#except I really fucking suck at those

[erinwantstowrite]

hey erin are you writing rn?

I am in my backyard playing my guitar except I forgot that it's really fucking cold outside and I'm pretty sure I hear a possum somewhere but I'm kind of ignoring it because I mean what the fuck is the possum going to do. unless it's the raccoon that's been harassing my family for the past like 2 years then maybe I should be worried but it's probably fine

[fujii-draws]

OKAY! Chatot rant in tags below! Read at your own discretion.

[ohmigoshiloveu]

Okay so like. I still haven't managed to get myself to finish episode 9, so I don't fully know how Theo's glow up finishes, but regardless I fucking love relistening to Emizel's section of episode 1 and like. Fuck man Theo does a lot of growing. Like he's a little bit pathetic at the beginning of the series. He's so, so brave during the alleyway fight, but he sounds shaky and scared and like a sopping wet pathetic baby the entire time. Charlie specifically describes him as not very alert, not a great fighter, and gives him this little moment where it takes him a second to manage to crush a soda can. He botches the check to beat Emizel in Smash Bros so there's a chance he sucks at the related skills (dexterity and computers I think?), but also after he loses Charlie specifically has him sound super frustrated and conclude that he should've 'stayed in his lane'. When Emizel says 'We'll do what we do best,' and Theo immediately responds with 'drink soda?' so fast that the other players notice it. Charlie might've had that as a predetermined character thing. Theo drinks soda. There's not much else to him.

Which creates this interesting dynamic between him and Emizel, because Emizel is so much better at him at all of these skills that the people around them (a FUCKING GANG) value. Emizel's perceptive, and agile, and strong, and a great fucking fighter irl and in videogames AND he always sounds badass. He's the top dog, the apex predator in their social circle. And I think that colors their relationship a lot? Like Theo has to look up to Emizel. I bet that Theo's looked up to Emizel since they first met, maybe Emizel came crashing into his life doing something epic and Theo thought it was the greatest shit ever.

On the flip side, I was getting a few hints of resentment? Hear me out! It's that 'should have just stayed in my lane' line. He's painfully aware how great Emizel is, compared to how much he's (from his perspective!) just a one trick pony. He's here to drink soda and say funny things, that's all most people want from him and he fucks up whenever he tries to do anything else!

And later in the segment Theo snarkily brings up a medicine check that Emizel had just fucked up in like this super backhanded, super passive aggressive way. That could be him wanting to rub Emizel's one singular fuck up in his face (especially because Theo was having a Moment about how he feels like people only see him as the soda guy, so any feelings of inadequacy would've been dialed up to eleven, so if there was any time for him to resent Emizel it'd be then), but it could also be that he was frustrated with Emizel being an ass (Emizel had just guessed that Theo's dream was to be a nurse, which was flat out wrong, and that's literally what set up the backhanded comment. Theo was saying something like 'thank fuck you don't wanna be a nurse cuz you sure fucked up with nursing that guy earlier.' It could also be that Emizel literally almost forgot Theo's name. Theo literally gave him the 'th' sound, it might've just been a bit Charlie was doing or it could've been Theo being AWARE that Emizel almost forgot his name. Or! It could be that in this moment, where Theo was confiding in Emizel about feeling like being the soda guy was all anyone ever saw in him, Emizel said something to the affect of 'well yeah Soda's the fun one.' Emizel doesn't think before he speaks and literally has a 1 in empathy. Just because he loves Theo doesn't mean he's not gonna blunder into being a complete and utter asshole to him. I'd hazard to say Emizel accidentally being an ass to people he cares about is a running theme).

