#i just sold my xbox

[undyingavenue]

is it too much to ask to be hyperfixated on a whole gaming console. cause i will be i will be so autistic about the ps4

[creations-by-chaosfay]

Quick question about a quick quilt...

I can finish a lap size rag quilt in less than a week, twin size in about a week, queen size in two weeks. It's three layers of fabric, quilt-as-you-go, minimal piecing, and they are heavy. Excellent for cold weather and folks who like the weight of blankets but not weighted blankets.* These quilts aren't as hot as layers of fabric plus beads/pellets, and they breathe much more effectively. For a heavier rag quilt, it's a layer of denim and two layers of quilting cotton or flannel. I have a rag quilt for myself that's three layers of quilting cotton. My house is drafty and winters are full of rain, which means the cold sinks into your bones with the humidity. My husband keeps stealing my quilt because his man-cave is the coldest room in the house. He doesn't care that it's very feminine colors "because it's warm."

As for why it's called a rag quilt, here's a sample:

The top is the fluffy side with the exposed seams. Instead of a quarter inch seam allowance the seams under the fabric, it's a one inch seam allowance and the seams are exposed. Said seams are then cut at one inch intervals. With every washing, the seams get fuzzier and softer. They're fun to touch and feel really nice. It's also why these must be dried ALONE or all the strings will end up on whatever else is in the dryer. Three layers of fabric also means two rounds in the dryer on high heat (which is why I like using flannel rather than quilting cotton) or one round of high heat and hanging to dry for a couple hours.

The back looks like a more traditional quilt top and is often the side with denim on it if denim is used. The one is three layers of flannel and was a giveaway prize earlier this year, to celebrate meeting a ko-fi goal.

These are a delight to make and excellent for cold winters and drafty homes. Did I mention they're pretty heavy? The one I have, once all folded up, weighs about six pounds, and knocks my husband out within about ten minutes of him laying over himself. It's why I plan on making a rag quilt for him. He keeps stealing mine.

For context regarding prices, these take significantly less time to make. This one, a lap size, took just 14.5 hours, and that included the quilting. A traditional style baby quilt starts at $2125 because I have a lot more cutting and sewing, and I do the quilting by hand (though it will soon change due to soon having a machine I can use on my Cutie frame and do all my quilting on it), and can take 70-80 hours start to finish. I charge $27/hour + cost of materials to come to the final price.

*A PT I know hates weighted blankets because they cause a lot of injuries. People rolling in bed with a weighted blanket on them have ended up in physical therapy because of soft tissue tears. Most especially dangerous for people with EDS and other connective tissue conditions. Other injuries they've seen are from the pockets with the beads/pellets in them tearing open. Pets and small children have been known to choke on those, and folks who are heavy sleepers can also be injured if the pockets near their face tear in their sleep. When the beads/pellets get all over the floor, people fall and end up with serious injuries from that. Not to mention overheating under all of them because the material doesn't breathe well.

[natjennie]

number one horror game experience is running for your life in fear and then getting somewhere and going "okay, I'm safe here" and then a monster steps into view instantly.

[wereverine]

if i had a nickel for every time a family member sold their switch w/o knowing that i desperately want one i would have two nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice

[dirt-str1der]

Work has ruined me i literally cannot enjoy playing yakuza because of my stomachache like fuck you ....

