#Documenting Journeys

[techdriveplay]

Unleashing the Thrill: A Comprehensive Guide to Adventure Travel

Adventure travel is not just about leaving the beaten path; it's about discovering it. It's an invitation to challenge oneself.

The call of the unknown, the allure of the untouched, and the thrill of the unimaginable – adventure travel is not just about leaving the beaten path; it’s about discovering it. In an era where the quest for unique experiences outshines the desire for material possessions, adventure travel has emerged as a beacon for those seeking to explore the world beyond traditional tourist vistas. It’s an…

[desdemonas-intellectual-nonsense]

I don’t want to sound foolish. But, just remember, love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.

James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

[giddlygoat]

one arm left. this painting has me in a chokehold. i feel manic working on it but i just need to get it out of my system. painting this image is like an exorcism for me, like i have to bring it to life or i will simply be consumed by it. nothing will be right with the world until i finish this godforsaken abomination

[cautiously0ptimistic]

And what's left of me, a cavity? At least the space is mine.

[shadowedfaith048]

I made a spider based off of @anxiousapplepie’s Rose Knights!

[chimerafeathers]

it’s pretty funny looking back on my perception of isat as i played because it shifted a LOT.

a lot of rambling about my specific experience with the game below the cut lol

starting point was like

- “oh one or two of the people i follow started posting about this game. looks cute. i might check it out sometime so i won’t read anything too closely.”

- somehow dashboard osmosised the info that main character and star person were connected/the same and NOTHING ELSE. info goes to the very back of my mind and is not consciously considered for a very long time

- Secret Sleepover Society posts a VOD of the beginning. eventually get around to watching this long after it’s clear that they’re not doing a full playthrough.

- [gets like 20-30 mins into the first vod] “oh wow i REALLY like the art and humor, this is so incredibly my style. since J&J aren’t finishing it i’m just gonna stop watching now and play it for myself”

- [reads a comment on the SSS vod that says isat is now on the same level as undertale for them] “ooohhhhkay i expect this to be fun and sweet and emotional but. cmon” [press X to doubt]

- intrigued still but become skeptical and guarded in that way where someone hypes something up TOO much to you and you’re suddenly on the lookout for flaws and overaware of your own emotional investment into the thing, like “sure it’s good but is it really gonna be THAT good 🧐”

- “this is probably gonna start out very cute, get ~dark and emotional~ later on, i’m gonna cry at the end (this is not hard to accomplish), i’ll think about it a lot for a week or two, and then i’ll move on and just think about it fondly from time to time :)” (i have not had a hyperfixation this strong in years lmao)

and then it being a “tumblr game” really kept hitting that “on the lookout for flaws” point over and over again. because i’m very aware of the pendulum swing of tumblr trends around storytelling preferences—all those posts like “why do people want characters to talk like they’ve been through 10 years of therapy, everyone should be fucked up & toxic instead” and “not everything needs to be found family. sometimes people are just coworkers/friends/whatever, stop trying to fit every relationship into a familial or romantic box” and “why are these medieval characters listing off their identity labels like they’re on 21st century social media. they would Not have that terminology/level of self awareness”

so i played the beginning kinda going “ehhhh” about how clearly communicative a lot of the characters appeared to be, the big hammer of “HEY THIS IS A FOUND FAMILY. DO YOU GET IT?” during the friendquests (especially with Odile saying it’s weird for an adult to be friends with a child, which i disagree with), the kind of awkward pronoun scene between Loop & Siffrin…i kept squinting at it all, trying to figure out if it worked for me or not in context.

and. it does. with the found family stuff especially, i keep thinking about how earned it feels, how the big friendquest “found family” hammer is like…a fakeout of the real ending. it’s not enough to say the word or play with the aesthetic of family. what does it actually mean to care about someone that much? what lengths are you willing to go to, what wrongs are you willing to forgive? it’s important that it IS family, and not ““just”” friendship or coworkers or mentorship, because the craving for permanence is so deeply etched into Siffrin’s character and that concept is the closest they can get to something that might last. but at the same time, those relationships are the same no matter what name they go by—friendship, family, the word doesn’t matter because the love is there regardless.