But also all of that might come down to Charlie still getting the character down. Or, because I've theorized before that Theo might not've been supposed to survive the first Gabriel fight, the little hints of bitterness might've been intentional (even if they were completely improvved and Charlie didn't mean to add that to Theo's character) because Charlie was trying to shove as much character into this character before he was gone, but once it became clear that Theo was going to stick around longer he dropped it. As far as I remember, that bitterness is completely gone in all later interactions we see with Theo. OR! It could be that the bitterness drops because they've both got bigger fish to fry from that point onward, what with Theo's Shilo Incident TM, Emizel's vampirism, the Weylin twins. He doesn't have time to be bitter, he's too busy worrying about losing a cornerstone of his identity or helping his best friend adjust to being a fucking vampire now. And then after he learns to live without soda that basically negates his feelings of inadequacy- like, getting over the idea that he's nothing if he's not the soda guy would be required for him to give up on being the soda guy. And then Emizel would drift back into JUST being a guy to aspire to instead of also being a reminder of Theo's short comings, and then drift even further down into being 'guy who is actually going through it and has to overcome his own demons just like I had to overcome mine'. Like, I think we got to watch Theo slowly start to take Emizel off this pedestal in real time (he still definitely thinks Emizel's hot shit tho. Emizel's his boy, after all.)

Regardless, even if Theo did resent Emizel a little in the beginning, it's so fucking clearly overshadowed by how much he fucking loved him. And like, how could he not? Imagine you're Theo, critically low self esteem, and the literal coolest guy you know fucking LOVES you. Like, Emizel keeps consistently going out of his way to pull Theo up to his level and to treat him as an equal (mostly. Sometimes protectiveness bleeds through, like in his hypothetical fang scenario in ep 1 where he predicts there being five Fangs to fight and he says he can take three and Theo can take two (which in itself is still incredibly kind to Theo. Like, boy, you thought Theo was gonna be able to take out two whole guys? Hell no.) But that could also be chalked up to Emizel just being a cocky ass who wants to show off). Like dude, c'mon. Emizel might be a reminder of everything that Theo's not, but he's also probably Theo's biggest cheerleader. He wholeheartedly thought he was being supportive when he said he thought Theo'd make a great nurse! In all seriousness, though, even if it ultimately discourages him, Theo playing that Smash game against Emizel was at least a little bit of proof of him decidedly not 'staying in his lane,' and Emizel seems to inspire that! Later in that segment he challenges Theo to see which of them can break one of the Fangs kneecaps first! I bet Emizel challenged him to stupid competitions a lot, and that got Theo fired up and competitive in return!

And even when Emizel's not building Theo up, he's still giving Theo special attention, or readily receiving any attention Theo gives him. If nothing else, even at his lowest points that might've made Theo feel cool by association.

On Emizel's part, I think he's like, possibly completely oblivious to any turmoil Theo's going through? Like he thinks Theo's the shit and genuinely sees him as an equal. I'm 99% sure that Theo being his right hand man happened because Theo would've put himself into the role (in episode one before he gets all of his character development he's pretty much always looking to Emizel for what to do, and still more or less does whatever he says up to where I'm at in the series, with refusing to leave the alleyway being the only exception I remember). I think if Theo'd had higher self esteem or been less eager to defer to Emizel, Emizel would've happily gone about his business slotting Theo into more of a partner role. He tells Theo to run from that alleyway because Theo'd taken a fucking devastating hit and Emizel was sure he could handle himself, not because he knows Theo sucks at fighting. He tries to turn Theo into a cool vampire. He convinces Shilo that Theo'll be a valuable asset to raiding the Weylin warehouse and they take Theo with them instead of having him stay behind with the car like Grefgore, despite Theo being the one who actually knows how to drive. He tells Theo about being a vampire even though he keeps it a secret from everyone else, confides in Theo that 'yeah he might absolutely be susceptible to going into a frenzy like Shilo did.'

When you get down to it, Emizel pretty much tells Theo everything he would think is relevant, with two notable exceptions. Maybe three if you count him not telling Theo he has nine lives like a cat but tbh I think he might've just forgot. Or maybe he gets to it later, or maybe he did tell him and I forgot! idk man! But! Those other two things. First off, he like. Pointedly does not tell Theo that he's a prince. Like when they were doing the recap on the way to the Weylin warehouse, there's like. Charlie gives Condi an opening to say it, a little 'is there anything else?' and Emizel just. Doesn't. And the second one is that (at least where I'm at) Emizel never comes clean about bloodbonding Theo. Maybe it just hasn't come up yet, but still. It fits a pattern of Emizel not wanting to admit something that makes him, like, ABOVE Theo somehow. He sees Theo as an equal, and a precious one at that, he doesn't want things to get weird between them because he's literal royalty, and he doesn't want Theo's life to literally revolve around him like it would under a level three blood bond- and doesn't want to admit that he even considered it, even if he did it without really understanding what it was.

