#almost the full set story

[gobstoppr]

Tetris Fanart.

I've been playing tetris while listening to horror podcasts. and yeah

[goldenwaves]

[akkivee]

You have probably rambled extensively on this topic already, but you'll also probably appreciate the option to do it again: Do you think Kuko is a "sacrifice the one to save the many", "save one if it means sacrificing many" or neither type of person?

i actually haven’t even thought about this lol!!!!

at the end of the day, i think he’d be of the mindset to exhaust other options before sacrificing anyone, like he does not take death lightly at all

if he had to choose, i get the sense it’d be ‘sacrifice the one to save many,’ and spin the situation to making himself be that one sacrifice. this i have rambled about quite a bit lmao, but in most story beats he’s a part of, he tends to give himself up if it means the other person will be okay; taking the full blame for ren’s bullying case, intending to take a hit for unami if that means she can be free if only for one day longer, taking hifujaku’s attack so hitoya (and jyushi to a degree) can see thru the battle just to name a few lol

so neither if he had to help it, but he’ll do his damnedest to make sure he’s the loss if put in a situation where he had to choose

[waywardsalt]

thoughts on totk now that i’ve beaten it

under the cut bc of length and bc there is honestly a fair bit of negative stuff

i don’t really think i can say that i liked totk.

it’s fine, it’s genuinely fucking incredible from a technical standpoint with ultrahand, recall, the three map layers and with how smoothly it ran for me. as a game it’s fine.

i’ll start with the things i dislike and end with what i actually liked

i honestly didn’t really like ultrahand? i disliked how much the game leaned on it, since so many puzzles and whatever just boiled down to ‘make something that’ll work’ and it just... it was far too clunky for me to really enjoy using it, outside of using some of the same few designs for traversal. there were a few times when i could see what the game wanted me to do with ultrahand and the given zonai parts and sometimes it just... didn’t work at all. more often than not ultrahand was frustrating for me to use so the game’s reliance on it just made it into a chore sometimes.

in a similar vein the dungeons were serious letdowns. i mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re fine, they had good themes and (mostly) had good aesthetics and general looks and identities to them, but the fact that they were just... basically twenty-ish minute little things was kind of disappointing. i hate that they all had the exact same ‘go hit x number of switches’ gimmick. it really limited what you could do and fucked with the dungeon design, too. the only one where that really worked for me was the fire temple, which was my favorite overall. the water temple was especially dismal, with the least inspired look and just being an astoundingly easy experience. the puzzles in those dungeons were so awfully easy, too, especially since half of the time they just hand you what you need so you barely need to really assess the situation and put a plan together

i hated the water dungeon’s little mini-areas where you do a single piss-easy puzzle to automatically get your prize, i hated the wind temple’s god damn ‘pull a lever and get your prize’ kind of puzzles, i hated how soul-crushingly disappointed i felt when i took a look at the lightning temple’s map and realized that every fucking floor had a singular room just for the switch puzzle. god forbid it’s as fun as the lowest level of that temple. i really miss stuff like mini-bosses or rooms where you have to do a puzzle in order to just... progress, i miss dungeons that i could get lost in or spend a while in or just had... something more interesting or some more substance so that i can’t just breeze through like it’s a glorified shrine. most of the puzzles in those dungeons were simpler than some shrines i did.

i didn’t care to do much exploration since there honestly isn’t much motivation to explore the surface map if you’ve already played botw, and the scarcity of materials this time really got to me, it took me a while to have a half-decent stock of materials, and i still had trouble not running out of stuff even though i was using amiibos to stock up on some things. the money situation was rough, too... a lot of things are cheaper to sell, but some armor is still really expensive plus you have to pay the great fairies to upgrade your equipment in addition to having the correct materials. that especially felt odd- having to grab a handful of (goddamn hard to get) lynel guts is hard enough to upgrade the soldier’s armor, but you want me to cough up 500 rupees, too??

(the scarcity of monster guts also got on my nerves, but i’ll just chalk that up to just some kind of really weird difficulty thing. it was annoying until i tracked down the stronger monsters.)

the story is probably the weakest part of the game to me. it’s really hard to have a baseline investment when you don’t care about these characters, anyway, and what i saw in this game’s story still failed to endear me to hardly any of them. link’s role frustrated me; he just comes off like a tool rather than a character this time through, he barely has any actual relevancy to the story segments beyond being the guy who can use the master sword and being the player’s vehicle to get from point a to b in the story. the blank stare and limited emoting worked in botw because... there’s a given reason for his lack of outward emotion in the past, plus he has no memory in the present. it makes sense. but this time around, he’s gotten memories in the years between this and the last game, but he just feels like a background character in most of the story beats. 

