Jak and Daxter is such a great series, I'm so sad that it doesn't get the love it deserves. I mean come on! A transformed best friend/animal companion. The absolutely beautiful snarky back and forth between characters. The subtle world building hidden within the world's own language barrier. The utter lost history between the time of the Precursors, as well as the 300 years between the first and second games. An ENTIRE DESERT OF STUFF TO EXPLORE. How is there so little to go around??
I feel that it's partially due to the content itself lacking the context needed to properly flesh itself out. There's subtle bits of information that can be found just about anywhere, but that's just it. It's subtle. Like...really subtle. Like "We're not even sure we should be putting the effort into modeling this" subtle. If y'all remember the tapestry in the Oracle's hut in Jak 2 and you saw my last lore hunt, you can pretty much guarantee a lot of these subtle pieces of lore have remained hidden for years, and not for lack of trying.
Every sign in 'Renegade' says and means something. Every piece of architecture has purpose. You don't just design scaffolding collision THAT precisely for nothing. You coulda made it an invisible block and called it a day. The Lurkers have a whole history of their creation and various branches of their species that we don't see outside of the first game. Spargus had at least ONE other King before Damas. That music puzzle had to be there for SOME reason!
Who are the Metalheads, where did they come from originally? What are all the tunnels in the Precursor Basin for? And what, if anything, is the connection with the House of Mar and Rock Village? Is the Warrior the one and original Mar? Some sketches have precursor text on his sword, do they say anything and is the Eco-Sword Praxis uses the very same blade? What is the importance of those ruins in Haven Forest? Where's Misty Island? How many questions can I follow down the rabbit hole until it hits crack territory?
I feel like there's so much more that we're not seeing, that we CAN'T see. Which means I need to play TPL again. Maybe 2 as well.
I've just gotten my hands on some PDF's of the design bibles for the series. I'm going to read through both those and the strategy guides I have, make some notes, and go from there.
It's time for another lore hunt.
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i know we all laugh (mostly fondly) about the paper-thin plots in porn that only exist to make the sex happen, but i was reading some old stargate fic over the weekend, and i really think we're sleeping on the paper-thin hurt/comfort plot that only exists to force the characters to FEEL THINGS.
like, is this scenario realistic? no. does it make any rational sense? no. does it provide a built-in excuse for a character to collapse, bloody and disoriented, into the arms of his beloved/friend/partner? obviously, that's the whole point of this exercise.
i love it. it's my favorite thing in the world.
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Bingqiu AU where Luo Binghe's the chosen village sacrifice to the evil deity who lives up the mountain.
Normally the village sends maidens, but they've more or less run out of expendable girls of the right age and, ahem, "virtues". So of course Luo Binghe's early life bad luck kicks in. In the wake of his mother's death there's no one to really care about what happens to him, he's fairly pretty, and the village leaders decide that if they dress him up like a girl the teenaged homeless kid should pass well enough. And hey, y'know, he's probably got a hard life ahead for him anyway -- dying in a brothel of some venereal disease or on the streets of exposure or starvation. At least as a sacrifice, everyone else gets to benefit from his loss! And the kid will get added to a shrine and be remembered as a hero! If anything, he should be happy about this!
Binghe is not happy about this.
But he's also a skinny underfed nobody who is easily overpowered, dressed up like a bride, and tied to a post. So. Not much he can do but wait for the evil deity to come and do whatever horrible thing he's gonna do to him.
Meanwhile, Shen Yuan is pretty sure he's been isekai'd into the over-powered hero of some kind of supernatural adventure story? He's not totally sure because he doesn't recognize the setting, but the signs are there. He's got a shrine-like base of operations (though it seems to have become corrupted/ruined, probably he has to restore it somehow), he has a very resilient and handsome new body with spiritual energy of some kind flowing through him, and a very clearly magical sword. Plus lots of neat starter powers! Though it feels like he has other abilities that have been blocked somehow? Probably he has to level up in order to access them.
When he treks out of his "base" and finds what seems to be a distressed maiden, he takes it for his beginner hero mission. The girl claims that she's been doomed to be sacrificed to an evil god. That sounds a little above Shen Yuan's pay grade for dealing with, so he unties her and decides that they had better just get out of the whole region altogether. He already packed up anything useful from his base, anticipating he might get caught up in an adventure once he left, so they follow the river away from the settlement until they reach another one.
While they travel, Luo Binghe tells Shen Yuan about the cursed deity, Shen Qingqiu, who was cast out of the heavens for slaughtering one of his brethren and has apparently being do-who-knows what to maidens from the local village in exchange for his "protection" ever since. Sounds like a real asshole! And also mid-level boss type bad guy at least. Shen Yuan hopes he doesn't have to fight him, but he probably will.
