norms or history or anything. Alistair contracts vampirism and he just assumes he's sick because he doesn't know what a fucking vampire is. He asks people "what are the Divines?" and people are so stunned by his sincere ignorance that they just tell him. People ask him "have you heard of the high elves?" and he genuinely says "nope!"

Alistair was born from a conversation I had with a friend who is writing a novel about a kid who is released into a world he knows nothing about. We talked about how a character who knows as little about the world as the reader/player/etc can be a super helpful and clever way to present the world to someone without confusing them. And we also talked about how certain media fails to really do this well. It works well with Fallout because most of the time you have literally been living under a rock for your entire life. But it's weird in Skyrim how you ask someone a question that your character would realistically know the answer to if they've lived in this world their entire life, and that person just answers you instead of looking at you like you've got five heads.

oh my GOD that poor man. that's such a fun way to create a pc though, i absolutely love it

[konahrics]

I once made a post about the DG dlc and how it didn't live up to its potential, but every time i read it i feel like it's just a wall of disjointed text lmao so here's a better version for those interested:

- Harkon should have been more insane. His personality is fine, he should just be more obviously bonkers while being a haughty power-hungry mf, and it would come into play later for the radiant quests

- I wish the Volkihar members were more interesting. I haven't really counted how many npcs have backstories/unique lines in the Dawnguard vs the Volkihar so i won't talk numbers, but the Dawnguard npcs are just more memorable overall imo.

- Serana should lead the Volkihar at the end if you side with the vamps, not the pc. I know every questline in Skyrim ends up making the pc the leader of their faction, with the Dawnguard being an exception, but Serana just fits the bill better: she's a pure-blood while the pc is a half-blood, she's much more experienced in vampire politics and she's Harkon's daughter.

- For players who actually want to lead, it could be an option once you've done a lot of radiant quests, like how you restore the Ratway to its former glory in the Thieves' Guild questline, except instead Serana goes "hey yknow what? I don't even want to lead and you've been doing a lot. Here's your new crown."

- THE RADIANT QUESTS. Omg the potential. For the Volkihar: that's the part where Harkon having become obsessed with the prophecy would play a role. He's been neglecting his territory, other clans are encroaching and he either didn't even notice or didn't care. Now it's your problem. Also, you need to cull vamp numbers in the province so people don't make Dawnguard 2: electric boogaloo, both because of vampires invading from other provinces to take you territory and because of newly-formed covens, and you need to recruit more actual Volkihar by turning people (i like the quests that are already there for turning npcs tbh). For the Dawnguard: oh shit turns out the Volkihar were keeping other clans at bay and culling their own numbers, and now that they're gone, it's your job ig. The in-game quests are already pretty good, but introducing foreign clans would add to the world, essentially.

- Why does it feel so much like a good vs evil plotline? The Dawnguard admittedly has some nuance to it (they're good people who want to protect others from the vampire menace, but their leader has a torture chamber next to his bedroom...), but the Volkihar literally live in a castle whose floors are splattered with blood and have human cattle in the basement. I wish at least once Harkon is defeated, if you were on the vamps' side, you could choose how to run the faction. Maybe the "cattle" could be volunteers only and not kept in cages, or something, my point being that it should be left up to the player. Ngl, every time i side with the Volkihar, i feel bad about it.

- While the Dawnguard are making moves and recruiting in preparation for their fight against the Volkihar, the vamps are kinda just sitting there. There could be an internal struggle between those who are loyal to Harkon and those who believe he isn't fit to rule anymore (instead of the Vingalmo vs Orthjolf feud being about which of them can lick boots better, they could each represent the pro- and anti-Harkon sides), the result being that they're still not really reacting to the Dawnguard threat, but now there's a reason; they're too busy plotting against each other. And once Harkon's dead, the surviving vampires can work together and be less likely to stab each other in the back, which in turn sounds less exhausting for whoever ends up leading them.

