#i gave up on fixing their shit and the presentation looks so disjointed i want to THROTTLE them

[the-multiverse-theory]

it is so late and i am so sleepy but if I go to bed my miserable group presentation tomorrow will approach faster and even the thought of it makes want to die so no sleep for cat W. multiversetheory

[cardinalfeng]

LoZ: BotW Review

I know I don’t really like post game reviews but I’ve loved Zelda for a really long time and I wanted to talk about this new installment because I just finished it.

Let it be said however: Spoiler Warning! I’m talking about all of the main quests and a small amount of the side quests.

So, Let’s start with the great plateau. I thought this area was ingenious. Not only did it get you right back into the feeling of Zelda, with locations like the Temple of Time, but I felt like it was really a mission statement for the game, and I loved it. I encountered the Stone Talus right after the Stasis trial, so I had the hammer, but it took a few tries to realize that the hammer was a better weapon than the swords I had. I thought the sense of mystery throughout the entire area was awesome, and the fact that there were somethings which were just as hard as areas in the rest of the game, like the decayed guardians near one of the shrines. And the fact that you re-encounter the old man at the Temple of Time was awesome, because you have 4 spirit orbs and so, before you know to look at the steeple, you just walk inside and see the goddess statue glowing.

I also liked the run from the Great Plateau up to Kakariko Village. On that trip I encountered moblins and lizalfos, which were the other two extremely common enemies in Hyrule, and the difficulty spike was present but manageable. That whole trip also introduced Hestu, and had one of the most amazing tonal shifts in the game. I went through the East Barracks at night, and it was an extremely hard and lonely area, especially when I had like 2 swords and a few arrows. However, upon leaving that area, you meet a friendly NPC, and then a stable, which leads to not only catching horses, but also changes from the loneliness to feeling like you have friends somewhere at least. 

In Kakariko Village, I feel like they capitalized really hard on the Sheikah. It’s where you learn about the memories, and Hyrule’s past, and the Sheikah’s past, and the Yiga. It was pretty intense in terms of the whole story line. But, it again helped me feel less lonely in Hyrule. And the side quests weren’t hard, but they were full of personality. 

The hike to Hateno Village was also interesting, because of the sheer number of dead guardians you see near Fort Hateno. However, the Hateno Village shrine was pretty terrible. The motion controls are pretty inaccurate and unfun, and I won by basically cheating. Though the goal is to show what the switch can do, I really felt that it was more tedium than fun. I felt the same way about bringing the ancient flame up to the Tech Lab. It was mostly just walking through the village. For comparison, I really enjoyed the Akkala one. However, the NPC’s in both Hateno and Kakariko were fantastic and full of personality, in a way that felt more like an older Zelda, like LTTP.

Meta-game I think was pretty interesting. Sure, it’s basically just Korok seeds, Shrines, Towers, and scavenging. However, the sheer number of things you can find really just filled up my time. And things like shrines and korok seeds are genius little ways to have tons of puzzles filled in the game. Such as the “Steady thy heart” shrine, which was a mini-dungeon, and on the way to finding it, I found like 2 korok seeds, and there’s a bit of combat involved too. And the towers were also their own puzzle-combat combination, which just felt very Zelda, even if it was such a new feature. However, the Gerudo Tower, for the Gerudo Highlands was a load of bullshit, and I had to look it up. It’s just an issue of placement. 

The Divine Beasts were a really cool idea, and I think that there were enough variations in the formula of get to a place, do a fetch quest, fight the divine beast, finish the dungeon, beat the boss. I really liked the Zora’s Domain one, because of the sheer factors involved. The Zora people hate you, you need a shit ton of shock arrows (you didn’t but I played ball), and you need to get inside Vah Ruta. I felt like that mission wasn’t just to get inside of Ruta, but really for Link’s sake, and that of Hyrule. It was multi-layered, and the fetch quest was mostly combat. And Ruta was an interesting gimmick, and I enjoyed the dungeon in its entirety. 

The Goron City quest was fun, and people often harsh on it for getting into Eldin and not being fireproof. However, on either stable next to Eldin you can get fireproof elixirs or fireproof lizards. Plus, Eldin is literally crawling in fireproof lizards. I thought that Rudania as a whole was really fun, but I wish that they’d stuck with the darkness inside Rudania that was there at the start. It might be annoying at first, but the puzzle possibility and interesting mechanics were too good to pass up. I think Arin Hanson is right, however, that the boss cutscenes shouldn’t happen when they do. Rather, when you’re about to fight the Divine Beast, to see it in all of it’s glory. Because I could decide for myself to fight the massive volcano lizard.

