#but completing this challenge is requiring me to NOT go there which is HUGE

[catrillion]

Day 11 of 30: I haven't updated in a few days, but that doesn't mean I haven't still been on track! I have exceeded the 1666 daily word goal every single day this week, and today was no exception: today, I wrote 3559 words (wowie zowie) and my total word count for the month is now 23,873.

Y'all, that is NUTS. I'm almost halfway there. I've never in my life gotten this far during NaNoWriMo, and even if I don't make it to 50k words by the end of this, I'm still so insanely proud of myself you guys have no idea

[heloflor]

Me playing Mario vs Donkey Kong: Man this game is so janky! I’ve got so many unnecessary deaths because of it! How are you supposed to do some of this stuff?!

Also me playing Mario vs Donkey Kong:

[stars-and-darkness]

the thing about caitlyn fucking kiramman is that i don't even LIKE her, but i also can't stop thinking about her. she could've been SO GREAT. like in s1 i didn't particularly care about her (she was just ... there. there was nothing offensive about her character, she just didn't stand out among all the others in the main cast), but in s2???? so much of what goes on with her in s2 is just so utterly delicious and right up my alley ... in theory. in concept.

but the execution is just so utterly atrocious, and combined with the rest of s2's general idiocy, it makes me so furious, but i still can't not think about the WHAT IF, ya know?

what if we maybe deferred the magical hive mind robots and the wizard cult and the multiverse to the next show (or never ... never's good) and the focus remained on piltover and zaun. what if we had a season or two more, so that the necessity of a redemption within the next six 40 min episodes didn't bog cait down (or ... you know. no redemption arc. i actually prefer that. let her be evil, lmao.)

if they had spent the time and the effort into actually exploring her inner world in order for us to see her slow descent into fascism, it could've been SO GOOD. if they had taken this kind, painfully naive yet so well-intentioned girl who descended down into zaun and saw the suffering inflicted by the system she herself has benefited from her entire life, put her through an event that actually challenges both her ingrained kindness and the newly-formed awareness of the oppressive dynamic that permeates the society she lives in and then asked the question: is caitlyn kiramman the sort of person who can suffer a huge personal loss like her mother due to this exact oppressive dynamic and still come out recognising that it's a symptom of the system her mother, PERSONALLY, propagated?

and if the answer is no, like s2 attempts to do, if, as someone much funnier than i am said somewhere on this webbed site, she takes zaun lives matter out of her instagram bio ... that's okay. hell, for me, a known enjoyer of characters who are terrible people, it's excellent. it takes the s1 character i didn't much care for and makes her into someone i would be extremely intrigued by.

but ... that's not what happens. or rather, an arc that would require a lot of work to do justice is so condensed that she goes from 0 to 100 in one 40 min episode, and i understand why it's so hard to swallow for so many people. and the worst part is that i can SEE the outline of what could've been, and it makes the switch that much more jarring. cait seemed to be going in one direction, until the memorial attack when she did a complete 180. worse than that, when she decided to form her sexy lil copaganda war crimes task force, she immediately pulled out the big guns.

(i have seen ... so much discussion on how much harm unleashing the grey on zaun actually did, and in case my opinion is somehow relevant to this discussion let me just come out and say:

how do you think gas works? we are shown, explicitly on screen, cait and the war crimes gang release it in the streets of an underground city where her family controls the vents. i think any discussion that doesn't conclude with yes, caitlyn did in fact bring unfathomable harm to hundreds if not thousands of people is a waste of time.)

more than that, while cait herself doesn't live in our world, the creators who wrote and animated this, and the viewers who saw it do, and we all have a cultural awareness of chemical warfare and its associations. it's insane to me that people go against common sense to defend her here, both because i don't think it can be defended unless you have a HEAVY case of fave-can-do-no-wrong goggles on, but also for me personally because ... why would we want to? she's finally being interesting.

all that said, and i cannot overemphasise this enough, gassing zaun should've been a moral event horizon for cait. it should've been the point at which even the people around her--most notably, bloody VI--turn on her. it should not have been the very first thing she does.

hell, she establishes the task force specifically BECAUSE she believes that the council attack, in mel's own words, was an act of one deranged individual, and she wants a small force that can extract/kill jinx, rather than a full-scale invasion that is going to harm innocents. so WHY is the first thing she and the task force do EXACTLY THAT?

the war crimes task force should have been shown to struggle in zaun for an extended period of time, during which cait grows more strained, as do her relationships with her loved ones. she should have been shown struggling with ptsd from the dinner party and guilt over not taking that shot at jinx when she had the chance. vi is the one who convinced her not to--what if she finds herself blaming her for that. what if vi (this post isn't about her so i'm struggling so bad not to derail it completely but oh my poor girl what did they do to you) is pulling away from her, more and more conflicted about what they're doing, both on a systematic level as enforcers rampaging through the undercity and on a personal level as an older sister (just give me vi actually struggling with being an enforcer, PLS, give me her feeling cornered and seeing no other way forward, give me SOMETHING). it would bring in an interesting bit of interpersonal conflict for caitvi that isn't predicated on cait fucking punching vi only for it to never come up again.

point is, we should have seen cait struggling under the weight of being the head of her house, the weight of expectations, the weight of her guilt, we should have seen her barely holding together and feeling like everyone in her life is against her (again! vi!), BEFORE she makes the choice to unleash the grey, to do exactly what she formed the task force to prevent, to take something her mother built to actually do some good (pls insert all the arguments why the kiramman vents are fucked up actually here, i'm too tired to bring them up) and turn it against zaunites, in her mother's memory.

moral. event. horizon.

