#but i think it's just because this thing is super tanky

[front-facing-pokemon]

[cosmic0dust]

Silver as a Gym Leader

- a ramble from someone who’s way too autistic about pokemon and rival Silver

Silver would absolutely either be a Poison or Dark type specialist, but for this I am going for Dark, with his ace of course being Weavile

Important things to note

• Mainly giving him pokemon that are available in gen 4 considering this would probably be hgss

•Also assuming fairy types don’t exist yet, and giving his pokemon egg/tm moves

•Giving some of his pokemon hidden abilities because I think he’d def breed for them and be a mean gym leader to get through

•If this was an e4 team I’d probably fully deck out his pokemon with competitive items, but since it is just a gym leader team only two of his pokemon hold berries.

•Enjoy!

Silver’s Team

Umbreon

Silvers team usually consists of really speedy pokemon/sweepers like Crobat, and Sneasel so I think giving an umbreon would help round out his team and add a tank to take hits, though it’d be different than his usual style. I also think adding an umbreon is a nice nod to Johto, as well as a friendship evolution. Showing off his character development and growth that we see at the end of HGSS.

Ability: synchronize - inflicts status conditions onto the opponent as well if hit by one

Held item: Sitrus berry - restores 25% of max HP

Moveset

Psychic - to deal with fighting types

Dark pulse - good STAB move

Wish - good healing move for a tanky pokemon

Confuse Ray - just feel like this helps round out the set

Houndoom

Houndoom helps deal with the bug types with a good fire type STAB move, and is also a nice nod to the old official art of Gen 2 Silver with a houndoom. It’s also a solid dark type pokemon.

Ability: Early Bird - pokemon wakes up twice as fast if fallen asleep

Moveset

Flamethrower - perfect to take care of bug types

Nasty plot - great for boosting sp. attack

Torment - prevents the spamming of the same move - gives it an opportunity to land a few more attacks if it tanks a water/ground type move

Dark pulse - another dark stab move

Honchkrow

Now this is a nod to Silver in pokespe, who uses a Murkrow and eventually a Honchkrow. I think it’s a cute little reference, and also a solid team member. It’s flying type is also a great counter for bug and fighting type pokemon

Ability: Super Luck - boosts critical hit rate

Moveset

Night slash - we already know what I’m gonna say.. dark stab move..

Drill peck - great stab move for flying and bug types

Feather dance - lowers opponents attack stat by 2 stages, great for fighting types and physical attacking bug types / moves like X-Scissor

Sucker punch - more stab, also good against faster opponents since Honchkrow is kinda slow

Obviously Weavile would be his ace, having assumed he would evolve his sneasel before becoming gym leader. Sneasel is also a pokemon he has in canon, so he has to be here. Ngl, struggling to find a good moveset for this guy. Weavile doesn’t have a ton of options in gen 4. I think it’s best use would be a swords dance sweeper

Weavile

Held item: Chople berry - reduces damage from super effective fighting moves to 50%

Ability: pressure - reduces opponents move PP by 2 instead of 1 each use

Moveset

Night slash - .. duh

Ice punch - the best physical ice move Weavile gets

Swords dance - to crank up the attack

Aerial ace - bug counter go brrr

might make another post about him as an e4 member or how his gym would be designed! I definitely think he could also be a poison specialist (maybe a poison specialist in the e4) or a champion and I’d love to build up his team like fully decked out competitively for a champion style team. Might also do smth like this for spe silver! Thanks for reading :3

[velvetvexations]

--- somehow i don't think the trans radfem movement thinks aphobia is a fine word to exist

It's almost quaint. Almost.

Why is there a wave of trans radfems defending 4chan boards

I'm going to need to be pointed to this if only because I'm going to get dinged for spreading malicious lies about trans women being "Nazis" otherwise, but lmfao if true.

wtf kind of hill is txttletale dying on now?

I mean she's still a tankie fuck but apparently now she's also getting in on the transmisogynistic harassment campaign game.

isn't "doll" specifically a fetish term? that is really not something people should be applying to other people without making sure it's ok first.

No, it's a Black ballroom term that trans women started running with.

People on this site are taking pissing on the poor to a whole new goddamn level “telling people that this person is/has sexually harassed someone who was a minor is calling everyone with their identity a pedophile”, I’d blame the school system but that really was a choice not to actually read and relay

it's definitely malicious

joan jett in the mv for i hate myself for loving you is like, unbearably beautiful

so true

it’s so obvious that these people choose to isolate themselves in a dimension crafted out of their own self-hatred that they care more about hurting their oppressors (and people who don’t even oppress them) than uplifting people hurt by systems of oppression. sometimes i think i’m bad but then i come across people like that and realise i’m relatively well-adjusted

inspiring innit

post addressed to trans women from a trans woman about trans women –> trfs in the notes: “why are you telling me to be nice to trans men?”

they have their priorities

absolutely wild to say that transunitists are 2010-reddit-style mras and then say things like "afab privilege." yeah those afabs with their wielding of power. and i bet they get free drinks at every bar and their bosses promote them for being pretty, huh.

they get upset at having their logic compared to MRAs because it's implicit misgendering (never mind that they directly call random trans men MRAs and radfems as well) but I'm not sure what they expect when they talk at length about how all of those fucking evil AFAB bitches are just waiting for their chance to screw you over with a false rape accusation

"pick me" is AAVE, and, like all white girls, they're overusing and misusing it until it has no meaning left 🙄

I actually wasn't aware of that. Neat. Disputed? See replies.

a lot of this going on is just reminding me once again of the intense monogenderism that really never gets worked on. It’s super awkward as a multigendered individual and an intersex one

it also just really feels so fucking tone ignorant the way people talk.

society still calls traits of men or masc, some even actively choose to agree while still being a counter to it gender but obviously real trans women don’t so attacking those things would never hurt them, and multigender trans woman who are also men? Obviously fake.

the English language is so fucking insufficient

I honestly wish every asshole who seems to think the ability to mask as complete cis and definitely just your assigned gender is a privilege had to live in my head for the holiday season. I am entirely in the closet with my family because of bigotry I have no other choice than living with my family for multiple reasons I just spent the entire winter holiday pretending to be a woman answering to my deadname being called aunty and sister and daughter and not being able to say jack shit about it without even being able to retreat to the solace of my friends afterwards because they are all busy with their own families. I want those assholes to experience the emotions and thoughts I just went through and come out the otherside and see if they still think that this is a fucking privilege.

