#which. git gud.

[serpentface]

Ephenni man participating in a variant of the kagnoma wantouki folk dance. He has come prepared, wearing bell bracelets and belled and pheasant-feathered dancing shoes, and neglecting a tunic and cloak, allowing for the percussive slaps to his chest and stomach to be louder.

"Kagnoma wantouki" groups together a variety of closely related folk dances that occur across the Imperial Wardi cultural sphere, and beyond (the west + south rivers Hill Tribes, Cholemdinae, and Loberan North Wardi groups have also adopted and developed variants, and one western variant has spread to parts of Bur). The dance is performed differently from province to province (sometimes even from village to village) and goes by several more specific names, but it is distinguished as a collective from other folk dances by the commonalities of:

the dancers use their own bodies as a form of percussion, via clapping their hands, slapping their chests, upper arms, stomachs, thighs, and/or shins, and stomping their feet. The name of the dance itself refers to this.

the dance is otherwise dominated by rapid footwork (often emphasized with bells) and is accompanied by up-tempo music.

the dance can technically be performed strictly solo, with opportunities for partnering.

dancers provide some vocalization.

As a folk dance, it serves no direct religious function and is mostly performed by people with no formal training at social gatherings (this is a mainstay of weddings in particular, but occurs at everything from religious festivals to funerary feasts).

Drumming is the only strictly necessary form of musical accompaniment, but many variants/performances make use of tambourines and rattles. Use of a two-stringed bow instrument is common in the west and south. Chanting by the dancers and singing by a musical accompaniment and/or onlookers is a near-necessity, with a specific call and response form of song developing in tandem with this dance.

Costuming (if used at all) varies by region, but belled shoes decorated with feathers are common (for this and many other dances), and men who come prepared for the occasion usually go with a skirt and a nude upper body (baring more skin to make the slaps more percussive). It’s very common to see men fasten their cloaks around their hips and slip the upper half of the tunic off their arms and down to the belt when joining in opportunistically. Costuming for women requires less specificity and usually lacks the feathered shoes.

The dance can technically be considered unisex, but most variants show slight differentiation of choreography for men and women (in large part aligning to typical dress standards). The feminine variant involves active use of the skirt and less slapping, usually limiting it to claps of the hands, slapping the hand of a partner, and a specialized move during rapid percussive sessions in which the hem of the skirt is lifted by the non-dominant hand while the opposite leg is repeatedly kicked up and slapped on the shin in time to the music.

When dancing with a partner (which often occurs opportunistically among a group), both will face each other and attempt to move in time and punctuate the high-tempo sections with slaps of each other's hands. This dance has no particular connotations of courtship (while some other folk dances are at least Rooted in this and require man-woman dance partnerships with very strongly differentiated choreography). If anything, it's slightly more typical for people to partner up with a dancer of the same gender.

It's very common to see 'dance fights' develop between men in particular, especially when two higher-skilled dancers match up and attempt to outdo each other. This is a semi-formalized aspect of the dance, where the competitors will alternate between 'leading' for each section (punctuated by shifts in tempo and shouts) while the other attempts to match their movements as closely as possible, 'losing' the match if they can't keep up. A good quality fight in action will be deferred to by other dancers, who will circle around them and clap in time (while particularly canny accompanying musicians will improvise more complex rhythms, and singers call attention to it). These 'dance-fights' are almost always friendly in nature and often considered to be the highlight of a kagnoma wantouki, either as a showcase of the highest skilled dancers in a group or as a very, very entertaining spectacle when one or both are drunk.

[gamchawizzy]

weirdly specific achievement: i've drawn the mensis cage enough times that i can draw it coherently without reference

[reliquiaen]

Dear Respawn Entertainment,

Since I know you'll insist on putting those horrible traversal challenges in your inevitable Jedi Part III, please consider doing one of those pan shots like in older 3D platformers where you can see the whole level and the rough path to take. Because as they are, the traversal tears are nightmarish creations that really force people to experience your namesake to learn the paths. Perhaps the camera pan could be a lower difficulty setting option for those of us who aren't masochists.

