#Skyrim of all things. yes it’s weird and I do love it a lot

[pizzabookbuying]

me at any given opportunity just making the plot about family dynamics and maternal love

[aerscribbles]

What Video Games I Think The Cast Of TGCF Would Play:

(long under the cut)

Xie Lian: Ultrakill. Devil May Cry. Neon White. Bayonetta. Anything fast paced, skill based and violent will do. He would play every Soulslike Fromsoft game, at first for the challenge and later for the emotional catharsis. Speaking of Fromsoft, he would absolutely adore the Armored Core series. Give the weapons freak a customizable mecha, please.

Hua Cheng: Dating sims, to practice his seduction skills in a simulated environment through a proxy character. Then he would figure out he enjoys the Visual Novel format in general, and go through just about every one of them in existence. He would also play a lot of Animal Crossing-like games. Ghost City is just his animal crossing village.

Feng Xin: Ye olde Legend of Zelda. All of them. Classical RPGs in general. He would enjoy a structured experience with juuuust the right amount of freedom. He likes knowing what to do and where to go but having some amount of choice in how he gets there.

Mu Qing: Fromsoft Soulslikes, purely for the emotional catharsis. I think it would either fix him or make him worse.

He Xuan: Rougelikes and weird artsy shit. The former can become a kind of 'turn emotions brain off logic/violence brain gets to drive' experience, and for the latter, well, fishboy is a loser nerd (affectionate) (saying this as a bit of loser nerd myself). Also heavily modded Skyrim.

Shi Qingxuan: Gatcha games. Look, they have disposable income and a fondness for pretty things. They would. After the... Blackwater Incident, they would get really into MMORPGs, playing as support- a way to have social interactions the way they used to, being powerful, beautiful, loved and needed.

Shi Wudu: Only plays viddy games socially. Allegedly. In reality he does play video games, just really really old ones. Heroes of Might and Magic, the older Civ entries, stuff like that. Would also the spreadsheet hell game (World of Warcraft). Generally regards video games as a complete and utter waste of time.

Pei Ming: Aside from the obvious visual novels IYKYK, he would have a great time with MMOs.

Ling Wen: Give this lady some nice and bloody fighting games, to unwind from being the sysadmin-in-chief for a massive organization while being unable to punch any of her coworkers. She would probably also enjoy the highly technical aspect of speedrunning.

Yin Yu: Puzzle games, platformers, puzzle platformers. The more brain-meltingly hard the better. The Witness. Baba Is You. Celeste. Return of the Obra Dinn. Portal. Hollow Knight. Little Nightmares. Outer Wilds. I think his favorite game ever would be Stray. IDK he's catboy coded.

Quan Yizhen: An absolute relic of a doom copy, given to him by Shixiong to keep him occupied ages ago. Would pick up some other games post-canon, probably playing co-op with Xie Lian.

Yushi Huang: Strategy games, to keep herself sharp.

Mei Nianqing: FTP gatcha phone games. Gambling addict, keeps things portable.

Jun Wu: Before/during canon, nothing. Post-canon, anything, as long as it's co-op with Mei Nianqing.

[daisychainsandbowties]

would lilith be much of a book reader? What kind of books would she read?

right so i think that Lilith has the adhd reader thing where YES she loves to read, NO she doesn’t read. actually she’s always reading twelve books at the same time; no she never finishes any of them.

like any really really intelligent person Lilith is hungry for knowledge, and like any child raised under the press of a thumb she’s willing to get that knowledge wherever she can. her brain is working against her a little but it’s also a beautiful creature because it wants knowledge, but all of it all the time all at once. 

i think she’s on wikipedia and in the NASA archives and on Project Gutenberg constantly. she will literally sit there on her phone for hours doing the fanfiction thing where she tricks her brain into thinking it’s not technically reading because there are no books involved.

she tab-hops like a madwoman but it’s a case of balancing her intense need for information with her brain’s unwillingness to tackle that information in a structured way. inside of ten minutes she’ll read a bit about the Riemann hypothesis, a couple paragraphs of a socratic dialogue, an archived forum page about siphoning gas with your mouth and what petroleum tastes like (keeps waking up with a weird sulfur taste in her mouth. keeps hoping to find some explanation other than ‘it tastes like devil in here’) but if you ask her what she reads she’ll scowl and say ‘nothing.’

but i mean this is the girl who used to sit with Beatrice for hours and just listen to her talk about Galileo and Langer's lines and how to debone a fish. who used to sit by the fire with her dad and listen to random bits of historical apocrypha and who requested Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time as her bedtime story when she was three years old.

she definitely sits on her phone watching 6 hour videos about Dark Souls lore and she reads all the books in Skyrim because they’re like 300 words long and somehow staring at the TV and reading off there is easier than reading a physical book made of paper or reading on the kindle (even when Cam downloads dyslexia-friendly reading aids).

her brain likes to bounce off the walls but it wants to know things. so badly. i think audiobooks are good for her but she plays them at 2x speed so her brain has to kind of do cartwheels to keep up and it gives her the same feeling as listening to heavy metal while she goes and picks up heavy objects and puts them back down again in the gym.

i wrote about this a little before but the sound and texture and the saying of words is very appealing to Lilith. she loves the music of language so i think the only way she can read actual novels for any length of time is to read them aloud (as opposed to subvocating) because choosing where to put emphasis and just feeling the words in her body is enough to keep her suitably entertained (plus lilith post-canon is not a huge fan of silence. she spent a lot of time wandering around in the weird high-pressure hellscape of The Other Side looking for Mary and then Ava. so she treats Bea’s noise-cancelling headphones like they’re going to eat her and she enjoys white noise playlists and having music just playing in the background).

Lilith adores the puzzles that language can make. she actually loved poetry as a kid because it felt to her like she could memorise the poem and work it over in the horrible ‘no talking’ hours that her mother imposed. at night when she couldn’t sleep after her dad died she’d repeat the poems over and over and over again and slowly wring more meaning out of them with each repetition.

she likes when stories are puzzles and, incidentally, one of her favourite things to do is listen to an audiobook on 2x speed while doing sudoku or crosswords.

and Lilith will read anything. she’s not super into fantasy or sci-fi because she has fucking wings and scales and it’s a bit like ‘i’m in this picture and i don’t like it’ but she enjoys classics. has a weird soft spot for Moby Dick and she really likes post-apocalyptic books like The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Parable of the Sower and i think she quite enjoys The Hunger Games and the Wool series. she definitely loves The Broken Earth Trilogy because it somehow gets a free pass with her ‘i’m in this picture and i don’t like it’ hang-up. it does make her cry though (the hand scene really gets to her because sometimes her mother would hold her hand like that, like she wanted to smash it and see if it came back together without the dysgraphia).

but she also rlly likes plays because performance and by god Lilith is a drama queen. she would totally have been a theatre kid if she’d been allowed & she loves performing little monologues and she likes how people sound when they’re angry but in the context of a play because the anger is always under the control of the narrative, and you can stop being angry whenever you want. 

she loves collecting information so when Cam introduces her to Stardew Valley she sits up in bed all night reading wiki after wiki and making little spreadsheets on her excel app for which gifts to give and when and how many of each crop to plant and which trees to grow and where and how many chickens and how much hay and all the different fish and how to organise the layout of the farm. so by the next day Cam wakes up and Lilith has basically a bachelor’s degree in Stardew Valley

and Cam is like ‘oh my god Lily i got you this game so you would relax!’ and Lilith frowning in genuine confusion like ‘i am relaxing??’

she does sometimes just teleport into Bea and Ava’s house & look quite forlorn until Beatrice sits down with her at the island in the kitchen and the pair of them peel oranges.