[perenlop]

god i cant wait til i can get a windows laptop again... i wanna do sonic mods so bad

[cyber-harpie]

no i don't want a popup to tell me what the traffic is like (i don't want to know why you know where i work. also, if i wanted to know i would look it up).

no i don't want headlines in my start menu or my search bar (if i wanted to know i would look it up).

no i don't want to know the sports game score (if i wanted to know i would look it up).

no i don't want to know the stock numbers (if i wanted to know i would look it up).

no i don't want weather notifications (if i wanted to know i would look it up).

i also really don't want to see ads and sponsored content in the weather app, which i only opened so i could disable notifications (are you serious right now?)

no i don't want auto generated icons in my search bar representing those headlines and current events i, once again, did not want to see in my search bar.

i don't want to sync my files to the cloud. no, really, please stop asking. (i tried it once. it shredded my project files). no i don't want to see ads for onedrive in my file explorer. or in my taskbar.

no i don't want to see ads for copilot in my taskbar (siri, alexa, & cortana can also leave me alone forever please and thank you).

no i don't want you to swap my wallpaper without asking me to some spotlight service as a ploy to show me more ads i didn't want to see, weather i didn't ask for, and has nothing to do with the wallpaper i already set up.

[anx1oustig3r]

i feel like seeing these games all lumped together speaks more about my personality than talking to me does

[foone]

AAA games? Pfft. Indie games? Double pfft.

I only play games from the alternate history where Hillary Clinton was elected in 2008 and banned all video games. You can only imagine how weird their underground gaming scene is. People like to call unlicensed games "bootlegs" but they've got actual bootlegged games! I've played games about helping your grandmother in hospice care realize she's a lesbian by reading Sappho to her, at 2am in a speakeasy in Baltimore. The cops raided it the next night, hundreds of Gamers were arrested. They posted pictures all over Friendster of the Baltimore PD destroying the arcades with axes.

I nearly got busted once because I was imaging old disks from a 386 and someone tipped off the gaming cops that there was a copy of Commander Keen in there. I had to prove that I didn't know it, I was imaging the disks blind and then indexing them later, and I would of course turn over any contraband to the proper authorities.

I was already on a watch list because I'd been known to have some gamedev-related activities pre-ban. They can't arrest me for making games back in 2007 when it was still legal, but they do want to keep an eye on me since I have the skills to break the law.

Anyway that universe's bootlegs are mainly PC games. Can't really have console games if there hasn't been a console release since the Wii/PS3/360 era. At one point Nintendo threatened to release the Wii SDK so game devs in the US could make unlicensed games, but that didn't happen as there were quickly no functional Wiis left in the US, except for very rare holdouts that never move. PC games are easy to distribute samizdat and hide on a USB stick or CD-R labeled "nickelback".

Japan's games industry is still going, so the later Nintendo and Sony consoles still exist, but Microsoft got out of the business of course. They sold the franchise to Sega who were hoping to release the 360 successor (the Xbox One in our universe) as the Sega Phoenix but it never materialized, either through their own financial incompetence or because of pressure from the US. There's a lot of international treaties that the US has pushed "and this aid only goes through if you ban games" clauses into. That would have been an official UN resolution if the USSR hadn't vetoed it. For once, thank God for the security council, eh?

I mainly get my gaming news through Japanese gaming sites (through a set of VPNs, since they're blocked at the border firewall), and some tor onion site run by a weird guy in Minnesota who is obsessed with documenting all the underground US games.

There's a lot being worked on, but it's always a tricky trade off. Too much attention and the police might be able to track down the creators, and it's basically impossible to fund underground games, as the VISA/PayPal etc funds get seized immediately. There's a whole task force for that.

Anyway one of the weirdest differences between our two time lines is that they've gone back and edited out gaming from a bunch of movies. Those that they can, of course. War games was just banned because they couldn't remove the tic tac toe ending. The Net just removed the scene at the beginning where she's playing Wolfenstein 3D, by recording some new screen footage and a new voice over. She's fixing a spreadsheet in the new edition.

(Yes, I've seen The Net from this alternate timeline. On Laserdisc, of course. I'm just that kind of person!)

They even edited Star Wars. You know that scene where R2-D2 is playing holochess with Chewie? They edited it to be a board game instead of holograms, because that made it too "video gamey".

Technically it's not illegal to show gaming in a movie, but it needs to be an 18+ film and you have to show the deleterious effects of gaming and/or the gamesters coming to a bad end.