(insert here something about how jinx turning the grey back onto piltover should've been a major moment for HER, and something to actually lock in all those unconnected and thematically insignificant cait-jinx parallels. how we should've seen her struggling just as much with her own rage and hate, which all stems from guilt--because cait isn't the only one who lost a parent that night. how that moment should have been a CHOICE jinx makes, not just a terrorist attack but the moment in which she chooses to fight for zaun--for selfish reasons, of course, because she's not an idealist, she's not a revolutionary--but does her motivation really matter if the result is an actual resistance movement? look, i have even more thoughts on jinx than i do cait, and if i go on i'll never stop so let's just--let's just go back to cait.)

instead, the gassing is the first thing she does, it's shown to us within a single music video, and then she's being hailed as a dictator. and as rushed a job as the first three episodes do in establishing how she got there, what really pisses me off about cait in s2 and what prompted me to furiously type up a post about a stupid cartoon when i should be translating latin texts for class is ... what now?

the timeskip between ep 3 and 4 is the most fascinating bit here! here's where she's at her angriest--her guilt is eating her alive, because she didn't take that shot, because she alienated vi (what a nice way to say she punched her and left her curling up in pain, alone, wow), everything that made her angry is still there, she still sees jinx's face in her nightmares, except now she has the ultimate power. she has avenues opened up to her that she didn't up until now, and she has ambessa whispering in her ear, fuelling her rage for her own purposes.

this should have been caitlyn at her worst. just as angry as before, just as guilty, but with the full power of a city under martial law under her fingertips.

in a world where we have revolutionary!jinx, we could've had the scene where cait lets ambessa put the Cloak of Dictatorship around her shoulders intersped with flashes of jinx digging out silco's old coat and shrugging it on. caitlyn's cloak hangs heavy and just keeps dragging her deeper underwater as she chokes on her own rage, but jinx nuzzles into the collar of her coat. caitlyn's cloak is a shackle; jinx's coat is a comfort as much as a promise.

in a world where we have revolutionary!jinx, we could've had cait have actual war on her hands.

(it doesn't even have to be jinx. i mean, i WANT it to be, but the war could happen without her, too. i just need IT to happen instead of arcane age of ultron.)

and this could do wonders for her character from so many directions--it could fuel her hatred more because zaunites aren't just rolling over as they did when she gassed them, now they're fighting back, and they're fighting dirty. it could push her deeper into ambessa's embrace because she sure as hell doesn't know anything about warfare, so isn't it lucky she has a decorated general as her mentor?

this is where i get to one more thing i'd have loved to see and that's ... no redemption. not every villain needs redemption, and they sure as hell don't need it to be sympathetic.

because arcane only had two seasons to work with, and because we HAD to have cait redeemed by the end, we get to see none of what would realistically have been her worst era. instead, when we meet her again in ep4 she is already tired, already done with all this, already disillusioned with ambessa. the most interesting part of her arc is completely skipped over in favour of a "redemption arc", and i use the that phrase HIGHLY ironically, given that it was less of an arc and more of someone from the writers' room pointing a gun at my forehead and threatening to shoot if i didn't agree with them that she was redeemed now and that it's all roses and daisies from now on.

ultimately ... i don't WANT her redeemed, but if we must, then i wish more thought and time and effort went into it, just as i wish it did with her descent.

and you know what? caitlyn as the main villain of s2 might've fit nicely into the whole theme of monster you created from s1. of how revolutionary ideas are significantly easier to hold onto when someone you love isn't at stake. you know, all the things that would make the big-collar-and-injured-eye visual parallels s2 draws to silco actually make a lick of sense.

s2 cait stumbles through a multi-season arc in nine episodes, and about as gracefully as a broken-legged foal.

[cerastes]

Today is Day 9 Of Me Playing Girls' Frontline 2.

Like any other gacha, the start is braindead because they need even the most non-sentient of creatures to be able to clear. This is nothing new, but it really stuck out like a sore thumb in this particular case because this game heavily uses the XCOM formula as its inspiration. For the uninitiated, the original 1994 X-COM: UFO Defense starts incredibly brutal and only gets harder as you advance. The 2012 reboot, XCOM: Enemy Unknown starts reasonably brutal and scales pretty harshly and always demanding you really, really are learning what your tools can do and what the game mechanics are as you basically fight an asymmetrical Civilization III game against an opponent that 1) outguns you most of the way and 2) fights you with the hatefulness one only reserves for someone that has fucked one's wife. GFL2 starts you off against enemies that require absolutely no tactical acumen whatsoever, that do not use cover, and that deal pitiful amounts of damage even if you yourself don't use cover. This lasts a little too long for comfort but again it's industry standard. Once you get to parts of the game that require sentience, it's fun to see how they've gone about the flow of combat: You're basically pitting your characters with their own special conditions, specialties and passives against many enemies that initially are simple as hell (they just move and shoot) but steadily become more complex and nuanced (enemies that target an area for bombardment at the end of their turn, enemies that can counter in specific circumstance, enemies that trap your enemies with overwatch fire, reaction intereceptions, AoE, etc). The system definitely has potential. I've yet to truly find anything actually challenging that wasn't me fighting enemies 10-20 levels higher than my units, but the fundamentals of cover and risk-reward are there even on-level; if you get shot at completely exposed, you are going to take hefty damage (unless you are rocking a Suomi shield).

The biggest departure from XCOM proper is that there is no accuracy: All attacks will always hit, unless certain abilities outright deny the damage -- like certain enemy Medics that can use the Anesthesia skill to negate one instance of damage -- and the game really favors a more aggressive style for both the player and the enemy through the Stability System: All units have a Stability counter, which decreases by certain amounts depending on the attack received. Once it's depleted, units can only benefit from the most bare and basic defensive effects of cover, which are not very good. Stability Break also may have additional special effects on certain enemies, chiefly bosses, resulting in extra damage taken, reduced attack power, changing forms, losing certain active or passive skills, etc. As a huge fan of systems like this, I Enjoy.

The game is gorgeous looking: The environments are highly detailed, the character models are incredibly well made, the guns are lovingly sculpted. I know the overarching meme is that it's got the best anime girl feet in the industry -- and it's true, they put more love into rendering and modelling these girls' feet, stockings and socks that I've seen parents put into raising their children -- but the model quality is truly overarching, they spared no effort in any obvious area, it's a really gorgeous looking game. The sound design and the music are all fine and have not wowed me in any special way, really, but visually, good lord, the game truly does go hard. Another thing the game does really well is video cutscenes, the action and choreography of actually very decently lengthy cutscenes they show pretty often go very hard, with good explosions, good gunplay, fluid and good looking motions, etc. The animation direction in GFL2 is really, really good, something I wasn't expecting given they've not really delved on this area particularly in previous games. They probably hired a really good studio for this-slash-got themselves some very talented and skilled personnel for it.