Beatrice talks about whatever she’s reading about that week, and eventually Ava comes in and explains all the different strategies for winning at Super Smash Bros and her opinions on the objective best tracks in Mario Kart while Beatrice cooks burgers on the grill outside in her baseball cap like somebody’s hot lesbian dad.

& then Lilith checks her phone & pecks Beatrice on the cheek and teleports home in time for Cam to get back from the airport. she tries to make out like she spent the whole weekend very sad and very by herself but Cam is like ‘gimmie your hands’ and then ‘yeah, Lil. i can smell the orange peel.’ 

so i think Lilith is a big reader but it’s not for the sake of stories especially or narratives or for characters or anything it’s for stimulation and knowledge and the words themselves. she’s that meme about the boyfriend who sits eating a sausage with the wikipedia page titled ‘sausage’ open on her computer. she ricochets between subjects and has the most incredible visual recall you’ve ever seen.

probably has a photographic memory but will forget what you asked her to go look for halfway up the stairs. Ava sees her sitting on her phone for literal hours while they’re all at the beach and asks Cam what the hell Lilith is doing because she’s not on social media & Cam is like ‘oh yeah she’s addicted to stack exchange and wikipedia’ and Ava takes a moment, licks melted ice-cream off her knuckle and says ‘wow that’s kind of hot’ and Cam waggles her eyebrows and goes ‘yeah, i know.’ 

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Where is your favorite Dragon Age place? Do you have a favorite romance?

Mine would have to be Skyhold just because all our friends are there and it's home. My spouse and I have played all the romances in Inquisition and I love them all sooooo very much that I couldn't choose a favorite and I just wish you could romance every last one of them at the same time.

*Asks are sent for fun, no pressure to answer.

Hi Lovely!!!

OH GOSH I still have your other DA question to answer, just remembered when I saw this one.

AHHHHH Soooo I've only played ONE Dragon Age Game, ONCE, and it was Inquisition and I NEVER finished it, why, I don't know. I bought it on a PS Store Game sale for 12$, and I loved it so much I didn't want it to end... but I don't remember much about it because I played it 5 years ago maybe? Though I should play it again... I bought ALL the DLC for it on ANOTHER PS Store Sale for 10$, so it gives me a reason to play it again.

BUT!!

Skyhold was ALSO definitely my favourite place there too!! I romanced Dorian because I liked his character A LOT (he became my fave character in that game) and I wanted my character to tap that LOL. For all the same reasons you had, and then some... I like to do adventures and then have a mundane cooldown period doing random tasks in games I play, so it was just a nice place to do mindless things.

I loved that game, mad at myself for not finishing it. For some reason when I play American RPGs, I rarely "finish" the final quests and just mindlessly do side quests. Listen, I have a collective 1000+ hours in Skyrim (I've replayed it 3 times!!) and I have NEVER EVER finished it. I always progress as far as the point where you have to pick a side in the main story and then I just... don't? LOL. I love my last playthrough of it.

Gosh I need to replay some of this stuff, you know? I think I just... don't because I'm paying for a PS Plus Membership so I feel like I have to ALWAYS play something new from their game catalogue to get my money's worth, LOL. Ugh. I'm so weird about games.

ANYWAY, yes, I should replay Inquisition since I want to play the DLC I bought years ago, LOL. Just don't know when I'm going to squeeze it in because I am playing Outer Worlds right now (GREAT GAME), and I want to squeeze one more PS Plus game in between finishing that and when Assassin's Creed Shadows comes out in November; I pre-ordered the season pass edition so I'll be playing that for a few months LOL AHHHHHH.

Sorry for rambling!! I love talking about my fave games!!!!!!!

I dunno, maybe I will play DAI again before The Veilguard goes down in price (I want to play it but it comes out same time as AC Shadows and I'm a bigger AC fan and I KNOW I will enjoy it more so it's getting my one and only preorder this year LOL). I'll need to refamiliarize myself anyway with the characters and world :)

[mongoose-bite]

fic writer interview @nevermindirah tagged me! Thank you, Happy New Year :3

I'm tagging @thana-topsy @baratrongirl @amazinmango @raindrop-rouge, but only if you want to, no obligation.

How many works do you have on AO3?

83.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,369,970

There you go, substantially more than a million words, for the sheer love of it.

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Fuck: My Life Nearly 190k of eruriren porn star AU. Of course it's my top fic.

These Weren't Memories ereri canonverse, written after the first season. It's old, and I don't like all of it, but it's a classic of the ship as I tried to make it work as close to canon as I could.

Neither Tarnished Nor Afraid ereri, and the first true AU I ever wrote. It's a weird police procedural, and I think it's up there just because it's old and has had more time to accumulate kudos to be honest.

The Beneficent Gentleman Finally a non-snk fic. Kingsman, hartwin, and my only epistolary story, loosely based on the novel Daddy Long-Legs, and I'm quite proud of how it turned out.

Flight (When None Pursueth) And we're back to ereri; it was just the biggest ship I ever sailed. This was my serious take on a reincaration AU, and it was not fluffy.

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Usually I do now, but back in the heyday of the SNK fandom I rarely did, cause there were just a lot of them. I responded to long ones or ones that asked a question. I also think the culture has changed on it too; ten years ago it was much less expected for authors to respond to generic 'i liked it!' comments, but as comments have dried up overall, it's become more common.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

If There is a Cure Skyrim fic. Delphine/Dragonborn, and there is no happy ending.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

95% of all my other fics tbh.

7. Do you write crossovers?

I don't enjoy crossovers. I wrote one tiny Ojisan to Neko/Persona 5 fic that probably would have been funnier as fanart, but I can't draw.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Ooh yeah, back in the day on ff.net in the early 2000's I had a guy get all caps on me cause I paired the PC of a game with an older woman, and a few others that were clearly designed to sap my confidence, presumably because I was writing the wrong ship.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes. Consensual.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I'm aware.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yeah a few times. Very flattering. I even had a translator pass on translated comments once.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes but it's rare. Honestly I've only ever met one person with whom I really clicked as a collaborator. That was a long time ago, and we do very different things now. It's fucking magic if you can find the right person though.

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Ereri is not my current interest, but it really was something special. I sometimes wonder if I'll ever write like it's 2014 again...

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I don't have one. The only fic I never finished I abandoned completely.

15. What are your writing strengths?

Description; I can do a lot with few details.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

Sloppy editing, repetitive phrasing, (a symptom of the former) and the pacing on long serialised fics can get very baggy.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Keep it to a minimum. If you don't need it, don't use it. It's more trouble than it's worth (I'm wearing my reader's hat for this one; my eye will just skip over it.)

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Morrowind.

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

There isn't one. I've missed fandom a lot over the past few years, and if I'd wanted to write something I would have.

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

My Old Friend. It's barely a fic, really. A man goes back to his hometown to bury his abusive uncle and reconnects with the father of his childhood friend, on whom he had a powerful but obviously unrequited crush on as a teenager. I had to string together a bunch of unrelated prompts as part of an event, and it just turned out really well. I'm proud of it.