This has affected films less than you'd think, to be honest. They were never great about showing video games even before they banned them.

Anyway, go have fun playing your AAA games with hundred-million-dollar budgets. I only play indie games made by people under a constant threat of arrest for their art.

[bobacupcake]

indie game releases may 9 2024

today is just an absolutely amazing day for indie game launches. like there is something here for just about everyone. i want to catalogue all the ones ive seen

animal well

described by some as a "metroidvania thats similar to outer wilds in that you want to go into it knowing as little as possible" . which i assume if youre like me is all you need to know to be sold on this, so thats all i have to say

steam | switch | ps5

little kitty big city

you play as a little kitty in a big city. incredibly cute. great for people who love cats and play games to just take it easy and have a nice time. you get to put the kitty in so many silly hats

steam | switch | xbox (also on gamepass)

rabbit & steel

"what if you could do mmo raid progression but without having to invest hours into an mmo" here you go this is the game for you. get together with friends and learn mechanics and fights and get 5 different debuffs and try to parse what they mean before they make you explode in 5 seconds. i hope this sounds fun to you because to me this is what i live for

steam

crow county

an incredibly stylish ps1-style survival horror game. solve mysteries!! shoot monsters!! pick up items!! you probably know if this is the game for you already!! from what ive seen its a great love letter to the genre

steam | ps5 | xbox

1000xresist

i have heard /immense/ praise over this game from a narrative angle. scifi thriller. also the trailer starts with someone getting stabbed. cool. if you play games for their stories and a hyper-cinematic scifi adventure is up your alley check this one out

steam

cryptmaster

a dungeon crawler where you do everything by typing words . i dont know how to properly describe this but it looks incredibly cool the trailer through the link does a much better job of showcasing it than i do. AND , if this game and 100xresist both look up your alley, you can actually get a bundle with both of them for 40% off

steam

anyways thanks for getting through my big wall of gifs i really wanted to showcase these games because like these are some Real amazing games all launching on the same day. and also the same week as hades2 . and im sure theres even more that i didnt even see!!! check the replies because im sure people are gonna add even more

[dayque]

Magnus: What happened to my cute baby? Do you remember when I could hold him and he would ask me to read him stories every night?

Izzy: He once burned down the greenhouse.

Simon: Helped Kit steal the silver weapons to sell it on the shadow market in exchange for Xbox video games.

Clary: He broke all my cell phones trying to figure out how they worked.

Alec: He sold his brother's milk horns in the shadow market. It took us 3 years and 10 thousand dollars to recover them.

Jace: He disorganized the library's over 5,000 books into unbreakable code just to annoy me. By him self. IN ONE NIGHT.

Ragnor: He stole my spell books and, I have no idea how, translated them and posted them on every social media site known to the shadow world.

Magnus: My clever little baby, at least you have to give him credit for being persistent.

[vole-mon-amour]

is it just me or the way Wyll blushes and hides the pic of Mizora in that xbox ad doesn't sit well with you as well?

so Mizora traps him in a contract, owns him via contract, can boss him around, yank his invisible leash, and, if he disobeyed or if she dies, he either dies as well or immediately goes to hell for an eternity. I'm a way, he's her slave. as far as he knows, he can get out out of the contract by sacrificing himself (or he can sacrifice himself to save his dad).

sure, you can go behind Mizora's back and save Ravengard, buy we'll go with Wyll Doesn't Know That for the sake of my point.

and canonically Wyll dislikes Mizora and her company. he wants to get rid of her. he hates that she turns him into a devil. he hates how he looks. he hates everything about that.

and what Larian say in that xbox ad? oh, Wyll actually blushes and keeps the implied sexy pic of Mizora and it's implied that he has a crush on her/would have sex with her.