Love you anon. <3

that anon telling on themselves so hard saying transmisogynys "far deeper" than transphobia. literally why on earth would you phrase it like that if the point was anything besides "my *special* oppression is way more poignant and meaningful than your boring regular oppression"

lmao right though it's so obviously just trying to mark their thing as having more dramatic flair

do you keep a backup of your blog with a program like tumblthree? there's a lot of valuable posts on it, and tumblr is almost distressingly transitory.

I don't, but noted.

[spaghettioverdose]

You people aren't actually for any particular ideology, you're just a particularly pathetic strain of online shittalkers who read a few books and think you know how the world operates, and understand the plight (or lack thereof) of other people. Talk to the average homeless American about how much they "benefit from imperialism". Or better yet, wait until the Chinese Century begins so you can pivot to doing the exact same thing you're doing but with China, instead! Because you have no principles or beliefs of your own that guide your actions, you're just a fucking SHEEP who wants to stroke their microdick a little and feel good about how morally righteous and super communist you are. I hope a Dhongfeng missile obliterates your home and leaves you destitute, fucking tankie.

this anon's like if you made a joke anti-tankie anon

[nerdasaurus1200]

Why Cassandra's Moonstone Armor Sucks

*cracks knuckles and dusts off keyboard*

It's time to finally rip this armor to shreds...figuratively because it's indestructible XD

And big shoutout to @whosbex @archivedwoods @th3p0rtalmaker @the-reverse-mermaid @aziraphalesbookkeeper and @majorabbey who all wanted to see this. I thank you all so much for your patience 🥰

Don't get me wrong there are some elements of this that absolutely work. The blue and black is a wonderful color scheme, especially that blue swirl that goes down and around Cass's body. And the spikes on the shoulders, forearms, and calves looks super cool and gives off a more black rock feel and a very intimidating silhouette. But...that's about all it does right.

1- It doesn't fit Cassandra's sense of style at all

In all the outfits we can see Cass wear throughout the show, we can very easily get a sense of exactly what her style is. It’s very clear that she dresses conservatively. And especially in armor she values practicality above all else. Her clothing has to serve its respective purpose. And up until season 3 the only revealing thing she wears is her island outfit and even then that’s pretty modest. And the moonstone armor comes along and completely disregards her established sense of style.

2- It undermines the moonstone's capabilities

We get it very explicitly confirmed that the Moonstone made the Dark Kingdom, and made Cass's tower as well. We see the amount of detail it puts into buildings. Even the rocks, the most simple thing it can make, are magically complex enough to know to seek out the Sundrop. And you're telling me that this thing can't make better armor than that?? Nuh uh, no way. I don't buy it. There’s absolutely no reason for the moonstone to provide a skin tight catsuit with a few spikes when we know its power can be much more sturdy and intimidating.

3- It's Chris Sonneburg's fantasies showing through

Those of you who have been in this fandom know the crush that Chris, the director, has on Cass. She's supposedly based on his college crush or something, and from day one he always wanted Cass to be the villain and plan to betray Rapunzel even as far back as the very beginning of the show. And of course, don't you want to see your crush in something hot? Therefore, I'm certain that the retaining of the catsuit was his idea. Because if you look at the moonstone concept art you can see more and more the visual leaning into a catsuit rather than actual armor

4- It's not at all practical or historically accurate

For reference, THIS is what armor has typically looked like throughout history

And even in works of fantasy you still have some version or variant of armor like this. Throughout the middle ages you can see just how tanky armor used to be. But as you can see, the moonstone armor looks nothing like that. It doesn't at all look like it could realistically defend a person.

Granted Cass's guard uniform is also kinda form fitting like the moonstone armor, but there’s still protective elements of it. The helmet, the breastplate. You could still believe that that is practical armor. Despite it being indestructible, the moonstone….is not at all practical armor. It doesn't look like it belongs in history or even fantasy. It is so obviously modern it’s almost painful.

5- It makes her disappear.

This is actually something that @moltenhair pointed out a while back that I never realized. There's too much black in there. A lot of the time we see Moonssandra at night and because there's so much black on her armor it makes her fade into the background to the point where she looks like a floating head and hand because the blue is all that really catches your eye about the design. Granted one can make the argument that this could have been done on purpose because taking and using the moonstone isn't actually giving Cass the spotlight she thinks it is but...eh...it's a loose argument.

[grison-in-space]

Hey! Not trying to keep an annoying conversation going but I wanted to say I super appreciate your rebuttal on the ARA stuff, it was a really good clear summary. Particularly glad you brought up the "nothing with us without us" thing because that tendency in ARA circles to treat animal liberation as the Same Thing as liberating marginalised humans, who can speak for them-fucking-selves, is so upsetting and overtly dehumanising and it's really valuable to see that pointed out. It's also so connected to the move towards tankie or fascist rhetoric, because it so strongly relies on a paternalistic view of exploited people as passive recievers of harm and charity. Anyway sorry I'm a bit ill and rambly but I really appreciated the clarity of your takes is what I wanted to say.

No worries, the boundary I wanted to set was more "I'm not interested in repeating that I know full well what ARA ideology is and how that hooks into veganism, and I'm not a captive audience." I'm happy to have conversations, including with people I disagree with; I am not happy to have to repeatedly explain the same thing that has, again, been my consistent experience for nigh on twenty years of interacting with the community. This is not that, so. Thank you for the compliment.

The paternalism is such a huge factor. It reminds me very much of benevolent sexism (as opposed to hostile sexism), and rings all the same alarm bells. It really, really, really reminds me of the way Autism Speaks talks about autistic children and always has.

If animals don't have language (and they largely don't) and if they communicate in ways that might be non-intuituve to a human (and they often do), surely it's incumbent on us as humans to decode the meaning of the signals they are sending in order to understand how to ethically interact with one another. Communication, after all, can happen perfectly well in the absence of language. And yet.