[jasper-pagan-witch]

No One Asked For It But I'm Doing It Anyway: A Pop Culture Magic/Paganism Server By Jasper

That's right folks, I bit the bullet and decided to design my own pop culture magic and paganism server from the ground up. It's still in the building phase, but I figured I'd let y'all know now that it's coming.

Features include:

PluralKit for systems!

A very lowkey approach and pretty subtle detailing, for the most part, to make it closet-mage/pagan-friendly!

Open to minors! Just don't tell us your age - in fact, maintain as much privacy as possible, regardless of your age! All we really wanna know is what to call you! Make up a new name! Try out pronouns!

A deeply unhinged server owner (me!) and a pretty good mod and admin team!

Skyrim memes as one of the first things you see in the server!

Forum channels because I can't be arsed to make new channels for every piece of media in existence!

My weird friends - who can be your weird friends too!

A verification system that forces you to look the Skyrim memes in the eye!

Please send me an ask or a DM for the invite link, as Discord has now locked invite links to last 30 days or less.

And, uh...needless to say, Harry Potter folks, this ain't the place for you. We love our trans friends, Jewish friends, friends of color, and autistic friends a lot more than your "nostalgia" and JK Rowling's entire list of being terrible. Yes, this includes the blood libel game.

[mareenavee]

Tell us 10 things about your version of Teldryn! Inquiring minds want to know :)

Hello my friend! Thank you so much for asking.

This is good because while I know a lot about all of my POV characters in my fic, I know I've shared exponentially more about Nyenna and that perhaps I have worked on her backstory more than the NPCs that I've brought into this tale. I'll preface by saying most of these are going to be HC material based on the direction I wanted this character to go in this story.

So without further ado, 10 Teldryn things from my fic, The World on Our Shoulders. Do be warned, some of these do get a little deep. There's a CW/TW on #8, so skip if you need to.

1) Teldryn has a tendency not to think through his decisions as hard as he probably should, even after all these years. He lives very much in the moment, more as a way to ignore/avoid thinking about his past than anything. He does tend to want to move on to the next logical goal and doesn't see sense in lingering. Lingering or waffling can only cause more discomfort later on mostly. He's not a procrastinator generally. For a lot of reasons, this occasionally can be a point of contention between him and Nyenna, because she thinks too much about decisions most of the time.

2) Teldryn is not at all a fan of dragonflies. I have shared an in-universe example in this snippet here. There's no particularly discernable reason WHY exactly, as they are not harmful. Everyone has something. Nyenna hates skeevers en masse. Athis is disgusted by vampires. Farkas is nauseous about frostbite spiders. Teldryn does NOT want dragonflies to land on him or buzz anywhere around his ears at all. No thank you. The big bug eyes and loud wings and the weird long metallic bodies really sort of freak him out in ways other things just don't. (I love them personally irl lol)

3) He is a big complainer regarding cold weather. He hates icy winds, he hates when snow gets into his shoes, he hates not being able to see in bad weather. If his ears go numb with cold, then nobody will hear the end of it at all, ever. This despite living on Solstheim and in Windhelm. He travelled through Skyrim for decades of his life, too. And yes, all of those decades he had negative things to say about the Godsforsaken snow much to the chagrin of his patrons.

4) He never believed he'd ever be the kind of person who deserved love or kindness. He never saw a future where he'd ever be able to settle down. It affected his relationships, often by self-sabotage. He'd be the sort that wouldn't believe it when someone would profess their love of him because he couldn't see in himself why they would even say something like that. The closer they'd try to get to him the more he'd push them away until the relationship was too fractured to put back together. He might have loved or got close enough to it before, but his fear and self-doubt closed those doors before too long. Even then, it was nothing like really getting to know Nyenna. He might have been boastful and forward and bold at first -- but that was nothing new. He behaved that way with anyone (yes anyone) he found particularly attractive. It was more than that. It was a slow dawning realization that she somehow already saw the kind of person he could be underneath all the darkness. Despite all the complications of their situation, after that, he certainly did fall hard.

5) He knew Neloth in the 3rd era and is one of the very few people Neloth may possibly miss in an abstract, miniscule sort of sense should they actually be removed from Nirn. He can be considered one of Teldryn's close friends, again in that sort of almost indecipherable sort of way. Back then, Neloth really wanted to mess with the prosperity of house Dres and Teldryn somehow managed to convince him the best way to do that would be to join the Twin Lamps with him. Unheard of, really, for a Telvanni, let alone one as high up and curmudgeonly as Neloth. Teldryn takes that as a personal win even if Neloth wasn't in it to be empathetic and helpful, really. This secret has caused Teldryn a bit of trouble since then, however.

6) If he doesn't like working with a specific patron, he won't talk at all besides what needs to be said for survival, despite how chatty and boastful he normally seems. It's why sometimes people he'd worked for might say things along the lines that he's rude, harsh or that he's unfriendly. It's not the case, really, once you get down past all the swagger and chitin.

7) He never got a chance to cross paths with the Hero of Kvatch. He'd been in Cyrodiil during the Oblivion Crisis and actually did put his sword arm to good use, but they always seemed to miss each other. He never once saw Martin Septim either, at least not to the best of his knowledge. This was in his early years of being a sellsword in general and everyone was too busy with the Crisis to bother asking why he always hid his face behind a strange chitin helmet. At the time, that suited him just fine.

8) CW/TW: Implied Suicidal Thoughts and Mentioned Substance Abuse. Skip to 9 if you need to.

He spent a great deal of time and money trying to forget to the point of near self-destruction. Of course, with Corprus, he can't really die by disease or aging or even poison. He couldn't do it himself despite trying once or twice. He'd have had to get himself killed somehow. All he knew was that without any kind of purpose, he was absolutely unmoored. Especially around the time of the Red Year, he felt so much of it was his fault, a direct result of his actions, fated or otherwise, especially when word started spreading that the general opinion was that the Hortator abandoned Morrowind when he was needed the most. The guilt was unbearable. His go-to strategy to be done with it all was picking fights while massively inebriated. However, even on these extended benders, people mostly felt sorry for him and would drag his drunk and/or high self back to the inn or to jail to sleep it off. There was no honor in cutting down a drunk, especially one clearly in so much pain. Eventually, Neloth and Geldis helped him get back on track. He still struggles with the guilt and regret, but has come a long way since the Red Year situation.

9) He has a strained relationship with religion. He's not sure if he was played by Azura or if it was something more, but hasn't ever been able to shake the feeling that if he'd only done a few things differently, he'd never have gotten tied up in the Nerevarine nonsense to begin with. He'd never had been caught and arrested if he'd just paid a little more attention back before the start of things. The ambiguity gnaws at him, because he'd talked with Azura and he has Moon-and-Star and there's no real concrete way to determine where the lies end and the prophecy begins and just who or what is responsible for pushing him the direction he needed to be. It's also why he hates the term "Fate" but can't seem to find other vocabulary for all the coincidences he'd been wrapped up in over the course of his life. Azura doesn't speak to him directly anymore, but sends him little visions in his dreams once in a while that he generally can't quite determine the meaning of, usually regarding a decision he'd already made.

