#they also gave me a bunch of video game recommendations and im very much looking forward to checking those out

[savethepinecones]

also i survived the family halloween party. looking forward to sleeping without having nightmares due to stress

[iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid]

im considering dming curse of strahd in the near future, got any tips or warnings? :-)

ABSOLUTELY

so first of all, disclaimer, this strahd campaign is my first ever attempt at dming. you'll hear a lot of people say it's not a good choice for a first time dm, but i disagree! maybe that's because all my players are newbies and don't catch when i mess up, or because i'm playing a very "the rules come second, the story comes first" kind of game, or because i've also done CoS as a player before so i was already familiar. either way, i'm having a blast, and the story is excellent

first tip: read the book. i recommend reading the chapters out of order, though - each chapter is a different location, and they're not in the order your players are likely to come across them (for instance, strahd's castle is chapter 4. literally why) so i looked at the map of barovia, looked at what locations my players were likely hit and when, and read in that order instead.

there are tons of online resources for curse of strahd. TONS. there's a huge community on the CoS subreddit, and it's chock full of tips, tricks, extras, new ideas, add-ons, fanart, you name it. look up maps for locations that aren't given maps in the book, and you'll find like five separate people have already done it and posted it online for anyone to use. speaking of which, i've recently made a powerpoint with a bunch of maps on it so i can hook up my laptop to my TV and project the maps up for my players to see while we're playing (complete with little animations to reveal secret rooms when/if they find them) and that's been working out great so far

there are also lots of videos on CoS, and i highly recommend lunch box heroes on youtube. i've watched every single video in this playlist and it has helped so, so much. i'm using a bunch of deviations from the book in my campaign that this guy specifically gave me the idea to use

my biggest tip: make sure your players all have a good reason to hate strahd. for a lot of them, this will come naturally (for instance, maybe one of your players will try romancing strahd's alter ego and unknowingly set themselves up for the heartbreak of the century 🙃) but for a lot of them, you may have to orchestrate a good reason. throw one of their spouses in the castle dungeon like my dm did to me! it helps so much in getting them invested in the plot if they want to kill that guy in the castle so fucking bad dude let me at him

but yeah, other than that... have fun! don't take what's in the book as gospel, just use it as a guideline for the story. ultimately your players are going to hugely affect how the story goes, so don't get too attached to certain plot hooks that may get turned on their head or may just never happen. roll with the punches, learn to improvise, and practice your best vaguely eastern european accent for the barovian npcs :)

[seerofmike]

something im starting this year is a very self-indulgent, "my year in review" thing where i list 7 video games i enjoyed this year + 7 movies from this year that i liked because as time goes on i feel like i'm getting worse and worse at determining what i did and when i did them so this is basically just a place for me to journal the things i enjoyed this year for future reference.

all the movies are 2022 releases but since i'm hardly ever on top of current video game releases. my games list is gonna be all over the place. im mixing them up. feel free to read if you want yippee it's meant for me but since its being posted publicly ill write em all up as little recommendations. going in no particular order other than alphabetical and alternating between a movie and a video game i liked this year. also why 7 of each ? because 7 is my favorite number fuck you

The Batman

-hmmm. thoughts. congratulations to our second gay batman, robert pattinson. ok this is only half a joke. i love the riddler being a twitch streamer terrorist i like when media modernizes older characters it's funny. gotham truly felt like a shithole in this movie. soundtrack fucked. can't fight city halloween was on my spotify 100 wrapped

Inscryption (2021)

-i fucking suck at this game, i still have not beaten the trapper and as i understand theres like 2 whole other parts of the game to go or something??? so no i have not beaten it yet. but i have also sunk an unholy amount of time TRYING to beat it and i didn't get sick of it. it's a very dark but very entertaining card game and it has a free demo. even if you don't like card builder games i think you should try. it has a very unique atmosphere and premise

Bullet Train

-yes i liked the cringe brad pitt action movie. fun fact this was actually specifically tailor-made for me in a factory! it has a large cast of assholes trying to kill each other and it's funny and wacky and i love the directing. that sounds so fucking nerdy to say but i want to be a film director so im gonna say it. the directing of the action sequences especially was really impressive to me because there's only so much space/movement your camera can (believably) achieve when filming in a small, rectangular, ever-moving box like a train and i think mr david leitch did it very well. also tangerine and lemon funniest characters in an action comedy ever

Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag of Milk (2020)

-i kind of don't want to say much about this on the off chance someone reads this and also decides to play a game on this list but. listen. play it. it's like a dollar. it's very short, it's about a girl dealing with mental illness, and that's all i'll say about it.

Glass Onion

-mr benoit blanc u are so fruity. but ohg this was fun. it was fun! and it was especially more fun to rewatch it and see all that i missed and the small moments that they weren't really trying to hide from you. i enjoy the concept of being gaslit by a movie. also janelle monae is always so fun to see act

Paradise Killer (2020)

-honestly, there is so much i hate about this game. the sprites are awkward. the voice acting is bad. the platforming is abysmal. yet it's still here because i think its world is genuinely insane and unique and it knows the exact type of vibe its going for with all these terrible people in a vaporwave reality and it achieves it and also its a murder mystery and i like those. give it a try

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

-yeah we all know her pussy slaps. there really isn't anything new for me to add. it's funny. it's got good action. michelle yeoh best actress award NOW!!!!!

Pathologic Classic HD (2015)

-yea this one is kinda cheating. i started it last year and got like 2 hours into it and gave up and then did a bunch of other things but i finally figured out how to get my controller hooked up to my laptop this year and i played it. 100%'d it. its proudly displayed on my steam profile.

look at that. awful. horrible terrible plague walking simulator 0/10 am playing again

Nope

-i love jordan peele. i love keke palmer. i love daniel kaluuya. this movie was made FOR MEEEEEEE it was very slow and tense and i know a lot of people complained about the slow pace of it but the build-up made (SPOILER) reveal all the more terrifying. speaking of terrifying, the scene where everyone (SPOILER) is the scariest thing ive seen in years and i think i have claustrophobia now :) also akira homage <3

A Short Hike (2019)

-this one was soso cute and relaxing :) it was very funny and had a cute artstyle and i beat it in like 1 hour. not a very big commitment but its charming enough to want to come back to

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish

-ummm. so. puss in boots??? that shit slapped????????? it had NO reason to be that good. like obviously the animation has been spiderverse'd which SLAPS but the they put their whole puss(y) into this movie and they didn't have to. it's good. all the characters were SO fun, literally all of them. i love the stupid little dog. he is my scrimblo. go check it out if you haven't it is NOT the soulless cash grab i thought it would be

Slime Rancher (2017)

-so like, conceptually, this game is weird as fuck. a first person shooter where you suck up little jellies and feed them and harvest their poop. its insane. its also very relaxing but also very ...management-y, like the way stardew valley is where its technically very relaxing but you are doing SO much to maximize ur profit for the day. i love that shit. look at those things. theyre adorable

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

-ohg. knumckles

SOMA (2015)

-ok so i don't actually get scared that often BUT here is a mike secret. ocean shit SCARES me i do not like anything set under the ocean and the fact that this game takes place underwater freaks me the fuck out. i dropped my 3 hour save file to switch to little baby for bitches mode after 3 hours not because the monsters themselves are scary but because emotionally i cannot handle monsters on top of a deep sea setting. also the story was really good you should play it

[queenlua]

hey, i started following you recently and ur bio says ur a hacker? any tips on where to start? hacking seems like a v cool/fun way to learn more abt coding and cybersecurity/infrastructure and i'd like to explore it but there's so much on the internet and like, i'm not trying to get into anything illegal. thanks!

huh, an interesting question, ty!

i can give more tailored advice if you hit me up on chat with more specifics on your background/interests.

given what you've written here, though, i'll just assume you don't have any immediate professional aspirations (e.g. you just want to learn some things, and you aren't necessarily trying to get A Cyber Security Job TM within the next three months or w/e), and that you don't know much about any specific programming/computering domain yet.

