#but i haven't actually done a story mode playthrough with it

[epidaleacalamita]

the part of my brain that's been desperately trying to get me to go back to drawing is screaming in anguish as i start another ac6 playthrough

[frankensonnet]

I got very, very sick at the beginning of December, and while I was recovering I redid my Skyrim modlist again and started a new game. I decided to do a Stormcloak playthrough this time since I'd never done one before, and went searching through the lore to find good roleplay-related reasons to join with the Stormcloaks. It led me down an extensive, hyperfocus-driven Nord/TES lore rabbithole, and now I am utterly fascinated with what the plot of Skyrim could have been.

The last time I started a new character I had begun doing a brief write-up summarizing each play session, with the intent of maybe turning it into a little story. This time, I included Seasons of Skyrim in my load order and Time Flies for greater immersion and to make sure that I actually get to see the different seasons. I also have survival mode enabled and Take Notes installed, and was journaling from my character's perspective as I progress through the main plot.

I'm just now headed to High Hrothgar for the peace council during Season Unending, and I haven't started the civil war or any other major quest lines. I'm 107 in-game days in and have over 11,000 words of journal entries.

I really want to turn this into a 3rd person story. I've never actually written fanfiction before but there's some great stuff out there, and I've been reviving some of my creative hobbies lately to escape from the hell that is dissertation writing and job searching. If I did write something, it would be based my modded gameplay and personal headcanons rather than trying to stick the actual canon of TES (let's be honest, Bethesda doesn't bother to stick to their own canon, so why would I?). Either way, I'm enjoying getting back into Skyrim again.

[juggling-responsibilities]

A Written Let's Play? Plus: Creation!

Welcome, friends! I've decided to do something fun with my spare time, which is by writing a book report as I play through a videoed game. You know, like a normal person.

It's actually something I used to do here and there, just for fun. Some description of the scene, some screencaps, a nice interlude while I wax unpoetic about musical themes or narrative devices. It's something I miss doing, so I'm doing it. And, because I put it on a sideblog, you're only along for the ride if you choose to be. Which you have, so thank you.

So, before I start, a little bit of housekeeping under the cut - and, just for fun, I've started character creation a bit early. Those polls over on my main haven't quite finished yet, but they're wrapping up and there's a clear winner, so I've gone ahead and just done it.

Let's get a few things out of the way first, though.

What this will be:

A little bit of everything. I'm going to take the opportunity to just luxuriate in the space. Describe the story as I go? Absolutely. Take some opportunity to write from the perspective of my main character? Done and done. Play around with the Enhanced Edition's Photo Mode? Don't mind if I do.

Fun. I'm doing this for me, after all, so I'm going to make sure to amuse myself while doing it. Hopefully that also means I'll be amusing the rest of y'all in the process.

The chance for me to actually finish this game. I've started this several times and the farthest I've gotten is somewhere towards the end of Act 2? I think? It's a very big game, with lots of options, and I've been a bit spoiled for choice. Locking it down into a fun writing project will help me focus.

What this won't be:

An unspoiled run. As I mentioned above, I've played this before - albeit not completely. So I do know some of the story beats that are coming, and have seen further ahead in the game than I've actually played, so this won't be fresh reactions.

Spoiler-free. To that same point, since I'm writing about the game as I play it, I'm not going to hide things as they come up. I'm also not tagging for spoilers - this is a sideblog specifically for this, which means you have to actually follow and click through to see it, and at that point that's on you. I will put it behind a cut for reblogs, but that's about it.

Regularly-scheduled. Each post will be done when it's done, and I'm not setting a release schedule that I inevitably will fail to follow. Instead, to keep this fun, I'm just going to do it as and when I do it. We'll see how frequent that ends up being.

And now, with that out of the way: let's get to the real meat of the matter. Character creation.

Because I left the polls vague - choosing party roles, rather than classes - I left it open to choose something weird and fun for my playthrough. I also did not provide options for all the mythic paths, but rather the ones that I felt had some of the best story potential. Granted, they all have stories, but some of them are a bit wild and out there, and while fun to play, probably less fun trying to organize for a writing project - especially for a first playthrough. Aeon and Trickster are probably best for second or third times through the game, for example, since they both play with the actual medium of the storytelling as much as (if not moreso than) the base story of the game.