There's also just so little understanding and interest in the reality of what the consequences of "freedom" for animals living in captivity actually are and can be; consider for example Flaco the eagle owl who escaped into NYC, as @why-animals-do-the-thing covered last year. For a species that is notoriously reliant on our social structures and learned skill sets to survive, you'd think we could handle this better. But I see an awful lot of animal rights activists who seem to think that successfully releasing animals into the wild—freeing them from human control—is just a matter of one heartwarming video where the animal steps out of the cage and immediately locks its new job as an independent forager into place. It isn't.

I am also just straight up not convinced that freedom in the sense of being on your own and able to do whatever you want is all that great. I have spent my entire life boldly going where no one has gone before. It kind of sucks, actually. On the other hand, as a neurodivergent person personally I do a lot of structuring my choices with an eye to Past Me pissing off Current Me because I know Future Me will appreciate it. I can devise my own structures to let me successfully do that ... or I can just outsource the enforcing to a third party with opinions, which is something I sometimes need to do badly enough to purchase and train an entire stupid dog about it, because asking other humans to do it is relationally expensive. Sometimes having external structures that keep me from doing dumb things when the impulses get me is good actually.

And I mean, I'm a biologist. I went a little viral here a few years ago for being silly and describing what acacia trees do to try to fight off their greatest enemy: the mighty but terrifying giraffe. I know how plants engage their agency as dramatically and persistently as any animal; they're just sessile, so they do everything without the ability to get up and go. They are, however, no less active or opinionated a participant in the ecological chaos of the world than any other kingdom. To say nothing of fungi! To live is, unless you have chloroplasts, to consume. And even an awful lot of chloroplast-bearing species engage in a little heterotrophy now and again.

So like. Why should I think that eating plants is necessarily any more ethical than eating animals? Why does ARA-driven veganism think that increasingly processed and modified diets that camouflage and hide our connection to our food as part of the natural world that, yes, we also live in? Why do we hide from the complexity and the small grief of life, the shadow of death that has to come for there to be any room to change? One day, I too will die, and something will consume me unless I choose instead to be consumed by fire itself. That's carbon, baby!

[ageless-aislynn]

Day 3 (there was no post for Day 2 😉) of Project: Mass Effect 1 on Insanity!

Friends. My friends. I've cleared all of the side quests I'm planning on doing and am in the process of fighting my way through Feros. Still have Noveria and Virmire to go, then the big battle on the Citadel at the end. But still. I'm playing on Insanity and I'm continuing to progress and I'm so happy about it! 🤗🤗🤗

I also am NOT looking forward to Mass Effect 2 which is going to nerf all of my wonderful powers and be about 10k% harder but hey, let's just stay focused on fighting the Thorian and Temporarily!Evil!Shiala 'cause that's a slog on lower difficulties for me and I'm not anticipating a lot of fun. But! I've made it this far!

But for the important thing that you're probably ACTUALLY wondering about: what armor is everybody wearing? 🤔

Garrus in cutscenes continues to wear his standard armor. Probably because he's tired of GLOWING IN THE DARK in the armor I have my stealthy Archangel sniper in during gameplay...

Yeah, that's not exactly camouflage, I'm sorry to say. But it gives him the best stats so... 🤷‍♀️

Liara looks pretty good in hers, I'd say, more tanky than usual. And I'm getting used to Shep's not!N7 armor now.

I actually kinda dig the helmet with those lights!

Annnnnd, of course, then I got a set of armor with better specs so had to change it, lol! 👀🤷‍♀️😉

Don't know what the helmet's going to look like yet but at least it's back to my N7 red and black colors!

Also! If you're like me and that fight on Therum ruins (right before you go inside to rescue Liara) is a tough one for you, what with the Geth troopers and those darn jumpy Geth Stalkers (grr 🤬) and the Geth Colossus just sitting back there all murdering you on Casual and Normal? Friends. I got through it deathless on Insanity. Let Auntie Aislynn tell you how so this part of the mission will never, ever bother you again! (You may know all of this, of course, but I didn't until I was doing some research before this mission. 😉)

Oh no, the Mako can't drive through that narrow opening, guess we have to go forward on foot and face all of those Geth with just our handguns and biotic/tech powers! 😞

Heh, or you can get the Mako to roll onto its side and then wiggle wiggle wiggle thruster jet thruster jet thruster jet wiggle wiggle until you pop through to the other side! NOTE: Make sure to save right before you try this maneuver because the first time I did it, I got jammed in there and couldn't go forward, back or exit the Mako so had to revert. But it's worth the risk to get your two Mako cannons in this fight with you! (I have the actual gameplay footage so if you'd like to see this all in action, just let me know! 😉)

Jumpy Geth Stalker?

An easy kablooey! 💥

Geth Colossus? Stood there and took it straight to the face and never even fired a shot at me ether because I was out of its range or it was just so 😱SHOCKED😱 I'd gotten the Mako in here, lol! 😂😉

So definitely take that tactic if you can, my friends. It makes this part a breeze! 😎

Anyway! I've got some tough fights ahead of me but I've done better than I expected. I didn't have to do the Rogue VI mission (aka proto EDI) but I needed some targets for Tali to user her AI hacking abilities on for an achievement, so I thought I'd just go there, let the bazillion drones kill us but hopefully get some AI hacking in, revert, get some more in, etc. then just abandon the mission when I got tired of it. It's not required to advance the main mission so can be left undone.

I beat the mission. 😲Granted, we all died A LOT because those drones are SUPER AGGRESSIVE and there's not a lot of room to run. And I was focused on trying to get hits with Tali's AI hacking talent as much as possible. But still! I just kept trying and trying, took about 6 times to finally clear all the waves and we were done!

So now, wish me luck, that darn Thorian and Temp!Evil!Shiala are going to be my hardest challenge yet, I think! 😬🤞😣🤞 Love you all! 🤗💖

[vorrenthalla]

Morrowind Review from a girl who grew up with Oblivion

This post is about how I generally found the game. I may do follow up posts with more details about some topics otherwise this would be far too long.

tl;dr I like Morrowind, its not my favourite of the elder scrolls games but it is good game. It does some things better than the others and some things worse but I have no strong feelings on it, I don't think its the best Elder Scrolls and I also don't think its unplayably bad. The Story is good (though I don't think its as good as people frequently claim), the gameplay is janky and the world is great. Some aspects have not aged super well though.