10) He didn't kill Vivec. He couldn't bring himself to do it, even after everything with the Ordinators. Even after everything with the Heart. Even after all the manipulation and bullshit that got him to the end of that path. Even after everything he lost by having to be this legendary hero, this paragon, the Hortator and Nerevarine. Azura had said he'd be responsible for the destruction of the Tribunal as the Nerevarine, but once Vivec was mortal again, death would come for him in no time at all. It wouldn't be by Teldryn's hand. And to this day, he has absolutely no idea where Vivec ended up or why and doesn't care to know. He will walk away if anyone brings it up in conversation, even if it's a bunch of scholars discussing history. He'd get into a bar fight over the mention of Tribunal worship. There's trauma there he's absolutely pushed aside.

[voxblade]

You seem to reblog a decent amount of Skyrim from me now so I need you to give me your fav random piece of lore or knowledge or anything about any elder scrolls anything (I fully expect you to just make something up entirely)

Make that pieces, because I can't answer anything short form to save my life and there's a lot I've scrambled together overtime. Uhhh...

- I half-remember reading that apparently the dwarves were SO ATHEIST that when they found proof that gods existed, they went "fuck that" and yeeted themselves out of the continuity and into another dimension or something

- the dragonborn's power is shouts. I understand that they are divine or some shit and taken from an ancient draconic language or w/e but I refuse to believe at least one of those shouts isn't them screaming

"THAT'S MY OPINION"

(Or that at least it isn't a mod)

- there are some dudes called the nords and they collectively are the CEOs of racism. the whole of the nords. All of them.

- you can kill a dragon voiced by super mario himself. given that Italians are inherently evil, killing him appears to be the correct moral choice.

- The jester man you like is a mama's boy and the MILF in question is basically a weird shriveled raisin thing that lives in a coffin. #Hotgirl-goals. He also feeds cats to rats?? According to another mutual??? which as a fan of cats makes me sad, but as an even bigger fan of rats I find oddly cathartic, in a juvenile way. My babies have long been overdue for revenge for the billions of beautiful lives lost to cruel nature and cruel fate. Yes. Reverse the food chain. I hope they eat humans next. (Assuming this is even real.)

- there's some fucking guy you hate named Jason or something who wants to be a big deal but he's an absolutely terrible companion and he dies to fucking everything. He's not even cute in a pathetic meow meow way? Which sounds like me to be honest. Maybe I kin him without realizing. You don't know. I don't know.

- There is a long and arduous side quest not many players know about. In Whiterun, if you leave the Bannered Mare, there's a 1 in 76 chance you will find a strange NPC called Thes waiting by the door. If interacted with, Thes will ask the player a series of strange questions to try to get to know their character. Should the player answer to Thes's liking, he will say "ah. You've also lost the use for truth. This will serve you well". Thes will leave after saying this and the player will unlock the Kindred Spirit quest. It's a bit clunky from this point on, but essentially, you have various markers on your map to track down, each promising something "new", but whenever you get close to them, the positions will move and cannot be found, even through cheats. What the player must do is try for the same rolling chance that summoned Thes in the first place by entering and leaving the Bannered Mare over and over again, except when they succeed the roll this time, Thes will be replaced by a new identical character with a new name, insisting his name is Da. Da will ask the player if they are having any trouble meeting the objectives and the player has the option to call him out. This will learn a laugh ("but they just work! What's the commotion?"), and Da eventually adds a new marker to the map, this one leading towards the Den of Falsehoods (this is commonly confused with the Liar's Retreat). To make a long story short, this is also bullshit but I'm getting tired of summarizing. After a bunch of bullshit, at the end of the quest, Da will be waiting for the player in the core of the den, this time named "Beth". When confronted this time, "Beth" will talk to the player about the nature of truth and falsehood and the player can ask for them to reveal their true name. "Beth" will comply, but only after asking if you would ever love a liar like him. If you say no, "Beth" will nod and say he understands and also will tell the player to be excited for Fallout 76. This is very curious, and possibly reference to Bethesda's other franchise, Fallout, and its entry Fallout 76, which wasn't in development when Skyrim was first released. "Beth" will then leave the game and cannot be found again. If the player says yes, "Beth" thanks them and reveals their true face: a curious npc named Todd Howard. Todd Howard apologizes for his lies but curiously will not give the player any sort of reward for having done the quest. It is also possible from this point to marry him if the player is so inclined. This is ill advised, because Todd Howard will keep all of the money from whatever business he opens and he never sleeps, which some players reportedly find creepy.

- I like that little freak the adoring fan and how you can make him run off a cliff

- there is a mod (???) that lets you summon Santa Claus like a primordial ancient demon and I think it works for him. Santa really served cunt in that mod.

- Sheogoraths line of "CHEESE, FOR EVERYONE!!!" may be indicative of the fact he likes cheese.

[changelingsandothernonsense]

Skyrim favorites! 2 parts!

Answer one or more of these as either Teldryn or Sydari!

And then ofc give us your favorites, too! 20.   favorite weapon?

23.   favorite faction?

24.   favorite creature?

26.   favorite ability?

Answering as both since they both have their own opinions on this. Throwing in some Morrowind references too...coz reasons.

I'm dropping a fic easter egg in here! :D

20. Favourite Weapon.

Sydari unsheathes a curious dagger from her boot and places it on the table. The metal is unnaturally dark and the weapon itself seems to hum. There's daedric lettering etched into the centre of the blade.

"This little thing has gotten me out of more sticky situations than I can count. The enchantment is a little temperamental but the blade never dulls." She looks over at the Dunmer seated beside her, he raises an eyebrow as he stares apprehensively at the blade. She carefully places the dagger back in its sheath and smiles at him.

"He hates Daedric shit."

Teldryn shakes his head and slumps a little in his seat.

"I don't hate Daedric shit, I just," He scratches the bridge of his nose before taking another sip of the beverage beside him. It elicits a slightly disgusted look, "Miluth forgets that I've had my fair share of interactions with Daedra, all have consequences that I am no longer interested in experiencing." He looks down the hallway and smiles to himself, "Not any more."

"Oh, that's bullshit Tel! Your favourite weapon of all time was that weird crescent sword you took from that Dremora Lord," Sydari jeered, "Tell them that story!"

Teldryn shakes his head, "It's locked away in the armoury for a reason." He makes a sign with his hands that implies "little fingers".

"He stabbed a god with it!"

"Did I?"

(I love the design for Daedric weaponry in TES, something about it is so badass).

23. Favourite faction.

Sydari rests her feet on the table and sighs, "I'm a Nightingale."

Teldryn laughs, "She runs the Thieves Guild!"

Sydari throws a crust of bread at him and laughs in return, "And he thinks building tents in the yard and putting lamps in the window qualifies as a personality trait!"

"That one is a worthy cause and teaching her to build a yurt is a great way to pass the time."

"And attracts the attention of half the town."

"It's a dying art"

Sydari smiles back at him, "I know".

(I play the Thieves Guild questline in Skyrim a lot and Josh is very much an Ashlander projection on my part. He's also a member of Twin Lamps, a faction that has grown on me quite a bit! Yes I did say I'd throw Morrowind into this, can't do anything as instructed lol)

24. Favourite creature.

Sydari smiles, "I have always loved rabbits. They're so cute! I find the netch that float across the island to be fascinating."

"You've never had one of those things puke on you. It's foul." Teldryn takes another drink of the odd beverage beside him and grimaces. He pats the large, olive-green carapace of the nix hound at his feet.

"That's because I've never thrown a whole bottle of Sujamma at one you s'wit!"