(stuff under cut because long)

first i'd probably just try to pick some interesting problem that you think you can solve with tech. this doesn't need to be a "hacking" project at first; i was just messing around with computers for ages before i did anything involving security/exploitation.

if you don't already know how to program, you should ideally pick a problem you can solve via programming. for instance: i learned a lot back in the 2000s, when play-by-post forum RPGs were in vogue.  see, i'd already been messing around, building my own personal sites, first just with HTML & CSS, and later on with Javascript and PHP.   and i knew the forum software everyone used (InvisionPowerBoard) was written in PHP.  so when one of the admins at my RPG complained that they'd like the ability to set multiple profile pictures, i was like, "hey i'm good at programming, want me to create a mod to do that," and then i just... did. so then they asked me to program more features, and i got all the sexy nerd cred for being Forum Mod Queen, and it was a good time, i learned a lot.

(i also got to be the person who was frantically IMed at 2am because wtf the forum is down and there's an inscrutable error, what do??? basically sysadmining! also, much less sexy! still, i learned a lot!)

the key thing is that it's gotta be a problem that's interesting to you: as much as i love making dorky sites in PHP, half the fun was seeing other people using my stuff, and i think the era of forum-based RPGs has passed. but maybe you can apply some programming talents to something that you are interested in—maybe you want to make a silly Chrome extension to make people laugh, a la Cloud to Butt, or maybe you'd like to make a program that converts pixel art into cross-stitching patterns, maybe you want to just make a cool adventure game on those annoying graphing calculators they make you use in class, or make a script for some online game you play, or make something silly with Arduino (i once made a trash can that rolled toward me when i clapped my hands; it was fun, and way easier than you'd think!), whatever.

i know a lot of hacker-types who got their start doing ROM hacking for video games—replacing the character art or animations or whatever in old NES games. that's probably more relevant than the PHP websites, at least, and is probably a solid place to get started; in my experience those communities tend to be reasonably friendly to questions. pick a small thing you want to do & ask how to do it.

also, a somewhat unconventional path, but—once i knew how to program a bit of Python, i started doing goofy junk, like, "hey can i implemented NamedTuple from scratch,” which tends to lead to Python metaprogramming, which leads to surprising shit like "oh, stack frames are literally just Python objects and you can manually edit them in the interpreter to do deliberately horrendous/silly things, my god this language allows too much reflection and i'm having too much fun"... since Python is a lot of folks' first language these days, i thought i'd point that out, since i think this is a pretty accessible start to thinking about How Programs Actually Work under the hood. allison kaptur has some specific recommendations on how to poke around, if you wanna go that route.

it's reasonably likely you'll end up doing something "hackery" in the natural course of just working on stuff. for instance, while i was working on the IPB forum software mods, i became distressed to learn that everyone was using an INSECURE version of the software! no one was patching their shit!! i yelled at the admins about it, and they were like "well we haven't been hacked yet so it's not a problem," so i uh, decided to demonstrate a proof of concept? i downloaded some sketchy perl script, kicked it until it worked, logged in as the admins, and shitposted a bit before i logged out, y'know, to prove my point.

(they responded by banning me for two weeks, and did not patch their software. which, y'know, rip to them; they got hacked by an unrelated Turkish group two months later, and those dudes just straight-up deleted the whole website. i was a merciful god by comparison!)

anyway, even though downloading a perl script and just pointing it at a website isn't really "hacking" (it's the literal definition of script kiddie, heh)—the point is i was just experimenting a lot and trying a lot of stuff, which meant i was getting comfortable with thinking of software as not just some immutable relic, but something you can touch and prod in unexpected ways.

this dovetails into the next thing, which is like, just learn a lot of stuff. a boring conventional computer science degree will teach you a lot (provided you take it seriously and actually try to learn shit); alternatively, just taking the same classes as a boring conventional computer science degree, via edX or whatever free online thingy, will also teach you a lot. ("contributing to open source" also teaches you a lot but... hngh... is a whole can of worms; send a follow-up ask if you want that rant.)

here's where i should note that "hacking" is an impossibly broad category: the kind of person who knows how to fuck with website authentication tokens is very different than someone who writes a fuzzer, who is often quite different than someone who looks at the bug a fuzzer produces and actually writes a program that can exploit that bug... so what you focus on depends on what you're interested in. i imagine classes with names like "compilers," "operating systems," and "networking" will teach you a lot. but, like, idk, all knowledge is god-breathed and good for teaching. hell, i hear some universities these days have actual computer security classes? that's probably a good thing to look at, just to get a sense of what's out there, if you already know how to program.

also be comfortable with not knowing everything, but also, learn as you go. the bulk of my security knowledge came when i got kinda airdropped into a work team that basically hired me entirely on "potential" (lmao), and uh, prior to joining i only had the faintest idea what a hypervisor was? or the whole protection ring concept? or ioctls or sandboxing or threat models or, fuck, anything? i mostly just pestered people with like 800 questions and slowly built up a knowledge base, and remember being surprised & delighted when i went to a security conference a year later and could follow most of the talks, and when i wound up at a bar with a guy on the xbox security team and we compared our security models a bunch, and so on.  there wasn't a magic moment when i "got it", i was just like, "okay huh this dude says he found a ring-0 exploit... what does that mean... okay i think i got that... why is that a big deal though... better ask somebody.." (also: reading an occasional dead tree book is a good idea. i owe my firstborn to Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development, as outdated as it is, and also O'Reilly's kookaburra book gave me a great overview of web programming back in the day, etc.  you can learn a lot by just clicking around random blogs, but you’ll often end up with a lot of random little facts and no good mental scaffolding for holding it together; often, a decent book will give you that scaffolding.)