AND Karlach, who was also a slave with no means to get out, who was sold to slavery by a person she trusted and protected, elbows Wyll and goes, "what, you don't want it?" Karlach who KNOWS how it feels and who wants to kill Gortash for what he did to her, and Mizora is Wyll's Gortash in a way.

so first we have Halsin being a sex slave for three entire years and he feared for his life every single day. yet, that info is hidden very deeply and is easily misseable, and its written in the manner of him victim blaming himself with "i was a young druid" and he chuckles as he says that and it's presented in a way way as if he had fun? as if he was there willingly? as if it's all a big joke and not a big deal?

like, i know it's a big topic, but why is only Astarion's trauma taken seriously? why is Astarion's story written and loudly told in a way that we know that Cazador tortured him in every way, including rape, and not once it's treated like a joke? but when it comes to other's slavery, abuse, and trauma, it's suddenly treated like a joke?

Halsin's story is generally badly written/portrayed & he deserves way better, and maybe I'm reaching with this because neither Shadowheart's or Gale's stories show their captors as something good (still not as detailed as Astarion's though), but somehow that slips/gets dismissed when it comes to others.

I think Larian should stop with memes and hehe haha teeheee and be serious when it comes to others' trauma, not just Astarion's.

[plxnetn1ne]

since everyone in this fandom and their mum seem to be giving their piece about the ‘update’ coming to Hogwarts Legacy on the 6th, i figured id give my piece even if no one has asked

ive been seeing a lot of posts and replies about how “we should just take what we get and be grateful” and “the devs are working hard, do you know how hard game development is?”

im very aware of how difficult game development can be and how mentally taxing it is. i dont doubt that they’ve been through the mill.

the update is trash. its that simple. we’re allowed to feel upset about it, and for people saying that its not fair to be upset — it is fair. we shouldnt have to expect the bare minimum from a game that sold 22 million copies and reached nearly 2 billion dollars in revenue, a game that had 14 nominations for awards and 3 wins.

we were told we were getting a summer update alongside the Haunted Hogsmeade quest — the quest they promised to release to PC and Xbox in march when the game celebrated one year of release. they said, and i quote;

“As we near the one-year anniversary of Hogwarts Legacy, we wanted to let our community know that the Hogwarts Legacy PlayStation-exclusive content will be available on other platforms later this summer, along with additional updates and features for the game. Stay tuned in the coming months for more details on what’s coming to Hogwarts Legacy this year.” copy and pasted straight from Hogwarts Legacy’s official twitter page. along with additional updates and features to the game.

yes — i know, thats a very vague statement. it could have been taken in any way, but typically when additional updates and features — plural — is put into a sentence, you assume that there will be more than one new feature. it wasnt wrong for the community to assume that there was more than a few new additions coming to the game.

okay, we got photo mode — thats great for console players, but it isnt new for us PC players. im happy for my console buddies that finally get to bring their mc to life in the way ive been able to. im looking forward to seeing the uptick in photos upon the updates release. PC and Xbox got the new haunted hogsmeade quest, and thats great, considering the release of it was delayed by 3 months, but atleast we’re getting it. but basically. PS5 was fucked in the process, because everything minus photo mode is stuff they already had, and honestly, thats not fair. and double honest — thats not an update. thats the release of exclusive content plus a new addition.

for several months a summer update was hyped up, and the result was…. ps5 getting fucked, a photo mode that im going to bet my ass on will be buggy as all hell, and some cosmetics. so no — i wont be grateful. especially when we keep getting promised things and then getting fucked by a hot iron in the process. because i havent forgotten the documentary that was supposed to come out, and i still remember during September when they hyped up a digital surprise for Back to Hogwarts day and it ended up being 30 percent off on a game most of us already had, only for the game to go on sale for half off the following Nov/Dec for the holiday sales.