Tbh the whole reason behind this rant (i guess "these rants" now...) is that some custom followers don't trust or react badly to a vampire pc, and with the game as it is, it makes total sense, so i wish Skyrim vampires weren't mustache-twirling villains. Also maybe i'm planning a fanfic with this Volkihar headcanon and wanted something to reference so people wouldn't think i'm misremembering the hell out of this game lol

[thedragonagebigbang]

Bang Creator Interview: Tumblr: @bardandbear 

The Collaboration period has begun! In these quiet months before works are due, we want to foster a sense of excitement, camaraderie, and celebration among our participants. To that end, all participants were given the option of a formal interview by our mod, Dema, or an informal “ask-game” survey. We hope you enjoy getting to know our phenomenal creators as much as we have!

Interview with Kes

Kes and Dema talk DA homecoming, tragic plotlines, and inlfuencing you (yes you!) to buy a [redacted]

Dema: As an artist who creates a lot for the Dragon Age fandom, what inspired you to start?

Kes: Well, I've always loved stories and fantasy, but I wasn't really able to get into the visual (gaming) side of things until I built my first PC with my dad when I was 15. The first thing I did was dump an extraordinary amount of time into Skyrim, and then I was recommended Dragon Age Origins as a similar game on Steam. I'd always been sort of arty but never people - Dragon Age Origins really changed that and I desperately needed to draw a bunch of the stories I'd imagined (and written) for my Warden. The reader/writer to artist pipeline if you will. The DA storytelling was like getting to read a book, but instead I could interact with it and see it. Totally changed the game for me.

Dema: Were you playing them as they came out?

Kes: I think that was a little bit after DAO came out, but I played DA2 and DAI on release

Dema: Have there been any lulls in your Dragon Age devotion, or has it remained pretty steady?

Kes: My interest built up steadily but I went properly unhinged around DAI's release and the 3ish years following. Adulthood was a good distraction in the hibernation period between Trespasser and DA4, and I actually foolishly thought I'd been reformed, then the DA4 news really started dropping and I've completely fallen for it all over again. It feels like coming home.

Dema: I'd love to ask what specifically about it feels like a homecoming 💖

Kes: Nothing since DAI and Trespasser has quite scratched the Dragon Age itch - that very specific combination of its exploratory lore, very unique takes on magic and world-building and the character complexity. I've spent the whole time hungry for more of Thedas and wanting to know what happened/what will come next, nothing could actually fill that void. Enough time made me sort of forget about the intensity of said Dragon Age itch but after the gameplay reveal I was like, oh yeah, this is what I have been missing.

Dema: Right?? I think it's the depth of the character development for me, in particular. Do you have a favorite character or plotline? Something you get your teeth into and want to shake like a dog?

Kes: Oh so many. I adore the loneliness and isolation and despair of the warden Mahariel questline, Alistair actually asking your Mahariel what the Dalish do to mourn their loved ones in a game that had up until that point largely ostracised her continues to alter my brain chemistry to this day. Morrigan and Flemeth's deeply troubled mother daughter relationship is always so meaty to dig into, every time they resurface I think we get more tragic layers. I think the evolving plot over what spirits are is probably my favourite in the series though, the way they interact with the world, what they've become vs what they were? Makes me insane actually.

Dema: I am losing my mind over that glimpse of Morrigan in the DA4 trailer. Since this is also an artist interview: did any visuals in the game particularly strike you? A demon's design, a location, an object, or something else? And related to that, is there something from DA that you particularly enjoy as an art subject?

Kes: Like basically every artist in the DA fandom I'm fairly sure the DAI tarot card art style changed me as a person. In general the progression from DA2's stylisation to the DAI stylisation I think is really lovely and I've been trying to incorporate some of that texture and movement and composition into every artwork I've done ever since. Surprising absolutely no one, I've actually really loved drawing DA elves, so many of them fit what I call the 'elf lines theory' where they have this very 'geometric' shape / proportions. I feel like Solas does this in the most exaggerated way because there's no distraction of hair, but all elves are my favourite to draw for this reason.

Dema: Do you have any tools you can't live without? 

Kes: Unsure if this is allowed because it might sound like a bit of a shill, but I would like to shout out my trusty tablet that I've had for almost a decade and I still love using. For anyone who has been a Wacom user their whole lives, I really urge you to try Huion tablets.