(also, it's pretty useful if you can find a knowledgable someone to pepper with random questions as you go. finding someone who will actively mentor you is tricky, but most working computery folks are happy to tell you things like "what you're doing is actually impossible, here's why," or "here's a tutorial someone told me was good for learning how to write a linux kernel module," or "here's my vague understanding of this concept you know nothing about," or "here's how you automate something to click on a link on a webpage," which tends to be handier than just google on its own.)

if you're reading this and you're like "ok cool but where's the part where i'm handed a computer and i gotta break in while going all hacker typer”—that's not the bulk of the work, alas! like, for sure, we do have fun pranking each other by trying dumb ways of stealing each other's passwords or whatever (once i stuck a keylogger in a dude's keyboard, fun times). but a lot of my security jobs have involved stuff like, "stare at this disassembly a long fuckin' time to figure out how the program pointer got all fucked up," or, "write a fuzzer that feeds a lot of randomized input to some C++ program, watch the program crash because C++ is a horrible language for writing software, go fix all the bugs," or "think Really Hard TM about all the settings and doohickeys this OS/GPU/whatever has, think about all the awful things someone could do with it, threat model and sandbox accordingly." occasionally i have done cool proof-of-concept hacks but honestly writing exploits can kinda be tedious, lol, so like, i'm only doing that if it's the only way i can get people to believe that Yes This Is Actually A Problem, Fix Your Code

"lua that's cool and all but i wanted, like, actual links and recommendations and stuff" okay, fair. here's some ideas:

microcorruption: very fun embedded security CTF; teaches you everything you need to know as you're doing it.

cryptopals crypto challenges: very fun little programming exercises that teach you a lot of fundamental cryptography concepts as you're going along! you can do these even as a bit of a n00b; i did them in Python for the lulz

the binary bomb lab is hilariously copied by, like, so many CS programs, lol, but for good reason. it's accessible and fun and is the first time most people get to feel like a real hacker! (requires you know a bit of C beforehand)

ctftime is a good way to see when new CTFs ("capture the flag"s; security-focused competitions) are coming up. or, sometimes CTFs post their source code, so you can continue trying them after the CTF is over. i liked Stripe's CTFs when they were going, because they focused on "web stuff", and "web stuff" was all i really knew at the time. if you're more interested in staring at disassembly, there's CTFs focused on that sort of thing too.

azeria has good ARM assembly & exploitation tutorials

also, like, lots of good talks out there; just watching defcon/cansecwest/etc talks until something piques your interest is very fun. i'd die on a battlefield for any of Christopher Domas's talks, but he assumes a lot of specific x86/OS knowledge, lol, so maybe don’t start with that. oh, Julia Evans's blog is honestly probably pretty good for just learning a lot of stuff and really beginner-friendly?

oh and wrt legality... idk, i haven't addressed it here since it hasn't come up in my own work much, tbh. if you're just getting started you're kind of unlikely to Break The Law without, y'know, realizing maybe you're doing something a bit gray-area? and you can cross that bridge when you come to it? Real Hacking TM is way more of a pain-in-the-ass than doing CTFs and such, and you'll learn way more with the latter, so who cares lol just do the fun thing

[kingjasnah]

Is there the full list of brandersons favourite games reposted somewhere?

i dont think so? or not that ive seen. u can literally just sign up for the newsletter on his website but screw it ill just post them for u. it sure was a TRIP scrolling past these to get to the interlude though. undertale is on this list.....im shakign at the thought that adolin was based off ff10 tidus but i cant get it out of my head now

#10: Katamari Damaci

I love things that make me look at the world in a new way. Katamari did this in spades. It is an imaginative, bizarre vision with unique gameplay. It is like nothing else in the world and I love it for all its strangeness and occasional lack of gameplay polish.

I was transfixed the first time I played it, and have looked forward to it being remade and rereleased on multiple different consoles. I love the cute—and somehow creepy at the same time—storyline. It feels like a fever dream more than a game sometimes, and is probably the closest I’ll ever get to understanding what it’s like to do drugs.

#9: Undertale

This is an oddball on this list because I think it’s the only game that is not a franchise from a major studio—but is instead an indie game, which I believe was originally funded on Kickstarter.I loved how this felt like a novel as much as a game. It was one person’s vision; a single story told really well, with a huge amount of personality. The humor was just my kind of wonderful/terrible, and I was instantly enamored with the characters.That probably would have been enough, but it is a nice deconstruction of video games as a medium—and has not one, but multiple innovative gameplay mechanics. Together, the package left me enamored. This is a work of genius that I feel everyone should at least try, even if it ends up not being for them.

#8: Fallout: New Vegas

I have played all of the core Fallout games, and I was one of the (it seems few) who was really excited when it moved from turn-based tactics to first-person shooter. While Fallout 3 was good, it didn’t have the charm of the first two.New Vegas delivered on everything I was hoping to see. The charm was back, the writing sharp, the quests imaginative. The gameplay was engaging and branched in a variety of directions, the gunplay was solid, and the atmosphere immersive. I of course love the first two games in the series—but New Vegas combines everything I like in gaming into one package. (As a note, I own the Outer Worlds, and am looking forward to digging into it. Consider this item on the list a recommendation of other Obsidian games—like Knights of the Old Republic Two—regardless of genre, as I’ve found them universally to be superior to their contemporaries.)

#7 Super Mario World

When I was eleven, I flew (alone, which was very exciting to me) from Nebraska to visit my uncle Devon in Salt Lake City. Before I left, my father gave me $200 and told me to pay for my own meals while on the trip—but of course, my uncle didn’t allow this. At the end of the trip, I tried to give him the money, which he wouldn’t take.I mentioned my dad would take the money back when I got home, but that was okay. Well, my uncle would have none of that, and drove me to the local mall and made me spend it on a Nintendo Entertainment System. (This uncle, you might guess, is an awesome human being.)Since that day of first plugging it in and experiencing Mario for the first time, I was hooked. This is the only platformer on the list, as I don’t love those. But one makes an exception for Mario. There’s just so much polish, so much elegance to the control schemes, that even a guy who prefers an FPS or an RPG like me has to admit these are great games. I picked World as my favorite as it’s the one I’ve gone back to and played the most.

#7: The Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 3)

I kind of miss the golden age of adventure gaming, and I don’t know that anyone ever got it as right as they did with this game. It is the pinnacle of the genre, in my opinion—no offense to Grim Fandango fans.This game came out right before gaming’s awkward teenage phase where everything moved to 3-d polygons. For a while after, games looked pretty bad, though they could do more because of the swap. But if you want to go see what life was like before that change, play Monkey Island 3. Composed of beautiful art pieces that look like cells from Disney movies, with streamlined controls (the genre had come a long way from “Get yon torch”) and fantastic voice acting, this game still plays really well.This is one of the few games I’ve been able to get my non-gamer wife to play through with me, and it worked really well as a co-op game with the two of us trying to talk through problems. It’s a lovingly crafted time capsule of a previous era of gaming, and if you missed it, it’s really worth trying all these years later. (The first and second games hold up surprisingly well too, as a note, particularly with the redone art that came out a decade or so ago.)Also, again, this one has my kind of humor.

#6: Breath of the Wild

I never thought a Zelda game would unseat A Link to the Past as my favorite Zelda, but Breath of the Wild managed it. It combined the magic of classic gameplay with modern design aesthetic, and I loved this game.There’s not a lot to say about it that others haven’t said before, but I particularly liked how it took the elements of the previous games in the series (giving you specific tools to beat specific challenges) and let you have them all at once. I like how the dungeons became little mini puzzles to beat, instead of (sometimes seemingly endless) slogs to get through. I liked the exploration, the fluidity of the controls, and the use of a non-linear narrative in flashbacks. It’s worth buying a Switch just to play this one and Mario—but in case you want, you can also play Dark Souls on Switch... (That’s foreshadowing.)