i thought Siffrin was gonna be a kinda bland, blank slate character in the beginning! i thought the focus was going to be on all of the other characters, and “Siffrin” was just going to be our unobtrusive player vehicle to interact with them. something along the lines of Slay the Princess, the Stanley Parable, even Undertale itself—the “decider,” Stanley, and Frisk are all characters, technically, information can be gleaned and extrapolated about their personality or background to some extent, but that’s not really the point or focus of the story they’re in. it’s about the situation, it’s about the choices YOU, the player, are making, it’s about the characters you meet and the relationships YOU establish under the player character’s name.

lol. lmao, even.

there’s a Black Sails post i saw a long time before i watched that show, that said something along the lines of, “by the end, a character’s lack of a backstory becomes the most poignant tragedy of them all.” i didn’t fully get what that meant at the time but it sounded intriguing! and now i’m like. YEAH. YEAH MAN. IT SURE IS.

the “blank slate” impression didn’t last long at all, but it’s still wild to me how cleanly all the little elements that gave me that impression in the first place were retroactively justified and made heartbreaking. of COURSE Siffrin says he “didn’t have anything better to do” before joining the party. that’s not a weird, weak cop-out, that’s a lifetime of being adrift and alone hidden behind an amicable smile.

none of the characters are as open and communicative as they appear. not with us, not with themselves, not until they’re pushed to a breaking point. their experiences with gender and identity are grounded in the cultural and religious worldbuilding and aren’t as utopic or shallow as slapping on a label and calling it a day. they’re examined in the context of their world and identity first and foremost, not ours (as much as that’s possible to untangle anyway), and meaningfully conflict and interact with those elements of characterization.

it’s just. man. my expectations weren’t low going in—i fully expected to love it!! it just caught me off guard how layered the writing would actually be.

[wolf-saint]

... dog motif mental illness *crowd cheers* *someone does a backflip*

[callmegaith]

Experimented some more last night but realized that looking at the ref and trying to match those shapes is really limiting me so today I decided I would not have the reference there and I would draw Barney based on the shapes I wanna give him and my imagination THE DIFFERENCE

With ref

Without

He's so triangle to me tbh I wanna give him sharp shapes. I also realized he needs two different face shapes one for the helmet and one without.

I really like the one without the ref so I'll continue to develop that c:

[edenfenixblogs]

I AM NO LONGER IN ANTISEMITESVILLE, CALIFORNIA AND I AM HOME WITH FAMILY!!!!!

My mom’s dog says it all about how exhausted I am.

[gaymingintrovert]

That water cooler was kicking my ass

[saltwater-sloth]

I... I just realized that the Fount's keyhole brooch thing is a hexagram.

We've had the Fount's official design for how long; and I've only now googled what shape it was cuz I'm bad at geometry????

tldr; apparently, I'm an idiot who can't spin shapes around in my head.

[catwyk]

back in s1 if it werent for writing being the waxen scrivener's thing, faulkner would so have had a muddy, ripped, bloodstained diary where he wrote shit like

today sister carpenter and I trecked through the reeds of the white gull river for in silence. i believed we were quietly reflecting treading on the threshold of the trawlerman's sacred land, but 4 hours in, sister carpenter almost lost a boot in the mud and muttered "more like shite gull river." what the fuck?? I drank a green juice and practiced my prayer marks. hopefully tomorrow we find someone i can turn into a saint. goodnight!

[moonchild-in-blue]

So, sometimes while playing botw/totk, I like to take out my horses and do long journeys across Hyrule, to take a break from fast travelling and completing quests.

Since I just got a new horse way down south (her name's Urania!), it seemed like the perfect excuse to take the long way to Link's house. Usually I map out the way before hand, so I know which route to take, and what stables/towns we are stopping at. Because I wanna feel like Aragorn I suppose.