"Language!" Teldryn tuts, a smile plastered across his thin features, "I heard her say fetcher the other day! Where did she pick that up?"

"She probably picked it up from you at the market last week! You called Fethis one because you think that he overcharged you for that glass tube you insisted on importing from the mainland."

"That's because Fethis is a dick!" Teldryn sighed and leaned back in his chair, "He's a dick Sydari."

"Language Sero, language."

Teldryn shakes his head, "I like big dogs."

"He likes cats."

"Shhhhhh!"

(I can't choose animals, I like most of them tbh so the above is a selection. I personally love the calls of silt striders and I think netch are cute.)

26. Favourite ability.

Both elves look at each other.

"Invisibility"

(I play stealth characters as a general rule, it's fun!)

[darknesslioness]

Hey, I just wanted to ask, do you have any voice claims for your nutcracker characters? I just wanted to know because I love them so much :3

I do, actually! I considered it a lot years ago and made a list of possible voice actors for every character I had planned at the time (with example performances where I thought I best heard my characters in pitch and intonation because we all know great voice actors can have a great range of voices). I won't list all my characters since I've never mentioned most of them outside of a Discord server, but I can mention the big four here.

Note: This is subject to change at any time, but this is what I have from the last time I binged voices. Enjoy. :)

Daemon Thuringia- Troy Baker (Tailon - Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Joel - The Last of Us, Greed - FMA:B, Booker Dewitt - Bioshock Infinite) & John Hopkins (Marius - Ryse: Son of Rome) (I could never decide which one I liked more, so if I could combine Troy and John's voice performances into one, that would probably be it)

Althea Voronina - Laura Bailey (Ioreth - Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Serena - Skyrim, Lucina - Fire Emblem: Awakening) (As you may have noticed, Althea has a voice performance alongside Daemon's in Middle Earth, so if you want to closest thing to an audible conversation between them, watch the opening of that game.)

Althea Voronina (elder) - Pam Hyatt (Frieda - Silverwing, Kaede - Inuyasha) (For Althea in her 80s. Wanted a wizened voice, but a strong one. Probably one of the most likely to change however.)

Draven Thuringia - Travis Willingham (Roy Mustang - FMA:B, Isaac Frost - Fight Night Champion, Spartan Paul DeMarco - Halo 4, Zavok - Sonic: Lost World, Reggie Rowe - Infamous: Second Son) (Yes, I find this very ironic and a bit weird since Laura Bailey is married to Travis, but is what it is. He's got the tone and depth I want here.)

Guinevere Cawthrone - AAAAAANNnnnddd I once had a possible voice for her, but I fell out with it after a while. Sometime after that, I decided that there would be a reason for that..... ;)

[miraakulous-cloud-district]

For the Skyrim OCs ask! Tell me about Ravonna! Answer two or three of your faves from the list in her voice.

Link to the ask game can be found here <;3.

Oh my God, this is brilliant! I've done an ask game a few months ago where I let Ravonna respond and she's been itching to talk again, so I'm letting her take the lead (don't mind the emojis, she is fascinated with them). Also, sorry for taking so long to get to this! I guess Ravonna got a bit shy?

🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮

Greeting and salutations, it's me again, ready to run my mouth. Thank you for the ask game and for giving me the opportunity to speak here again. You may live to regret it *she laughs*. Here, have a pint, we may be here for a while. I'm a bard, and let me tell you, we like to talk. A lot.

One of the questions that sparkled an interest on this one over here: Do they believe the College of Winterhold caused the Great Collapse? If no, what is their theory?

I am a mage, and I've also been to the College in Winterhold, and let me tell you: that place was where I felt the most welcome in all of Skyrim. I wasn't delusional when me and Lucien planned the trip to Skyrim, I knew the people aren't the most welcoming, but I'm one of them, a bloody Nord, and all I got was shitty remarks, growls and weird looks. I even got to jail once because I almost got into a fight with this guy. *she huffs a laugh*. There was a huge giant, and I rushed to help! Mind you, I had just escaped Helgen, I was having the worst day of my life (narrator's note: this wasn't the 'worst day of her life', she is just exaggerating) and then this Vilkas guy comes in and he starts preaching about how he needs none of my fancy magic and that this is his city and I'm not welcomed there. I just know that my '''''fancy magic''''' would kick his ass into oblivion and back! ANYWAY, I deviated form the subject a bit, but The College of Mages is my safe space in Skyrim, and there are some of the nicest, most fun people. So I don't believe that they were responsible for one bit! It was probably the flying whales, or the Kraken! Or just nature, which can be scary as fuck. Or an army of giants? I don't know, I wasn't there, but I will defend the mages! And this brings me to my next question: Do they believe in snow/sky whales? Yes. I've seen stranger things. Besides, Hjaldir saw some. he even hunted some, but they're extremely tricky to catch, but the meat on those things? DELICIOUS. EXQUISITE! I need to go back to High Rock and eat an entire whale right now! *she laughs, but her smile is filled with nostalgia and sadness. She misses Hjaldir and her old life a lot. She finishes her pint of mead in one big gulp.* (the author is trying to get her to stop, but she wants to answer the other magic question)

AH, how can I resist this one: If they are a magic user, what is their favorite school of magic? Do they have a natural talent for magic, or does it require diligence and study?

But here's the thing, I don't know! Magic is so amazing and it can be used in so many ways! I love to combine the schools of magic, it's really effective! But of course, nothing compares to destruction! I am a master destruction mage, and I've worked with this school of magic for as long as I remember. This is where I feel most comfortable! And one school of magic that I find really useless is restoration. *Miraak, the ultimate healer, raises an eyebrow from somewhere* I mean, I can just buy the potions! I have no need for it, really!

[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?

[holocene-sims]

15 oc questions!

i was tagged by @stargazer-sims - thank you so much!! ❤️ i've never done one of these tags in a character's voice, so it's fun to get extra practice writing as them 😊

i'll tag:

@dandylion240 @bl-sims-anime @idyllicephemera @elderwisp @nectar-cellar @minty-plumbob @crazykissim @mangosimoothie & anyone else who wants to do it!

ANYWAY i'm doing this for grant! idc if y'all have heard enough about grant, the honor goes to him

are you named after anybody?

my actual legal first name is joseph, which is my grandfather's name! so, uh, somehow yes, i am named after somebody! but i'm 99.9% sure it was out of laziness and not out of love. well, no, i'm 100% sure of that. it's not like my mom has ever respected her parents...but that's a whole different thing, we're not going there.

when was the last time you cried?

i'm a crybaby, come on! i'm known for being very emotional. i mean, sad animal commercials make me weepy. externally weepy. like tears running down my cheeks weepy. but the actual last time i cried? hmm, maybe like a week ago? i don't know if i could tell you why, though. i probably blocked it out of my memory! i'm great at that.

do you have kids?

do, uh, do cats count? because i do have a cat who i love and put sweaters on. sweaters! and he loves it.

do you use sarcasm?

it depends? sarcasm usually feels mean-spirited to me, so i'm not super into it, but then again, that's half the conversations i have with my family. i know in that case, though, that it's all bullshit humor and not serious. anyway, i think what i'm saying in a roundabout way is it depends a lot on context and audience. i don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or be a dick. i like being nice.

what's the first thing you notice about people?