The choices being what they were, the poll resulted in a Ranged build, following the Legend path.

I have an archer on another save - going Slayer (Deliverer) full class route on an Angel path - so I didn't want to just copy that. I wanted to do something fun and new, so I looked up some other options - a lot of guides recommend a weird and fun ranged build for Wenduag, a potential party member, which focuses on throwing axes instead of a longbow, so I decided to cannibalize that. I also wanted to make it easier on myself and start with a pet - Wrath of the Righteous does some really great stuff with pets. Ranger gets a pet eventually, but there's one of the hybrid classes that starts with a pet at level 1, and that's Hunter.

Throwing axes, with an animal. Something weird and fun.

Maybe it was the fact that I've been looking through some second edition materials and had Extinction Curse on the brain, but that sounded like circus performer to me.

With a selection of a leopard companion (because circus), all that was left was to choose a name.

...fuck. I'm terrible at names. I usually ask my wife to give me good names for my character, she's very good at names. But I wanted to do this one for myself. Something that was true to the origins of the character, something that reflected the medium upon which this was posted.

What do you name a character who was built from a tumblr poll?

Perfect. Absolutely perfect.

I'll post her stats elsewhere - I know y'all are horny for numbers - but for now I think that's where I'll leave this.

[lillxart]

An Orc named Primrose, made her when I was 12. I wasn't making Skyrim ocs then so I never bothered to bring her into my universe. But maybe I will now? Who knows.

At first it was Ralof because as a lil' 12 year old I had never played an open world game like Skyrim before (I had only played story driven linear games or COD) so I was scared and very much alone. Since Ralof was the first one I saw in game I latched onto him.

Once I realized I could break narrative I did it before to make things easier. Now I just do it on and off when I feel like it since I have different ways of enjoying the game depending on playthrough.

We love our old men and Paartysnax. Seriously, I do love the whole concept of the Greybeards and I wish we could've done more training and stuff with them in game. I especially wanted more dialogue with GILF Paarthurnax since having a dragon we can actually talk to in TES universe is seriously sick as heck. And despite what I think most people believe they aren't pacifists. They just don't think using the thu'um for war and bloodshed is honoring to the Gods, and instead honoring the destructive and selfish nature of man. Yeah they don't wanna have a hand in Skyrim's politics, but does anybody want to deal with all that?

Yes and no. It's a mixed bag and depends on how I feel. When I'm not playing on PC and not using console commands to spawn in money dungeon crawling goes from "Something I do for fun" to "Something I need to do to survive" and there are times where I have to endlessly dungeon crawl for money then very slowly walk half way across the map for hours because the carriage driver is glitched and doesn't let me travel back to Riften so sell all my stolen goods for the theives guild questline--*currently doing that in AE* BUT other times I can go through tons of dungeons and not feel like that, mostly like I said though it's on PC where I can alter my carry weight XD (haven't exploited any of those enchanting glitches yet).

Probably Dragonsbridge. No LoreTM reason, I just think it's cool.

Favorite Jarl is papa Balgruuf the ballin' because of his dialogue and because as a 12 year old I latched onto any nice character because I was scared and alone XD Now as an adult I think he's objectively a good Jarl. Least favorite is Jarl Skald. He's literally just there. There's nothing special about him, nothing really unique, he's just an angry old Nord. In fact do ya'll even know who he is off the top of your head?

I liked the Dark Brotherhood Questline a lot and I wish it was longer and we had more NPC characters added in the Dawnstar Sanctuary. Maybe personal questlines we could do for the surviving members since obvi asking that for ALL the base DB assassins would be too much XD The ability to recruit would've been nice too.

The main questline. We needed more Alduin, maybe even a conversation with him, more Greybeards, and the gravity of Alduin's return needed to be more apparent. I think there needed to be just places in Skyrim that existed solely to be destroyed by the dragons. No quests, just strictly vanilla NPCS that died and buildings that got burned down because of the dragon attacks. Yeah maybe it's considered toothless and lazy to just plop in certain areas in your game that exist just for that purpose but this is Bethesda we're talking about XD so, in the end something would've been better than nothing.