#5: Halo 2

Telling stories about Halo Two on stream is what made me think of writing this list.I’m sometimes surprised that this game isn’t talked about as much as I think it should be. Granted, the franchise is very popular—but people tend to love either Reach or games 1 or 3 more than two. Two, however, is the only one I ever wanted to replay—and I’ve done so three or four times at this point. (It’s also the only one I ever beat on Legendary.)It’s made me think on why I love this one, while so many others seem to just consider it one of many in a strong—but in many ways unexceptional—series of games. I think part of this is because I focus primarily on the single-player aspects of a game (which is why there aren’t any MMOs on this list.) Others prefer Halo games with more balanced/polished multiplayer. But I like to game by myself, and don’t really look for a multiplayer experience. (Though this is changing as I game with my sons more and more.)I really like good writing—which I suppose you’d expect. But in games, I specifically prefer writing that enhances the style of game I’m playing. Just dumping a bunch of story on me isn’t enough; it has to be suited to the gameplay and the feel of the game. In that context, I’ve rarely encountered writing as good as Halo 2. From the opening—with the intercutting and juxtaposition of the two narratives—to the quotes barked out by the marines, the writing in this game is great. It stands out starkly against other Halo games, to the point that I wonder what the difference is.Yes, Halo Two is a bombastic hero fantasy about a super soldier stomping aliens. But it has subtle, yet powerful worldbuilding sprinkled all through it—and the music...it does things with the story that I envy. It’s kind of cheating that games and films get to have powerful scores to help with mood.The guns in Two feel so much better than Halo One, and the vehicles drive far better. The only complaint I have is that it’s only half a story—as in, Halo 2 and 3 seem like they were one game broken in two pieces. And while 3 is good (and Reach does something different, which I approve of in general) neither did it for me the way Two did, and continues to do.

#3: Final Fantasy X

You probably knew Final Fantasy was coming. People often ask if the way these games handle magic was an influence upon me. All I can say is that I’ve played them since the first one, and so they’re bound to have had an influence.On one hand, these games are really strange. I mean, I don’t think we gamers stop quite often enough to note how downright bizarre this series gets. Final Fantasy doesn’t always make the most sense—but the games are always ambitious.Ten is my favorite for a couple of reasons. I felt like the worldbuilding was among the strongest, and I really connected with the characters. That’s strange, because this is one of the FF games without an angst-filled teen as the protagonist. Instead, it has a kind of stable happy-go-lucky jock as the protagonist.But that’s what I needed, right then. A game that didn’t give me the same old protagonist, but instead gave me someone new and showed me I could bond to them just as well. Ten was the first with full voice acting, and that jump added a lot for me. It has my favorite music of the series, and all together is what I consider the perfect final fantasy game. (Though admittedly, I find it more and more difficult to get into turn-based battle mechanics as I grow older.)

#2: Bloodborne

Those who follow my streams, or who read other interviews I’ve done, probably expected this series to be at or near the top. The question wasn’t whether Souls would be here, but which one to pick as my favorite.I went with Bloodborne, though it could have been any of them. (Even Dark Souls 2—which I really like, despite its reputation in the fandom.) I’ve been following FromSoftware’s games since the King’s Field games, and Demon’s Souls was a huge triumph—with the director Hidetaka Miyazaki deserving much of the praise for its design, and Dark Souls (which is really just a more polished version of Demon’s Souls).As I am a fan of cosmic horror, Bloodborne is probably my favorite overall. It really hit the mix of cosmic and gothic horror perfectly. It forced me to change up my gameplay from the other Souls games, and I loved the beautiful visuals.I am a fan of hard games—but I like hard games that are what I consider “fair.” (For example, I don’t love those impossible fan-made Mario levels, or many of the super-crazy “bullet hell���-style games.) Dark Souls is a different kind of hard. Difficult like a stern instructor, expecting you to learn—but giving you the tools to do so. It presents a challenge, rather than being hard just to be hard.If I have a problem with Final Fantasy, it’s that the games sometimes feel like the gameplay is an afterthought to telling the story. But in the Souls games, story and gameplay are intermixed in a way I’d never seen done before. You have to construct the story like an archeologist, using dialogue and lore from descriptions of in-game objects. I find this fascinating; the series tells stories in a way a book never could. I’m always glad when a game series can show off the specific strengths of the medium.In fact, this series would be #1 except for the little fact that I have way too much time on Steam logged playing...

#1: Civilization VI

This series had to take #1 by sheer weight of gameplay time. I discovered the first on a friend’s computer in the dorms my freshman year—and I can still remember the feeling of the birds chirping outside, realizing I’d been playing all night and really should get back to my own dorm room.That still happens, and has happened, with every game in the series. I have a lot of thoughts on this series, many of them granular and too specific for this list. (Like, it’s obvious AI technology isn’t up to the task of playing a game this complex—so could we instead get a roguelike set of modifiers, game modes, etc. to liven up the games, rather than just having a difficulty slider that changes a few simple aspects of the game?)I’ll try not to rant, because I really do love this game series. A lot of people consider IV to be the pinnacle of the series, but after V unstacked units—and VI unstacked cities—there was no way I could ever go back. If for some reason, you’ve never played this grand patriarch of the 4X game genre, it’s about starting with a single stone-age settler who can found a city—then playing through eras of a civilization, growing your empire, to try to eventually get offworld with a space program. (Or, if you prefer, conquering the world.)It’s a load of fun in the way I like to have fun, and I feel like the series has only gotten better over the years. My hat is off to the developers, who keep reinventing the series, rather than making the exact same game over and over.Now, about that request for difficulty modes...

there are runner ups but for the sake of anyone whos on mobile and cant get past a read more (first of all omg im SO sorry) ill refrain. anyway he thought WHAT loz game was the best before botw?

[transrightsjimin]

i was tagged by @soulmates7 thank you!!

7 ALBUMS GAME

Rules: Make an image HERE of your top 7 albums, just type in the name and select the album. This can be top 7 of all time or this year or whatever you’d like. 

ok i couldnt choose at all so now i have two images

but also i worked for 6+ hours on looking up bands i had seen live or used to listen to more often and i made a list with albums and singles that i have repeated / re-visited a lot or that simply mean a lot to me nd that i’d recommend to others. it was a bit hard to make bc i also love a lot of songs that are single releases with only 1-2 songs, but i don’t listen to them like you would to a longer single / mini album / full albums. i wanted to include laboum’s full length albums (two of us and low pop wow) but those sadly have the lowest production value in most of the songs so i cannot enjoy those fully. there’s also some older plastic tree albums from the 1990s that are hard to access for listeners so i can’t add those. anyway this is the full list (in progress) lol

CHECK IN GAME

1. How has your day been?

quite ok! i slept for 9 hours thats fucking wild, idk how that happened but im grateful! did cry abt gender stuff and am a bit frustrated abt how i took so many hours to look into old albums instead of do useful stuff, but it was very fun and inspiring.

2. What’s the last thing that made you smile?

hmm idk? i dont rly like, keep track of when i do or dont smile when im not in public hgghkjg

maybe the halloween pictures my mom sent me from her home? those were fun. or maybe my friend. idk i was quite cheerful / neutral this morning but since later in the afternoon i had a dip(?)