since the release of the game, modders have been basically picking up the slack by working their asses off to create bug fixes, better cosmetic options, enhanced schedules, companions, and so much more to keep the community somewhat entertained. this as well as the file miners that are constantly digging things up that we were robbed of, like the relationship list for companions, gaunt manor, other house specific quests, more quests concerning Isadora, on and on. on top of this, ive seen first hand how much of the outer parts of the map was developed only to be cut out. i spent a solid hour and a half today using free cam to fly around the outskirts of the map — buildings, caves, entire areas laid out for towns or poacher camps, all thrown out on top of all of the discarded quests and content.

and while im at it — ill be one of the few to say it, but Hogwarts Legacies storyline was not well thought out, or at the very least it wasnt very well portrayed. there were hundreds of questions we were left with upon beating the game. where did Anne go? what happened to the keepers after the final battle? why wasnt Isadora in her portrait? what were the keepers hiding? did inhaling the magic actually make a difference or was it just for shock value? how much of Isadora’s story did we miss? how was the undercroft tied in with Isadora when it was apparently a Gaunt secret? what even really was the undercroft?

yes, i know — “well arent they making a second one?” and yeah, im pretty sure they are, and maybe thats why we’ve gotten nothing more than a pile of bricks in the last year and a half. but, they should probably finish the first game before starting on a second.

this doesnt mean i dont love Hogwarts Legacy. i love the people ive met, the stories ive read, and i love capturing the screenshots i take from that game. the entire situation is just frustrating to no end.

[creations-by-chaosfay]

Why can't your husband buy his own xbox :/ why does he NEED an xbox anyway if y'all are struggling...

We can't afford anything nice at the moment. I had planned on using my earnings from selling my quilts, but I didn't make enough money to cover the more important things, like paying off our debts. Why should people who are poor not have nice things? Why must those of us who are poor be made to suffer because capitalism insists on hoarding money rather than putting it into livable wages that then make it possible for people to spend money and make the economy healthier? Why must those of us who are poor be forced to live unhappy?

My husband just started a new job two days ago, he turns 50 next month, and he has his original XBox One, and it's falling apart. It can no longer read discs, and all his games are on disc. It likes to randomly disconnect from the internet, and we using streaming services rather than cable. It also likes to randomly lose the ability to even operate at all. Why must he suffer and be unhappy?

An outlet for the struggling is healthy, but going to the gym is not nor shall ever be an option because they're filthy, and we're both high risk of getting sick and dying from covid19 (over 1000 people die from it every week in the US, but the economy is more important than people). Playing video games is a good way to get aggression out without actively hurting anyone.

How do you suggest he spends his off-hours? Or his days off? After all the yard and housework is finished, he's in pain. Arthritis in his shoulders, elbows, and hands, neuropathy in his feet, these make it difficult to do much physical labor without suffering from pain for hours or days afterwards. Dyslexia makes reading difficult, and just sitting and painting his miniatures without something playing in the background makes it less enjoyable and more difficult to focus courtesy of unmedicated ADHD. Do you suggest he just sit in a quiet room for hours and hours, staring at the wall?

The reason I ask for help acquiring a new console for him is because we are struggling. If I sold all my paintings at my asking price, it would have most of the debt covered. I would be more comfortable spending money on something nice for him if I had most of the debt paid. He's my caregiver, and I'm permanently Disabled. He does the cooking, laundry, yardwork, and so much more, while also working outside our home. He's exhausted. Playing video games helps him recover and prevent burnout. Do you suggest he burnout and suffer it for months or years?

Now how about you relieve yourself of some stress and misery by pulling out the stick you have shoved up your ass and stop criticizing folks for asking for help? Just because you're miserable doesn't mean you need to make certain everyone else is as well, seeing as misery loves company. That nasty taste of last week's dinner that you've been tasting is having a serious impact on how you interact with other people. Removing the stick and the taste will go away, give yourself time to recover and adjust to having a major source of your unhappiness removed, and learn to breathe and accept that some people don't see shame in asking for help. If, however, you insist on continuing with keeping the stick up there and judging me based on limited information and many assumption, you must purchase either a quilt or painting from my shop. Otherwise our next interaction will result in me simply blocking you. I have more important things to do than justify not wanting to be miserable.