okay, listen, in the most normal and not at all weird way possible, people's hairlines are always what i see first. i've been the first witness to so, so many fake blondes accidentally showing their dark roots or to dudes going bald. i'm sorry! i'm just freakishly tall! i can't not look down at all your heads unless i'm kneeling down on the ground. i'm not trying to spy on or judge the state of your hair, i promise.

what's your eye color?

brown! justice for brown eyes, the best eye color. i love being able to go out in the sun and not have my eyeballs bleached by the light. also, there's really not that many brown eyes in my family, so that's kind of fun. i'm a special boy.

scary movies or happy endings?

why not both? i love a good blair witch project, final destination moment. i also love a nice mushy gushy romantic movie with a happy ending. hell, i'd watch both in the same evening. start off with a fucked up horror movie and end it with pride and prejudice. sounds like a perfect night to me.

any special talents?

probably not anything relevant? i mean, i've played skyrim on survival mode without dying before. oh, and i guess back when i was still playing hockey, uh, a decade ago, i could score with the michigan goal pretty easily, which isn't all that common. in high school, i got my school the state championship win with that skill. but meh, i don't know how many people in the world know enough about hockey to care about that.

where were you born?

michigan! the part everyone forgets about, aka the upper peninsula, aka diet canada.

what are your hobbies?

i like to think i'm a well rounded person. i enjoy the super basic stuff like listening to music, but i'm also into into video games and tabletop RPGs like d&d. cooking and baking are fun for me, too. i did get into art semi-recently as well. i kind of had to have something i could do while laying down, like, 24/7 after i had spinal surgery.

if you're ever bored, just go fuck up your spine. you'll have SO much time on your hands to get new hobbies. actually, don't. please don't. i've been suffering for years and will continue to. i'm dying. don't be me. pretty please. pinky promise.

oh, duh, i also forgot that i'm into astronomy and um, planes. look, i'm not a car guy, i'm a plane guy. that's more fun, right?

have you any pets?

he's a cat named turtle, so, like, you know, the best cat in the world. sometimes i think about getting him a cat friend to hang out with but then i worry he'd get jealous, so i haven't done it. who am i to say whether or not he wants to live with a friend? or a sibling? being alone is so valid. i respect that.

what sports do you play/have you played?

oh, well, like i said, i played hockey for a really long time, like from, hmm, i think kindergarten and on! i even got a scholarship in college to play hockey. i'm glad to be done, though. some things ruined it for me. long story. but these days, uhh, i don't play any real sports anymore. i like hiking, you know, and i do work out at least every other day because it makes me feel better in a lot of ways, but that's kind of it. my sports days are over. i don't even skateboard anymore and i used to do that all the time.

how tall are you?

like 6'7" - though, i am rounding down a little bit. yes, down. not up. also, don't ask me how i ended up that tall. i have exactly one relative who is also tall. hi, chelsea! anyway, i am an accident or one hell of a joke. i'm laughing, i swear. it's very funny.

favorite subject in school?

i was overall a good student because i studied pretty hard but i was for sure a science and math kid. i loved physics in high school. and then in college, i got some way more fun science and math classes. just so you know, i am really holding back right now from rambling like a total nerd loser about my college classes...

but i mean, if you wanna learn about, i don't know, quantum mechanics or flight control systems, hit me up.

dream job?

that's such an easy question! when i was really, really young, i wanted to be a weather man, but then i changed my mind and wanted to be a pilot because, i don't know, i hit that time in every child's life where they have to become obsessed with a form of transportation. but then i never let that obsession go. my parents wanted me to be a doctor the whole time, though, but eww, no, i'm good. anyway, the dream of flying planes never died and somehow it worked out. now if i could just, uh, you know, go back to that job soon, that'd be sick.

[dontreadthisgamereview]

My Top Games of All Time List

This is my Top Games Experiences of All Time List. The rating of this is based on memories. I know some of these were in different orders on my lists for the previous years, but this list is based on how I feel about them today, which may change again in the future.

I've put a "thought" next to each. Some of these you can click on. Some of these you could play someday. I'd recommend trying any!

The Tops

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

My best game experience. I live in Michigan, so the waters of the Greek Isles? Like nothing I've experienced, but this game helps me imagine it. Then, place a great game in this world? Like, So Much game too? Great. Just great.

Saints Row the Third

My original experience with is what I chase in every video game I played. It was just… fun. Stupid, but exciting fun. It's wacky in story and style, you collect stuff, and you the skill tree is addicting. All about this.

Read Dead Redemption

This game impressed the heck out of me on first playthrough. It was so epic. The different biomes and acts to the game and different cities. It was not only sprawling in space, but in story and scope.

Control

To me, this game was all about the details. In the effects, in the environment, in the lore. Also, gameplay was slick and mood was awesome.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Nothing like this story. It felt like a prestige TV series, but not a boring something to watch but an exciting thing to play.

Batman: Arkham Knight

This is my pick to represent the entire series. This is not everyone's favorite, but it really grabbed me some reason. I love the city, the shooting, the "refresh" of the action gameplay, and it was one of the first Photo Modes I played with - which blew my mind.

Far Cry 6

Not only best of the series, but best FPS-Open-World period.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

Thick with style, short, impactful.

Bioshock

Great graphics, style, and in-game storytelling.

Fallout 3

My intro to open world games. Massive game.

Duke Nukem 3D

My intro to what FPSs could do.

Doom II

My intro to FPSs.

Sonic 2

Perhaps the first full game I beat. I was really proud. Replaying enough to get this one "programed" this soundtrack into my head…

Resident Evil 4 (Gamecube)

Playing back in the day at a friends was just simply a good time.

Resident Evil Village VR

Wacky, weird, and great in VR.

Tomb Raider (1)

Formative.

Sam & Max Hit The Road

Formative.

Tom Clancy's The Division

One of the best open-world (modern-city) games in my opinion. This one in a quarantined New York City. No cars, so all walking on foot. The cover based shooting felt really "professional." Super slick.

Dead Rising 2: Off The Record

The benefits of the sequel tech, but also an unprecedently "redo" with a redirection to wild fun. Super great.

Watch Dogs 2

The best open-world (modern-city) games in my opinion. A solid story with great style and so much to see. Lots of great touches and unique things to the series. Far better than the original. Just try it!

The Evil Within 2

This was the only game that made me feel kind of sick in my throat from some of the horror elements. So, definitely impactful to me.

Dragon Quest Builders 2

I thought this series was great. Some parts felt too long, but that's what also gave it the feel of accomplishment after you spent so much time in a world and completed it. The best "building" game in my mind.

Ultimate Spider-man

The first of the Spider-man games that really clicked for me. This was a great experience for me at the time. I played several times. I loved the style.

Resident Evil 2 (remake)

The best remake of anything I played. Genius.

Super

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Best in this series so far. Flawed, yes, but the experience at the time was unparalleled.

Prey

It takes a lot from other games, but it does it well!

Akiba's Trip

I like the cut of this games' gib.

Marvel's Midnight Suns

By far the best of the "series" of isometric Marvel strategy games.

Star Trek: Resurgence

Best Star Trek game, and one of the best sci-fi Adventure Games I've played.

Bully: Scholarship Edition

I loved the world and how it opened up, the seasons, the stories, the "classes minigames," etc. It didn't have the "highs" of some other games, but there really weren't any "lows" in this game in my memory!

TRON 2.0

Better than the movies to me. It just made a lot of sense, and also played darn well.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts

The best vehicle builder game in my opinion.