Dema: Not a shill, I for one love to know what other artists like using! When you're working on a collaboration like this, what does that process look like for you?

Kes: Generally I will read/watch something and an idea will really 'catch' me while I'm doing that which I want to draw. What's really fun about this collaborative process is getting access to the artist that inspired me to really pick their brain and test my ideas against their vision.

Dema: Oh that's exciting! How's your progress on the Bang piece? Are you feeling excited about it?

Kes: I think the challenge has been the story I'm trying to capture has a lot of really rich progression of character over a long period, so I've had a lot of different ideas I wanted to represent, and I had a lot of original concept ideas that I've sketched and combined and discarded and taken elements from. It's been an evolutionary process but I think I did finally get to turn a lot of those ideas into a cohesive main piece I'm really excited to see finished.

Dema: I am very excited to see it, too! Thank you for taking this time to be interviewed, Kes, it's been delightful.

Kes: No problemo!

[kcwriter-blog]

Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Since I have writer's block where my day job is concerned, I thought I would get the creative juices going by typing up an introduction to my account.

Full disclosure. I've had a Tumblr account for years. I've never used it for anything other than looking at the gorgeous artwork. I am not conversant in tags or the etiquette. Apologies if I make mistakes.

So why now? I recently became obsessed with a game I picked up at GameStop for the low, low price of $7. You guessed it. Dragon Age Inquisition. Another disclosure. I'm new to gaming.

My daughter was never into video games so we never bought a console. I had no idea what I was missing out on. Last year I bought a PS4. I tried a few games and settled on Skyrim and Mass Effect as favorites. All I really knew about Dragon Age was that BioWare made it and people that enjoyed Skyrim also enjoyed Dragon Age.

I loaded the game and instantly fell in love. I bought the books and looked into playing the first two games in the series. No luck as I don't have a gaming PC or Xbox and can't afford either right now. Maybe in the future.

I also instantly fell in love with Solas. I knew romances were an important part of BioWare's games so I looked up the love interests. I inadvertently got spoiled and knew who he was before I played. I was not planning to romance him at all.

I got through the tutorial and began making the NPC rounds in Haven. Since Solas had saved my Inky's life (elf mage) and seemed to know the most about the Mark, I started a conversation with him. Let's just say I squeaked out a very audible, "oh no," during that conversation. I was hooked and I knew it. He was so smart, so erudite, so confident, so witty and so handsome. i knew his voice actor was one of my favorite characters from Torchwood and that added to the appeal.

I tend to hyper focus so I set about learning everything there was to know about Solas - which is when I discovered how much a lot of people hated him. I got the whole betrayal, dooming the world aspect but not the dislike of his baseline personality. It wasn't until I read some posts on Tumblr that I got it. He codes as ND. Everything people say about him, people have said about me. It isn't true about me and I don't think it's true about him.

I'm in Solavellan Hell and I know it.

I don't really have anyone that shares my obsession with the game or Solas. Most people I know played the game a long time ago, never took Solas with them and have moved on to BG3.

So I'm on Tumblr enjoying everyone else's amazing artwork, stories and ramblings. I don't know how much of my own musings I will add to them. I generally don't like putting myself out there in cyberspace.

Im looking forward to learning from others just as obsessed with the angsty elf as I am. Greetings!

[landgraabbed]

hi! i was wondering if you had game recs for someone that has only played sims and stardew on pc! im the person and i want to start playing more stuff but i dont want to start with something too difficult i hope that makes sense 🐣 thank you and i hope you enjoy your weekend

hi nonners!! sure thing! a huge chunk of my childhood gaming was harvest moon and sims so let's see! my gaming tastes are very unified yet all over the place so don't take this as gospel and something you will For Sure enjoy! feel free to follow up if any game/genre piques your interest!

if you never did so, i would recommend giving the sims handheld games (namely, sims bustin' out, urbz, and sims 2 on the gba/ds). they're still in the universe of the sims so you take care of your lil sim/urb but they're adventure games where you're given tasks and progress through the story. the writing is silly but good, and the characters are fun, though the games may feel grindy at times. feel free to hit me up if you'd like, i can hook you up with them!