And Emizel backing off from ghoulifying Theo after Arthur explains what it actually entails kinda leads into a far more headcanon-y relationship analysis thing so um. Feel free to skip the next paragraph.

So! Like. Why the fuck was Emizel so attached to Theo being Soda. Like he gets over it decently quick, cuz that's his buddy and it's what Theo wants, so like. Whatever. But like, if I'm right about Theo always looking up to Emizel from the moment they met, there might've been some wiggle room between when they first became friends and when Theo became Soda. And like, before Theo became Soda, being Emizel's buddy would probably be the only thing he'd feel he had going for him? Which would've made it even harder for Emizel to get them both on equal footing, and I think that's just... really unappealing to him. Like! Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Emizel loves having people kiss up to him and respect him and blah blah blah, I just think Theo being his boy and Emizel treating him like a partner go hand in hand. Either they weren't best friends yet or Emizel was just. Kind of uncomfortable and eager to push Theo into growing into something more than a hypeman. And then the soda incident occurs, and it gives Theo SOMETHING to define himself by, something people like him and know him for that's got nothing to do with Emizel, and maybe the initial soda incident was bad, but having that sense of identity and falling into what kind've feels like a class clown kinda role might've helped get Theo over his self esteem issues long enough for Emizel to go 'oh you're actually super cool. sweet.' and then blah blah blah they get super close like they are in canon. And then whenever Theo seems like he's backsliding into what he was before the soda incident, Emizel tries to course correct not because he doesn't think Theo's any fun without soda, but because he's made the mental connection that Soda without soda turns into less of a best friend and more of a follower, which as stated before he probably really doesn't want from Theo specifically. but idk. pure conjecture here.

Anyways, above all else, Theo's important to Emizel. I really, really like the idea that Theo was supposed to be like a brother to him (which. Again pointing at my 'Theo was supposed to die in episode 1' theory, can you IMAGINE the angst Emizel could've had about that? Lose one brother and then someone else claiming to be your brother shows up? It would've felt like some hellish, not-worth-it trade. Like a betrayal, like accepting Shilo might mean replacing Theo, and how could he ever?)

And Emizel's important to Theo! But unlike Emizel (who I'm 99% sure is gonna have some kinda moment with Theo but I genuinely cannot see him loving Theo in any other way than the way he does now), Theo has the bonus of having his view of Emizel have a clear trajectory to evolve over the course of the campaign. Like I said, he seems to be getting more confidence in himself and like, not gonna get into the stuff I've had spoiled beyond episode 9 but it seems like Theo's gonna get a lot more comfortable being a proper leader and not just a number two. He's gonna have an easier time seeing Emizel as an equal, and I think that's fucking awesome!

I could be completely off base, but if I never watch another episode then I'll never be proven wrong. So. Ya know.

[dailykugisaki]

Day 347 | id in alt

Kugisaki hasn't been around Gojo enough to gaf about him LMAO.

[lacnunga]

In the wake of the IA situation, I've seen a lot more posts circulating about using your local library and I just. Sigh

[chilapis]

if you’ve ever been mean to the sweet little girl that is paimon i will kill you. i pray for public interest that this is common knowledge.

[hballegro]

highly recommend livetweeting things you watch to your friends or family because then you get shit like

[skeletalheartattack]

Favourite personal weapon?

(you CANNOT say battleaxe!)

probably scythe. like i know it's not really good at all for like. combat. but like look at that shit. pretty dope blade while i hold the stick. sooo cool.

[idontliketomatoesleavemealone]

My heart is beating so hard I’m so pissed about Everything rn

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[gibbearish]

dont starve is kicking my ass btw

[katierosefun]

ooo oooooo it’s going to be one of those tiring days!