3. What’s keeping you entertained these days?

uhmmm ive been recently watching halloween-related videos by Abby Green on youtube and rly enjoy her vids on makeup and halloween films and other chitchat and her makeup looks are so cute! also im watching sabrinah the teenage witch episodes from time to time w my friend in the evenings, though we also watched more of stuff recently like goosebumps episodes and films and the griezelbus film and carrie yesterday. we also watch a bunch of other shows but im not too entertained by them, i just find it hard to look away hjfdkhg

4. If you are in some kind of quarantine/self-isolation, what do you hope to achieve in this time?

uh i dont know? my country has never had a real full lockdown but i of c do try to limit going outside aside from working hours, though life hasnt been much different from pre-pandemic as i rarely do fun stuff anyway. i was always inside at home for most of the time but i dont do super exciting stuff here too bc i’ve probably never gotten out of my burnout i got in 2013. i did recently watch stuff together w friends online like watch bts stuff or try to dance together but everyone is either busy or has shitty connection nd it just didnt rly work.

i mean i do want to help better my mental health through CGT and giving myself more structure nd being stricter w bedtime. i rly hope my mental health will get better but idk if i can bc the CGT appointments are 12 in total and after that the therapy stops. it rly sucks but i accepted the offer as i otherwise would be on another waiting list elsewhere too and at the previous place i had therapy for several years, i kept getting new therapists regularly too bc of stuff like their contracts ending or pregancy so i guess im used to not being able to see a therapist for a long time. so idk.

i want to get better mental health and better concentration. i also just need to get a stupid fucking job bc while i dont want to work at all, i have to to be able to live and i need a reason to get out of bed every day to go somewhere so i would have more structure and be less depressed. i mean i could say i want to draw more and dance and read more but ive been saying that for years and i still rarely do it bc im so demotivated nd have worsened focus for years and my special interests are all over the place so i never think about getting stuff done while i really should.

5. Post selfie, if you’re comfortable doing so

from a while ago. it gave me 70s vibes somehow, i like it

LAST SONG

versailles - prince (got bored so i quit playing the song)

LAST SAVED PICTURE

the downscaled selfie and 7 album pictures above

tagging: @princeshojo @lampshroomomg​  @trespassers-will @baepsrae

[zetrystan]

How powerful is hugduul compared to Nicholas or Hector? It’s a weird thing to answer actually... Hugduu’l is technically a... healer? Tank healer. Yes. Does Hector know how Nicholas feels about him? What do you think? :) your sona looks like shaggy from scoobydoo I do look like Shaggy. Mh. Will we see more of Nicolas' lovers in the future ? :D (in Bromance) Yup! He has even a bunch of “main” lovers that will enter the story. We actually technically saw some of them already... and one is in the comic. :-> Favorite movie ? 030 Can’t choose! But I recommend Confessions (Kokuhaku) (2010). It’s very very very good. Are you aware of how wonderfully diverse you art style is and what a joy it is to look at? Eeeeeeeh. Nope, I’m sincerely not aware. :’> Haha. I wish I was able to make more different stuff, actually! U play overwatch? Nope! But if I did, I would main Junkrat, I’m pretty sure. Will you make a bromance physical book if and when it finishes I actually still am wondering... I don’t think Bromance would really work as a physical book as it is right now, but my friend @bekkidoodles​ actually gave me an idea of how to make it look good. But it would need a whole other lot of work. :’) Your a cutie.. Shut up. >:I Do you like cake? What kind? If not why? Almost all the kinds of cake, like any true human being should. IS MAYONNAISE AN INSTRUMENT? No it’s not. Horseradish is not an instrument either. Will any Angels or beings from other Pantheons appear? (in Bromance) Technically speaking, we already have a god and a demon in the story! But you will see more for sure... at least one other is planned right now... hEY COOL CAT if you could be a dinosaur for a day,the heck would u do ? Woah woah, important informations are missing there. In the prehistoric age? In our times? What kind of dinosaur am I?? are u gonna drop merch or comics strips of it someday ? cause at least im pretty interested in saving n buying ! (Bromance) Well, for the comic strips, they can be find on my Bromance Tapas page! As for merch... I’m yet again still thinking about it. I’m not sure Bromance has enough of a following to have people interested in buying enough stuff, ahah.  Do you have any plans for bromance, or is it mostly improvised? A mix of both. I have a plan for both my “main” story and my “side” stories, but I don’t like being too organized, so I keep enough space to create more things if I want to. Do you have your own irl bromance? :o Haha, kinda, in a way. Not the same kind though. as a pet would you rather have a tiny kitten-sized dragon or a large house-sized dragon? Kitten-sized dragon, of course. A house-sized dragon would be COOL AS HELL, but also absolutely not practical. How do I feed it? Where does it sleep? Where does it even stand? (in the middle of the street?) What color is the shirt youre currently wearing? I drew my shirt on the drawing in this post, haha. Go check on top of it! Do you love me? Are you pizza? If you are, the answer is yes. What hobbies do you have outside of art? Not much, since I spend most of my time drawing. But... video games? Jeez, that’s original. How many projects are working on right now? I remember you have a lot going on all the time it seems. I usually have a lot, but I tried to shorten the list the most I can. So now, I’m pretty much trying to focus on Bromance. Did you ever get water back for your street? or are you still melting snow? HAHA yes, forgot to tell it here. We got water back after two days. Two. Long. Days. Without showers or toilets. Terrible. Your ideal date? No date is my ideal date. Aw shit dude you like Heartstopper? I just started reading and it's real good I do, discovered it a few weeks ago! Well made comic! Do you loke anime? I loke anime. Any plans for another comic? Kinda, but I’m trying to kill those plans as soon as I have them. Better focus on ONE comic first, it’s hard enough! ahah Hey Trystan! Ou sont toute les femmes dans ton comic? (translation: where are all the women in your comic?) They exist! Considering I showed mainly three characters in the comic and I’m focusing on them, it seems like there’s no women, ahah. But I assure you the next big main character planned to be introduced is going to be a woman! (Well... kinda...) How long have you been drawing for? Any art style/artist you admire? For a long time, not too sure. Always been drawing a little, at least. And I know way too much artists I love, ahah. But recently I really have been digging @mancameron‘s art. Biggest goal for 2018? Not fail. It’s not up to a good start.

[ohoshi]

i watched the dont lie svt mafia game (the first two links u sent) and it was so fun!!! i love how you dont know who the mafia is until the end so it’s like youre playing along too :) also seungkwan was so smart!!! gradually building everyones trust and gathering allies around him!! i was so sad when he was killed off tho, he literally was abt to catch the mafia 😭 and hoshi REVEALING HIMSELF AS THE MAFIA was the funniest thing ever but also really smart like he turned everyone against mingyu (who honestly i thought was the mafia too), and in the last round hoshi was just openly like “who should we kill today” IM DEAD 😂 also can i just say that jeonghan looked so GOOD in that game...he’s such a sexy mafia 😏 i cant wait to watch their second dont lie mafia game!

u already know for 127 jaehyun was my first bias and now mark is my ult <3 and for dreamies if u dont count mark (since i knew him from 127 first so kinda unfair) i think jaemin was prob also my first and current bias?? he was my first bias and i just never stopped 😂 for wayv i think my bias is yangyang hehe :) im trying to think abt what similarities in my biases are - it might just be the smiley happy funny ones with the best laughs as we talked about before (this is weird but i think when i first meet someone i notice their laugh?? like i love ppl who have laughs that you can tell are just truly from their heart if that makes sense) i might also have a slight bias for rap lines but i think that is not as concrete as the smiley/funny thing!