Background:

In 2020 I decided to try doing Skyrim's full main quest + Dragonborn (neither of which I'd done despite 100s of hours in the game). In 2022 I decided to do a new playthrough of Oblivion + Shivering Isles because I'd never done Shivering Isles.

In both cases I played Vanilla (+ bug fixes) so I could remind myself of what these games were like without mods.

After the Oblivion playthrough I started playing Morrowind for the first time ever.

I knew very little about Morrowind. All I really knew was that some Elder Scrolls fans insisted it was the best and had the best story. I also knew a few minor lore things that are mentioned in Oblivion or Skyrim, mostly from the Dragonborn DLC.

I asked people how best to play Morrowind and ended up going with OpenMW with the "I Heart Vanilla" modlist, I also added a mod to delay the DLC. I had a look at the skills available and saw throwing was an option and I thought knife throwing sounded fun so I made a thief character that would throw knives. This turned out to be a mistake. I also played as a Dunmer because I like to play as the race on the cover for my first playthrough in Elder Scrolls games.

I got up to meeting the ashlanders in the main quest, did some of the thieves guild and some of the mages guild quests and various other side quests. I did not have a good time with it. I tried to push through but I ended up dropping it.

With the recent Oblivion Remastered hype I decided to give Morrowind another go. I decided to start a new game and use what I'd learned to make a different character. Not only did I have much more fun this time but I played the game all the way through.

My Character

This time I made a typical Tanky Warrior build. Sword and Shield with Heavy Armor. I also picked Enchantment because I had learned they were different in Morrowind and wanted to use them a lot and I picked Alteration because its my favourite magic school. I was also a Dunmer Woman. Leveling ended up being a bit weird. I didn't utilise training all that much and as a result my combat stats went up very fast but everything else went up very slowly.

My character at the start of the game:

My character at the end of the game:

Combat

Combat was really janky, whether or not you hit is based both on hitting the hitbox and a dice roll. I missed a lot early on but in the late game I never missed except for with Cliff Racers because their hitbox is weird so if you try hit it head on (which only happens if you are levitating) it just won't connect. Hits will cause a character to stagger slightly which makes it hard for that character to get a hit in back. Early on its very difficult and I died a lot but not that long in I became over powered and almost never died.

Spells and Enchanting

Spells have a chance to fail which is very high at low skill level. Its slow to level them too. In Morrowind you can get "cast on use" enchantments which let you cast a spell as long as the item is equipped which uses the items charge instead of your magicka and they can't fail. So I was heavily incentivised to use enchantments, which meant my magic skills didn't go up so I just kept using the enchantments.

Vvardenfell

The game is set on the island of Vvardenfell and it is beautifully alien. This is probably my favourite thing about the game. The lands, the plants, the animals and the architecture are all just so different from the other provinces of Tamriel and fantasy in general. It was a genuine delight to explore because of this. There is also a nice contrast with the imperial settelments that do look like traditional fantasy.

Quests

Quests are a mixed bag, there were some really fun an interesting quests. I personally enjoyed the ones that were essentially just sorting out or participating in fantasy workplace drama. I also enjoyed when quests had multiple ways of solving them. The biggest flaw is that this game has far too many escort quests which took a long time to do and the biggest challenge was getting characters unstuck from terrain. There were also some quests that had only one solution and it was one I didn't like it.

The Main Quest (no spoilers)

I found it started off a bit slow, with the early quests just being information gathering about a prophecy and after each bit the quest giver recommends you go do other things for a bit. I really like this as the side content was always the most fun stuff in Elder Scrolls and I disliked how the main plot always seemed too urgent with no real breaks in it so this was nice. You then have some time doing trials, which includes getting a bunch of factions to like you, which were okay for the most part but there was one I hated which I'll talk about later. I do appreciate that there are actually two failsafes allowing you to still complete the main quest if you kill an important character. I ended up using one of them. After that you are told to go into the spooky area to collect some McGuffins and use them to defeat the big bad. By this point I was significantly stronger than everything there and could basically fly so I zipped around the place and then easily beat the big bad. The big bad was entertaining lorewise and I definitely enjoyed his presence through the story but the actual boss fight just wasn't that good.

Overall I think the main questline was good and had a pretty good story. Definitely better than Skyrim at least.

The DLC Main Quests (no spoilers)

I actually enjoyed these quite a lot. I'm not sure why but I've always found that Elder Scrolls DLC quests tend to be much more fun for me than the main quests, the boss fights in particular. Morrowind was no exception. The quests in general were good and the story for both was engaging. I had a one issue with Tribunal with one main quest stalling as I had to go do an optional sidequest first which was weird. I also didn't like some of the rooms in the last dungeon of tribunal.

Now onto some of the biggest flaws in the game.

Slavery

This game has slavery in it. This itself isn't a problem but its not handled very well. Slavery is legal in Morrowind and freeing slaves is illegal. Almost all slaves are Argonians and Khajit who the dunmer see as lesser races. Its introduced in a cave near the first town. There are three slaves in the cave and if you take a key from the smugglers you can free them. I liked this idea. Unfortunately this idea is very unfinished. Many of the slaves in the game just can't be freed because their keys don't exist in the game and the locks can't be picked. Once freed, nothing happens, the slaves just stay where they are, it'd be nice to see them run off at least even if they just despawned. There are a few quests relating to freeing slaves but they all feel like a bit of an afterthought and very bare bones. This is bad enough but its made worse by the fact that you can participate in slavery through multiple quests and that's done better, the worst of which is during the main quest. One of the people you have to get to like you wants you to get him a wife. You can't just play matchmaker and find some nice girl who would like him, you can only solve the quest in one way by buying him a female dunmer slave. The existence of her means that slavery isn't just racist in this game its also sexist. The quest reward is a thong. The whole thing is just gross. I refused to do it (I know what happens from watching others do it after). This is where the failsafe came in. You can skip the making people like you potion by getting your fame up to 50 through side quests, which I did (took me one side quest to do as I was already close)

Sexism The game in general has a problem with sexism. This game was written by white men and it really shows. The first instance is that your gender effects your stats, Oblivion has this too and while I don't like it but its a minor difference and doesn't matter in the long run so I'm not mad about it. One thing that was initially annoying and then just funny is the fact that apparently nobody tested playing the game as a woman because you very frequently get referred to with male pronouns and titles, it makes sense with the prophecy stuff but it happens outside of that. I found it particularly weird with Redoran people calling me "house father" for a while. I don't mind characters being sexist but it does bother me when it impacts quest design and makes some quests just feel icky, I already mentioned the main quest above but there was also the stronghold quest where one phase was getting women to come to your stronghold, not because you want more people and want gender balance but because "the men need wives". For Redoran this meant 2 women from the nearby town and then your choice of; retired dancers from a strip club, recently escaped slaves or buying some slaves. I picked the recently escaped slaves because at least that felt like I was charitably giving someone a home who needed it.