in the farming sim/resource manager sim, i can recommend you the harvest moon games, now story of seasons. story of seasons: a wonderful life just came out on the switch, and i think other platforms, and it is a remake of the iconic a wonderful life. just keep in mind that it might feel like a step down from just how much content is in stardew valley! there's also the rune factory series, my time at portia (and the upcoming my time at sandrock), ooblets, graveyard keeper, calico, and animal crossing. oh!! and kynseed. kynseed is lovely and it looks gorgeous and it is a life sim where you play as successive generations, with lots of fae elements. it can get a bit grindy but i've greatly enjoyed my time with it.

(and i just started wylde flowers since i got it on sale this week, and i've been really enjoyed it so far, but can't provide a full recommendation since i've had so little time with it)

if you enjoy the decorating part of the sims, i can recommend you the tenants. it's a game where you play as a landlord, decorate houses, find renters, and most importantly do renovation jobs for clients.

if you're in the mood for something sandbox-y, other than animal crossing i think that no man's sky could scratch that itch (you can fully customize options such as resource availability, combat difficulty, etc) and, of course the legend of zelda breath of the wild (and i can only assume tears of the kingdom, but i haven't started that one yet)

if you're wanting to dip your toes into different genres, such as rpgs, i can recommend you the elder scrolls series (especially skyrim is more streamlined and thus, more beginner friendly) and dragon age. both series have difficulty settings you can change as you feel more or less comfortable. if you're interested in party-based, turn-based rpgs, you can't go wrong with the final fantasy series, golden sun, and octopath traveler (which is a recent favorite that i wholeheartedly love, with the caveat that if someone is looking for a large, overarching story it is not the game that will provide that)

edit to add story-based games. there are many but i won't cite what maybe most people would recommend bc i either haven't played it or dislike it. i really enjoyed oxenfree, not tonight, road 96, and most importantly of all, kentucky route zero. my sibling adores the dreamfall chapters series and i really enjoy watching them play it! and my wife (a much more casual player than me but whom i love watching play and has great taste) loved playing strange horticulture, the sexy brutale, eastshade, and coffee talk (episodes 1 and 2)

please keep in mind there's some overlap between categories! and i think that most games will be approachable to beginners. nobody was born knowing how to play games and i find that most games do a good job of bringing players up to speed.

sorry for the long reply!! gaming is just a bit of a big interest for me since it's my preferred medium and i'm a rambler haha. as i said, feel free to hmu again on or off anon!! and hope u too are having a great weekend

[willowser]

Do you have any recs for video games for semi beginners?? You’ve talked about a few different games so I’m curious about your thoughts, I’ve played like maybe 2 rpgs and I’d love to try more! But I’m scared of them being too difficult or confusing lmao

OH HELLO DEAR !!! 😊🩷✨️ I WOULD LOVE TO TALK ABOUT VIDEO GAMES WITH YOU !!!!

tbh it all depends on a few things !! like what kind of game you're looking for, something slow and relaxing or a bit more adventurous ?? and are you limited to a console or do you have a pc ??

i saw your other ask about skyrim and — yes !! i think skyrim is a good beginner rpg !! there's a lot of combat, but it's pretty standard and easy to get the hang of ! there's a lot of lore to dive into and has an open world ! so you can do as much exploring as you want ! the game in the elder scrolls series before skyrim, oblivion, is also really good, too ! a bit older so not as pretty, but i love that game !!

as far as something a little more relaxing, i would recommend animal crossing or stardew valley or even the sims !! i'm playing the new pikmin right now too and it's very fun 🥺🌱

some of my other favorite rpg's are a little bit older LOL but dragon age: origins (inquisition is the newer one !), kingdoms of amalur, any legend of zelda game (my favorites would be wind waker, twilight princess, + breath of the wild), genshin impact has been really fun for me !!, both the mass effect and fallout series are shooters, so the mechanics are different, but also easy to use once you get the hang of them !

and stay away from any fromsoftware games LOL they will chew you up and spit you out, even if the lore is so good 😫

[esmeriandreamer]

TTRPG tumblr, fun idea-

Tell me about your characters (PCs, NPCs, BBEGs, doesn't matter, all of them are welcome-), but do it in the style of how someone might gush about their blorbo-

I'll start- Introducing, my half-tabaxi rogue, Suna Ta-El.