My least favorite quest was Vah Medoh. First, getting to Rito Village wasn’t hard. It’s not in a dangerously cold area, Tabantha tower is really close, and Medoh is right above it, so it’s impossible to miss. Second, the fetch quest was really close and not hard to get to, and the task to get Teba on your side was aggressively easy. You have 3 minutes and it took me 30 seconds. Then the battle against Medoh just felt like the same task as the flight range, but with bomb arrows, and one less target. With Teba taking fire, and with Teba as cold and flat of a character, there’s no collateral for Link. Even after you find out that he’s been hurt, I didn’t care because the game gave me no reason to. The Dungeon wasn’t hard, and it’s gimmick felt shockingly similar to Rudania. The boss was easy, and as long as I had arrows, didn’t even mean Link had to get within close range. Furthermore, Revali is annoying and condescending, and has few redeemable qualities until after the boss fight, making me wonder why I even freed that asshole.

I liked the Gerudo quest, but I wish that it didn’t have the rupee gate to get inside Gerudo Town, and it felt like 2 dungeons in one. The Yiga Hideout and Naboris were both a dungeon in their own right. Naboris’s gimmick was annoying at points, and the boss fight had too many phases, but it all felt original and interesting. (Note: I did the beasts in order of Ruta, Naboris, Medoh, Rudania). My biggest point about the game is that there should have been more dungeons. The Gerudo quests left me satisfied, while every other one felt too short. If there were 8 dungeons, plus Hyrule Castle, that might be enough dungeon.

In terms of animals and extra stuff in the game, there were really great things. I liked how Lurelin Village didn’t seem to be balanced on Link, and was just there in Faron. I liked the Triforce Springs, especially the quest to save Naydra, which was new, but fascinating. Tarrey town was super fetch quest filled to build, but another way to make the player really feel how they affect the world. The labyrinths were complicated but fun, as were many shrine quests. The memories got me acquainted with a combination of Hyrule, the modern day, and 100 years ago, and were an interesting way to have a player choose if they want exposition or not. The Master Sword was an interesting way to get the player progress on their own but still have greater goals. Hyrule Castle was really fun, but a little too disjointed to allow for exploration without risking total decimation from the guardians (and the North Gatehouse is such bullshit).

Finally, is the ending. I personally love all of the cutscenes and the boss fights. The first one felt like a greatest hits of the previous bosses, but was still fresh and interesting to see how the mechanics interacted. Dark Beast Ganon was a more classic Ganon fight, but made Zelda’s role both prominent and non-intrusive, and explained the weird malice eyes. All of the cutscenes afterwards were amazing and lead the way to a great set of post-game quests to fix up Hyrule. And then the game stayed the same as if I never beat Ganon. With all of the cutscenes, I would love to see typical NPC Zelda, and travel Hyrule with her, even fix up the castle, use the Guardians to make a game plan against Ganon in the future. Sure it makes Hyrule less dangerous, but it gives the player power in Hyrule’s future beyond Ganon, which is where every Zelda game stops defining Link, and where Botw could have strived to be better.

TL;DR: BotW is a fantastic game that fills the time with tons of activities, and the changes to the Zelda formula only make it more fun. However, the Dungeons were too few and far between, and the ending was particularly underwhelming given the sheer number of hints at post game were in the final cutscenes. But overall, an unforgettable Zelda experience, and the best in a long line of great games.

[because-cur-non]

are you doing friendship ones for the prompt thing? If so Tench and Tallmadge for 25?

This town isn’t big enough for the both of us.  Let’s run away together! (Let’s join a street gang!  Is NASA recruiting?)

It was hot.

Tallmadge wiped sweat from his brow with a shaking hand.  He had one foot up on the metal bench at the side of the football field and he blinked hard as salt burned his eyes, turning his attention back to fixing his laces as they seemed to pulse in and out of existence in front of him, the white blurring into purple-black.  People were walking slowly off the field around him, heading over to the lockers after hours of pre-season training outside in the sweltering August morning and afternoon.