This was the completed route, starting in Highland Stable, Faron, towards Link's House in Akkala:

It took us about 2.5 days to make the journey, with 3 stable stops in Dueling Peaks, Woodlands, and finally Foothill, with a short stop in Kakariko Village to get some supplies and food.

I realise now I could've continued north towards Riverside Stable, instead of east Dueling Peaks but. Oh well. It was a very pleasant trip either way!

(pics and deets below):

So, we took off from Highland Stable and headed east, around Lake Hylia. Crossing the Hylia bridge would be easier, but there's a fire gleeok there and I'm very scared 😌💙

It wasn't easy to cross Farosh hills on horse, but we made it! Took us a day's worth.

(I forgot the Big Twin bridge wasn't in use, so I did try my best to find a different way for Urania to cross, but no deal. I had to cheat a little and use the stable boarding function 🥺)

Then next day we took off early and stopped by Kakariko to buy some more arrows for me and carrots for the horsie 🥹🥕

Left the village by 9:30, passed by Wetland stable, and continued north to Woodland stable.

We spent the night, and I left Urania there while I took care of some nearby affairs (aka a shrine and a couple other things). She behaved super well so I mafe sure to give her some extra apples before we took off again 🥹

We only had a few hours of daylight left, so we only went around Trilby Valley, and stopped at Foothill for the night (horse girlie needs to rest and also I didn't wanna be arsed with all the stalkoblins and such 🙃).

Next morning we left early once again, and after some very annoying storms and rain, we at last reached home 🥹💙

It was Urania's first journey EVER, and she did wonderfully 🥹💙🐎

[tokiro07]

As I predicted back in ch.1, after seven chapters someone has finally directly referred to Ichi as "Majo," prompting him to reply "that doesn't sound right, I'm a guy. How about...'Madan?' Call me Ichi the Madan!"

The way it's presented in Japanese, his mischievous little smile when he comes up with Madan makes it seem like he feels super clever, followed up by a huge toothy grin with a little blush while he proudly declares to the world that he's "Ichi the Madan"

In the English version, they did manage to retain that he's refuting being referred to as a woman by translating "Majo-sama" as "Lady Witch," a perfectly reasonable translation. However, while the line about Ichi being a guy remains, a new point of contention had to be invented for the dialogue to still make sense. So now, the problem with "Lady Witch" isn't just that it's feminine, it's also that it's too formal

As a feral child of the mountains, it does make sense for Ichi to reject fancy titles like Lady or Sir, and fittingly he had already asked Kumugi not to call him "Ichi-sama" earlier in the chapter, but it does still add a layer of nuance that wasn't present before while also removing a layer of nuance that was

The transition from "how about...'Madan?'" to "titles aren't my thing, but...I'm just a Witch" turns what was a moment of cleverness into a moment of humility. Worse, the pride of the following panel matches tonally with Ichi thinking he's being clever and wanting to show it off, but it's completely dissonant with him downplaying himself as someone special. If he's "just a Witch," it doesn't really make sense for him to introduce himself as "Ichi the Witch," because it makes him seem self-important despite just saying he isn't. If he's trying to avoid having a title, then "just Ichi" like he said to Kumugi would work, but no, he's declared himself "Ichi the Witch," giving himself a title when he just said he didn't want one

It's internally contradictory, and ultimately becomes a patchwork solution when inevitably another character tries to be disrespectful by calling him "Majo" without the "-sama" honorific, but Ichi is unfazed because he's only worried about correcting "Majo" to "Madan." Are they going to have that character call him "Sir Witch" and just hope it comes off as sarcastic enough that it carries an equivalent weight? That's probably what'll happen, but again, it alters the nuance of the scene

It's not a huge deal overall, I don't think it ruins the story or anything for one line to have an awkward translation here and there, but I do think it's unfair that not only are readers going to come away with different impressions of Ichi for the totally wrong reasons, but also that translator Adrienne Beck has to bend over backwards to make these things work just because some executive or marketing department person made a flippant decision with the title

It's not going to keep me from reading and enjoying the series, but it is a damn shame

[unreliableetape]

First Daffy [feat. Porky] vs most recent Daffy doodles