he has no role in the memories and in the present just exists to gather some stuff for other people, he gets the master sword from zelda and then helps the other sages get their secret stones, but he’s barely addressed as his own character in the grand scheme of things unless he’s being directly spoken to. he’s just the swordsman capable of wielding the master sword and zelda’s chosen protector as far as the story is concerned. he has no opinions outside of doing what he’s told and looking for zelda. at least not as far as i could really tell. at least in botw, the story directly concerns him, and it’s his story we’re following. this time around zelda and the sages seem like the most important characters, link’s just... there, doing what he’s been told to.

the new sages are fine, none of them really endeared themselves to me, and i will say that making the player watch essentially the exact same cutscene each time you finish a dungeon was BAFFLING. they were long and you learned almost nothing new after the first one, and there was nothing done to make them very distinct to each individual pair of sages or their respective regions; at the very least, it could have been interesting to meet the ancient sages not in the exact same stone garden, but perhaps at the top of a snowy mountain for the rito, near a volcano or something for the goron, maybe in a shallow pool of water for the zora, and in the desert for the gerudo- but no, they’re all effectively the same thing just with the speaking character swapped out with some minor changes.

(the sages themselves are a pain in the ass to use, having to chase them down to activate their power or accidentally activating a power when you don’t want it; yunobo was honestly my favorite, but because i generally defaulted to having them all activated at all times, i had a lot of trouble with tulin blowing shit away from me when i was trying to grab it while midair. they’re half-decent for combat)

i didn’t really care for rauru or sonia, either. rauru in the present as a ghost was fine, he was kind of interesting and seemed to have changed from his time in the past, but he never managed to be a character i particularly liked. i wasn’t really a fan of his... arrogance? or something in the past scenes, and he never really came off as very interesting. sonia was nearly completely uninteresting which is a shame since she has an interesting design, she just felt delegated to the role of supporting rauru and zelda and then dying to motivate them.

ganondorf is a character i was really looking forward to seeing, and it really fucking sucks that he’s so god damn one-dimensional this time! the story can’t be fucked to delve into him beyond just giving us scenes that just tell us that he’s evil and wants to rule hyrule and get the secret stones and nothing else because fuck having complex villains, i guess. especially frustrating because within the game itself you can draw more interesting motivations up for him, but the game really just doubles-down on him being evil for the fuck of it and wanting to end the world because uhhhh... he’s evil don’t fucking worry about it

the ignoring of the triforce in this game sucks in that way, too, because the way the triforce works and how it can grant wishes made it a much more interesting goal for ganondorf to attain, rather than some poorly-named ‘secret stones’ that do nothing more than just amplify power or something. it sucks how black-and-white this damn story is and how it seems like it just wants to do away with any possible nuance or gray area. no one but the bad guys or side characters are flawed in any actually interesting or significant way.

at least ganondorf was still the most interesting character in the flashbacks.

and then zelda, oh god ZELDA. i honestly really liked her in botw. i liked how you saw her as a flawed, insecure, pressured teen, and how you saw her struggles to relate to link and how she eventually warmed up to him. you saw her as a flawed person who develops and as someone who cares deeply about her friends and her duties and gets frustrated by her failings.

and then in totk a lot of her more interesting traits- her interest in sheikah tech, her excitement over field study and research, her more defining traits as this incarnation of zelda- are basically sanded down and she’s just this perfect flawless princess with great power and an insanely passive role in the past beyond finally taking some kind of action after one of her friends dies and she’s pushed to the brink. cool. great.

she has practically no flaw in totk. if anyone in the present talks about her, they have nothing bad to say and just want to please her and follow her orders, she is right in telling the gerudo how to train their troops she is right even when misheard to tell people to put themselves in danger and she is hardly meaningfully questioned when her imposter is doing very clearly suspicious shit. neither the story nor any of the characters wants to let her be flawed. she’s just perfect in damn near every way and barely retains any interesting characterization she got in botw. there are some interesting snippets in her being a teacher and setting up memorials to those who died in the calamity, but there’s hardly any more than that, and it makes it really hard for me to give a damn about her. she’s not interesting this time.

the whole thing with zelda becoming a dragon too, is... it’s fine. it’s ok. but the fact that she turns back at the end with no problem whatsoever is one hell of a fucking misstep. why talk about draconification being forbidden for a good reason anyways if it doesn’t actually matter anyways??? if you never actually see any of those fucking repercussions why even bring them up??? i really feel like it would have been more effective for there to have been actual consequences for zelda beyond just fucking flying around half-conscious for a millennium or whatever- have her lose her memory when she’s brought back! there you go! there’s the reason why draconification is forbidden! there’s the thing about losing yourself! plus, zelda losing her memories as a result would mirror link having lost his memories in botw! that has so much more weight and significance then ‘oh uh ignore the warnings from a while back she’s completely fine dw abt it’ i hate that she’s back just like that without any of the consequences that the game suggests.