Traversal Mechanically this was the biggest flaw of the game. The world of Morrowind is big, very big and your character starts of slow, very slow. So it takes a long time to get from A to B. What makes this worse is that running costs fatigue, not sprinting you can't do that here, normal running. Fatigue impacts everything so the less you have the worse you are at everything which means you need to keep it high. So very early game this meant I kept stopping every so often for my character to catch their breath making things take longer. Then a little later I would be chugging potions or spamming an enchantment spell to keep my fatigue up which was very tedious. In the late game I was able to get an enchantment that gave me permanent fatigue regeneration big enough to restore more than I lost from running which made traversal much better but still bad. There is a lot of walking between locations in this game and in Oblivion or Skyrim this wouldn't be so bad as random events can liven it up but Morrowind doesn't have those, instead it has a few set events (but not many) and once you've done them that's it, this would be fine if I wasn't going along the same routes so much and thus going through areas I'd already done. There are also set enemy spawns on the way, a lot of them, its not long before they get very easy to deal with and they are again just tedious, you can't just ignore them either because they will usually follow you forever. You can't fast travel by opening the map and clicking on a town in this game, instead fast travel is via a network of siltstriders, boats and teleporters so you often can't just fast travel to where you need to go, you can get close but that usually requires multiple fast travels which again is tedious. Thankfully the game does also have teleportation through Divine Intervention, Almsivi Intervention and Recall. I found myself using all three frequently to speed up travel. Levitation is something you can only do here and it is quite fun in the late game but until then its painfully slow with the exception of the levitation you can get from a shrine in Vivec which I used every chance I got. Overall it was awful and if you've never played I'd recommend just getting a mod to change it.

Dungeons

Dungeons are one of the weaker points of Morrowind. There are some very good ones throughout the game but most of them are few small and have little of interest to them. There are several types of dungeon and once you've explored a dungeon of that type you've explored about 90% of dungeons of that type as there is very little variation beyond a slightly different layout and different loot. Dungeon design is definitely something that improved in Oblivion and again in Skyrim. I also really missed the "Skyrim doors". Sometimes I could just teleport out of a dungeon when I'm done but a lot of the time I had to backtrack.

Overall I'd say that Morrowind is a game with a good story, interesting lore and a great world to explore but suffers from poor gameplay and some rather gross aspects. Out of the three Elder Scrolls games I've played its at the bottom but not by a huge amount.

Will I play Morrowind again? Probably at some point, I kinda wanna see what the game would be like with a magic build where I ban myself from cast-on-use enchantments. Might not be for a while though.

[in-case-of-grace]

TTRPG DEVLOG- GUTGUN & the Importance of Names

I wanted to share something I've had to fix a couple times over GUTGUN's development, how I fixed them, and why I needed to fix them to begin with. Today, I'm gonna talk about the names I chose for a few of the game's various ENEMIES.

Why would these matter? Well, for GUTGUN, I'm trying to translate the feeling of playing a boomer shooter into a TTRPG. One of the keys of that genre is speed. You don't stop to contemplate much, rather, you're spending the majority of your time in gunfights. A lot of a boomer shooter's gameplay is reactive, you're reacting to the situation as it unfolds, instead of standing still and formulating a plan.

How can I make a TTRPG feel fast without the ability to instantly react with moving and shooting as you would with a mouse and keyboard? Well, there's a lot of tricks— and many of those boil down to trimming the fat. Simplifying things wherever possible. Reducing mental load— the amount of Things a player has to think about or keep in their brain at any given time.

You know what can add to a player's mental load, and stop them in their bloody boots during the height of combat? Bad names!

A bad name can confuse or pause a player if it's too long, too strange (in the sense of using odd spelling or being hard to pronounce), or simply too similar to another name in the game.

For example, In E2, one of the ENEMIES I introduce is the GUTHOUND. They're fast, deadly beasts.

In E3, I throw in the GUTMOUND. These are tanky, lumbering things that take any damage meant for adjacent ENEMIES.

Perhaps you already see the problem? These names are only a single letter apart, and players could easily misread them when setting up encounters— leading to troublesome, unbalanced, unfun fights where they're fighting the wrong ENEMIES!

In isolation, their names may sound cool and play into the general motifs of GUTGUN, but it's still confusing. Even if we look at just one of these names— they're too long. What's more, they take up 2 vertical lines of text within the encounter tables (there are 4 columns for ENEMY placement), rather than 1.

Stranger yet is that, whenever I'd playtest, I'd get confused and mentally refer to the GUTHOUND as the "HOUND"— and get a bit lost for a moment when trying to reference their stats, because that's not the name they were under! HOUND is more intuitive!

So, the names were changed.

GUTHOUND > HOUND

GUTMOUND > TUMOR

You'll note that I didn't rename the GUTMOUND to "MOUND" as that'd still cause confusion! I took the opportunity to both shorten and uniqueify its name.

This wasn't the first time I've changed ENEMY names to reduce mental load, either.

Earlier, when I was developing E1, I had two ENEMIES: the GUTTER FAITHFUL, and the GUTTER INITIATE. Early playtesters found it confusing to tell these two apart. Both started with the same word, and the second? Well, "faithful" and "initiate" don't mean super different things, do they?

So I renamed them to the INITIATE and the DISCIPLE, respectively. Both shorter. Both more evocative. Both easier to remember.