The game economy is Post-Mihoyo style: There's a set cast of Max Rarity characters, called Elites in the game's nomenclature, that inhabit a Standard Banner with absolutely fucking horrendous rates. 0.6% chance of rolling anything Max Rarity, 0.3% of an Elite Doll, 0.3% of an Elite Weapon. Besides this, there's the Limited Banners, which is every banner ever, meaning post-launch Elites are all Limited with a Limited Signature Weapon. In other words, shit sucks. The only saving grace is that the game, in thankfully true XCOM fashion, is much less about having Strong Individual Units, and much more about having a team with good synergy, and there's plenty of great non-Elites you'll have plenty of copies of. Gameplaywise, you won't get shafted by not having the Newest Woman With A Broken Kit, which is good. Signature Weapons so far from what I've seen are very nice to have but no functionality is tied to them and no character feels incomplete without their Signature Weapon or without multiples dupes, which is really good practice and a deal breaker for me if it's present. About the only stupidly broken character I can think off right this second is definitely Suomi, who supports so incredibly well that she lets you Not Play XCOM. She's seriously and hilariously busted and futureproofed.

The writing is pretty damn stiff. This is nothing new with Sunborn. The thing with Sunborn is that when it hits highs, they are VERY high, but the trip to those highs is clunky and stiff, with an overabundance of nothingburger technobabble and tacticool filler dialogue that, were this a megahit the way One Piece is, would definitely inspire a dogged group of fans to make a website that tells you exactly where to read and where to skip to avoid all the meaningless filler. Even if you like some tacticool, it's just SO much of it that serves no purpose. The characters are... Unfortunately, not super fun. Our old friend Oats, ahem, Groza (OTs-14) is there, and she's fun, but the rest of the characters have not done a good job to endear me to them: Colphne I'm pretty ok with, Nemesis and Krolik really have exhausted the fucks I can give for them by this point (I'm in Chapter 4). This is particularly painful in the case of Nemesis for me, a character whose design I really, really love and who I was looking forward to a lot. Nemesis' whole thing is that she literally cannot speak normally and has to communicate entirely in cryptic theater kid ramblings, and Krolik conversely only exists as the only person that can somehow accurately decipher what the fuck it is she's saying. This is charming for all of three cutscenes before it becomes very old and basically filler: Nemesis says "The embers of starlight long forgotten by statues lingers in the fingertips of the deaf" and Krolik replies with "Hah!? Who are you calling a coward?! I'll beat you up!" because Nemesis shittalks Krolik a lot, and that's the crux of both of their personalities. I know they are building Nemesis for something else but good lord it's torturous and stale. There's a Super Powered Child that I don't care about and she's the main plot device. Mayling is funny and endearing, and I like her. We meet characters from Ye Olde GFL 1 days and so far it's been pretty nice every time: Suomi, Lenna (UMP9), Kalina, Leva (UMP45), always a good time hanging with them. I particularly enjoy how divorced Commander and Kalina are. Oh, the Commander (your character) is an actual character, fully voiced and all, I like that a lot, and I like them. You can choose a male or female Commander, with fully 3D rendered distinct non-obscured, non-masked models and that's pretty damn cool. Still, can't help but miss the bangers that were ST AR-15, RO635, DEFY, and others from GFL1.

There's plenty of stuff to do without using Stamina, especially event stuff, but I fear that once you run out of it, you enter that weird limbo of "logging in, autoclearing the RNG drops mode, logging out". I'm not there yet but I dread reaching it. I know they just launched the game here (1 year old in CN) but, I guess I've been immensely spoiled by Arknights' several replayable game modes, this game, being XCOM in nature, would ROCK a roguelite mode or some sort of replayable game mode so much.

Overall, it's been a pretty nice time, as someone who dropped but nonetheless greatly enjoyed GFL, it's great seeing the Old Friends better than ever. My friend Suomi and my friend Tololo (CHILE MENTIONED 🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱) are there for me and I'm glad to hang out with them again. I wish my friend Sabrina would also join me sooner than later :'). Color me surprised that so far, the gameplay seems both fun and has potential, but we'll see how it goes from here. Overall: Good first impression.

Say something nice about my friend Tololo

[buildnbuy]

⚽ Save File Diary, May 2025

I graduated from university in real life this month so this will be a quick update! 🎓😅 This month I focused on developing the Sims for the Foxbury Institute Soccer Team! This post will be covering:

No Longer Vanilla?!

New Club: Foxbury Soccer Team

New Sims!

Townie Makeover Teaser

How I'm Making Sims

What's Next?

No Longer Vanilla?!

I really wanted to try to keep things Vanilla, but the icons for clubs and holidays in the game as is is atrocious... so there is now one mod requirement for the save file!

Natabear's More Holiday and Club Icons!

New Club: Foxbury Soccer Team⚽

Currently there are six Sims that are included in the club! This leaves enough space for joining the team/club with at least two new Sims in gameplay (i.e. your Sim and their #1 bestie want to join the soccer team together! (sorry to #2 bestie)).

There are a handful of club requirements including career, skills, and having the active trait! The intense requirements have been really fun in playtesting as it felt like more of a challenge to get your Sim to get that call from Coach Barry to join!

Plus, there are a bunch of benefits to joining, including improved reputation, career progression, skill progression, as well as getting 'access' to Coach Barry who has the Active Aura mastery perk which also intensifies your fitness skill gain!

Really wanted to make it worth it to join the club, especially since your Sim is required to be in the Soccer Team Player career already (which is a 6PM - 9PM almost-daily commitment), this is super extra-curricular and deserves super rewards!

New Sims! 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

There are a handful of new Sims that are part of the team and with each of them new stories!

The main storyline for the team is that there are rumors that recruiters are coming to scout out the Universities soon and only one student will be handpicked to be drafted; taking them straight into the professional athlete career.