the dragon’s tears in general kinda just felt weaker than botw’s memories anyways bc you’re more just. watching stuff happen then actually learning anything. it has less characters and yet i feel like you only get to know like half of the important ones. like three of them are all about the same event. a few times they just replay parts of old memories in new ones. if they ever reference a past memory they just show you what they’re referencing instead of leaving you to piece it together. just play the voices or something don’t break the flow of things to play a clip of something i’ve already seen.

plus the fact that totk... barely acknowledges that it’s a sequel to botw really rubs me the wrong way. i understand that loz is extremely loose with its lore, but totk is a direct sequel set in the same world a few years later, and yet the events and characters of botw have might as well been forgotten and its all either ignored, brushed aside, or straight up replaced by something else for no good reason. the continuity between these games is absolutely dismal and to see the different ways in which the events and concepts or botw are just... disregarded really just left a bad taste in my mouth.

just- i love good stories and worlds in video games, and while some games can coast by for me by feeling good to play, having a good and engaging story and characters is usually essential to my enjoyment of a game, and when i don’t care about to the point of disliking the story and characters, and when none of the important areas are fascinating or distinct enough from each other, and when the game even fails to really reel me in with the gameplay...

i wanted to like totk, but it really just did not work for me. i just ended up feeling frustrated and disappointed and even sometimes bored with all of the major stuff and man. totk is really, REALLY, not for me, and it just left me wanting to play older zelda games instead.

...

HOWEVER! there were actually some things i really loved about totk! it’s not all doom and gloom! (well, not all doom, at least)

so! the music was great! not all of it really fit or made a lot of sense with the context in which they played or failed to evoke the feeling they were meant to, but the new tracks in this game were great! i especially love the first two phases of the fire temple’s theme, the depths music, and most of the new battle and boss themes. zelda games almost never fail when it comes to the music.

i did genuinely like the fire temple- yunobo’s ability was used the best in this dungeon, and it had the best five switches gimmick, i loved how you had to hit the gongs (sometimes having to construct a path to account for the weaknesses of yunobo’s ability) and how it then ‘scared’ each of the five statues holding a part of the gate- it was very cute and fit in very well with the general feel of that part of the story. it was the best in terms of difficulty and complexity, but it didn’t have the best boss- the lightning temple had the best boss, and i will admit that even if most of them were easy, i really enjoyed the mirror puzzles, as well as the process to unlocking the dungeon. the wind temple had my favorite visual identity and aesthetic, though, i liked it being a part of this old rito song, and how it was the most distinct in looks from the other dungeons.

the sky islands were honestly fun, even if they weren’t all that interesting. getting to some of the harder-to-reach islands were some of my favorite times i had to use ultrahand, and stuff like the zonai forge island and the one orblike island with the mirror puzzle, and pretty much all of the more complicated parts of the sky islands were a lot of fun to explore and figure out.

being able to ride on the dragons was just really cool, and the fact that they come out of the chasms was fun.

the new horns for the monsters were cool, it helps differentiate the different monster strengths and i just thought they were really neat.

the quest with lurelin village was fun, even if the pirates just being monsters was a real let-down.

the stable trotters were also a fun bunch of characters, that was a good, new way to open up fairy fountains.

all of the new stuff with the yiga was really fun, like getting their outfit and being able to pretend to be one of them and learning the blademaster attack- so much fun it was so cute.

most of the new outfits are really good and useful, and while a bit janky and not that great, the house-building bit near tarrey was endearing.

while none of the main characters interested me, i really, especially liked tauro and yona and penn. for some reason they just appealed to me and i really wish they had bigger parts in the game because they’re interesting and they have good designs and i’d really like to know more about them.

the underground gerudo shelter was pretty cool, to be honest, and the look of the caves was really cool.

i adored the proving grounds shrines- easily my favorite shrines in the entire game, i had no problem spending a decent amount of time in those kinds of shrines, they were fantastic.

the new ingredients and recipes and new weapons were cool.

the way you basically return to the area you started at on your way to ganondorf is pretty cool, that whole path is really neat.

ganondorf in general was a pretty cool boss, even if he ended up being kind of easy for me. the whole final boss sequence was neat.

