#South East Games

[blank-house]

hey there, blank house! just poppin' in to say that I REALLYYY really love keyframes, Elio is such a cutie patootie and boooy im the mother of the group in my irl circle of friends and that's bleeding into my keyframes mc with deja and cam HWDKSBSJ but may i just ask this? because picture my very pleasant surprise when reynah spoke tagalog! i was like — WAIT WHAT is there a fellow filipino in the team of one of my fave vns? as a writer myself, seeing filipino representation in games (not necessarily needed for a filipino to be in the team of devs) really inspires me to write more because! so yah, that's my question, i'm just reaaaally curious! thank you so much for releasing this lovely game AAA

AYYYY KABABAYANNN 🇵🇭☀️

But yeah haha hi! It’s me, the sole filo amongst the leads— buuuut I’m happy to report I’m not the only filo in the team. Two of our voice actors are Filipino as well!

FILO NATION RISE AHHH

But glad to hear you’re enjoying the game and even more that you’re inspired to write because of us. Happy to report that there’s tons more of us in the indie community too. ^^

[katrinargames]

FOR RENT SIM DUMP [KATRINA GAMES]

formerly bohmi sims

With the release of Sims 4 For Rent expansion pack, I wanted to give you some south east Asian representation. Download for the sims are below along with the cc used.

JADE KHAN

Age: 25 Aspiration: Championship Rider Occupation: Horse Trainer Given the nickname PJ (Privileged Jade) she got whatever she wanted as a child. That did not affect her competitive drive in competitions but it did make her a jealous sim when things did not go her way. Can she get passed her jealous streak and love more of life outside her horses.

BULAN PUTRI

Age: 26 Aspiration: Big Happy Family Occupation: Daycare Teacher Bulan should have had it all by now, the husband, the family, the perfect life. Or so she planned. Can she let go of her planning to enjoy life and find happiness outside of what she thinks it should be?

JORANI PHAN

Age: 25 Aspiration: Master Maker Occupation: Herbalist After losing her parents at a young age Jorani only trusted herself to get through life. She loves making a path for herself. Her confidence grows the more she becomes self sufficient.

MALI KIM

Age: 24 Aspiration: Academic Occupation: Professor Aid Silenced a lot as a child, Mali loves to express who she is through writing. She aspires to be an English Professor at Britechester University to help other express themselves through writing.

DOWNLOAD HERE

[chrismien]

Let's talk about Elsweyr's architecture, specifically how geography influenced it.

In the Elder Scrolls Online base game, players can visit Kenarthi's Roost, which is the starting location for Aldmeri Dominion players. We could easily observe the stilted houses and buildings on the island of the Khajiits. This doesn't really reflect the nomadic culture that majority of the beastfolk have since these kinds of buildings are made to last and are built for prolonged stay in the area. How do I know this?

As a Filipino, I find this style of building especially familiar. Indonesians may also share the same sentiment. In the real world, these stilted buildings are known as "bahay kubo" in the Philippines. They are a staple of provincial life and are designed in a way that prevents floodwater and mud from entering the house. This is why they are built on stilts.

Another purpose of stilt houses is to decrease the occurrence of pests running into the houses. Tropical countries are known for the many insects and small mammals that inhabit them, and stilt houses can help to keep these pests out.

As you can see from the image above, it is quite different from the fantasy world. It is a Filipino stilted house from the Siquijor region. The roof is not exaggerated, and the windows are more open. However, the buildings from Kenarthi Roost are actually very based on real life.

Looking at the image, it is clear where the makers of the game got their inspiration. This is an Indonesian stilted house. The purpose of this kind of roofing is to let the water slide down in times of heavy rains. Observe the stilts on this house, and you can see that they have more support compared to the ones from the Philippines.

Basically, stilt houses are raised off the ground, which allows for better airflow and helps to keep the house cooler. Additionally, the stilts can be used to create a ventilated space underneath the house, which can help to lower humidity levels.

It can also help to regulate temperature and reduce humidity is the use of natural materials. Materials such as wood, bamboo, and thatch are good insulators, which helps to keep the house cool in the dry season and warm in the wet season. Additionally, these materials are porous, which allows for good airflow and helps to prevent moisture build-up.

In this pre-release image, we can see that the columns and stilts are made of stone, and the motifs of the buildings are reminiscent of the styles from Cambodia and its surrounding regions.

Adding to that, the region of Southeast Asia is characterized by heavy rains and storms. In the more tropical parts of Elsweyr, stilted houses are more common. However, as you go up north, the climate becomes less tropical and more temperate, and the houses become less stilted and more made of stone.