omg thats so cool that you know so many languages!! youre so cool hehe :) i always have so much respect for ppl who learned languages (idk i dont count me knowing canto as learning a language bc i kinda passively learned it thanks to my parents hahaha) i took french and spanish for a bit in school but i didnt continue and have thus forgotten most of it D: (which i kinda regret, i want to try learning french again someday) also i totally get that about chinese and japanese being intimidating...ive always thought it'd be so cool to learn another asian language (and one that is more widely used than canto) but they are quite hard, esp for chinese/japanese where the writing system is a lot harder to learn!! i learned korean hangul so i can sound out words veryyyy slowly but i dont know what they mean 99% of the time 😂 i havent seriously applied myself to actively learning a third language but i've always wanted to! i can understand basic korean phrases tho since i watch so much korean content ahahaha

hmm as for weird phobias, i really hate cockroaches?? or bugs in general...and i also hate when circles are bunched together rly closely lol (i think it’s called tryptophobia but i wouldnt recommend googling that cuz it grosses me out so much omg 😰😰)

ok now to close this out on a happier note lol i THINK i can name all the svt members now??? like with maybe 85% accuracy 😂 and i think my first biases are joshua, jeonghan, & kinda dino and vernon :)) but i feel myself slowly falling for all of them i love how chaotic they are and ive laughed so much watching their videos already 😊😊

AAAH i'm so glad you loved it 🥺 ikr it was so good??? i especially loved the part when hoshi just blamed mingyu!!!!! and manipulated everyone into thinking that he was one of the mafia!!! what a smart move but also fun? hoshi the god of variety shows!! tbh i kinda knew minghao was the mafia since the beginning... he was just too quiet... i mean he is a quiet person yk but he was more suspicious than usual 👀 and i guess bc in the beginning they gave us the preview of their reactions and he laughed and knowing he's a scorpio i only assumed... so i didn't 100% buy hoshi's lie bc i was still sure that hao was one of the mafia 🤷🏻‍♀️ still tho it was legendary!!!! but i guess mingyu played it stupid and he was sus to begin with so 🤷🏻‍♀️ yeah.... YOU CAN SAY THAT JEONGHAN LOOKS GOOD BC damn right he does 😍 he is a beautiful man what can i say 🤷🏻‍♀️ he is also very confident in himself (the other day i watched one gose ep from 2019 it's called debate night i think and basically they're having a debate about the stupidest, most pointless things in the world (like is it better to live AS a pigeon or live WITH a pigeon for a year, or is it better to have 3 eyes or 3 arms 😅) and jeonghan always had a counter argument, ALWAYS, but he would say it so confidently looking handsome as hell he could make me believe that grass was blue..) btw gose always has dumb content like this but still i think it's the best idol content out there only bc svt are crazy funny and chaotic and those 13 boys share a total of 2 braincells shared by wonwoo and jun each; like there is one ep i think it's called the8 and the 12 shadows ans basically they all move in a row and all 12 of them have to repeat what the first member is doing, it might sound smart when i explain it but if you'd watch it you'd see that it's so dumb and pointless but it's funny and 1hour long and carats watch it bc 🤷🏻‍♀️ anyways what i'm trying to do is show you what you're getting yourself into😌

ohhhh i think jaehyun, mark, nana and yangyang all have beautiful smiles and they’re all very smiley and bright people 🥺 so that's definitely the one thing your biases have in common 🥺 that's so cute 🥺 oh you think you're attracted more to the rap line? 🤔 all of your nct biases are indeed rappers (jaehyun is a i can do it all i'm 97 line he is excluded) so maybe??? but yeah you biasing bright idols is 🥺 adorable!!!

ahh thank you 🥺 i try!! yeah most people forget languages if they don't use them regularly </3 kinda scared i'll forget french bc i never use it nowadays, i used to know a woman who only spoke french and i would have to translate to her what my family tells her and vice versa, it was a great french exercise 💪 but i don't see her anymore so </3 the fact that you speak canto and chinese(mandarin i guess?) intimidates you really adds fuel to the fire<3 it's great that you know how to read hangul!!! me too!! you'll get better at reading with practise! but compared to chinese characters i don't think it's that hard, i mean, how do chinese people even memorize all the characters?? or WORSE how do foreigners memorize them??! writing in chinese must be so hard do you have to pay attention to all the tiny lines?? that's a lot of work 😨 i am terrified 😨 do you also know basic japanese phrases from anime?? bc personally i do but i know a lot more korean than japanese i mean thank god, i'm learning korean religiously tho 😂 still tho can't watch idol content without titles</3 (except with chinese wayv members who struggle OMG MAYBE I LOVE CHINA LINE BC THEY MAKE KOREAN A BIT EASIER? anyways i completely relate to them bc korean grammar is so hard, so strange and so different from grammar i'm used to in 'western' languages)

cockroaches? 😨 i too hate insects of every kind<3 so i understand <3 oh i know about tryptophobia(?)!!! one of my friends is scared of the same thing too, have to admit it does look disgusting 😬 i'm also afraid of heights and water!!! (but like the sea and the ocean sjsgsjaha i can't swim!! and i never want to!!!) 😨😅

AHHHH I'M SO PROUD OF YOU 🤧 what a bias combo thooooo 👀 jeonghan? i approve! he is so fun!!! so beautiful!! sexc 👀 jeonghan is so interesting i love him and also joshua is so pretty too?? i mean obvs they're both visuals sjgssj but it's different with shua bc i can look at him all day it's soooo calming to just look at him?? ahh angelic! it's kinda interesting to me bc you bias jeonghan and joshua and jihan (their ship name) is kind of a big deal™ did you know that????? i assume it was unintetional and you had no idea about it jsgsja i also approve of vernon and dino as well but i mean i would approve of anyone and everyone at this point 🤷🏻‍♀️ have you seen pics of jeonghan with long hair??? i feel lowkey bad for saying this but he is so beautiful i deadass thought he was a woman 😧

[zzpopzz]

Really long rant about how I made Vanilla Twilight, I typed it at 2am so it’s kinda crappy and boring, just skip through this post.