“Shit.��

Tallmadge recognized the voice before the face under the sharp white glare of the sun.  His new college roommate, something Tilghman.  He remembered the last name more immediately because of its similarities to his own, but–Tench, that was it.  He felt a wash of relief.  Tench put his hands on his lower back and stretched his spine out, screwing his face up against the light.

“I checked online this morning.  Today was supposed to break another heat record.”

Tallmadge gave the most generic possible noise in response and sat heavily on the bench.  The metal was hot to the touch and he gripped it anyway, his hands curling over the edge, feeling like he might just slip off and fall through the ground and into space.

“You’d think they could let us practice in the gym instead,” Tench went on, sitting next to him.  Tallmadge pressed his eyes closed as the bench shook for a second.  “I swear to God, all I want to do is hit the showers and grab lunch an then go back to the room and frickin’ blast the a/c.”

Tallmadge propped his arms on his legs and leaned forward, putting his face in his hands and cutting the light.  He heard Tench next to him reach down under the bench and pick up his water bottle, then take a drink and cough from the water into his shoulder.  Every little sound seemed both amplified and disjoint and they blurred drunkenly, dizzyingly, together.  Someone called out to them and Tench responded, making the bench shake dangerously again as he motioned.  It was a cold sweat against his hands.

“Hey.”  Tallmadge wondered if he had lost track of time for a couple of minutes because suddenly Tench was sitting closer to him and tapping him on the shoulder.  “Are you okay?”

He made an inarticulate noise that meant yes-but-stop-touching-me-before-I-throw-up and Tench moved his hand sympathetically over his upper back once, twice.

“Do you want to lie down?  The bench is casting a shadow.”

Tallmadge indicated via silence that he was fine where he was but let him nudge him onto his back on the grass anyway.

He felt-heard Tench lie down next to him and stretch out.  The shade from the bench cut the glare that had still been sneaking through his fingers and he breathed a shaky sigh of relief.

“Did you ever have a unit in school when you were a kid where you studied the solar system?”

“Mm.”

“Yeah, me too.  We did this thing,” Tench shifted in the grass next to him, getting comfortable, “where we had to pick a planet and then do a class presentation on it.  I picked Mercury because…”  Tallmadge heard him shrug.  “I dunno.  Anyway, it can get up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit there.”

Tallmadge noted dimly that he’d like to whistle in appreciation of that fact.  He cautiously took his hands away from his face instead and found that it was not uncomfortable to do so.

“–And down to negative 280 on the dark side!  That’s wild.”  Tallmadge heard Tench prop himself up on his elbows and call out to one of the few remaining people.  “Hey, how long is the cafeteria open?  We’re waiting out the shower rush.  I thought that if I made it to the college level then I wouldn’t have to spend ten minutes standing around in a towel waiting for something to free up.”

Tallmadge missed the response as he steadied his breathing and carefully wiped off his face again.

“Did you hear?”  Tench lay back down.  “We’ve got an hour and a half.  I think we can make that.”

“You can go ahead.”

“It’s fine.”

“Seriously.”  A little stronger now.  “I’m fine.  I’ll head over in a minute.”

“I don’t mind waiting.”

Tallmadge relented.  “Who did you ask?”

“Uh, John.”

“Which John?”

“Uh…”  Tench hesitated.  “The sophomore, uh, the runningback one.”

“Laurens.”

“Yeah, him.  Shit, I’m not good at names.  There are so many of you.”

Tallmadge laughed, weakly but genuinely.

“What?”

“No, it’s nothing.  I’m having a hard time learning everyone’s name, too.”

“Yeah?”  Tench sounded relieved.  “Okay, good.  I went to a really small school,” he went on, “I mean, we had the same class all the way through.  I know this place isn’t giant, but…”

“It can be kind of overwhelming.  My high school was large but even so.”

“I guess it’s different.”  Neither of them said anything for a minute.  “So what planet did you pick?”

“What?”

“When you studied the solar system.”

“Oh.”  Tallmadge had to stop and think.  “I don’t remember,” he admitted.

“That’s cool.  You can take Mercury with me.”

“Is Mercury even big enough for the both of us?”

“Bigger than the dorm room.”

“Touché.”  Tallmadge sat up slowly and looked around.  White yardage lines and artificially maintained grass and his roommate lying next to him and watching him carefully.