That last part is very important for trimming the fat, as when players can more readily remember the names of what they're fighting— they can more easily find and potentially even memorize their stats, which can really speed up gameplay!

The point of all this is to say, hey, think about what you're naming things in your game. If players need to refer to it constantly, or remember what it does— the name should be easy to remember. If it needs to be read quickly, then the name should also be short and sweet!

[siren-nate]

I know it wasn’t the point of your recent Chosen post, but I’m curious what you identified as signs of power-creep 👀

I should clarify, when I said "signs" of power creep, I really mean like, the barest hints that are making me nervous. Episode V does a great job of juxtaposing the earth-shaking attacks of Chosen and Dark to give them a sense of scale, by showing how Second and the Color Gang are constantly blown away by the things these two demigods can do (and on that note, Chosen fans have it REALLY good compared to Color Gang fans when it comes to having your favorite characters meaningfully contribute to fights in the main series. It's like Piccolo fans vs. Yamcha fans). But there's still a few parts that irk me.

Chosen is constantly landing laser eyes on Dark throughout their fight, and Dark is always surviving because he blocks with his arms. Then he puts on the wristbands, and his first big demonstration of how much more powerful they make him is... tanking Chosen's laser eyes with his arms. I get that the difference is "being forced to defend himself" vs. "gliding down the attack to interrupt it with one of his own", but it still just felt weird. Part of it was probably the stylistic choice to change the laser eyes from causing massive explosions in 2 and 3 to actually just cutting and burning things in 5 and 6, which I think IS a good change that makes the laser eyes more distinct from his pyrokinesis, but it also means that they just don't feel like they have much meaningful impact anymore. The last time they did was when he sheared off one of ViraBot's limbs with them.

That's kind of the main thing - a lack of impact with a lot of Chosen's attacks. The Mercs are implied to either be tanky enough to survive his attacks or (in the case of Pivot) have some defensive options, but there's that one moment in particular where Chosen gets fired up and launches all three of the other Mercs off of him with a burst of fire... and that doesn't seem to hurt them at all. If you don't give these superpowers the impact they need on a regular basis to establish how destructive they are, it starts to feel like they're pointless; like he'd basically be doing the exact same thing by just punching and kicking with his super strength.

I saw someone claim that Chosen lost the fight against the Mercs because he's going through a moral crisis and wasn't trying to kill them, and I have to wonder if that person watched the same episode I did - if Chosen wasn't trying to kill the Mercs before he started fleeing, why the hell would he go and grab Second Coming explicitly because he remembers how ungodly powerful she was with her powers awakened? It feels like a poor excuse for Chosen just feeling too underpowered lately.

Sidenote: The Box is not an example of this. The Box is genius, displaying that Victim is so underpowered compared to Alan's other creations that he needs to be buffed ten times over and have his opponent reduced to about 1/10th of their own strength, and Chosen still gets the upper hand a few times because he's A) just that strong and B) far more experienced fighting people his own level than Victim is. Seeing how his pyrokinesis completely renders his clones helpless and incinerates them within seconds did a lot of good work towards re-establishing how dangerous Chosen is, not to mention how his ice-defense trick demonstrates how he's not the dumb brute a lot of the fandom thinks he is.

TL;DR: It's somewhat a symptom of Chosen losing so many fights, which really isn't even that valid of a criticism when we're only two parts in to the sixth installment. What bothers me the most is that he keeps fighting people who can seemingly just shrug off his powers, which makes his powers feel pointless.

[tachiharastanacc]

About Tachi. Do you think he gets those monthly surgeries too or was he exempt because he was in a secret mission

I think he gets them. He says that they’re lighter since he’s a spy, which I think just means that he’s less tanky and physically op bc that’s not a normal human thing.

Having said that, I do think that he has to get them monthly, or at least every few months (ik the popular hc is every 3 months). Especially bc he’s a spy with a super versatile and powerful ability. Not only does he have access to a lot of confidential information, he’s in a position where he’s engaging with people who would enjoy having that information.

It wouldn’t make sense for the person who could betray them the most easily not to have some kind of back up plan. Especially because guns and swords and most weapons are ultimately useless against him.

Also also because he wanted to join the mafia to get close to Yosano, and, even though it’s not at all who he is as a person, there was a risk of him completing that and then deciding he doesn’t have to work for them anymore.

[penguicorns-are-cool]

some people from older generations act like gen z is gonna come in and save the day and like

first of all, you're already old enough to vote and do all the things you could make an effort too. That's not to say there are no older people making an effort but they're generally not the ones saying gen z will save the day

there are a lot of gen z white supremacists, and neo-nazis, and andrew tate fans, and trumpies, and tankies, and trad-wives, and TERFs. There have been for a while. Like I don't think some of you guys understand how much of an effect the internet pipelines have had on gen z

then, while I understand this misconception, there are not that many of us who are super interested in politics in activism. A lot of us are very exhausted by it all and will not participate nearly as much as you think. Like yes voter rates will probably follow the upward trend because that has been worked into us, but some of y'all are acting like once all the gen z kids are out of high school we're gonna succesfully organize the entire working class and succesfully organize large scale strikes and blackouts that shut down the economy, or that we're gonna somehow take over most of the seats in the government and magically fix all the institutional issues

and like, no, sorry to break it to you but that's not gonna happen

It's definitely gonna help when all of gen z is out of high school and the boomers are not the majority of all voters for the first time in forever, but it's not like the entire world is gonna magically become all rainbows and sparkles and everyone's gonna get super accepting just cause gen z is here to save the day. there will still be all sorts of extremism and discrimination, and a lot of it will be coming from gen z and I know that cause it is happening right now.