Isabella Rojas for instance is an international student from Ciudad Enamorada and being drafted would mean a lot to her family and her city. Trent Freeman on the other hand joined the team just to impress Isabella at first but ended up actually falling in love with the roar of the crowd and wants to see his name in lights one day. For him, getting drafted is one step closer to fame. His brother, Darius Freeman only joined because his brother joined, and kind of just exists in his brother's orbit. But who would Darius be if his brother leaves school to go pro?

Will share all of their stories in full in future introduction posts where they'll also be available for download!

Townie Makeover: Becca Clarke 🦞

Becca Clarke is now at the Foxbury Institute! Her sleepwear outfit would make you assume otherwise though,,, I wonder who's hoodie she's borrowing...😉

How I'm Making Sims! 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

The way that I'm making Sims for the save file is pretty intensive as I'm giving each of them skills, reward traits, career-progression, lifestyles, skill mastery perks, customized career outfits, relationships, preferences, bucket lists, reputations, relationship bits, sentiments, and basically every feature under the sun that can help tell the Sim's story better through gameplay! It's honestly one of my favorite parts of preparing a save file!

(And yes, I'm very afraid of the next expansions adding another thing to the Simology panel...🙄)

But given this intensive process, I've decided to just focus on the main-Sim and their story as it related to university. Trying to give all of these Sims extensive family trees started to make me burn out...

Making a save file has been a huge learning process!

What's Next? 💽

I'm still very much in my Create-A-Sim era (do I need to change my name?), so the next handful of posts likely will be introduction to all of the Sims, as well as room uploads for the rooms I'm taking the photoshoots in!

As soon as I'm bitten by the BnB bug I'll be hanging around the Foxbury neighborhood! Hoping to complete the neighborhood in its entirety (builds, sims, clubs, etc.) by the end of this summer!

Will keep you updated as per usual! That's all for now, until next time!

[eriochromatic]

I love your Silco takes so I was wondering if you could share yours on Vander and the drowning incident because no matter what angle I look at, it doesn't make sense.

As far as I can tell from what we're shown, the riot was well under way before Silco threw that molotov, and it's confirmed that enforcers killed Felicia. Thing is, it's implicit that Felicia chose to participate in the riot because a.) Why else would she be there, and b.) She was down with Zaun being independent for HER KIDS. Also, anyone who participates in a riot, or even a peaceful protest, knows they're putting their life on the line. So while I understand reacting to loss with intense grief, it's not exactly a surprise? It's something you have to mentally prepare for when you take a stand against an oppressor?

But then, if you go the ideology route with Silco taking it too far and the riot was Silco's idea, that stunt on the bridge was most likely pre-planned, organized resistance. This means a sizable number in their community, including Felicia and Connol, supported it. Even if Vander had doubts, he went along with it. Otherwise, why does the show open with him beating an enforcer on the bridge? Vander had other options: he could have split the resistance group down the middle by sitting it out and/or trying to stop Silco, neither of which he did!

The letter highlights the loss of Felicia as Vander's triggering event, and Vander admits that there's blood on both their hands. To be honest, I kind of like this because it hints that Silco's violence was acceptable to Vander within the context of revolution, and he thought he could handle the sacrifices required. Ironically, when he couldn't handle it, HIS violence pushed Silco towards any-violence-necessary because you can't trust anyone ever anyway!

Anyway, I know this is the fault of flimsy writing in S2 and what feels like internal censorship with challenging political status quo during production, but two drowning attempts (which for Silco came out of nowhere), followed by expulsion from the Lanes (which he helped build), the guilt of Felicia's death, and the total loss of the friends and community he was fighting for ... I mean, at least Silco's villain era makes complete and total sense???

Ugh honestly I try not to think about the drowning incident or even make sense of it anymore because every time I do, it's just so obvious to me that the writers themselves had no idea what they're doing. Timelines are completely off, character motivations make no sense, so why is it up to me to untangle the mess they made?

I have a huge love hate relationship with season 2 because on one hand, I didn't expect as much Silco crumbs we got in the first place and I'm SO HAPPY we got to see him normally in episode 5 and thriving in episode 7. But the retcon… I was so pissed when Act 2 dropped because the whole bridge incident just stopped making sense like you said.

Then when Act 3 happened, it all clicked together, but not in the "ohhh the story makes sense now" way but in the "oh the writers needed to set up smth previously so this would work." and it completely took me out of it. Like. The writers wanted Vander and Silco to make up with each other. But they don't know how to do that. Let's add some underlying sentimentality between Vander and Silco and Vi's mom, then kill Vi off. That'll make them go back together (along with that STUPID LETTER Vander wrote). Sure that's a bandaid solution and on surface level it works, but I don't think the writers really thought we would think about Silco this much so the moment you peel back the layers nothing makes sense anymore. I think they could've crafted a way more interesting story if they ACTUALLY SAT DOWN AND TRIED to have Silco and Vander reconcile without using Felicia as a crutch, but season 2 has an overarching problem of "lets have all the important things happen offscreen and only imply that they happened" which is just… so lazy…. so I'm not surprised that this happened.

It just weakens so, so many parts of the story and raises way more questions than answer them. Why does Silco pull away and distance himself from Felicia's family? Surely Vi should know him from before? Does Silco only take in Powder because he knew she was Felicia's daughter? Why, WHY does Vander go like "there are worse things than enforcers out there" (implying Silco) in s1 while talking to Benzo????????? when he's apparently felt guilty this whole time ??????? what happened to "I've looked everywhere????" etc etc idk man. from s1 I always thought the bridge incident happened way, way earlier from Felicia dying bc Vi looked like she was about 7 years old during the bridge and around 14 during act one, but then if you see Silco during the s2 warwick flashback he looks like he's 25. maybe 30 at the maximum. aint no way he aged that much in 7 years, in act one he and Vander both feel like they're in their mid 40s idk.

This is lowkey why I kind of only want to draw young Silco.. I love old man yaoi but like. If everything I draw is just flashback version of him, I don't need to worry about logistics of the bridge thing bc it hasn't happened yet lmfao. Or the AU version where everything is solved and no one rlly thinks about that time anymore.