So I'd been thinking about it for a long time now, even before finishing Vanilla Twilight that I'd talk about it if someone asked, well that never happened so I was just thinking that I'd let it go but that post is so important to me so well fuck it I'll just talk about it anyway. I did it completely on a wimp like how cool would it be if I make a lyricstuck for Toumaki like I'd be the first (if anyone did this before me im sorry). The first song I intended to do wasn't VT, it was a much shorter and easier song. I saw the music video first time after a while and the lyrics gave me some scenes to draw right away, like the tones, the atmosphere, the lyrics all fit them very well, made me wanted to draw something happy but sad. The ending for it was a happy one instead of a sad one like other songs I did (I didn't post the ending for any of them, just let the viewers decide what it's gonna be) I was very scared like what if it won't turn out ok and people gonna hate me for it or no one even gonna look at it. Also what I visualized are mostly illustrations with backgrounds, what I never done before so high chance it won't go anywhere. I thought well let's just see how far will I get and won't talk about it at all until I post it so at least I won't be all barks no bite. I was very traumatized that someone might know about what I did so I locked all the files when I shut down my PC in case someone hack into it lmao. I started with making a storyboard(kinda) for it, this is where I first got trouble because there was some part I didn't think of when I visualized what I'd draw at first ( 'I don't feel so alone' part mostly and some in between) and it's only at this point that I realized how many I'd have to draw (over 40 images total) and it's mind blowing for someone who rarely finish a painting like me at that time, that number is more than what I'd draw in a year. VT doesn't have choruses that meant I can't do tricks like repeat some panels (I don't like this anyway). I usually painted on small canvas before that but I wanna make sure I can fix things later and some idea I had was pretty big so I used 3000x5000px canvas then trimmed them down ( I didn't know how big it was and it's huge). The idea was to make a tumblr scroll-post like a lyricstuck (my favorites are by paperseverywhere and toastyhat/emptyfeet , they made really cool tutorials about these) so I tried to drew out compositions that would look good scrolling down panel by panel and have some connections between them (this didn't turn out so good in the end because I wasn't good lol) Since I was scared that people might point out that I draw something wrong, it took me almost a week or something searching for references (check my pinterest board) like the streets, sky, houses, roads, outfits, poses,... I was going to draw. I got some knowledge about bikes by this too, like I can tell the differences between road bike, mtb, touring bikes,... I also see and captured bunches of screenshots and reread ywpd trivia countless time to make sure I won't get anything wrong. If you take notice, every outfit Toumaki wear in there are all canon, from anime or promos. The first few panels was really exciting because I had never painted so many with backgrounds before, I was really happy when I almost finished the first verse even compared to the full 3:50 of the song it was only 20 seconds and I thought maybe I can pull this after all. The last panel was intended to be Makichan standing infront of his house looking at the sky but I wanted to show the sky at the end of the panel and that wouldn't work on scroll-down post so I had to leave it for later, I repainted this panel for about 3 times and finished it just 30' before posting. The first panel of the second verse wasn't turning out alright too because that was my first time doing a 3 points perspective drawing and the colors didn't turn out as I wanted either (my intention was a green/gold dawn scene). Things kinda worked well despite that until the scene when Toudou sits in his ink, gdi I didn't know why I was so caught up in that and painted every piece of that wooden floor, it took me almost a week but turned out better than I expected so I was ok with it. I was going to make sketchy paintings for all of the panel but I did too much details on that one so it gave me the impression that I'll have to do just as much for every others. Now I still had school to go and that semester my uni got me pretty crappy schedule that made me have to wait for classes at school frequently, I was frustrated because I didn't get to paint during that time and I might finish it too late (even though I didn't set a deadline) and when I got home I just spent so much time checking twitter and just can't pick myself up to draw and ended up feeling shitty about it. *Side story*  I was so mad because I didn't get anything done and there's still more than half of the whole thing to do and the worst part is that I had no one that I can talk to because I didn't have any friend who ship Toumaki and I also don't want to publicly talk about what I was doing, I wanted to surprise people when I'm done, I didn't wanna give people the expectation then screw it up (I literally thought I'd drop a bomb not a grenade lmao) I can't remember how long was that shitty phase but I felt like it was so long, I barely finished verse 2 at that point. I was so mad at myself and my progress so I spent a few days to look at time management threads and this helped a lot, I changed my habits completely  by this and I still apply those methods now, like I used to stay up til 3am to read fics (bless you writers you fueled me with your writings bless you all) then I switch to bed before 12 and get up early for a good start or reduce working time while increasing quality* After that I kinda got things together,I just went ahead with painting tho it's still kinda tiring, I had to work on 5 essays during this time too. At this point I was like screw all, I give no shit about what everyone thinks I'm just gonna finish this and get some good nap (I practiced power nap to get more focus time for painting but dude everyone wants a good long nap) 10 days before uploading I found out that there's a Toumaki day (I'm so sorry), I was going to posted on the first sunday of June (I did researched on which was the best time to post on social medias so I randomly picked a sunday) and Toumaki day is the last sunday of May, that meant I had 10 days left and 15 panels to paint! I was going to ignore that but I already made it big I should make it right too so I shit my pants going through those last panels. I purposely hiding Toudou's face till the last verse to emphasize the feelz and got so relieved that I finally got to paint him (I read some tags that some viewers got emotional at this part so I'm so glad it worked). The whole things was put under Makichan's perspective so I was so sick of painting him at that point, he showed up in every panel and I can't paint him ugly because he's beautiful (especially his hair, I spent shitload of time painting them). I can talk lots about why I picked to do so but that's headcanon shit and it's embarrassing so let's just skip that. The last day I had only 3 panels left and I was hell confident that I've got this and somehow spent the whole evening rewatch Toumaki pingpong ep (end me). Of course that didn't end well, I managed to finish those by midnight but I still had like 3 panels that needed  repaint completely and all 43 needed retouch and edits. My plan was to post at 9am sunday (thats 9pm saturday est) so I had to get up at 5am and finish all that, I ended up cutting down 2 panels and simplified the instrumental panel (some tags said that was nice so I was at least relieved). Unlike other songs I did, the length of every line's quite different and the original sizes I did would make viewers have to scroll slower or faster at different parts. I didn't plan this beforehand and had to trim down some panels even the parts that I really liked and spent lots of time on. I also found out that people outside the homestuck fandom might not familiar with this type of post so I made a video too (I’m sorry I have zero skill in editing). After posting I was terrified of people's reactions or worse, there won't be any reaction so I turned everything off and went to sleep and woke up with an unimaginable number of notes I'd got, I set the target of 500 notes and I really didn't think that I'd get past that number like maybe 2-300 (well my other songs didnt even get 200), at the end I got 5000. I spent the next week reading and screencap tags given in reblogs, I put them on desktop and they're still my motivation til now. Vanilla Twilight is the thing I'm proud of the most even until now, when I've done other songs and projects that look somewhat better. If I have to recommend one thing on my blog I'd recommend it despite its' unskilled paneling, poor composition and muddy colors. It was the first time in my life that I'd put so much effort into something and went through such emotional roller coaster, the feelings I put into it was raw and the idea was very original compared to other songs, I improved and changed a lot during the 2 months I spent on it and never once regret doing it. ***Anyway, you sure have much free time to read it this far, here's a little game for you: I put random things in VT and HF like some characters/stuff from other series, my ocs,... (there wasn't anything purposeless in there even the logo on their cups or the bags they wear) just send me anything you find and I'll draw you something in return**

[jazzmckay]

i bought the original fallout games, here is a semi-liveblog of how fo1 went, with pictures. this is a very long wall of text and image heavy combo post

lots of spoilers, obviously

warnings for video game animal death, sadly

- i made a character with stats that are heavily recommended for a smooth fo1 playthrough since i wasnt sure how well i’d take to the old mechanics and such, but i definitely plan to replay sometime with an unarmed build instead because unarmed is My Jam

- in shady sands, i found a book with a cat on it in a bathroom that gave this message

i looked it up later because I Had To Know and it turns out its pornography. the vault dweller can thoroughly inspect this book in their inventory and still have no idea what it is. amazing.

- other than recruiting ian, nothing too interesting happened in the shady sands/vault 15 portion of the game

horned kangaroos. sure

- got to junktown and stumbled into dogmeat mostly by accident, i was just passing by and SUDDENLY DOG. he’s beautiful and bites people a lot and i love him. here is a random picture just because

- ian keeps shooting dogmeat accidentally. ian youre fired

- every time i pick up something new i expect there to be a purpose to it (the first time i looted a lighter i was sure i’d need it for SOMETHING) but it seems to be the equivalent of picking up an ashtray in later games: useless and valueless. for instance

- i keep forgetting to put away my weapons before going into non-hostile towns and one of these days im just gonna make everyone mad at me probably

- tandi is lovely, she’s one of my favourite characters. i had to start the “save tandi from the khans” mission a couple times because the first time i did it i had enough speech to just get tandi and leave and like. i love the great khans in fnv so i didnt wanna kill them all but there were Noticeably Distressed People asking for help so i had to do it. and then tandi got killed. so eventually i just got the fighting out of the way first and lockpicked her out on my own

- then i got to the First Deathclaw. sup harold, who later becomes a tree

“gonna kill it”  what a good and accurate dialogue option.