[synthetic-sonata]

it is a good day to not know anything about smps

[thedarklyblue]

hiii i want to quit my job <3

[celestrials]

I will never ever forget or forgive ppl for asking me if I was ever even a furry when they thought that my bf and I were breaking up. That shit was so fucked bc like???? Lmao like yea haha I totally created a fursona and spent hundreds of dollars in commissions in the last couple of years for pretend! It was all a facade! I was only pretending so my bf could like me more! You got me! Hahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahshahhahahahah🤪🤪🤪

[stormfang-gnash]

I have 700+ hours in Skyrim across ten years, but ever since Starfield came out and was absolute ass, I've been freed from Skyrim hypnosis. Skyrim is not inherently a good game, it's just the only game of its caliber on the market. There isn't really another open world fantasy arpg with an actually rewarding exploration system and fun quests that lets you make a character and choose how you want to play the game yourself that isn't a Soulsborne/Soulslike, or at least I haven't found one yet. I realized I don't love Skyrim for what it is, because there is certainly a reason why the mere thought of a completely unmodded run makes me cringe into my soul, I love the idea of Skyrim, what it could be if it wasn't held back by so many broken or unfleshed systems. I have so many thoughts about this game, click the read more if you dare.

I could start like everyone else does, by talking about the bugs, and I think they are important to mention. Bethesda always gets off the hook for bugs when we wouldn't accept this level of bugginess from any other studio, and I think it is time we acknowledge that. And it's not like all the bugs that happen are funny mammoths falling out of the sky, there were multiple gamebreaking bugs that if you didn't have a recent manual save, you could lose hours of progress, including in the main questline itself. I distinctly remember getting the glitch where you talk to Esbern through the door in the Ratway in the main quest and he's says "ok let me open the door and we'll talk" or whatever, but the door never opened. This was long before I started modding too, so I was either straight up vanilla or vanilla plus the unofficical patch - which is crazy to me that modders need to patch the game because Bethesda won't, but I digress. The bugs are an issue, but are unintentional. I think Skyrim isn't good not just because of the bugs, but moreso because what WAS intended wasn't great, even for the time.

All three major forms of combat are bland in their own respective ways, for starters. For melee, its literally just hold the attack button with the occasional power move to break shields and very little variety in how you can approach combat. Even if you stealth in, once you enter melee combat its just swing, swing, swing, open a menu and eat a wheel of cheese, he's blocking so hit with a heavy attack, swing, swing, block, swing, swing, swing... You don't have to read movements, no riposte, no dodge or parry or anything crazy. I don't think it's a tall ask to give me a dodge and reward me for using it, give me a parry that I can use to punish an overly aggressive enemy, but I can still just hold block if I'm not able to learn how to do those techniques, but also pressure me to learn to engage with the combat system by having enemies break my block/stun me with heavies unless you parry. It could have learned a few things from beat em ups or hack-n-slashes of the time, tbqh. Not to mention every weapon in the game is the same, something I noticed after adding the Immersive Weapons mod. There's much cooler LOOKING weapons, but an axe is just a stronger and slower sword and a mace is just a stronger and slower axe, and the same is true for two handed weapons. There's no variance to playstyle, something that had been true in other titles of its day. Monster Hunter comes to mind, with unique movesets for all of its weapons so no two feel the same. They didn't have to go hard in the paint, but make my choice meaningful. And because the damage bumps are fixed to whether or not you choose sword, axe, or mace, they can't really get too creative with anything else, which dumbs it down into the realm of boringness. There's no room for reach weapons like polearms, fun but impractical fantasy weapons like scythes or buster swords, chained weapons like flails, thrown daggers or kunai, finesse swords like katanas or rapiers, different damage types and resistances, nothing. Combat feels the same for you no matter what weapon you pick up and I think that's one of the worst choices they made. It makes it so it's super easy to pick up as a new gamer, but once you've been playing for long enough, there's nothing to delve deeper into to keep you interested in it.

Spells are worse though, because the damage doesn't scale with your level literally at all. There's very little difference between a level 100 destruction mage casting flames and a level 15 destruction mage doing it. The only damage amp spell casters get is a paltry non-scaling 25% to one particular element (meaning if you want to use all 3 kinds of damage spells (excluding radiant since its not a primary type, another piece of squandered potential) you have to spend 3 skill points to get max damage on each), one other small bump if you dual cast, but that shuts out other playstyles, like spellswording or even just having ice spike in one hand and lightning bolt in the other. So the only way to keep scaling your damage to enemies is to sink all your stat points into magicka so you can cast highier tier spells that will actually hurt high level enemies like draugr deathlords. You can't even augment your damage via enchanting, all it does is reduce mana cost so you can cast more. And you'll need to cast more, cause the aiming is ass. You know how DnD/BG3 has point and click spells like Magic Missle or Scorching Ray? None of that. Everything is an actual projectile, and the projectile is SLOW. I have no issue hitting moving targets with arrows, but with a spell? Forget it. And iirc unless you have a mod to turn off friendly fire, stuff like chain lightning WILL hit your followers/nonhostiles, which is fine in DnD to make you weigh the cost of using a high impact spell at the cost of allied HP vs switching to something with less or no AOE and less damage, but annoying in Skyrim when Fireball and Chain Lightning are the only spells at that level and the enemy is a deathlord.