“Better?  You were white as a sheet.”  Tench paused and then laughed, rolling into a seated position and holding out his darker arm next to Tallmadge’s.  “But maybe I’m not the best judge.”

Tallmadge cracked a sheepish grin.  “Thanks.”

“Not a problem.  Here.”  Tench climbed to his feet and gathered up their water bottles, holding Tallmadge’s out for him.  “Like I said, we’re breaking a record today.”

“Mercury’ll be too hot,” Tallmadge said after a long drink.  “It’s too close to the sun.”

“But it’s gravitationally locked,” Tench responded, taking a couple of steps off the field and turning back, waiting for Tallmadge to follow.  “I say we get a couple of lawn chairs and set up camp, right on the dawn.”

[thewanderingmacy]

Dublin and many rants

I’m trying to catch up so I can record my everyday. So I was in Dublin from April 9-18, which meant I celebrated my birthday there. Since I arrived on the 9th, I treated myself to a nice hotel room so I’d wake up properly on my birthday. The hotel was very boutique-y and cute. I bought some chips and shortbread cookies (I lived off of shortbread cookies in the uk and Ireland) and some chocolate covered raisins (also a fav snack) and spent my birth eve eating and watching downtown abbey in a beautiful hotel room. On my birthday, I had to check out but waiting for me at reception, thanks to a certain woman in my life, was a box of donuts. The receptionist was sweet and got me a tea pot and milk and everything and I sat in the lobby, ate two donuts and had some tea. Then I ventured to a coastal area in Dublin (Dun Laog… something like that) where I had an appointment to recolour my hair. My hair had gone yellow on the top and was grey on the bottom so I figured a good present to myself would be to fix myself. The deal was $55 for a cut, colour and blow dry. I needed a haircut too because the last haircut I’d gotten was a few one from a student and my hair was uneven. So I sat and got my hairs done for a couple hours. It turned out okay. Not great- a little patchy- but miles better than what I was dealing with before so I was satisfied. At that point, it was like 3-4pm, so I went back to the hotel (had another donut) and checked into the hostel I’d be staying at for the rest of the time. The hotel was in a quiet area just south of the main city centre but the hostel was smack in the middle of it all. It was honestly a bit too central- I had to deal with constant crowds when exiting the place. After that, I treated myself to one of my favourite meals- Ramen and then I saw Free Fire at the cinema (with popcorn and chocolate of course). The movie was actually pretty good. I’m a fan of the director’s and he didn’t disappoint. There was a great build up and the dialogue was hilarious. I went back to the hostel and had a final donut. And that was my birthday celebration. The rest of Ireland was spent mostly in the city centre, seeing the shops (there’s a great store called Primark I ended up wandering into daily). I saw the 3 museums of archaeology, design and nature, I went on a tour of Dublin castle and the palace, I saw the parks by the city centre, saw the main cathedral, saw a couple food markets and whatnot. It was pretty cold and rainy while I was there but I usually was able to force myself to continue with my plans. I went back to that coastal neighbourhood and went to a Sunday market and wandered the coast for a bit, before heading to the south suburbs where I got my ears (technically re) pierced for $15 which was a great deal. On the last day, I went to Malahide castle which I loved. It was surrounded by beautiful gardens and the whole space gave me downton abbey vibes. That same day I visited the old 19th century prison which was also wild.

I met a girl from Winnipeg in my dorm. She was traveling through Europe and was down to the last couple weeks of her trip. Few things to note about this interaction. One, she was one of the travellers that just buy a one way ticket and wing it. I don’t like that. She said she’d planned to do North West Europe but ended up in Italy and Hungary and Eastern Europe because she met people along the way. That’s great for her but to me, that’s just dangerous because she probably spend double the price for hotels and flights and transit, booking everything a couple days before. To be fair, she’s a mellow example because she had a plan to go back. I met a girl in Belfast who made me even more anxious because she was supposed to go back home to San Francisco 6 weeks ago but, on a drunken whim, went to Belfast from Dublin and has been there for weeks. She has a suitcase of stuff 3 hours from Dublin and said she wants to collect her things but doubts she will. That’s just reckless and immature. I think when people hear that I preplanned everything, they take it negatively but I think I love the fact that I have a plan and I know what I’m doing and I’m reading up on the history of my destinations and getting The Experience. Anyway, the second thing I took away from meeting this girl was that I need to work in film. She said she was studying Musical Theatre and Arts Management in post secondary school. So, I, assuming she has a legit passion for the arts, said I was anxious to get home so I can start working in film and get my career going. She completely disagreed and said I should enjoy traveling (which I am/trying to/focusing on) and that she isn’t excited to get back working on her art. I’m so excited to get my drivers license and PAing on sets and write screenplays and get a portfolio and connections going. I really am so anxious to work in film- I think I can say that I have a certified passion for working in film and that it isn’t just a way for me to feel important, validated, etc. Like I genuinely want to start creating things now. I have a list on my phone of film ideas I’ve gotten traveling and I’m taking a ton of photos for set references, and I’ve gone to museums in Bath and London and, now, Prague, dedicated to fashion history and I took photos of pretty much everything to catalogue for reference. Basically, talking to a fellow aspiring artist made me realize that I love planning and that I’m dying to work in film so the conclusion is I need a (pre)-production job asap.