Metal Gear Solid V

Other than Death Stranding, this is the only Kojima game I've played all the way through. And I’m putting this one on the list instead just because it got me just as much or more weirdness, but faster.

Tomb Raider (reboot)

This really shocked me in how "cool" a reboot could be. Many things from this game I won't forget. Best in this series in my mind.

Astro's Playroom

Slick as heck.

Luigi's Mansion 3

The only one of the series I've played, but I'm guessing the best. This is just really great.

Freedom Fighters

I've been playing recently even.

GTA San Andreas

The best one in my mind. There was nothing like the Act change where you had to go into exile. It made you do new gameplay, explore new areas, all these things in the same game.

The Crew

Some people rip on this game as not being exactly a street to street rebuild of the United States, but that would be terrible. THIS is the best version of a real coast-to-coast driving game thus far. Technically, The Crew 2 has better graphics, but that's not even a game. THIS is a game. It's not just a tech demo like the sequel.

Super Mario Odyssey

Perfect game.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

See our podcast episode about this: link

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2

The best LEGO game in my mind. Fully of characters and places and styles and jokes and it's completely beatable.

Zombie Army 4: Dead War

This series is wild. This is the most advanced in this series thus far.

Hitman: Absolution

The best in the series in my mind. This was the last before a reboot.

Katamari

Of course.

No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way

Back in the day, this was packed full of gameplay and style.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Back in the day, this was slick.

Ratchet & Clank - A Rift Apart

The best of this series. Looks like a Pixar movie and plays great too.

Rocksmith

I learned some bass using this.

Blood and Truth

The first VR game I played that was a "real game." Not to mention, unique in being a fast paced shooter.

Sniper Elite 5

I liked this entire series, so this is the most advanced version thus far.

South Park: The Fractured but Whole

This game literally surprised me in how actually funny it was. Best South Park thing, better than the show.

Sunset Overdrive

Some people rip on this one online, but I love the weird and wacky style, and the gameplay is fast and unique.

Sacred 3

A game I played long after its release, but it was just a fun and fast paced game.

The Godfather: The Game

A strange game I played on PC. Some pretty unique ideas, lol

Uncharted 2

One of the best in the series in my mind.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

It was the best game I played that summer, when I was really lonely at my internship in Ohio.

Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance

The best of the series in my mind. I really liked how slow the story started, from your family owned business to being part of the Rebels.

Resident Evil Revelations 2

This game was a weird one, but when I played the collection of the episodes - it was a like playing a "hidden" game no one knew about. Oddly, one of my top RE games.

Guacamelee 2

One of the few "hard" games I've played all the way through. But, it was all doable!

Void Bastards

A viable rougelike. And now that I think back, a Boomer Shooter too?

Dead or Alive 4

What can I say? Good gameplay, wacky style, and the FPS on Dreamcast was wild.

Great

Ghostwire: Tokyo

Great style. Nothing like it in an FPS.

HUNTDOWN

Unique retro style game with slick, die and repeat gameplay.

The Medium

One of the few "real horror" games I've played. But it got me really engaged and I enjoyed from start to finish.

Prototype 2

Best of this series. This game is extremely playable.

Dance Central 2

I first played this series at a friend's, then I bought the whole setup. I don't know where my Kinect got to…

Shovel Knight

This one really surprised me. I hadn't played a lot of "hard" games like this one, but it played SO well.

Fallout 2

I played a lot.

Bulletstorm

'tude

FEAR 2

A good one in the series. Story is all out of whack, but allows for a great game "world."

Titan Quest

I never did the Diablo thing, but this one grabbed me for some reason. I played through several times.

Alien: Isolation

Superb style and pacing.

Alien Shooter: Vengeance

I played back on PC in the old days. I really never played anything like it before, or since.

Crackdown 3

I liked the series, and this one is the most polished.

da blob 2

I don't think about often, but I remember fondly.

Dishonored 2

The best of the series for me. Like the original, but amped up.

Star Wars: Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight

The best star Wars game I played for a long time. A great mix of the FPS, the lightsaber, characters, and even FMV stuff!

Star Wars: Tie Fighter

I still remember flying with Vader, and really hoping he would approve of me.

Trover Saves the Universe

A groundbreaking VR game, but also game. It was subversive to what a game "should be" like. This game usually goes left when it's supposed to go right.

The Talos Principle: Deluxe Edition

One of the few puzzle games I completed. The style and world was trippy/cool.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

The best of the series in my memory.

Dying Light

Not a lot from this games sister series grabbed me really, but this one did. I felt like it just all came together "right."

Freedom Force

One of the first games with a deep style I played. Then I found out who John Kirby was later.

Hitman (1)

I had some good memories with this one.

The Witcher 3

Iconic.

Sackboy Adventures

The only Playstation platformer that rivals Nintendo ones.

Assassin's Creed Syndicate

I loved the style on this one. I think I near 100%'d it.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst

I liked the original, and this one made it playable. No other gameplay like it that I know of.

Portal 2

The original is slick, but this one is a full game.

Red Faction: Armageddon

In this game, you really can destroy everything in it. Even walkways you need to continue on. Thus, they have a "nanotech" tool to rebuild stuff. It's the only way a game can really let you destroy everything in the space.

Remember Me

A unique sci-fi game with super cool ideas. Great style too.

Life is Strange

I never got much into sequels or other "emo" games, but this one hit me at the right time. Love the soundtrack.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas: 2

I played this one way back. Best of the series in my memory.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

The best of the series for me. It uses the top tech, and it's short.

Titanfall 2

Best pilot/mech gameplay I've had.

Outlast II

Some scary memories from this one. Very dark, as in almost no light in some scenes. It's an experience.

Steam World Dig 2

All these Steam World games are quality, but this one grabbed me and was easy and short enough to finish.

Detroit: Become Human

This game seems to be made fun of by a lot of people online, but I started, was engaged, and finished. The best David Cage game I've played.

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

The only fighter jet game I've ever started and finished. So, in my mind, the best one.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Gameplay wise, my favorite of the new series.

Cat Quest

A unique hack and slash game where you mostly play on the "map" screen. Good sense of humor and fun.

Journey to the Savage Planet

FPS Roguelike with a great sense of humor.

Honorable Mentions

Mass Effect 2

Best in the series.

The Saboteur

One of the first games I felt like I wanted to "get everything on the map."

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

The entire series was interesting, but this was the best playing for me.

Dead Space 2

The better of the two

Monkey Island 3: The Curse of Monkey Island

Encapsulates a certain sense of humor. Made me wish for warm climates.

Majin and the Forbidden Kingdom

Interesting puzzle game.

FF9

The first half was solid.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand

Actually… a good Cover-Based-Shooter for the time.

Alice: The Madness Returns

Took the idea of the original, but made it look and play good!

Shadow Complex

A PS Now discovery. Quite fun.

Slayers X

A perfect homage.

Amped 3

I remember using my digital camera to take some videos of my screen of replays of my best runs.

SSX (reboot)

Introduced me to some great music.

Bayonetta

You can't deny the style, but I never got into the gameplay.

Beyond Good & Evil

Could have been greater, if they were only a bit more focused.

Binary Domain

Uniquely experimental. I enjoyed playing with friends.

Nights of Azure

Unapologetically alternative

Black & White

Interesting attempt, if nothing else.

James Bond 007: Blood Stone

I didn't like this series of the movies, but I liked this.