Honestly I've tried to write this response several times trying to spell out my version of the timeline but just. nothing makes any fucking sense. I don't like thinking about how badly the writers fucked up on this part. Silco magically gets an eye injury caused by Vander and they had yaoi divorce but it's fine now. That's just how it is for me and if I think about it even a little more in depth my head will explode and I have better things to do with my time like draw zaundads yaoi

[podemechamardeeli]

Tiny Town Challenge Expanded - The Sims 3

The inspiration for this challenge came from Deligracy's Tiny Town challenge for The Sims 4 (Original rules HERE). I loved the idea of the challenge, but The Sims 3 has a huge advantage: it already has an open world, so the houses didn't need to be restricted to one lot, but instead, we could build a real community. That's why, in addition to translating, I took some time to adapt it in the best possible way to everything that TS3 offers us.

I kept the characteristics of the Sims from the original challenge as best as I could, but adapted them to keep them as "autonomous" as possible.

I have all the expansions and stuff packs, so feel free to do only what fits into what you already have in your game and/or adapt it as best you can.

When I saw the Stardew Valley map by @boringbones, I felt this would be a perfect match! You don't have to start on the same map as me, but I strongly suggest you start on a tiny or small mapto really have the proximity between the lots and, even better, if it's empty so you can populate it as you play with the Sims.

I'm just starting to play this challenge, so not all the rules have been tested. I will adapt as needed and welcome suggestions.

Tags: #TinyTownTS3 #tiny town challenge ts3 or tag my "@". I would love to know you're playing too. 😍

The Goal

The goal of this challenge is to build a town with tiny houses for up to 16 Sims (depending on whether you want to use mods or not or which packs you own) that match their desires and skills.

You can watch my gameplay of this challenge on my YouTube channel here. (link to be available soon)

The Stardew Valley map can be purchased here (link for download).

The Rundown

Each Sim has a set skill that you must utilize to fund the construction of their tiny home. For example, Frank Stem likes flower arranging, so you must sell flower arrangements to fund his Tiny House build.

You must also represent each Sim's favorite style and color in the build (see the Sim characters below). You can only work on one Sim's house at a time, moving each Sim in individually as you "unlock" them.

To "unlock" the next Sim, you must complete the previous Sim's home.

How to Play

Start by moving your first Sim into a lot of your choice.

To select your first Sim, you can use an online randomizer or simply choose your favorite.

After moving your first Sim in, use a money cheat to set the Sim's money to $0.

Each Sim should start on their lot with their skill item of choice and some useful items. They also start with a sleeping bag (requires Generations), a mini fridge, and an All-in-One Bathroom (requires Island Paradise, Into the Future, or Movie Stuff). Feel free to adjust these items if you don't have the necessary packs. After placing these items on the lot, set the money back to $0.

After finding your skill items, start earning Simoleons by selling your creations!

Use this money to build your Sim's tiny home!

Since we don't have a sales table in The Sims 3 like we do in The Sims 4, I suggest that all collectibles and creations be sold at the consignment store (requires: NRAAS Consigner - [link HERE]).

Extra Rules and Ideas

Your Sims can contribute to community areas to help other neighbors when they move in and to create a pleasant sense of community and lifestyle. Ideas could be a shared laundry, bathroom, BBQ area, garden, central square, pool, etc.

As you play, your town will grow and your community will become fuller. When you reach the last Sim, you can go back to playing with the first family, and here, my suggestion would be to put everyone in a rotational household using Story Progression and evolve with each family.

If you don't have all the necessary packs, feel free to alter the challenge to suit the packs you have, or use the base game features. There are many ways to make money, including tasks like collecting valuable objects or careers.

You can play on any lifespan, but I suggest playing on epic or disabling aging altogether to get the most out of your Sims.

According to the original rules, you can use cheats, rewards, and anything else to make it easier, but keep in mind that the easier you make it for yourself, the less challenging it will be!

The Tiny Town Sims

Azure Hue:

Skill - Painting (Base Game)

Decor Style - Contemporary/Boho

Color: Blue

Cyprus Handyman:

Skill - Sculpting (Ambitions)

Decor Style - Rustic/Farmhouse

Color: Orange

Frank Stem:

Skill - Flower Arranging/Gardening (Base Game)

Decor Style: Vintage/Garden/Farmhouse

Color: Green

Suggestion: If you want to go with Flower Arranging, I recommend this mod HERE.

Opal Gem:

Skill - Jewelry Making (Supernatural)

Decor Style: Victorian/Fairytale

Color: Purple

Annie Aperature:

Skill - Photography

Decor Style: Industrial/Minimalist

Color: Red

Beatrice Jam:

Skill - Cooking (Base Game)/Baking (Store Content)

Decor Style: Cozy

Color: Pink

Suggestions:

Cooking can be done through the Culinary career. Your world will need to have the Bistro lot or the Rabit Hole rug, which can be downloaded HERE.

Baking can be done with the Deliciously Indulgent Bakery. (requires: NRAAS Cupcake HERE)

Ziggy Yarn:

Skill - Knitting/Crocheting

Decor Style: Mid-Century Modern

Color: Yellow

Suggestion: If you want to make this Sim this way, you will need this mod HERE.

Pippin Playmaker:

Skill - Toy Making (Midnight Hollow)

Decor Style: Colorful and Eclectic. Think of a dream child's room, with furniture of different styles, vibrant colors, toys scattered on the floor, and walls decorated with drawings and posters of cartoon characters.

Color: Rainbow (use and abuse the color wheel)

Sophie Sauvignon:

Skill - Nectar Making (World Adventures)

Decor Style: Rustic and Provençal. Imagine a French country house, with worn wooden furniture, floral fabrics, soft pastel tones, and many elements that refer to nature, such as fresh flowers and wicker baskets.

Color: Burgundy

Morgana Spellbinder:

Skill - Alchemy (Supernatural)

Decor Style: Gothic and Mysterious. Think of an alchemy lab filled with old books, jars of colorful liquids, candles, mystical objects, and dark wood furniture with metal details.