I??? FUCKING LOVE HER??? Went through so much bullshit but now has a found family who is 110% inspired by the Dark Brotherhood from Skyrim-

This girl stabbed her kidnapper/abuser to death at 16 and thought "Hey, y'know, I kinda like this??" and now she guts abusive assholes for a living- And it's not even that difficult because most of the bastards she's hired to kill just see a pretty little cat-lady and think they're about to get laid, but SURPRISE BITCH, DAGGER TO THE THROAT-

And you might think "Oh, femme fatale Mary-Sue", but no, this pussycat is absolute cringe-fail half the time-

This bitch tried to intimidate a forest of ghost mist, and FAILED, then got humbled by her plant friend who just said PLEASE-

She flirted with a girl at the market and got such a lesbian crush for her that she literally went into a FLESH DIMENSION to try and find her after the girl got kidnapped-

THIS BITCH THROATSLAMMED THE BBEG, AKA A FUCKING HIVEMIND, TO THE GROUND-

I just- She started out as a personification of my rage and fear that comes with being afab, the frustration around how many afab and other female-presenting people have to constantly be reminded of how the patriarchy dictates our lives.

And now she's my femininity, nurturing towards her friends, but a bitch to anyone who dares disrespect her or hers. She's that bitch who will hold back your hair in the club bathroom as you puke, while offering to stab your shitty ex in the alley around back.

She's also my literal little meow-meow, and while her mother is a black Tabaxi, her himbo of a human dad very much passed on some orange cat genes to her- I am just waiting for the day the party gives her catnip because it's going to be HILARIOUS-

I just love my girl so much ;7;

[trickstarbrave]

i really hate the fact the nord pantheon was just thrown to the wayside in favor for the imperial pantheon and any discussions i see of it are unsatisfying or even sometimes frankly stupid.

“it was 200 years” yeah a lot can change in 200 years but you mean to tell me i will have dunmer lecturing me at random going “oh btw we dont worship the tribunal anymore back to the good old good daedra for us :)” but absolutely 0 fucking explanation of how this happened. im just expected to know it. with the dunmer its kinda silly bc anyone who played thru all of morrowind to know enough about the tribunal worship in detail can probably infer it on their own and don’t need it spelled out for them. and people who haven’t probably wouldn’t know enough to think it was unusual. but sure go ahead and have that in to explain the lore as though my random 25 year old nord dragonborn pc would know anything about dunmeri customs and religious history. but the explanation for the widespread adoption of the imperial pantheon in favor of the nord pantheon???? just completely fuckin gone??? okay fine whatever

“well scandinavia was christianized in like 200 years so things change” the christianization of scandinavia is messy and unusual (and also took longer than like 200 years fully). they were converted mostly peacefully due to the relationship nordic people have with dieties--based on convenience. gods are like people you have relationships with, and sometimes those relationships are business relationships. also it was politically motivated to get some extra manpower from christians for various political battles and scuffles. the nords, while based loosely on pop cultural depictions of vikings, don’t actually follow this. they are people deeply rooted in tradition. change happens, and takes centuries to fully shift. two centuries may in theory be enough time to do that--but not without adequate explanation and see the above on that. they are prideful and at times arrogant. at best i could see them adopting a few compromises for politics, but the thing is imperial pantheon was already the compromise they were tolerating and not really adopting.