If the stick is difficult to remove, a laxative might be just what you need.

[kenzan-kiwami]

from what i can gather this means the preload failed. sure would be fucking nice if it would TELL me this before the game releases

gaiden unlocks on steam in 5 minutes

well, it's been nice playing with you all

[alpaca-clouds]

Ghost Hunting Is Kinda Silly - And Getting Sillier

The guiltiest of all my guilty pleasures are paranormal documentaries. Like all of it.

As I spoke about yesterday: I was super afraid of ghosts and stuff, until I started watching Ghost Hunters and Destination Truth. Mostly because back then (around 2010) one of my besties became hyperfixated on this stuff fo a while. And she got me to watch a lot of it together with her - so in the end? I just started enjoying it for myself, especially just having some of it run in the background while I was working on other stuff.

So, yes. Since about 2010 I basically watched everything in regards to paranormal documentaries I could get my hands on.

Now, mind you. While I have seen a couple of things in those documentaries, where I believe that something happened that I personally cannot explain, I usually watch those shows assuming that most of the time something happens it is faked to make the show more interesting. Like the three or four instances where I do think at least some weird happened, it was stuff where just the reaction of the people were so freaked out, that I do put it above the actual acting abilities of everyone involved. (And in one regards the person this happened to apparently also dropped out of the show after it, which makes it a bit more believable to me.)

But yeah, a lot of the time stuff is either faked, or there is some minor stuff that can be explained (EVPs are a top one) being played up as shocking and stuff. Like, yeah.

Those things are kinda expected and were always par for the course. Because they are still trying to make interesting television. I get that. I absolutely get that.

I get it.

But these days? It is getting a lot more silly. Like... Look, between about 2010 and 2013 I did some ghost hunting myself (no, I did not find a single ghost, but in two cases found faulty wiring in the places). But back in the day the "equipment" was simple: Something to record with, some photo equipment, an EMF-meter, and a FLIR. That was usually what was used pretty much by everyone. Sure, some of the bigger organisations had some other equipment stuff, but generally that were the things. And in fact those things were often very useful. Because a lot of "ghost hunting" back in the day was at least in some regard about debunking ghosts. Like finding that faulty wiring, finding stuff that produces infrasound, or cold spots. Stuff that can actually make people "experience" supposed paranormal stuff.

Now, though? There is so much stuff people use, that is just... Well, it is assuming that ghosts are real and doing stuff, while also not having any basis of backing it up. This started with the silly Occulus thing (that produces words out of electromagnetic fields), and the radio frequency scanner that randomly spoke out words. Nobody ever cared to explain why those things would work or why ghosts would know how to manipulate this stuff. It was silly. And then folks came out with this Kinnect Thingie for the XBox, that "lines out" human figures, and by now gets sold as a specific thing for ghost hunting. But... Like that thing just halucinates figures, ESPECIALLY in darkness. It is not proof of anything.

And when I am watching stuff from the last about two years... There is just so much random equipment, that is even less based in reality, and based very much just already assumes that a) ghosts are real, and b) can be detected by magentic fields and stuff.

Again, the original reason why ghost hunters used EMF-meters, was, that we had some evidence, that certain magnetic fields can make at least some people think that they are not alone in a room, and from that halucinate at times figures in the corner of one's eyes. Something that especially if one expects there to be ghosts (because it is like a supposedly haunted castle) will then be interpreted as ghosts.

Yet, by now everyone is treating it as if EMF are a proof that there is paranormal activity - rather than exactly the opposite. And nobody really seems to be interested in finding alternative explanations of why certain places might have people have "strange experiences".

And yeah... Like, I do still kinda enjoy it as trashy background TV. But man... I am honestly a bit sad, how folks do no longer go into the explanations for those experiences.