Color: Dark Purple

Melody Harmony:

Skill: Music

Decor Style: Bohemian and Artistic. Think of a music studio with instruments, band posters, vinyl records, comfortable furniture, and vibrant colors.

Color: Sepia (Warm and soft brown)

Oliver Quill:

Skill - Writing

Decor Style: Dark Academia, Cozy. Imagine an office with a wooden desk, a bookshelf full of books, a comfortable armchair, a fireplace, and earthy tones.

Color: Coffee Brown

Newton Gears:

Skill - Inventor

Decor Style: Industrial and Technological. Think of a laboratory with tools, machine parts, wires, neon lights, computers, and metallic colors.

Color: Metallic Gray

Scarlett Zinger:

Skill - Fashion Stylist

Decor Style: Modern and Elegant. Imagine a fashion atelier with mannequins, fabrics, mirrors, designer furniture, and neutral colors with vibrant touches.

Color: Hot Pink

Ink Ryder:

Skill - Tattoo Artist

Decor Style: Urban and Alternative. Think of a tattoo studio with graffiti, urban art posters, metal furniture, dark colors, and neon lighting.

Color: Black. This color represents rebellion, individuality, and the art of tattooing.

Finn Fisherman:

Skill - Fisherman

Decor Style: Nautical and Cozy. Imagine a fisherman's cabin with nets, boats, shells, light wood furniture, shades of blue and white, and elements that refer to the sea.

Color: Ocean Blue. This color represents tranquility, serenity, and the beauty of the sea.

Final Note

Have fun! You can change and adapt the rules as needed. The goal here is to have a lot of fun with the best game ever! So feel free to explore everything a truly open world has to offer.

[loreiiiiiiiii]

The discourse surrounding Eurlychous and Odysseus in the thunder saga is so fascinating because extremely valid points can be made as to which one of them is in the right and which one is in the wrong.

Eurlychous' reason for staging a mutiny is perfectly understandable imo, but a lot of people call it hypocritical for two reasons:

1) Eurlychous' behavior in Circe saga. In that saga Eurlychous was perfectly willing to abandon the men on the island, while Odysseus wanted to save them, but like.. what was Ody's actual plan here? From any rational POV this was a completely unwinnable situation for them, and Odysseus probably would've got turned into a pig too if it weren't for Grandpa Hermes showing up and giving his grandson some handy performance enhancing drugs.

2) Eurlychous opening the bag of wind, more or less directly causing the death of the vast majority of Odysseus' fleet. Now, opening the bag was a pretty fuckin stupid move on all accounts, but I think also somewhat understandable given Ody's behavior earlier in the sage. In 'luck runs out', Eurlychous rightfully asks Ody if he actually has a plan on surviving the wind god's island, to which Ody replies 'nah bro just trust me lol' and shuts down any attempt Eurlychous makes for discussion. This is a HUGE redflag from a leader, especially considering Eurlychous is Odysseus' second in command. He, out of anyone, needs to be the one to challenge his captain, but Odysseus doesn't want that. He wants absolute devotion.

This is why Eurlychous says 'if you want all the power, you must carry ALL THE BLAME' during mutiny, which is a pretty damning line...but it also makes Eurlychous a hypocrite, because Odysseus never actually has 100% of the power, as evidenced by the crew opening the bag of wind, or Eurlychous asking to just fuck off from Circe's island. And when Eurlychous actually DOES have the power? He hands the reins back to Odysseus the second shit hits the fan. Where's all that accountability now, Eurlychous?

I have less to say about Ody, considering he's our central POV character, but there's still a few things to unpack. While his decision to go through the lair of Scylla is undoubtedly a shitty one, it was either that or die to Poseidon (or a raging whirlpool in the original poem.), so it was either gamble the lives of all your men or sacrifice 6 to preserve the rest. What else was Ody supposed to do?

The biggest mistake Ody makes here isn't the decision to sacrifice these men- it's not giving his crew the headsup about it. Had Odyssues actually TALKED to his men and warned them of their choice, maybe he'd even have volunteers. But Odysseus cannot fathom this, because he requires absolute obedience from his crew, and nothing less. My way or the highway. The viewer knows Odysseus is objectively correct here, but the crew don't. All they know is their captain just threw away the lives of 6 of their friends without any sort of headsup or discussion, so why the hell would they trust him?

That being said...I don't really blame Ody for his decision to sacrifice his crew in thunderbringer. Because he wasn't the one to make the decision to kill the cattle. That was PURELY Eurlychous and the crew's choice. Odysseus tries to warn them several times, but they don't heed that warning. Had Odyssues made a better effort to build trust and rapor maybe they would've, but still. If you want all the power, you must carry all the blame.

[luvvyouforever]

rhys and john keats - modern au!rhysand x college student!reader ❥

↳ reader can barely handle the weight of college but rhysand is there to pick her up and help the pain.

↳ so self indulgent it hurts. set in a modern age where reader is a college student but rhysand is still high lord? idk honestly. mentions of stress, self doubt, comfort, crying. my day-to-day life essentially.

↳ requests are open! check characters in pinned post and link for requests is in my bio :)

the living room of your shared apartment with rhysand is a sight to behold. papers, printed copies of poems, books, pens, highlighters, and three energy drinks enclose you in a circular shape. it's horrifying and the sight is not eased by your messy hair, dark circles, and tear-stained cheeks. the semester was getting to you, clearly.

three papers were due for one class in the next two weeks. six quizzes were on the agenda and you had easily ten multiple page texts to read before class at 9am the following monday.

it had never been this stressful before but your time in college was coming to an end and that only ramped up the amount of work you had to complete. your final few semesters were certain to end you and you'd never get to walk across that stage to receive a blank page of paper which would eventually be replaced with your actual diploma. that's how it felt, at least.

minutes full of agony passed until you heard the familiar flapping of strong wings on the balcony. you didn't move from your sitting position as rhysand sauntered into the room, smile so wide it reached his violet eyes.