Even the stealth archer that is the best way to play isn't as engaging as it could be, because there's no incentive to be GOOD at stealth. There's no red alert phase enemies go into if evidence of your presence is found, they just see a dead comrade, look for you for a minute and a half, then go "🤷‍♀️ must've run off" and that's it! And the AI is so bad if you have a few levels in sneak they can be looking right at you and STILL not see you. The gameplay as a sneak archer is similar to the melee in that its just get a pick, pick, oops they saw me so I'll hide now, pick, pick, pick, run and hide, pick, pick, miniboss so kite around it/switch to melee and the dungeon is clear. I noticed as I was writing this that I have never had a save where I was a straight up melee or magic combat user and actually continued playing it. Every character I have that I played to level 30 besides the wizard where I was hoping it would get fun eventually (it didn't) is some sort of hybrid spellsword or paladin because doing just one or the other highkey... is Boring! But I'm not sure if it's worse than having to stop combat to open a menu and switch spells. Even with SkyUI, this shit is gross and clunky to use, and it makes combat come to a screeching halt.

Crime is another thing I feel is... eh? It doesn't really feel like people's opinion of you changes based on your actions like they do in Morrowind or even Oblivion. In fact, the entire Speech tree is completely useless beyond lowering shop prices and fencing items, because you can almost never use it to fish out information from people, manipulate people, piss people off, or get a read on someone's opinion of you because that information is literally irrelevant. Everyone's disposition towards you is just "you're the main character so I guess I'll just dump 5 sentences of exposition on you without any hesitation". If I attack Nazeem in broad daylight and serve my sentence or pay my fine, the guards may comment, but nothing of value is lost. No one seems to dislike the player for their actions, or refuse them service or anything. You might lock yourself out of a quest or follower, but it never felt like anyone had much to say if I did commit crimes, unless it's LITTERING, because THEN people will come up to you and either tell you to knock it off or ask to take what you dropped. Even when you're obviously trashing a room, they just ask you to stop, they don't get aggressive. It's not like even RDR2 where the townsfolk will loathe you after you've done a crime, but bringing your honor back up clears the hatred townsfolk hold towards you. People aren't distrustful of you if you're a werewolf or vampire unless you're caught doing explicitly non-human things even if you're in the monster hunter guild, if you are a non-Nord dragonborn, you experience no racism, like there's just... so much that could've been done here. Speech is the most underwhelming skill because it's never utilized beyond things relating to gold - intimidation or persuasion are such rare dialogue choices, why even bother? It's rare that you can actually defuse a situation with words anyway, and it's telling that the only way to really be able to raise speech is to buy and sell over and over rather than just talking to people and trying to glean information from them, being able to defuse arguments, or pick fights.