“well they needed unity for the great war” that means then that this change is around like, what, 40 years old at the most if i give them 10 years of hindsight for the great war happening. the great war started 30 years before skyrim began. it was not some monumental battle at the 200 years ago mark that would kick start the political shift. could i see it happening? yes. but that would mean ulfric--who is older than the great war very obviously--would probably be MUCH more politically motivated to instead be championing the adoption of the old nord pantheon the imperials tried to stamp out for political unity. in fact, this would be an even better motivation for his direct hostilities with the empire, because that means their religious persecution of nords was LONG before the fucking white gold concordant. but that isn’t what happened. instead this would have to mean 40 years ago at most (probably more around like, what, 32???) the empire forced the imperial pantheon down every nord’s throat, banned their worship of the nord pantheon effectively, redid all their shrines and temples during the war, converted a bunch of people to loving talos through propaganda, and then after the war ended said “nevermind you can’t worship talos anymore” and ulfric was ONLY mad about the last part. right. sure.

also frankly the religious diversity made the world of the elder scrolls more fucking interesting. it was cool to see it. it was interesting to see varieties of faith, different creation myths, complex religious history and shifts of faith. it was cool to see how these cultures evolved and changed through their history to be something alien and weird and to see other cultures react in universe to those differences. keeping the nordic pantheon would have made the game more interesting. but it also would have involved making a world that required more thinking on the part of the player to understand instead of turning off their brain and just thinking this is oblivion with vikings. rich lore previously established is gutted and ignored, only vague place names remaining. is saarthal inthe mage’s college about uncovering the mystery of the attach by snow elves on the atmorans? no its about the eye of magnus. okay, uh, are we gonna learn about the elven god magnus? no, just go to this old nord ruin that was the center of the dragon cult to retrieve an artifact to stop it. oh are we gonna learn about the dragon cult? no you idiot it became a training ground for archmages in disjointed puzzles, go kill some zombies draugar, fight a lich king dragon priest, get the artifact, and come back with no explanation of the arcane mysteries you’ve experience and take your prize of being the archmage now that everyone else is dead. don’t you feel satisfied and like you’re in a real living breathing world and role playing in it?

[m34gs]

Tell us about your top five favourite video games! ❤️

Oh thank you so much for this ask, friend! I'm super excited to answer :D I will list them from fifth to first!

5th: This spot goes to Mario Party 8! I have a lot of fond memories of this game. Where I grew up, it was a very popular one for families to have for the Wii, and it was something we could play in large groups. It's silly and funny and there's not a lot you have to do to understand what's going on. The reason this isn't higher on my list is just simply because, in my opinion, it's only really fun when you play with others. Playing alone or just vs the computer is not really fun at all.

4th: Sims 4 is in fourth place. I really enjoy this game because it's pretty versatile in terms of how you can play it. You can use it simply to build homes (which is mostly what I'm doing right now; building and decorating is so much fun!), play out storylines that come with the base game and/or expansion packs (apparently there's quite a bit of actual lore, which is something I only learned a few months ago!) or even make your own crazy story-lines (currently: I have a family of vampires with one human member who desperately wants to be turned, an Elder vampire who just wants to raise a good vampire family, a young adult vampire who thrives being a vampire and is trying to seduce Vladislaus Straud, and a third young adult vampire who is desperate to be as human as possible and loves all things about humanity...and then I have another "family" where one woman was jealous of another's beauty so she tricked her into staying in a tower and I'm currently playing through as her, only able to befriend the people her captor invites over, and trying to convince one of them to "join" the family so she can get them to free her and run away with her and start a new family in a cozy magic cottage somewhere...). Possibilities are really endless, and that's what I love about it. But, the game is rough on my PC, and it sometimes lags or has issues where it doesn't load properly, or something doesn't register right, so sometimes I have to exit out and restart or try again a different day. It also can't seem to decide if it wants me to use keyboard controls or mouse controls. Some days right clicking rotates objects. Some days right clicking moves my screen. It is a Frustration.

3rd: Third place goes to Danganronpa! I really enjoy this series. As of now, I have played the first two games and part of Ultra Despair Girls. The mysteries are very fun, the storyline is interesting, and I think all the character designs are so unique and dynamic! I have a few favourite characters who won my heart fairly instantly, and I really love replaying chapters where they are more present in the story-line. I love all the art fandom has made for it, and I love the fanfics too! Free time events give more information and insight about the characters and the storyline even after the gameplay is finished, and that makes me really happy. After all, I am a sucker for character development and backstory.