"my dear y/n," he whispered. his voice was so sweet that another tear forced its way out of your eye and down your cheek again. he must have sensed it, the stress pouring down your bond, or maybe he could somehow smell the salt of the tear as it dripped onto the page in your lap. he knelt down to meet your face and he pouted. "what's going on, darling?"

for the first time that night, you tore your gaze away from your work and met his eyes. "there's too much," you mumbled with a watery voice. "i can't do this."

he made a click with his tongue while examining the piles of work on the floor. his fingers lifted the assignment prompts and poems and syllabus requirements. more tears fell and you silently cursed each and every one of them.

"why can't you do it? what's challenging you?" he asked gently. it was not meant to condescend but he was trying to figure out how to help you in the best way possible.

"i feel like the analyses i'm coming up with are dumb, i don't understand the lines, the rhyme scheme is stupid, and i don't know what my thesis is for a moronic paper on keats should be. it's stupid and dumb and i'm stupid and dumb."

rhysand moved his hands to your cheeks before you could even react and pulled your face to meet his strong eye contact. his purple eyes bore into yours and he poured liters of reassurance down the bond. that mental claw in his head brushed against your mind in a calming manner. "do not say words like that, my love. you are so intelligent. and you're fully capable of managing everything on your plate."

you sniffed, feeling pathetic in his strong gaze. "i don't feel that way, though. i don't know how to deal with this stress, rhys. it's impossible. it's like this huge tower looming before me and i'm being asked to climb every single step in the best possible way or else i'll be pushed off of the top."

rhysand breathed out a sigh and his hand found your own. "i'm gonna help you climb that tower, okay?" he grabbed a brightly annotated copy of a keats poem and read over it.

"have you even read keats? or dickinson? do you know what a thesis statement is?" you asked. there was a bite to your words but it didn't faze rhysand in the slightest.

"of course i do, love. what do you think i do in my spare time when i'm not being an expert ruler? there's a small section i had put in the library, down on one of the lower floors, and it's full of human books. there's anthologies of authors, textbooks on writing, math theory, whatever you want, it's there. and i've perused it all. this poem-" he held up the printed keats "-is one of my favorites.

"so, the way i interpret this poem is that in order to withstand and stay strong in the face of suffering, we should indulge in poetry, beauty, and art. don't you think so?" he began to recite some lines which resembled this theme and suddenly, it all made sense.

he did that two more times with the other texts you had to write about. everything connected when he taught it and read it. you now had three outlines completed with well-developed thesis statements, annotated stories and poems for discussion, and three out of six quizzes were completed.

"thank you," you said, pouring as much love through your bond as you could. "really, thank you. this means so much to me."

"of course, my dear. shall i put on a sweater vest and glasses and replace your professor from here on out?"

you giggled and finally stood from the floor. the two of you walked into the kitchen to begin making a nutritious, filling dinner with your favorite velaris-sourced wine. "i would absolutely take you up on that offer if it didn't mean everyone in the class would be vying for your attention."

rhysand's arms wrapped around your midsection while you prepared food for dinner. his head leaned forward so that his mouth was by your ear. "i only have eyes for the smartest person in class."

can you tell i'm an english major? this is all very self-insert, i read the keats poem i talked about like two weeks ago :p

[strawberrypajamas1]

choosing the right classes

(aka step 1 in how i graduated with a 4.0 in engineering)

use rate my professor. for good students, a common reason why they didn’t end their semester or year with a 4.0 is because of the professor. however, don’t blindly avoid profs whose reviews say that the class is too hard. college is going to be hard no matter what and academic challenges are how you learn! also, its important to take these ratings with 50000 grains of salt because personality ratings tend to negatively affect female professors disproportionately. instead i looked out for a few key red flags: (1) the professor does not give As ever, or only to the top X% of the class. this means that either it will be impossible for you to end the semester with a 4.0 or that you have to compete with your peers to do so. (2) the professor never returns exams so no one knows what grades they have during the semester. this makes it extremely difficult to know how you are doing in a class and how to change your study techniques to improve. (3) the professor doesn’t actually show up to office hours and never responds to emails. obviously don’t take a class with a professor that is famous for being hard if you are dead set on getting a 4.0 but also don’t freak out if you have to. the main things to look out for in ratings is if there are weird rules about grades or the prof clearly does not care about what they are teaching.

class timing. the class schedule i found worked best for me was starting my classes as late as possible and as close together as possible. this allowed me to spend the morning studying and freed evenings for clubs and hanging out with friends (i will go into further detail about my daily schedule in a later post). having back to back classes kept me in the school zone and i didn’t have the issue of having a two hour break between classes, not feeling motivated to do work and then wasting that time on my phone.

non-major elective classes. engineering majors at my college were required to take 7 humanities classes. most people would choose a random class or take one they assumed was “easy”. choosing humanities elective classes might seem like an trivial decision but it can make or break a semester. a common trap i’ve seen my friends fall into is choosing a random class and majorly struggling balancing it with engineering coursework and getting a bad grade as a result. i don’t care what stuck up engineering majors say, humanities classes are hard!! the most difficult and time consuming class i took in college was a shakespeare course. it takes a ton of time to synthesize arguments and there is so! much! reading!! if you know your semester is going to be tough, be 100% certain the humanities classes you are taking are going to be as easy as possible. my biggest tip for this is taking performing arts classes (dancing, acting, singing). at my college, they counted as humanities classes even though the grades were completely based on attendance (so getting an A literally meant showing up to every class). no matter how “easy” a humanities classes is you will still have to study for a test, prep discussion posts, write essays, etc. as opposed to performing arts classes where (at least at my school) you just show up to class. if you do want to take harder humanities courses try and time it during lighter semesters (which is what i did when taking the shakespeare class). 

a note about classes with major group projects. group work will be done no matter what field of engineering you work in. also, there are some classes that will always have a major group project (senior capstone is an obvious one). however, if given the choice between classes that had a group project work a large portion of the grade vs those that didn’t, i always chose the classes that didn’t. group mates can be a huge hit or miss, especially in state schools that aren’t super selective where (no offense) a lot of people don’t care about doing well in school. a bad group can add so much unneeded stress to a semester. 

[mobiuslab]

Reverse: 1999 seems unreal; too good to be true.