Below are some comparisons of Elsweyr to Southeast Asian locations (left is Elsweyr, right is the Southeast Asian location):

The similarities are quite evident.

While some references say that the Khajiit are based on the Romanian peoples of Europe, their architecture is very much based on Southeast Asian styles. It is also worth noting that traces of Persian, Romani, Indian, and other cultures can be found in Khajiit society.

Some YouTube content also states that the Khajiit can be compared to gypsies in the real world, as they are both considered "fringe people." Another note regarding the architecture is that it is also based on the domiciles of the sea gypsies in the Philippines, the Badjaos.

Southeast Asia is a very beautiful region with a great deal of cultural diversity. As someone from the Philippines, I can say from my own experience that foreigners can experience how Western and Eastern cultures merge here.

What other topics should I do next?

[theeccentricraven]

OC Origins

Thank you @kaylinalexanderbooks for the tag! This is an especially fun one.

Rules: talk about the origins of the names and personalities (and maybe even the design?) of a couple of your OCs!

From The Blood Cleaners

Justin

When I got the idea for The Blood Cleaners back in 2006, I knew early on that I wanted a male protagonist. He was largely inspired by Jonas of Lois Lowry’s The Giver and Equality 7-2521 of Ayn Rand’s Anthem. Like them, he would be determined to stand up to the status quo to choose his own life. I imagined he would be determined for justice, both justice for himself and justice for the people around him, hence the name Justin fitted him perfectly. It was even more fitting when I later met a new friend named Justen who reminded me a lot of my own Justin with his determination to defend liberty and live his life with purpose. 

It took a long time to come up with Justin’s appearance and age. Originally I just imagined a dark-haired boy. As I developed the dystopian world of Corpa - a completely self-sufficient city - I knew I needed a place where it would be realistic to have quarries and mines. I picked Arizona as a location (though I did take some liberty to craft a fictional location). I then felt it would make sense for most of the population to be of Hispanic descent and have brown skin. Latin-American culture matters a lot to me since I studied Spanish for years, love the culture, have many friends of Hispanic heritage, and have nieces and nephews with Latino ancestry, too. I thought it would make sense for the nuclear war apocalypse to create a bottleneck in the population, hence the survivors would mostly be people of color and so their descendants also would be. Ultimately, I decided to have Chapter 1 begin with Justin at age 8 when he makes the two key discoveries that serve as the inciting incidents of the two main plotlines, and then the rest of the story would be about Justin at age sixteen. The age made sense since sixteen makes more sense to begin an occupation rather than twelve, and because the content and subject material of the book should be reserved for readers sixteen and up (age of the character often represents the ideal age of the reader). 

So that’s how I made sixteen year old brown skinned, black haired Justin who is determined to fight for his freedom.

Joselyn

Originally I thought Justin’s only love interest would be Clarice (I’ll tell her story in a future post). Clarice is one of the children of the Fists - the government and ruling class of Corpa - who lives in the Steel Castle. Justin would meet Clarice after earning the privilege to work in the Steel. The problem was that she would be absent for much of the story. For Justin to get to work in the Steel, he would have to first go through the training, the torturous transformation, work as a blood cleaner for a while, and slowly discover his telekinetic powers. This would be a lot without a love interest. When I started the revival process for The Blood Cleaners last year, I put behind a lot of years of regret for not writing. Not knowing how many books I would get to write for the rest of my life, I wanted to cover what I would regret not doing. For a long time, I wanted to have a story where two characters bump into each other after running around a corner. I wanted it to be a type of “meet cute”. I gradually came up with the idea of having Justin at age eight unwittingly bump into his  future love interest when they were chased by two separate groups of people. This allowed for Chapter 1 to start with the inciting incidents for two of the major plotlines. First inciting incident was when Justin discovered the secret note. Second inciting incident was him running into Joselyn, beginning their romance plotline. I named Joselyn after Jocelyn of the film A Knight’s Tale. I used S instead of C to make them different.