I have a very love hate relationship with Miraak on Adept Mode Skyrim. It took me 12 tries to defeat him. But ignoring self imposed difficulty, my favorite villian is Miraak and my least favorite is Ancano. I wish we got more to his questline, the cultists, and more reward after defeating him. It's an amazing concept to speak to the first dragonborn, and the aesthetic of the DLC was on POINT. Ancano is my least favorite because yes of course plot twist IT WAS THE THALMOR ALL ALONG but while the COW questline is one of my favorites I will admit it's too fast XD and Ancano being a villian would've been so much better if we just had more dialogue with him or had the ability to built rapport with him over time. Like maybe in the COW questline we had an obligated fetch quest with him and by the end of it he like insults and says smth like 'I suppose you have your uses'. From that point on there are other optional quests we can do for him that are menial so we can build a better attachment. When he tries to kill us in the end maybe there's a moment where he considers sparing us for the final fight but then we continue to fight him and blah blah blah we kill the evil Thalmor. ALL THAT TO SAY, COW and Ancano not utilized, typical evil Thalmor villian, so he's my least favorite.

It's ok, like most things I wish it was better utilized. I very much enjoy getting the chance to engage in the politics of Skyrim since I find things like that fun and interesting.

Very cool bois. Wish there were more books or maybe even journals on them in game we could read. Fair mini-bosses.

No not really. In Snow White's situation at that point in her story she's been used and manipulated so much she can't enjoy finally 'saving the world' because honestly it might've been better if Alduin just ate it. She's the hero of the age, and has much more work to do before Skyrim is truly safe.

Skyrim Saturday Ask Game

hey everyone! since its saturday, i decided to throw together some skyrim asks! go wild, i can't wait to see how ppl respond to these <3

Helgen - Who was your first Skyrim character? Do you still make anything with them/play as them now?

Riverwood - Hadvar or Ralof? Why?

Whiterun - Do you tend to do Bleak Falls Barrow before or after meeting with Farengar?

Ivarstead - How do you feel about the Greybeards and Paarthurnax?

Morthal - Do you enjoy exploring dungeons and ruins? Why or why not?

Kynesgrove - What's your favorite non-major city/town/settlement?

Solitude - Who's your favorite Jarl? Who's your least favorite? Why these?

Riften - What's your favorite guild? How do you feel about their questline?

Markarth - If you could rewrite one questline in Skyrim, which would it be?

Blackreach - What's your favorite enemy in the game? What's your least favorite? Why?

Throat of the World - How do you feel about "Season Unending"?

Skuldafn - How do you feel about dragon priests?

Sovngarde - How would your Last Dragonborn celebrate after the battle with Alduin, or would they celebrate at all?

[dzpenumbra]

12/23/22

Alright well... over the past few days I have been followed by 12 bots. And I just tried to do my civic duty and report these things... and... I can't really find a good way to do that. I mean, the thing that made the most sense was "impersonation". Because, you know, they're not actually people, and they steal people's likenesses for profile pictures - which is surreally creepy, I mean honestly, imagine running across a profile that wasn't yours that had your face as a profile pic, good lord my heart goes out to those people, that's haunting. But Tumblr won't even let you file an impersonation report unless you are the person in the photograph. Is this a thing where fucking idiot teenagers cried wolf too many times? This shit is out of control.

I mean, for me it's just obnoxious, and super depressing, but for a site as a whole it's just a really fuckin bad look. Just sayin.

Okay. I'm done talking about that. XD Today was... unexpectedly productive.