The characters lack depth I didn't know was possible until Baldur's. I can talk to a lot of major NPCs and companions and get the jist of their life story in BG3, but what can I say about Lydia, or the wood elf you can pick up in Riverwood who is so forgettable I can't even remember his name? Major players in the story like Ulfric or Jarl Balgruf? Even my beloved Kharjo, what do I actually know about him? He's in Skyrim because he blew all his money on gambling while wasted on Skooma, and he has his mom's amulet. That's it. There is ONE fleshed out follower and its Serana. And she ironically is the ONLY NPC you could really and truly get attached to, the only one with a shred of personality, and she rejects your marriage proposal. You can't make this shit up. I get its partly because they have so many companions, but I'd rather have just one masc and femme follower of each race that have fully finished character sheets with ideals and motivations than 50 stubs with non-existant personalities (and this way at least the "uglier" races have more options bc there's so few Khajiit, Argonian, and Orc romances you could count them on 2 hands). And genuinely, this is the central issue with what's wrong with I think most of their titles after Skyrim. They focus too much on having more, more, more, that what they do have winds up uninteresting because it wasn't developed enough. Wide as an ocean with so much you COULD potentially do and how much it offers, deep as a puddle with how much everything is lacking because of a lack of focus on the smaller details. You don't earn your romance, you just wear an amulet and talk to the npc you want to marry. You barely interact with any adopted kids other than "yes bring that skeever home" "no go to bed" "ok ill play tag with you". Even one of the tasks I do every game almost, building the homestead, what is really the difference between buying and furnishing a house in a major hold versus the homestead, other than it being time consuming and slightly modular? Unless you grow plants, prebuilt homes offer the same amenities except the forge/smelter iirc, and your spouse will occasionally hand you gold from stuff they've "sold" despite you never stocking the store. There's such a missed opportunity to actually RUN a store that you have to keep stocked, giving you a decent way to earn passive income with all the trinkets, armor, and weapons you loot. Your spouse and kids should make occasional trips to town for fun and supplies, and you could easily have small optional quests to do for them, almost like a Haruka's Requests system. You don't have to do everything she asks (I sure don't when it's Koi-Koi), but it raises your bond if you do.

The one thing I can say with confidence the game got right is exploration. You can pick up a quest in Whiterun to go kill someone near Riften, and while you're making the trip, you run past 20 different dungeons you could stop in and get new loot, you might find more sidequests along the way, kill a dragon, run into a radiant encounter, pick new herbs for poisons, fill soul gems for enchanting later, etc, etc. It's a positive loop that keeps you locked in like "ok I'll just do this one last small thing" but that thing is so connected to everything else that it builds on itself to keep you invested. It's a truly brilliant way of handling exploration, and I see it echoed in BotW and TotK and I'm glad for it, it is truly the best thing to come out of the game. Truly a journey-not-destination kind of thing, and because of that I don't fast travel nearly as much as I walk places. But everything else.... sucks.

And I really do hate that it sucks, I'm not a hater just because, as evidenced by my playtime, once upon a time Skyrim was my favorite game, and stayed in my top 5 for years. I want to keep enjoying it, but partially because I've been milking dopamine out of it for 10 years, and partly because I can see behind the veneer, it doesn't hit the same anymore. And the central issue I have with coming back to Skyrim now is the same issue I have with Starfield - I've seen every system and idea that's lacking done so much better by other titles. No Man's Sky did everything Starfield wanted to do with space travel MILES better than Starfield and I don't even play NMS anymore, and it was 8 years old when Starfield launched. And because I'm not a broke 15 year old with a shitty laptop anymore and I can actually play all kinds of newer titles and emulate older ones, I've seen everything that Skyrim tries to do done better by so many other games that it's impossible to go back, even by its contemporaries in 2011. I try not to judge the lack of meaningful stealth mechanics too harshly, but Splinter Cell and MGS3 had already set the bar on that many years prior; I try not to judge the NPCs/companions, but Mass Effect is often praised for it's cast of colorful characters and the ways you can romance them too, and it predates Skyrim by a few years; melee combat had been so iterated upon by this point that they could have pulled out any popular non-FPS title and chosen that to look at, or even referred back to the original DnD blueprint; and I've ALWAYS hated that vanilla had no way of either being able to keep track of or summon your horse when Red Dead Redmption came out a year prior and had an icon to to show the horse on your map, and Ocarina of Time, a game that was then as old as Skyrim is now, gave you a method to summon the fucking horse on command. And it is hard to not look at newer titles like Red Dead Redemption 2, or Baldur's Gate 3, both of which are absolute masterclasses on open worlds with strong narratives and compelling NPCs and companions even despite some of their flaws, and NOT judge Skyrim now that I've seen what COULD have been with more care and attention to detail, and probably an engine that isn't Creation. Especially now after Starfield and even FO76 where I can clearly see that Skyrim wasn't overly ambitious and just couldn't achieve all it wanted to do before it had to be shipped (though it plays a part, I'm sure), but everything is the way it is by design.

now its time to bring the haterism

if you think multiple are bad vote for the one you hate the most <3