(Different point but talking to other travellers mostly just validates my own traveling style. I was talking to these girls in my hostel and one was a total party girl, one was a Classic Tourist, though to be fair, she was from Brooklyn so she’s pretty normal but her travelling style was lame, and the third didn’t say much so I won’t include her. The partier was here to experience the club culture and was going to Cracow and a few other stops with the intention of experiencing the party scene. Okay the third girl did say something because she agreed with me that partying was just something we’re not interested in at all- to be fair, we were talking about pub crawls which are regulated and whatnot but it stands that I have no intention of taking a sip of alcohol on this trip. Like I just have zero interest in drinking. It feels like an outlet or excuse or something to be stupid, immature, reckless, which as we know now, I do not appreciate. A tangent from this tangent- I’ve come to realize everything I do boils down to wanting control and power (the love of planning, the no drinking interest). Anyway, I mentioned how I saw a classical music concert today, and the partier made a face like “ew” and I’ve been thinking about it, because I like the fact that I want to experience the arts and culture of the country. To be fair, I’m not shitting on her travel style- I told her, if you enjoy it, might as well go all out- she just shit on my style. Another example, she asked for suggestions of what to do and I mentioned how I went to a beautiful 18th century palace with stunning painting fresco ceilings and she was like oh god, no way. Seeing some nice ass ceilings is a damn good time. I get a kick out of seeing history and architecture and everything. Also, the second girl, The Classic Traveller, was showing me her souvenirs she bought and they all came from a random, unoriginal souvenir shop. I realized, I like genuinely would not even think to buy someone something tacky from a store like that. I’ve been going to Antique Fairs (I spent a whole $4 to look around) and visiting craft shops, looking for interesting gifts and souvenirs. Not be toot my own horn and be like I’m Original and Interesting, but like I’d like to think I’m better than spending $10 on some boring mugs that say I love Prague on them. Basically, comparing myself to these travellers, made me appreciate my style of travelling.)

Getting back to Dublin, I enjoyed the city. I didn’t adore it but I enjoyed it and felt like I got some nice experiences out of it. I think my expectations were built up too much because I’d heard amazing things about it and, while it was cute, it felt very familiar and, I’m realizing now, that that familiarity made me less likely to treat myself to food and experiences because it felt like I was just in Canada or something and I wasn’t in a new country, a new world where I needed to experience things. Like, being in the Czech Republic, I see desserts and think I need to get the full Czech experience but I never felt like I was immersed in Ireland. In fact, it was really hard for me to grasp that I was in Ireland at all. It never really checked in and, even though I’d been there for 2.5 weeks, I never really became overwhelmed by a sense of traveling in a foreign country. It just didn’t really affect me a lot and felt disjointed or something, I don’t know. That isn’t to say I didn’t see beautiful things and did really fun activities and ate great meals (I had great burritos in Ireland- I’ll never forget it), I just never felt immersed in Irish culture. Dublin reminded me, in terms of what it had to offer, of a version of the New York-Toronto comparison, where Dublin is Toronto and London is New York. It had some cute quirks and some nice architecture but it never felt overly unique. It was definitely a modern city with large mall complexes and expensive cafes. To be fair, I didn’t get to go on a tour (I went on one in the castle but not one for the whole city) and perhaps if I’d learned more about the history, I would have gotten a more detailed understanding of the city but it felt like a very modern city layered with some history.

That’s all I’ll say for now.