2nd: Skyrim is in second place!! I used to play this game a bit more faithfully when I lived with my parents and had access to my brother's xbox. And a tv. I do not currently have a tv, as you know, friend, and I do all my gaming at the current time on my laptop and/or my phone. Anyway; Skyrim. It makes me really really happy. I love the fact that I can become a Vampire Lord, or a Werewolf, I can be the Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold, I can learn to be a bard, I can join the Theives' Guild, I can join the Dark Brotherhood, I choose which side I'm on in a civil war, I can adopt children, and have many houses...and those are all Side Quests (except the civil war, which can be done as a side quest or as part of the main story depending on how you play, if I recall correctly). Like, those aren't even the main quest. I never finished the main quest because I was too busy off doing side quests for rewards so I could buy pretty clothes and fun toys for my two children and then I would spend time with them and play tag and hide and seek like a good dad (I played as a male Dunmer). I genuinely miss this game, and trust me it will be the first one I purchase when I have a TV and Xbox of my own.

1st: First place goes to....Twisted Wonderland! Right now, that is the game I play the most, and it is the one I'm most focused on. I love the story and the characters. There's an interesting plot going on, and I am eager to know what happens next. The events and side stories are very entertaining (though I haven't been able to play as many events as I would've liked because I had a rough past year) and provide a deeper look at a lot of characters! I love Character Development!!!!!!! And I enjoy how different characters end up interacting with each other in the events, it fleshes out the world a bit and keeps the houses/dorms from feeling too divided or closed off. Like, it helps provide that sense of over-arching storytelling, rather than allowing each dorm's story to feel disjointed and not connected to the others. I really enjoy that. On top of all of that, there are fun rhythm games and minigames, battles you can fight daily, and other little cool features that I really enjoy and that allow me to "play" the game daily without feeling like I have to devote a whole bunch of time to it if I have a busier day ahead of me. I also really love the official art; it's all so pretty and wonderful. They really did a great job with the character art and the art for the different cards.

Thanks again for the ask, friend! It was fun to answer!

[shame-kink]

theres like, two levels of “playersexual”.

the first is the authors making all the romance options bi, which. like technically it can often stem from the same mechanical reasoning as “true” playersexuality (omfg im gatekeeping?????), that its easier, more efficient, or more equitable to just have all the options available to any character setup. in that sense theyre absolutely taxonomically related, but from a semantic and ethical point of view it seems kinda dogshit to reduce textually bi (one way or another, theres a lotta ways to do that) people to a mere practical development choice? like dude i think that characters just bisexual its kinda fucking wierd to frame his ability to be attracted to [character in context thats not the pc’s gender] and also romance the player character as some sort of “lazy writing shortcut”.

the second is far more nebulous as it exists more in what is LACKING than what is there. the anomalous ‘real’ “oh actually this was just a studio being either programming/writing lazy or like. genuinely just bizzare on a spiritual level”. skyrim romance is roughly egalitarian in implementation but there is effectively 0 external queers aside from two dead guys on an island and Possibly this one vampire from the morthal quest who seems like shes grooming a child? its a world absent of same-gender relationships but incapable of recognizing the player as anything extraordinary in that respect. romanceable npcs showing attraction to other npcs is rare in general, even, though going back over it in my head my initial presumption of it being completely absent is verifiably false. i think. ANYWAYS this theoretically would also include characters whose textual sexuality CHANGES to match the player character, which -discounting allowances for potential watsonian mischaracterization (i.e. a character being labeled gay by an unreliable commentator in a save in which they end up in a same-gender relationship, and other such things) can show up in really weird ways like ok in stardew valley i’m not actually saying Leah’s ORIENTATION necessarily changes but her ex’s gender specifically changing to match the player is SO FUCKING WIERD WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT. LIKE WHAT IS THAT EVEN IMPLYING?! WHUH?!!?