by FAR, though, my absolute favorite part of this game was 100% the depths. the fact that there was just an entire second layer to the map that was the same size as the surface, just inverted and dark and filled with new bosses and locations... i spent hours down there without going back up to the surface and absolutely had a BLAST screwing around in the dark, lighting up my path with brightblooms and tossing together little vehicles with lights so that i could get to the next lightroot off in the distance. the depths was probably where i ended up using zonai vehicles the most, and it was honestly pretty fun to go around spotting and reaching every lightroot, coming across different mines and weird little landforms and coliseums and yiga camps. the music and plantlife and look of the depths were so good, and it really felt distinct from the rest of the game in a very good way. doing all of the lightroots and getting enough zonaite to max out link’s energy cells was definitely a good move since it made finding shrines and dealing with later zonai machine stuff easier.

overall, tears of the kingdom was a severely mixed bag for me, and while there was stuff i did like, i don’t think it’s enough to really get me to say that i really liked this game overall- after all most of the stuff i disliked was unavoidable parts of the games, and it definitely put a hamper on my interest in the rest of the time. totk is fine, but it’s really not my thing. 

[seyaryminamoto]

I know I just put an ask in this morning, but do you happen to have any good Sokkla birth fic recs? I mean pregnancy is fine too but I'm lacking on actual birth scenes and the few I've seen are so sweet 😭 something about those two's personalities is so intriguing in those fics idk Sokka by Azula's side while she's in physical pain may be my weakest point when it comes to Sokkla and I'm unapologetic

Hmmm, off the top of my head, Proving you Wrong came to mind, even if that's not the core subject but I very much remember a birth scene there haha. I have a lead-up to birth but I didn't actually write the birth itself in Matching Heartbeats Chapter 2... Sorry, it's just insanely challenging to write childbirth, hahaha 🤣 There's also I'll Meet You At The Bottom? I no longer remember if it went in depth with the birth because it's been a while but some part of me thinks it did... For pregnancy there's Yeet!, Changings, and Singing Metal. If you want, you probably can find a lot I haven't had a chance to read just yet in this particular filtered search, while I can't attest to high quality every time, I'm sure you'll find plenty of good stuff there regardless!

Hope that helps and happy reading!

[unliikelylovers]

if any of my followers don’t know what my url is from and you’re interested: it’s the title of this song from falsettos, a musical about the aids crisis from 1992 (which is why the video looks, you know, like that) i highly recommend you go listen to it because i think it is one of the most beautiful and moving songs in the broadway canon

[milo-is-rambling]

Me looking at my own mood boards like “oh yeah this guy gets it”

[pettyprocrastination]

ngl but i think if a kid wrote a letter to santa about wanting an abusive family member out of the house he’d slyly send the letter down some little magical mail chute and itd end up in hell where krampus would read it and then show up to that house on christmas eve to give that kid a nice new bike and a teddy bear under their tree before dragging their peice of shit dad down to the underworld for eternal torture. 

[todayisafridaynight]

We’re having an emergency meeting to discuss Chris Johnson and the whitest name ever

absolutely fitting for our white man now innit

[brltpop]

I was going through my albums and realized the cheapest one i own was $1 (the cure greatest hits) and the most expensive one was $60+ (seventeen's love & letter repackage)

[kraviolis]

nintendo hire me i have the best idea for the story of a new zelda game

[mintjeru]

keeping myself busy by posting wip screenshots

[psikind]

I beat pokemon scarlet today hi for the love of god hello

[arolesbianism]

unless the printing pods questlog is pulling a bait and switch... i have discovered that the Super Cool Secret Power Source thats been so hyped up is just a geothermal plant :[ klei wont let us have the Infinite Explosion Death Machine

Yeah I found that out during the beta, I might have mentioned it but I was mostly too busy with other new stuff. I mean it makes sense from a gameplay standpoint, but I will admit that it's probably the weakest part of the dlc from a lore standpoint. Now to be fair, the devs have said that they're hoping to make a couple more similar scale dlcs, so there's still a chance they'll say fuck it and throw the temporal bow at us lol. This is also my copium for Calvin dupe not being in the game yet, pls klei release my boy his dupe description is still in the code I see him give him to me klei

[lookingforcactus]

Because I'm feeling whimsical,

What the fuck do you mean that's a quilt??? Round 2

All quilts are contest winners from the quilt show Road to California, 2022. You can see these quilts and the other winners from that year here.

Best of Show Quilt

Title: Harlequinade Maker: Rebecca Prior Quilter: Jackie Brown Design Basis: Maker's Original Design "Harlequinade" is a theatrical quilt filled with visual clues guiding viewers to discover a hidden story. Inspired by Venetian Carnival masks and commedia del'arte characters, the quilt features the antics of Harlequin, the trickster, who has his own ideas about freedom and fun!