It also really sucks for us cause that's a lot of pressure that you've all been putting on us to fix the world and it's a pressure a lot of us have felt since we were quite young and it's really not helping. Like it's nice that you have faith in us but as a high schooler who's trying to get into college and is worrying about transitioning to adulthood and the cost of going to college rn, the pressure to fix the world is not helping at all so please just stop

[howlingday]

(can't remember if I sent this one before so sorry if I did) jaune Arc is a proud member of the arc sword lords a combination of a noble family and knight order devoted to mastering the sword. Though he's the odd one out of his family. Instead of relying on twitch reflex and aura and charisma jaune devoted himself to the basics and a strong body with full plate. Between the family's sword style ( the steel net) which focused on the seven strikes and how to block dodge counter and parry them and crane style a martial art all about balance footwork and defence leading to a brutal counter and jaune's own mastery of the disarming and armor sundering. Well the end result is that jaune's basically impossible to touch in combat and every mistake ends in a counter that either takes away your weapon your armor or your life. A style so perfect jaune's armor shines like new because he's never even taken a scratch. But is a tank enough in this world of bloody evolution? Or is the shining knight of remnant due for a greater fall when his skills fail to match up to the power of the soul?

(tldr: jaune's a super tanky build that lacks any magic or aura from a family that are either spell swords or monks what's life like for the black sheep of the arcs?)

"When I was growing up," Jaune said, leaning his head on his partner's, "I was kind of the odd one out."

Pyrrha remained silent as he spoke. The two had grown closer as of late, and though it wasn't the level of intimacy she'd desired from him, it was still nice to be this close to him. In the corner of her eye, she saw Nora and Ren turn the corner, only for the former to guide the latter back the other direction. She'd have to thank her later somehow.

"Dad was the best guy with a sword in town. And all I ever wanted to do was to be him." Jaune gestured with his arm out. "That tree? Split in half. These marble columns? Well, you wouldn't be able to tell from a distance, but he could slice them so finely, you'd have to use your finger to tell the difference." He chuckled. "And then there's Mom, and she was the best with magic. She could make anything happen with spells. The two of them made the perfect daughters." His hand fell to his knee. "And then there's me."

"You're good, too, Jaune." Pyrrha said, resting her hand on his. Neither could tell, because they refused to look each other in their faces, but both could feel heat rushing into their cheeks. "And you've always been good to us, too."

"But not good enough for my family." Jaune said softly. "To them, I was 'Big Jaune,' or 'Jaune the Jock'. Every time I tried to help out with something other than grace, or something smart, or anything that wasn't 'lift big heavy thing,' I was useless."

"But you're not useless, Jaune." Pyrrha found her courage to look him in the face. "You're smarter than you think, and you're more than just the muscle of the team." Pyrrha chuckled. "And to be honest, I thought Nora was more of the muscle anyways."

The two shared the chuckle while Nora giggled next to the quiet, yet smiling Ren.

[milliemuus]

So, I’ve watched Mario and Luigi: Brothership, and it got me thinking: What if the characters in PV got similar stuff to the bros? Like they have their own attacks and counters. I’ll do Millie, Kieran and Pecharunt for this, and only the base attacks and counters.

Millie: In my opinion, she would be the slower character and does not hit that hard but with more hp and defenses, her base attacks are:

Kick: Basically, she does a spin kick, you know those right? I honestly could only do this since I don’t know what to do tbh.

Punch: She punches the opponent.

Avoiding attacks:

Jump: She just jumps to avoid attacks

Block: If an unavoidable attack, she blocks decreasing the damage taken

(I’m sorry, but I can’t think of anything for Millie)

Kieran: For him, he’s Millie’s opposite. Being fast and hits hard but much frailer since, he probably didn’t eat or sleep much after the trip from Kitakami.

Base attacks:

Jump: He does the same thing as the Mario Brothers in base games, he jumps in the air before stomping on the opponent and jumping again to hit them.

Bat: Now, this is a personal funny headcanon of mine, Kieran probably has green wooden baseball bat that is meant to mimicking Ogerpon’s cudgel. And he basically uses this to just swing and hit opponents with, I think’s funny.

Counters:

Jump: the same thing as the Mario brothers

Bat: Same thing except there’s a chance he may hit Millie.

Now for Pecharunt: he’s easily an all rounder with decent stats in everything except defense which is phenomenal.

Base attacks:

Shell Bash: He retreats into his shell before rushing towards the opponent before slamming into them, however, he would also jump in the air and slam back down.

Malignant Chain: it’s in the name, he throws two chains from his shells and hits the opponent (single target) dealing small damage before wrapping themselves and exploding dealing more damage.

Counters:

Shell Bunker: He retreats into his shell to block attacks to decrease the damage taken and absorb their impact so his next attacks become stronger for that turn.

Chain Punch: He uses 2 toxic chains from his shell halves as use them as arms and hands, he uses it to punch attacks to block them.

So, what do you think?

I WAS SO SCARED COZ I THOUGHT U WERE GONNA SPOIL ME BUT THIS WOULD BE AWESOME

SInce Pecharunt and PV work together, they're kinda a one-package deal so i'll shorten it, but I've thought of smth similar before, but thry use their pokemon instead of themselves, if that makes sense?

Like Gooby with her moves, PV can be an exception since he's TECHNICALLY half a pokémon if you think about it..

I do think Millie would be more tanky, and some attacks hit her, esp if PV were to target her...hypothetically. Gooby is more of the attacker, or Moof

Or whomever she sends out

I also did think of a cudgel-like thing, but instead it was like toxic chains wrapped up? I'd have to doodle it out at some point bc it's a vague image in my head...but this came from a Mario Supersluggers AU LMAO

Something PV can do is mix the moves from Pecharunt into his own, esp the closer he gets to power. He has a move where he gets two chains ti descend into the ground (Think of Phantom Force) and appear near hid opponent's feat, wrapping around or hitting them.

I also like to think he uses them for extra jump-boost or extra punch (Think of how the Snaptors use their necks to extend toward the bros)

Stuff like that! You also know how in BIS Bowser had a shell-defense move? I wanna say Kieran has smth like that, but he doesn't obtain that until say...maybe later. Ive genuinely thought of a mario-rpg style au for project venus, because I think it'd be silly.

Also yeah, I haven't decided movesets for Millie.

OH! OME MORE THING! The giants, in BIS! I like to think Milloe and Gooby have a super-move where Millie gets on Gooby, or Kieran gets on Treeplin, stuff like that. (I feel like even in-canon they'd do that) and perform an attack!

Lmk whatcha think!

[hawfstuff]

Who-lahan's your favorite Dulahan?