[incorrectskyrimquotes]

hey hey :) I had some questions about the birthright mod and you're really the only person I've seen talking about it. I don't do anything with mods (specifically on skyrim just because I usually play on console) and so I was checking the requirements for the mod and it says the hearthfire dlc is required :/ I'm getting skyrim on my pc probably later today and was wondering if you think hearthfire is required or just recommended. do you think it'd cause issues with the mod if I didn't buy hearthfire as well?

oh christ how old is this ask

generally, yes. when it comes to mods and requirements (esp for stuff like vanilla dlc) its usually a very hard requirement. i think for birthright specifically, its using resources from the honeyside fix, which uses resources from hearthfire.

birthright seems to have been built around the new honeyside, which was built with, at the very least, some resources from hearthfire. it might also be stuff like load bearing tomatoes, something skyrim is generally (in)famous for

[jenroses]

A lot of it can! I built a stupidly overpowered computer given that the game I played the most in the first month or two was Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri from 1999. Windows 11 actually does better with SMAC than Windows 10 did, it's only crashed once! I can also run Creative Suite CS2 which I OWN on this system. Photoshop from 2004 doesn't quite know what to do with multithreading but it's actually still really fast and the 64 gigs of RAM doesn't hurt. At the moment I have NMS running in the background while I have a gadzillion firefox tabs open and I could easily watch a video like this and be fine. One of the upsides of holding on to old software is that where it can take advantage of the new hardware, it really does run very well and you get actually uplift. The issue is that a lot of people lost the thread of Intel's naming scheme and haven't upgraded their computer or they bought something with stupidly little RAM (16g is probably okay but 32 g is what most gamers will be happier with and I bought a little word processing toaster of a netbook in 2020-ish or 2021 which had FOUR gigs of RAM but there was a huge tech shortage at the time and it can do what i needed it to do (run Scrivener) just fine. It cannot handle a lot of tabs open and still do, you know, the operating system. 8 gigs is Sluggish because of Windows bloat.

And yes, I have a fervent desire for two things in programming:

That programmers optimize their programs to run on a wide variety of systems with reasonable speeds

That programmers enable their programs to use things like multithreading and large amounts of available RAM *if there is excess capacity readily available* to speed necessary functions that take significant time. Like, oh, loading screens and transitions shouldn't take much time at all on my system but the cpu is sitting there at like 4% utilization while the framerate drops to 30fps on a LOADING screen because they just had to animate a gadzillion star systems through the gpu alone (looking at you NMS.)

What I mean by that is that, for example, in the gaming sector, there are a lot of companies who are like "How much eye candy can we stuff in here to meet our arbitrary (stupidly low) framerate goal" and most of the "eye candy" is stuff most observers wouldn't know or recognize from a hole in the ground. Yes, I'm talking about Starfield. I didn't understand why they'd accept a framerate of 30fps on console until I discovered they'd artificially locked both Skyrim and Fallout 4 ON THE PC to like 30 or 40 fps. And then tied the physics to framerate, completely unnecessarily (as in you can change this behavior with like two or three ini edits.) Then there's games like Baldur's Gate which was done thoughtfully and can run on a huge range of hardware. I had to return one Civilization game because they hadn't accounted for an aging fanbase and high resolution monitors and I flat out couldn't read the tiny text to play the game.

But yeah, we have this neverending leapfrogging bloat that goes on, where users try to upgrade to get things to work better and companies decide to fill in the new overhead with data mining background tasks and "user experience optimizations" that are a ridiculous rat race that in no way enhances the user experience.

Anyway, I'm not opposed to upgrades but like, do them sensibly and if you can, learn to build your own stuff so that you aren't beholden to the anticonsumer tactics most major computer system integrators (dell, etc.) use to get as much of your money as possible while giving you the least in exchange.

we should globally ban the introduction of more powerful computer hardware for 10-20 years, not as an AI safety thing (though we could frame it as that), but to force programmers to optimize their shit better

[nancylandgraabs-blog]

babe

original/b+a

[oo11]

there are dozens of games I could’ve put for “underrated”, it was hard to choose

template here

[dredgen-nope]

i need to stop wasting money and go manage all my sub services but also i really like being able to use frogpog and waynersob why does these come from two different streamers i am fuckign