I woke up early, like 6 hours of sleep early. Like my essential oil diffuser hadn't even gone into hibernation mode because it hadn't finished its 6 hour shift yet. I woke up and went back to sleep a few times, tried to browse social media to reset the vibes. It's just a comfort thing, again my dreams haven't even been bad, just vivid. But I'm so fucking useless to the world when I first wake up that I don't even have the wherewithal to remember to write my dreams down. I remember reflexively trying to capture highlights when I first woke up, but it was like trying to hold water in trembling hands or something. I guess I'm just out of practice. I need to get back into doing a pre-sleep mantra kinda thing to remind my subconscious to practice, every second counts when it comes to dream recall.

When I finally got up for real, I got kitty some food, got some breakfast and decided to start recording for a new Rimworld series. Yep, a new project. Another one. And a fucking movie, to boot. So the concept is to take a playthrough and record it, paying close attention to story points the best I can and trying to get good cinematic shots. I want to do a sorta... RP playthrough, voicing over the main character through the form of a journal or log or something, recalling her story. Or someone reading her journal or something. That part I won't be able to figure out until the story is over. But I'm doing the new DLC and I'm playing the Sanguiphage scenario, but with a bunch of mods for more immersion and personality. And I plan to do a movie of it, rather than do it episodic like my last one. And very in-character. I think it'll come out pretty cool, time will tell. It's a good longer term project because I can do other projects while it plays itself in the background.

The first playthrough was a bust, it went south very quick and the story wasn't really interesting. The setup was amazing, but they just got taken out by wildlife in the first week so that was like... bummer. So I did yoga, showered and went skating. Skating was pretty sick. I got a few 3 shuvs pretty clean, I got a standing still heelflip (which I haven't gotten in probably 2 years?), a moving kickflip and found this... I don't know what it was, some kind of big metal cover on something? I packed snow around it and set up a ride-on grind and it slid okay. I got a 5-0 across the whole thing, it was like 8 feet or something. But... yep, there's a but... I tried a boardslide, and I really was hesitating for a while because I didn't know how it was gonna go... and there was a big screw thing poking up that I didn't see... and it tore up the bottom of my board pretty bad. And now there's a big groove in it and it just... killed all my speed. Even on flat. Even on hills. I'll see how much tuning it up will do, but to be honest, it's really deep. So... fingers crossed, we'll see how that goes tomorrow.

Came back, made buffalo chicken pizza, which came out really good. Did all the dishes and cleaned the counters. Killed it. Played/recorded a new Rimworld playthrough over dinner and it looks promising. When I was getting a little... bored of it... I had something pop into my head. I don't know how I got to it but... when I was packing, some random dude sent me a message on Reddit. He was replying to a post he put up 9 FUCKING YEARS AGO. He was requesting a Baroness tab, back then I did full-band tabulature, transcribing by ear for every instrument. You know, as educational tools, so people can learn how to play the songs they love. That's how I learned guitar. My acoustic case is still full of printed out sheets of tabs, like dozens of them. This dude wanted me to tab out Mtns. (The Crown and Anchor) by Baroness, off Yellow, and I didn't know the song well. But I took it on. I remember doing it, and getting really close to finishing it. Then I'm guessing my life went to shit, because I never sent it to him. And that harddrive is now pretty much fucked. Pretty sure, not really brave enough to try to get shit off of it again.

So... I had a thought. Why the hell am I putting in effort to make Christmas gifts for people who treat me like garbage? Why don't I give this a go, make a special gift for someone who obviously really cares about this song so much that they're going to follow up on it almost a decade later. And I did. And I fucking hyperfocused on it the way that only transcribing music and super inspired art can do for me. I sunk into that for probably 3-4 hours? Lost all perception of time. I transcribed most of both electric guitars and bass, drums are gonna be tomorrow along with the acoustic and lead guitars. I'd say the bulk of it is done though. Pretty cool feeling. It's been a while.

So, I'm gonna drop the tab to that guy on Christmas, and he better have Guitar Pro because I really don't feel like doing any of that .gp5 conversion or - god forbid - make it a pdf or some shit. I mean, I can if I have to, but like... I put a lot of work into getting the sound right, you know? They're kinda meant to be experienced in Guitar Pro.

So yeah, that was pretty much my day. Now it's almost 3AM again. And all the snow is disappearing. But it's okay, I have plenty of really cool shit to do.

Kitty is calling, bed time.