Short answer, very few aside from my own. Long answer, I'm not a terribly big fan of the Headless Horseman from Sleepy Hollow over shadowing all Dullahans in a pop-cultural sense. I feel like The HH under utilizes the Dullahans more interesting quirks. (no spine whips, no blood throwing, no fear of gold, no name calling, etc) He's fine. Bunch of examples under cut.

First off the classic 1949 Disney Sleepy Hollow

He's a lot of fun but just too simple. No substance other than to be something fast and scary to terrorize Ichabod Crane.

Fun to watch but WHATEVER. 1999 Timmy Burty Sleepy Hollow HH is pretty cool.

like this is fantastic atmosphere, until he finds his head.

Oh cool, a skull.

oh god put it back. This is hideous.

The HH from Fox's Sleepy Hollow is actually pretty excellent.

Making him generally faceless is an improvement.

The shotgun bandolier adds A LOT. I think this is a great Dullahan but it's really hard to find good photos of him online that aren't super underexposed or horribly compressed. I'm also not a terribly big fan of how Dullahans are used in anime, the vibe they give off in anime feels nasty. Celty from Durarara I don't actually mind that much. I think a motorcycle in place of a horse is a good way to adapt the Dullahan to more contemporary settings. But she's like the only GOOD example.

This however is just disappointing.

If I recall correctly this one was used to write a lot of "head gags" around including but not limited to "repeatedly being groped by one of her friends while her head is far away from her body and unable to maintain agency over it"

And I just fucking hate looking at this THING.

Also what's with all the scythes? Dullahans don't fuckin' use those, get that shit outta here. There are more examples but I don't care enough for them to post any more. They're all pretty bad, and they are all harem filler. GROSS. I also wish the Dullahan was used more in games, their depictions are usually pretty cool but it's almost exclusive to Japanese developers. Western game devs are sleeping on the Dullahan and I want to rectify that.

Golden Sun Dullahan is cool but I don't typically think of them as "super tanky armoured dudes", too bulky imo.

Castlevania Curse of Darkness Dullahan has a great outfit, but that sword and shield combo looks worse that the Final Fantasy 14 grapes, awful weapon design. Speaking of FF14

Cool design, but same issue. Far too bulky for my tastes. Dullahan also makes an appearance in SMT

This just kinda sucks. More recently we got one in Dragons Dogma 2

He's alright. And then there's the beloved Horseless Headless Horsemann from TF2.

He's just too goofy, I don't like him. There are also dozens of Headless horsemen in card games, but they all feel like they are just there to pad out the monster menagerie. My biggest issue with Dullahans in games is that they are almost exclusively a throw away boss/miniboss and never get to be a real primary focus of their respective games, despite how cool they are. For these reasons there hasn't ever been a Dullahan in popular culture I've REALLY latched on to. Out of all of these I only really like 1999 Sleepy Hollow HH and Fox's Sleepy Hollow HH, because they are the primary focus of their respective stories but this all keeps coming back to Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" as it's the only REAL substantive piece of fiction that uses the Dullahan in a strong manner, and even then he only shows up for the finale. A lot of this is pretty surface level, I'm sure there are far better depictions of Dullahans out there but none of them have made it back to me.

[vvooper]

ok I'm making another ffvii character pokemon team post because I cannot be stopped. here's barret

a couple of these were more difficult to come up with, but I didn't even have to think about a few of the others. details under the cut

his sprite is a recolor of lt surge. the outfit and sunglasses were made for him. nothing I could do about his arm though

species: coalossal

ability: steam engine

item: heavy-duty boots

moves: flamethrower, power gem, body press, iron defense

a coal pokemon named after corel seemed like an obvious choice, given its coal mining history. heavy-duty boots because we follow workplace health and safety standards in this household.

the rest of the set isn't all that exciting. flamethrower because of... yknow. and body press and iron defense more generally feature because of how tanky barret is

species: octillery

ability: moody

item: assault vest

moves: fire blast, octazooka, flash cannon, charge beam

dyne the octillery features as one of the vaguely gun-shaped pokemon.

I gave him the moody ability because he acts pretty erratically, especially in rebirth. all of his moves are also vaguely gun-shaped. charge beam specifically because he uses electrical mines in his rebirth fight.

species: kangaskhan

ability: scrappy

item: protective pads

moves: fake out, return, low kick, safeguard

barret is such a dad that we have to represent his relationship with marlene with kangaskhan. she gets the protective pads to help keep her safe :)

return because she loves her dad a lot. low kick because she's tiny and low to the ground I guess lmao. and safeguard because again barret just wants to keep her safe

species: avalugg

ability: own tempo

item: rocky helmet

moves: avalanche, take down, stomping tantrum, recover

I mean how could I not?

own tempo ability because terrorists tend to go against the grain a bit. in addition, barret's particular avalanche cell is doing their own thing separately from the rest of avalanche.

avalanche as the first move... again how could I not? take down because we're stickin it to shinra. and stomping tantrum represents barret's temper.

species: magmortar

ability: vital spirit

item: heat rock

moves: fire blast, focus blast, solar beam, sunny day

catastrophe is barret's ultimate limit break. this calls for another vaguely gun-shaped pokemon!

again, barret is rather spirited, so ability is vital spirit.

fire blast and focus blast are explosion-shaped moves. solar beam in particular was chosen because catastrophe really is just kind of a giant laser

species: ting-lu

ability: vessel of ruin

item: assault vest

moves: lash out, earthquake, payback, ruination

I wanted to continue with giving everybody one legendary, mythical, or ultra beast, but I actually had a pretty tough time landing on one for barret. I'm still not super happy with it, but I decided to go with the angle of how barret's actions against shinra are in large part motivated by revenge. the treasures of ruin seemed like decent options for that since they're embodiments of negative emotions. while wo-chien represents grudges, I thought ting-lu was more fitting as a ground-type given barret's previous occupation. I named it angermax after another of barret's limit breaks (and one that, under certain conditions, is actually stronger than catastrophe).

the moves lash out and payback both reflect barret's motivations against shinra. ruination of shinra is of course his ultimate goal.

don't know if anyone will actually be interested enough to follow these, but I'll do one for tifa next. you can find the one I did for cloud here