- the deathclaw killed tycho twice and i reloaded until we all survived, idk why it kept going after tycho instead of me, apparently tycho looks more leaderly than i do rip. anyway that allowed me to get really close w/o much danger so i could just shoot it in the eyes it was fine

- i got the water chip back to the vault with plenty of time left over. unfortunately it seems i should have gone back to visit earlier for a couple more quests but alas, i missed them. i also have a quest in junktown thats bugged and i probably wont be able to finish it rip

excuse me that was a unique gun

(i ended up reloading anyway and got it back. i decided i didnt want to kill any of the feral ghouls in necropolis if it could be avoided and it turns out their perception is garbage, so it is indeed possible)

excuse me x2

the bodies around the glow. pff

- speaking of the glow, it was very stressful. i triggered almost every single trap, probably, and also didnt think of the fact that i could kill the robots while they were still deactivated until after id gone through a pretty nasty fight with a batch of them. it was mostly fine though, other than having to get dogmeat to stay put somewhere a couple times bc tycho kept shooting him with shotgun burst fire. tycho youre also fired and im taking the fancy shotgun back.

- also there was sooo much good but heavy loot in that place GOD i did not have the inventory space. my need to hoard everything and pawn off stuff to get The Most Caps Possible made it very difficult. might go back sometime if im allowed? i have enough rad-x for it, in any case (spoiler alert i was way too distracted and busy with everything else to try going back)

- joined the brotherhood, got power armour, am still overcapacity even with the strength stat boost. need to find some merchants with refreshed inventory.

- the brotherhood tech looks so fancy in this game. its so. clean? i guess part of that might be that it isnt as far away from the war yet and its a high end bunker but damn

- also got one of my fav fallout weapons ever the power fist!!!

ayyy! since my build is more for guns, i ended up giving it to ian and hes pretty incredible with it so it works out.

- finally made it down to the boneyard/adytum. everyone here is grumpy and sketchy. i spent a lot of time trying to talk to anyone i could and get information before making any quest commitments

including a fella who gave me a tarot reading!!!

- the adytum deathclaws were pretty damn easy to deal with, with power armour and a sniper rifle. pretty much just baited them from a distance so they wasted movement getting close while getting sniper crits lmao i have a ton of perks for higher crit chance/damage and it def helped

- GOT KATJA AND I LOVE HER. im always picking up her knives for her but im willing to do this for her because i love her. (once i got a chance to juggle inventory i gave her a ripper so i no longer had to pick up the throwing knives, i just get to watch her saw everything up with one knife in particular its great)

- anyway the radioactive goo around the gun runners base posed a much more lethal opponent than the deathclaws. all four of my companions took turns ignoring the BRIDGE OF SAFETY to just walk across the goo a couple times no matter how i moved or where i told dogmeat to sit for a bit. hell

i love this

- the followers of the apocalypse always have and always will be my favourite faction of fallout. i really enjoyed chatting with everyone there in between taking down the regulators. it seems they liked me enough to send me backup for taking on the cathedral, which is kind of them but proved to... cause complications. more on that later

- got back to the brotherhood bunker to do some inventory management and misc. quests because after enough faffing about i decided it was time to deal with the cathedral. i liked the idea of starting with the master and taking out the head so to speak before going to the military base to clean up afterwards. i got everyone as armoured and well equipped as i could and headed down

how do you do fellow kids!!

- talked to laura from the followers and she let me into the back room with the staircase, all while im being followed by like four followers invaders. i am so obviously Trouble, surrounded by followers of the apocalypse but i guess thats fine

- THE PROBLEM IS. THEY GET IN THE WAY. the staircase leads to areas with very little space to move around and i had to reload like 5 times for no reason other than the followers were in my way and i couldnt do a single damn thing. they also made it impossible to be stealthy, even when i could get around them because id have to circle around so much id get spotted easier. just a nightmare. in future playthroughs ill just avoid getting help from the followers i guess :(

- so because of all that i ended up going a route i didnt really want to: completely diplomatic. im a huge fan of diplomacy and resolving issues without violence in fallout games but this was actually a rare situation where i preferred to do a little shooting. sometimes you gotta. i wanted to go through the cathedral manually, loot a lot of corpses, and take on the master in combat, but the only way to get the job done without half my companions dying because the followers of the apocalypse where in the way was to convince morpheus to take me directly to the master and use speech/the sterility holodisk to talk the master down. sigh

- at least we got to shoot some stuff on the way out, but with the countdown to detonation going, i wasnt sure how much time id have to look around/loot so pretty much just went through running and gunning

rest in fuckin pieces

- decided to just get every single special stat implant that i hadnt already taken. we’re heading into the endgame now and i figured i might as well go all out. time to get us all into perfect order. this includes my poor puppy dogmeat who had had an injured leg since a fight in the hub before i went to the boneyard. my doctor skill was really bad and im not sure if theres any other way to heal a companions limbs, so after my post-cathedral level up, i put all my points into doctor just to help out my sweet baby boy

- military base time lads here we go

- i bullshit and lockpick my way in through the front door without having to fire a single shot. cool

- inside theres a lot of mutants and computers and forcefields. i sneak to a computer and change a whole bunch of settings, not really understanding what im actually doing, somehow this kills 3 of the mutants? i go over there and sneak kill the last in that area and poke around the other computers. some new force fields come on but theyre yellow instead of red. they still hurt. what is the meaning of this. i never really figured it out 

- i wasnt sure what else to do at this point and there was a red force field over the elevator door still so i say fuck it if this goes bad ill just reload and attack the room with like 10 mutants hanging about. it goes REALLY WELL until one of the brotherhood fires off a rocket

THANKS IT WAS COMPLETELY USELESS

- so i reloaded because i refuse to let this be a thing and i pickpocketed all the ammo off rocket man over here. try and slaughter half my team now, fool. 

- this definitely went much better:

im the stealth man 

- after this all thats left really is dealing with the lt., getting the access codes, and blowing this popsicle stand. unfortunately the lt. fight results in the death of my good pup boy dogmeat rip. i really wanted to reload and save him but honestly im not sure i could do much better than no casualties other than dogmeat. i very nearly lost katja and ian as well. in another playthrough, now that i know wtf im doing, i think i could do better, but with this playthrough i think saving 3/4 companions is pretty dang good

- here we go again with the countdown to detonation. on the way out of the elevator, one of the remaining brotherhood dudes got in my way just like the followers at the cathedral. i killed him and didnt feel too bad about it bc literally no other option but to reload and i just wanted Out Of There with what was left of my companions

- i took screenshots of the slideshow at the end but its a lot and all pretty standard, i think. other than the sad fate of necropolis (which im not sure how to avoid, if its even possible?), i think i got all the “good ending” stuff

- aaand back to vault 13

yo dog fuck u

i mean whatever, i didnt really want to go back to the vault anyway.

i know what the canon vault dweller does because i know who the player character in fallout 2 is already but my vault dweller is probably happy to go back to some of the places she visited on her journey and leave the vault behind. i imagine she revisited all the places she’d been to check in on everyone and then wander north (with..... katja........) and eventually settle down and blah blah spoilers for fallout 2 which i will be playing soon probably [thumbs up]