Captain America: Super Soldier

At the time, this was alright.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

Not many of these grabbed me, but this one did perfectly.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

Had a lot of fun sci fi ideas. A good looking game for it's time.

Conan

Okay. It looked good. It had topless women in it on PS3.

Condemned: Criminal Origins

Dark game with mix of investigation and grimy violence.

Dark Void

The best "jet pack" game I've played. Activating it indoors had a 90% chance to kill you, just like you'd expect!

Dante's Inferno

The goth, metal, emo, dark, in your face style was unique and not really done to this extent again. It went all in on style, with only tolerable gameplay.

The Darkness II

I was considering putting the first one on here because of its innovations, but this one was better to play.

Deadpool

One of the most humor based games I've played. And gameplay is o.k.

Fable

Great sense of humor and style. Better than all the sequels in my mind.

Far Cry 2

I just remember having to keep getting these very hard to find malaria pills to stay alive. Not many games have your character just die if they can't find an actually tough to find item.

Folklore

Felt like an indie comic somehow. Odd style.

Freelancer

Early "open world" stuff.

Tearaway: Unfolded

Full of gimmicks and weirdness. Hard to forget some of the strange things they tried.

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

Simple and unique gameplay. Would make a good, modern mobile app.

Lollipop Chainsaw

Trash. But, like, as in "Trash Cinema." As in, good.

Lost Planet 3

I'll never forget the feeling of being a lone contractor on this hostile ice planet. It was one of the first games with a "vibe" I remember

Metro Exodus

I always wanted to like this series, and the is the one that allowed me

Murdered Soul Suspect

Never seen an adventure game with this kind of plot before, or since

Oni

Very unique, experimental gameplay. No one did this control scheme again, but it was a unique idea for the time.

Overlord

Great sense of humor and unique (gameplay)

Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kain

I remember trying to wrap my head around the plot/mechanics of this. Both might have been beyond me at the time

Splatterhouse (PS3)

Tough to play now, but parts were striking upon release

Gal*Gun 2

Nothing like it (except for Gal Gun 1)

School Girl Zombie Hunter

Very unique

[t00thpasteface]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SKYRIM!!

for skyrim’s 10th anniversary, i figured it would be fitting to celebrate the life and times of my first-ever dovahkiin, Minnie the Moocher: dragon slayer, shiny object stealer, and-- after she ran out of worlds to conquer-- irresponsible wine drinker. of course, there was no better way to honor her than by drawing an animatic set to the song she’s named after! 

this whole project took about a month from storyboard to export (including a LOT of off-days), and it features over 50 separate drawings. i had a blast every step of the way and i’m so super proud to share it with all a’ y’all!

as much as i like to dunk on skyrim for whatever reason, this game has really come to mean a lot to me over this past decade-- and so has the community that’s surrounded it for all this time, from memey lets-plays to gorgeous fanart to all the weird nightblogging and shitposting the tes fandom gets up to. i’m happy to say i’m satisfied with this animatic as a loving tribute to all that and more. 

to all the skyrim players out there, i just have one last thing to say-- yes, i DO get to the cloud district. very often, in fact!!

anyway, enough sentimentalism. enjoy the video! love y’all 👋💕

[sarsaparillia]

you know what? fuck it. i’m gonna talk about this game because i love it and i want other people to give it a chance and hey maybe if other people give it a chance i will no longer have accidentally contributed quite literally thirty percent of the fandom’s fanfiction lmao

kingdoms of amalur is what dragon age inquisition wishes it was. there. i said it. it’s out there in the world, now, and you can fight me about it

here we go, friends:

everything that DAI does well? amalur does it better, with the sole exception of romance, because amalur is not about romance unless u count alyn shir whomst i love so much but honestly u cannot date her the way she DESERVES to be dated WHATEVER

but the thing is that amalur does not HAVE to be about romance. amalur is about hitting monsters very hard with a wildly fantastic array of weapons. amalur is about fate and choice and also, again, absolutely shredding shit into pieces. amalur is about treasure hunting and wars and sticking your nose into everyone else’s business in a way that i have only ever seen one (1) champion of kirkwall pull off in a way that works.

amalur has the best fucking take on Truly Weird Immortals that i’ve ever seen

like, listen, i cannot talk enough about how ABSOLUTELY BONKERS the fae are in this game. these writers REALLY LEANED IN to what a culture of creepy nature fuckers who do not die so much as regenerate would look like. interacting with the fae is fucking UNCOMFORTABLE in a lot of instances, because of how ABSOLUTELY GODDAMN ALIEN they are. amalur’s fae put literally every other immortal race in every other video i’ve ever played to fucking shame!!!!! i LOVE it!!!

yes, the human/elf NPC models can be a little weird-looking; they’re ugly in a way that real people are ugly, which i like, actually, but not everyone is like me. but honestly, it’s the backgrounds in this game that make it. it’s like walking through every single fairy dream you had as a child come to life. you want red-earth deserts? detyre. you want ancient forests with trees so wide they make you feel like an ant? dalentarth. you want a rotting jungle on the ocean? klurikon. you want greece? there’s DLC for that, and also a bunch of god-chosen stone giants who spout greek poetry. there’s a whole island of undead pirates. there’s the plains of erathell, which are still recovering from a magical fairy war a thousand years ago called the godstorm. there’s alabastra, cold and beautiful and burned to pieces, ripped to jagged parts by the people who ought to have loved it best. there is GRIEF, because this is a war-torn country where things used to be stunning. like, man, what i would not GIVE to see alabastra in its prime, just fucking LOOK at this shit:

and that doesn’t even begin to get into the fact that this game, playing as a woman, is.... gay. it’s gay, y’all!!! it’s so gay that i don’t always know how to handle it!!!

and like sure, that’s because it was definitely coded with a male-player-character in mind, but they just... never removed those lines, playing as a woman? so you wander around and you get hit on constantly, and given that i am personally gay as all hell, this delights me. but the inverse of this is that the one male character who DOES hit on you also hits on you as a dude. i love grim onwig, that’s all there is to it.

it’s a loneliner game, in some ways-- more like skyrim. you run around, you buy or are given houses, you die a bunch of times to the FUCKING ettins in ettinmere, god i hate those fucking ettins, two-headed giant blue bastards who definitely kill and eat you. they are so rude. you fall DEEPLY in love with adessa and wish you could play as a gnome; ysa is the most incredible city in the game, i’ve truly never seen anything like it.

and yeah, in some ways, it falls prey to exactly all of the problems early aughts’ RPG’s did. it can be repetitive, a lot of fetch-quests, a lot of “mother of god, THIS AGAIN”

and yet. AND YET.

i’ve poured four hundred hours into this game, and every single time i start a new play, i find quests and stories that i somehow managed to miss the other times i’ve played it. the NPCs all have very distinct personalities, which is a goddamn feat, given how many of them there are. pick any single character with speaking lines, and they’ll be distinct unto themselves. and i mean that-- even the random characters in taverns, every single shopkeep, anyone and everyone you speak to, all of them. they say things and you go “hold on what the FUCK”, even when there’s no quest behind them. the depth of worldbuilding that went into this game is INSANE; these writers really, really loved what they were creating, and that shines through in every single moment you play

please give it a chance. it’s really, really worth it. i leave you with the empty court of the winter king, because the first time i stepped into it, it felt like coming home.