Thank goodness he found Binghe, though! Clearly the helpful little sister type! He's definitely going to require her assistance if he's going to figure out how to navigate this world and level up his skills enough to take on a god.
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love when men cry about body hair bc "it's hygiene" and yet 15% of cis men leave the bathroom without washing their hands at all and an additional 35% only just wet their hands without using soap. that is nearly half of all men. that means statistically you have probably shaken hands with or been in direct contact with one of these people.
love when men say that women "only want money" when it turns out that even in equal-earning homes, women are actually adding caregiver burdens and housework from previous years, whereas men have been expanding leisure time and hobbies. in equal-earning households, men spend an average of 3.5 hours extra in leisure time per week, which is 182 hours per year - a little over a week of paid vacation time that the other partner does not receive. kinda sounds like he wants her money.
love that men have decided women are frail and weak and annoying when we scream in surprise but it turns out it's actually women who are more reliable in an emergency because men need to be convinced to actually take action and respond to the threat. like, actually, for-real: men experience such a strong sense of pride about their pre-supposed abilities that it gets them and their families killed. they are so used to dismissing women that it literally kills them.
love it. told my father this and he said there's lies, damned lies, and statistics. a year ago i tried to get him to evacuate the house during a flash flood. he ignored me and got injured. he has told me, laughing, that he never washes his hands. he has said in the last week that women are just happier when we're cooking or cleaning.
maybe i'm overly nostalgic. but it didn't used to feel so fucking bleak. it used to feel like at least a little shameful to consider women to be sheep. it just feels like the earth is round and we are still having conversations about it being flat - except these conversations are about the most obvious forms of patriarchy. like, we know about this stuff. we've known since well before the 50's.
recently andrew tate tried to justify cheating on his partner as being the "male prerogative." i don't know what the prerogative for the rest of us would be. just sitting at home, watching the slow erosion of our humanity.
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What progress at home has biden enacted? What policies of his show that he is making progress that prove he is actually different than trump?
I like to pretend I have faith in humanity, so I'll answer as if you're asking this in good faith.
Biden's DEA has lifted restrictions on telehealth prescriptions to make appointments and assistance more accessible.
He put a funding package into place to help unhoused people get access to mental and physical healthcare, as well as short-term and long-term housing.
He has attempted and is still attempting to get student debt relief through - this was blocked by Republican judges appointed by Trump, but he's still working on it.
Infrastructure repair - his administration has budgeted funds to actually fix some severely-damaged and frequently-traveled bridges.
Trying to expand access to healthcare to include undocumented immigrants who came to the USA as children (Dreamers) under the Affordable Care Act. Support for Navigator programs and outreach has also been increased.
He has vetoed Republican-led bills that were attempting to overturn environmental protections - one that would have forbidden investment fund managers to consider climate change in their portfolios (I have two degrees in accounting and this is actually huge), and another that would have overturned restrictions on agricultural runoff into our waterways.
He and his administration worked for ages to get rail workers paid sick days.
This is just some of what he's been doing. Meanwhile, Trump and other Republicans want to criminalize the lives of LGBT people like you and me. They want to eliminate no-fault divorce and force births that will kill parents or devastate them financially. They have stated flat out that they want to install a military dictatorship in the USA. They attempted to put that in motion on January 6th, 2021. They failed once. They will do better next time.
One party wants to house the homeless and expand social safety nets, while the other one wants to criminalize homelessness. One of them wants a future in which I might be able to vote to change how much of a war machine my country is, while the other one wants to eliminate my ability to vote entirely. Those are not the same. Those literally are opposites.
At the end of the day, all you and I can do is choose to do the least amount of harm possible. You and I cannot choose to do no harm. This is the USA, we sell war, you and I cannot choose to do no harm. I wish we could, my god do I wish we could, but that is not an option. So we grieve for the harm we couldn't eliminate and work to minimize the harm that is done. Despite all the crap they support, Democrats are the minimum amount of harm right now. Acting like they aren't is exactly what brought us to an election where our options are a future where we are either wading in blood or drowning in it.
Not voting for Biden will not help Palestine. Not voting for Biden will guarantee a Republican president who will make the situation in Palestine WORSE. AND it'll hurt a lot of other places as well, both at home and abroad, because Republicans are about business and the USA is in the business of war! And I would very much like that to change someday! I would very much like to someday be able to choose to do no harm! And I know what I have to do to try for that future, so what are YOU going to do? There is no standing off to the side in this. If you aren't helping pull, you're the dead weight we're pulling. Are you going to dig your feet into the mud and blood and drown us there? Or are you going to get the fuck off your ass, grit your teeth, and help us pull free?
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