I wanted to make Joselyn and Justin be parallels and opposites. Unlike him, she lives on the surface, not underground. Like him, she’s one of the common people as she lives on a farm. I did this partly for world development, since I wanted to show how the farms played a part in the self-sufficient city. I also made her be a Spanish speaker, since Corpa has a good deal of English and Spanish speakers. I describe Justin and Joselyn having similar features with brown skin and black hair, though they are not related (thank heavens!). They have a familiar ancestry, as Justin’s late father was also a commoner on the surface. Joselyn’s farmgirl characteristics might have had some influence from the love interest in Anthem, Liberty 5-3000. I make it clear that Joselyn is a capable girl, not a vulnerable damsel in distress. She has similar beliefs as Justin, though she’s more outspoken, no concern for how speaking her mind could threaten her life. She’s good at taking charge, though she begins with self-esteem struggles. I don’t like the way that the media has a tendency to either portray a smart female character who needs to deal with the dumb guy getting in her way or to portray a dumb female who needs a smart guy to rescue her. I defied the tropes by having Justin be a constant support for Joselyn, helping her get out of a rut, not in a way that shows he’s capable and she’s incapable, but that they are both capable and need support from each other.  

I knew from the beginning that this meant there would be a love triangle because I did not want to cut Clarice - she plays a vital role in the story. I like having the love triangle be different from the usual love triangle tropes. I’ve observed that most love triangles are a girl choosing between two guys. When a love triangle is between a guy and two girls, the girls will often be nasty and the guy will be a jerk. I wanted my love triangle to be more innocent, in which both of the girls are worthy of and need to be loved. Justin never meant harm, as it happened because he didn’t want to hurt either Joselyn or Clarice and he genuinely fell in love with both of them. I won’t give away too much, but can say Justin will regret the heartbreak when it happens. As with any love triangle, a choice must be made, but I won’t give that away. 

Other Posts on Justin: here here

Other Posts on Joselyn: here here

Tagging (no pressure): @katenewmanwrites @willtheweaver @buffythevampirelover @winterandwords @addicted2coke-theothercoke @evilgabe29 @spitefulbull @tildeathiwillwrite and open!

[percigrove]

my pwhl gifties to myself arrived on international women's day 💜

[franeridan]

i love the way luffy is so consistent and insistent in making fun of zoro for having no sense of direction that it slowly brainwashed everyone into forgetting he's just as bad himself

[antoncrane]

Re Fallout 76: I think that if I kill a high level thing, I should be able to use whatever it drops at whatever level. (I say beating a lvl 50 creature at lvl 19, and it dropped my fave shotgun loadout that I can't use it yet asdfgdfg.)

[mismatchsocks]

nothing to offer but quotes from nbc hannibal/the blooper reel

[hermeswol]

ok i made the caster krile summoning circle

[atariforce]

Atari ST Box Art Wallpaper: North & South by Aurelien Vaillant aka Wasabim

[asoiafreadthru]

A Game of Thrones, Jon III

When they finally spied Castle Black, its timbered keeps and stone towers looked like nothing more than a handful of toy blocks scattered on the snow, beneath the vast wall of ice.

The ancient stronghold of the black brothers was no Winterfell, no true castle at all.

Lacking walls, it could not be defended, not from the south, or east, or west; but it was only the north that concerned the Night’s Watch, and to the north loomed the Wall.

[timeisacephalopod]

Part of being Canadian is how similar we are to the US, and honestly not a single person on earth I think could genuinely pin point the difference between Canadian and American culture but the average Canadian. Americans assume we're the same as them (we aren't), even a bunch of Canadians think we're Americans, especially around voting seasons, and about half our cultural identity is "we're Not American!" but there are some cultural differences and if we all spoke French equally we could have had a language distinction but nooooo. Despite not being America unfortunately such a fuck off massive country right below your teeny tiny ass country (population wise) does result in a cultural avalanche from said fuck off massive country. Especially when you share a language.

The war of 1812 will forever be funny to me though because Americans were like "hmm maybe Canadians would also like to tell the British to fuck off, we will invade to show them!" And Canada was like *burns down the white house* and we've been tentatively chill with each other ever since lmao (even when we probably like. Shouldn't be cool with America but like. We could not risk that implosion politically or otherwise it'd be suicide).

[postmakerkiwi]

⚔️ Peace Keepers' Garrison - Training Grounds 🛡️

The wide open expanse of the Peace Keepers' home's northwest side forms the premier location for dragons to practice their combat. Cannonballs crash and blades clash, whilst the hot, howling winds hum along.

photo 1 via IGN photos 2, 3 by CatbatQuartet

[edenorisshitposting]

I'm seeing a lot of posts about how we should listen to Jewish voices when it comes to harry potter game antisemitism, but not a lot of posts by Jewish people about the harry potter game...

[i-demand-a-hug]

Apparently there's drama about Fontaine, which is mostly France inspired, also having dishes from Britain and even Italy. Personally I think that's fucking hilarious and I want to see Hoyoverse mix and match Europe even more.

[yoshifawful64]

I finally got my first win in the Gold Room!