Thanks

[fishareglorious]

after so many failed expeditions in hard route (bad luck, stupid decisions, and why the hell is the final boss so tanky there) and 1 finished one in normal, I finally grinded enough points for the card.

hell yeah :D

[unidentifiedfuckingthing]

the minecraft build ive been working on for like 2 weeks. its heavily edited from/inspired by

this build and my goal is mostly to be able to house a lot of villagers without putting them in jails like people like doing. also i had 3 separate skeleton horse traps spawn at this house while i was building it

[decidentia]

Just a note to say thanks for bearing with me. ♡

[presiding]

daud enjoyers play like

no kills all coins all collectables. stop to listen to every conversation, even the words of my enemies. i'm a changed man. but it's too late, i'm already doomed, the narrative is closing in, but maybe, just maybe -

daud enjoyers also play like

carnage

[asleepinawell]

hot off the triumph of my ng+ run of dark souls 1, i decided to finally go back to try and beat ringed city which i rage quit 2 years ago (read more because i rambled a bit) (obligatory note that this is all just my opinion, other people get different things out of the game and that's fine, etc)

i didn't quit over a boss fight, but over that stretch between the inner wall bonfire and the swamp where the devs were like okay turtle clerics, ringed knights, SIX harald knights on the stairs backed up by ranged, and then a goddamn swamp in a level that should have been a cool ruined city. and all of the hard damage sponge enemies respawn. so if you die you have to go through a ton of very slow hard fights again and it's tedious

this time i looked up where the bonfire was and just made a run for it. and then after trying the next part did the same thing again. it is just frustrating. i can't play for more than twenty minutes at a time without having to turn it off and find something actually fun to do

the whole time I've been thinking about what makes a soulsborne level actually good. i've never thought it was difficulty (and would argue that being known as "so so hard" becoming the core aspect of soulsborne has been the worst thing to happen to the series)

for me, the best levels depend on patience and observation, not extremely hard enemies spawning out of nowhere. the sign of a good level is that when you finish it, when you're out of the thick of it, you think "hey that was cool and i wouldn't mind doing it again someday". and you think that regardless of any annoyance or difficulty you had along the way

when you finish an area and just think "i never want to go through that again" then something went wrong

i think about tower of latria, anor londo, darkroot garden, tomb of giants, central yarhnam, and even the valley of defilement and yeah some of those were grueling but god were they cool and i will go back to them someday. ringed city makes me think i'd rather go mop my kitchen (which i did so i guess something good came of it)

similar feeling about boss fights. artorias and manus were challenging but i ended both fights being like fuck yeah i did it! and the fights looked and felt really cool. i felt like i was fighting a duel rather than waiting for the boss to stop ping-ponging off the walls shitting status effects so i could get in one hit

the first boss fight in ringed city (I'm up to the second one now but haven't done it yet) i was like oh good now i never have to do that again (i don't even remember it very well, just that i didn't enjoy it). i actually prefer easy fights that have neat atmosphere (moonlight butterfly) to harder ones that leave me frustrated and think the best ones combine elements of challenge and atmosphere

(artorias' primal screams still get me every time, the deceptive speed he can move with despite lurching around, his dead arm dangling, the trail of abyss corruption, the way i remembered all his attacks years later...god that fight was good)

anyway i love the series a ton and I'll just end with the fact i have beaten demon's souls about 5 times (3 ng+ iterations included), and dark souls 1 about the same number of times. i've been through bloodborne twice and am almost through a third time. elden ring i beat twice and it's kind of a mixed bag. and then there's ds3 which i beat once and have 5 new characters i never got far on (i did like it but felt no desire to replay). i don't think i ever touched ds2 again after beating it. to me that says a lot

[dazzelmethat]

I bought 2 new plants and some floaters. The scape is still messy but I want it to have an overgrown forested look. I still need to add a hide or two somewhere in there. Ignore the photobombing barbs

[the-voice-of-night-vale]

social anxiety can be really funny in retrospect bc it will have you saying shit like 'is it weird to call a doctor's office and schedule an appointment?"with 100% sincerity and panicking about it as if that's not the silliest thing in the world

[alteredsilicone]

part of me wants to try elden ring but also...

(looks at frostpunk) afraid of dropping it like 2 hours in when i get too overwhelmed, i don't do well with hard games

[chika-nyan]

Lies down. So it looks like my job is actively trying to moorder me so I’ll probably be mostly ded for a while. Honestly at a breaking point, can you believe vacation was just last month? :) Gonna keep doing my best to hold on for that mid-late spring exit/quitting time with next vacation but it’s going to be a trial forsure.

[lokh]

i am at the end of my fucking rope

[death-rebirth-senshi]

Man now I'm looking at my new game+ clips for bosses in dark souls 3 and it doesn't make me miss dark souls 3 so much as it makes me miss being this good at a souls game.

[rivaiin]

its that time of the year where i consider giving another try to a souls game

[soufre-de-paris]

you would think my love of replaying elden ring and my recent foray into playing every dark souls ever would have prepared me for a fucking zelda game