Director's Choice

Title: Welcome Home Maker: David Taylor Quilter: David Taylor Design Basis: Original image by Margo Clabo, used with permission I first saw this image from friend Margo Clabo more than a decade ago. It took years to convince her to let me adapt her photo into a quilt. The image it depicts is especially sentimental for her. The challenge for myself was to create a pieced pictorial background and recreate a traditionally pieced quilt by using my hand appliqué technique. The project size was overwhelming, but I'm thrilled with the finished quilt. So is Margo. Time to exhale.

Note: To be clear, that is not a photo with a quilt in it, that WHOLE THING is a quilt.

Best Machine Stationary Quilting

Title: Emerald labyrinth Maker: Kumiko Frydl Quilter: Kumiko Frydl Design Basis: Maker's Original Design As a starting point I used an image from the entrance to the EL Barkookeyeh Mosque in Cairo. Thinking of an elegant and intricate garden I added bursts of natural color and filled the area between the large elements of the design with finer ornament inspired by butterflies and plants. I set the circular image in a rectangular frame with a subdued complimentary design of rippled reflective pools.

1st Place: Animal

Title: Woodland Wilds Maker: Ann Horton Quilter: Ann Horton Design Basis: Maker's Original Design My morning hikes in the woodland hills of our northern California home inspired this quilt. The rabbits are always alert for danger. This machine appliqued, thread painted and embroidered view through a window is surrounded by wild flowers on hand dyed silk and again surrounded by other wild birds and animals. I love my wilds things in the woods!

1st Place: Human Image

Title: The Memories That Remain Maker: Lynn Czaban Quilter: Lynn Czaban Design Basis: Library of Congress Photos - LC-USF33-006183MI and LC-USF33-0061 I am fascinated by the human face and our ability to communicate without uttering a single word. The Portuguese word 'saudade' meaning a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for something or someone that one cares for and loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never be had again.

1st Place: Naturescape

Title: Desert In Spring Maker: Andrea Brokenshire Quilter: Andrea Brokenshire Design Basis: Maker's Original Design My Mom and I embarked on an epic travel trip we named our "Thelma and Louise Adventure" In Palm Springs, CA we visited the Living Desert Botanical Garden. This quilt is inspired by one of the photographs I took that spring day of a Prickly Pear Cactus in full bloom. I loved the leathery texture of the cactus leaves (paddles) and the almost translucent citron yellow blossoms.

2nd Place: Animal

itle: Not Today Maker: Kestrel Michaud Quilter: Kestrel Michaud Design Basis: Maker's Original Design The chase is on! The Roadrunner is after his next meal, chasing a Common Collared Lizard through a steampunk junkyard. The desert is a favored dumping ground for the detritus of progress, even in a fantasy world. A steam-powered industrial revolution creates iron refuse and pieces of broken machinery have been left to decay in dry desert air. That doesn’t bother these critters. To them, this is home. Will that lizard wind up as dinner? Not today!

2nd Place: Human Image

Title: Declaration of Independence - Voices of Freedom Maker: Nancy Prince Quilter: Terri Taylor Design Basis: Reproduction of John Trumbull's Painting The quilt is a reproduction of John Trumbull's painting which depicts the moment in history when the first draft of the Declaration of Independence was presented to the Second Continental Congress on June 28, 1776. The quilt front and back were created in Photoshop and custom printed on fabric. Four thousand hours over 4 years was necessary to create the quilt. The back captures the story of the Declaration and its signers.

Note: I'm not at all patriotic. But credit where credit is due. That's a fucking quilt.

3rd Place: Animal

Title: Midnight Flight Maker: Joanne Baeth Quilter: Joanne Baeth Design Basis: Maker's Original Design Several years ago we had an injured Great Horned Owl roosting in our willow tree during the day. I took several pictures and was inspired to create him in fabric. The background features a painted sky, old buildings, melting snow and a rabbit on the run The foreground is the swooping owl which was constructed by painting and inking each feather and thread painting over fabrics and needle punched wool rovings

3rd Place: Naturescape

Title: Day Into Night Maker: Deb Deaton Quilter: Deb Deaton Design Basis: Maker's Original Design Inspired from photo by Robert Murray with his permission. When the Arizona sun begins to set, the sky comes alive. I saw this photo and knew the splendor of this landscape needed to be captured with fiber! Sky is hand painted. Raw edge applique. Mixed media used: oil pastels, color pencils, inks to enhance the fabrics and create more dimension. Cheesecloth: painted to create spikes of cactus. Tulle used to capture the sunrays. Machine quilted.