The reason I even took notice of it in the first place was its soundtrack. I hate jazz, but they made a jazz song that I actually like, and then there's ReReReRegulus!, what a banger. And then I watched the trailer, to get a feel of what the game is even about. First of all, the accents! Hello? I normally always play games in JP, but this game seems to be set not in some fictional world, but in our real world, in the real London, so the British English dub would be so much more immersive (but of course there are a lot of familiar JP seiyuu, I'm very conflicted.) If this game, unlike Genshin, has a good voice director, who actually does their work and tells the VA's how the character is supposed to sound, I might play in English tbh. As a former FGO player, traveling to the past isn't an entirely novel concept to me, however, we are going to the 20th century, which is quite interesting. I mean, think about it, the 20th century of our real world, there are so many fascinating historical events. And it seems that they are putting in much more effort in portraying the zeitgeist of the era than FGO ever did. The artistic direction seems to be on point for this game. Apparently there is a main character, with a canon personality and fully voiced dialogue. Hoyo making Honkai Impact 2.0's new MC a self-insert was the stupidest move, and I'm so glad that this game understands how much better a canon protagonist is. It really convinces me that they care about storytelling and characterization. The general artistic direction is so impressive, but the game itself also surprises me. The base rate of 6-stars is 1.5% (compared to Genshin and Star Rail's 0.6%) AND the soft pity starts at 60, with hard pity being at 70. There doesn't seem to be a weapon gacha and the dupes only increase skill multipliers instead of completely changing how a character can be played. At first, I thought it was unfortunate that pick-up rate was only 50%, but every character joins the standard pool, so losing the 50/50 won't be nearly as bad. Unless the gacha currency economy is completely fucked, this seems extremely generous. The combat is thankfully not one of those god-awful auto-fights like Blue Archive or PriConne, but it's turn-based, which is much more engaging, allowing for challenging battles that actually pick your brain and require some skill.

However, there is an auto-mode for the mundane stuff, and get this, you can record your actions, rather than having an AI do everything wrong. And thankfully, there is no PvP, so you don't need to compete with whales. Knowing all this, I really have to wonder, where is the catch? There must be some huge flaw, right? It is as if the devs of Reverse: 1999 looked at all the complaints and criticism of all other gacha games, and just decided to address all of them. As long as the game doesn't have a huge reliance on meta characters to clear endgame content and event-limited content and the writing doesn't absolutely suck, then this game might be the perfect gacha game. I'm so excited to give it a try!

[smash-64]

2024 Game of the Year Countdown Honorable Mention: Pokemon Leaf Green Nintendo GameBoy Advance, 2005

Playing another Kanto game so soon?? (Preview: there will be another Kanto game on my GotY list) AND doing a poison type Nuzlocke? Am I crazy?

Well, not entirely. I’ve been wanting to replay Pokemon games lately and I’ve seen Kanto dozens upon dozens of times over the years, so I’d definitely need something to keep it fresh. Add in that Gen 3 is probably my least favorite generation, and I DEFINITELY needed encouragement. As this particular replay was more about my Nuzlocke attempt, my “review” will lean entirely on that aspect rather than anything else. Check below the cut for a lengthy summary!

I have only ever truly tried one Nuzlocke in my Pokemon career, and it was also on a Gen 3 Kanto remake. I tried a bug type only Nuzlocke on Fire Red a very, very long time ago, and it ended in tragedy. I made it all the way to Lance, where I lost my Beedrill, and then lost the other four members of my team against Gary. A critical hit at the wrong time put me in a bad spot and Scyther couldn’t Swords Dance me outta that one. Bug types had me hamstrung from the start, as I only had five available to me: Beedrill, Butterfree, Parasect, Venomoth, and Scyther (no Pinsir since I had no trade options open to me at the time). It was rough and Blaine involved a LOT of luck. However, this is not about my failed Nuzlocke attempt from long ago; it’s about my successful one from 2024!

I fell into poison type as my option since it offered me a few choices, but none of them were exactly OU tier crushers. Additionally, I was stuck without certain options, like Crobat due to the lack of friendship evolutions, and Gengar, since while I do have trading available to me now, I wasn’t willing to restart my post-Elite Four Fire Red in order to complete a trade. Gen 3 had some stupid roadblocks and the trade limits are really annoying. Don’t get me started on how they permanently ruined the entire stat system, not to mention how hard it was to Catch ‘em All. I digress.

Bulbasaur was my starter and obvious choice for a strong, early poison type. With both Nidorans catchable before Mt. Moon, and two Moon Stones within, I was able to waltz into Cerulean City with a Nidoqueen and Nidoking. This made the early game a breeze! I appreciate the original Gen 1 designers for making it possible to find such strong Pokemon early in the game, should you know where to look and what to do.

My next team member was going to be Haunter, and I did give myself one rule exception to the standard Nuzlocke: Haunter, as a ghost, is allowed to faint; but ONLY when using Destiny Bond. Seems fitting and proper for a ghost to be able to do stuff like this. As an attacker, Haunter was destroying teams with her crazy high special attack. This was nice since I wasn’t going to be able to do the trade evolution required for Gengar. 

Tentacruel came next and easily slotted in. I found myself riding high for a long time, but I knew I’d eventually have to face my most difficult challenge: taking on Sabrina. With only poison types available, I was fully exposed to everyone in the gym. Destiny Bond Haunter can only get me so far, so I was glad to see that Gen 3 did at least one thing right: they gave Nidoking Megahorn. 

Sabrina ended up being a huge pushover. As did Giovanni and Victory Road. Before I knew it, I was at the Indigo Plateau and the Elite Four. Now, I recall my Fire Red bug type Nuzlocke going similarly, but I wasn’t going to allow myself to grind levels for a simple advantage like that. I had to do it the hard way.

I got lucky with some odd choices by the AI when fighting Lorelai; Slowbro vs Nidoking saw her use Amnesia when I didn’t OHKO her with Megahorn, which is a very strange choice. I know Gen 1 had some poorly programmed AI, but I figured they would have fixed it by Gen 3. Then, Nidoqueen’s Thunder got a critical hit against Cloyster, and I easily Destiny Bonded Lapras with Haunter. Bruno was a joke, and Agatha was as well, aside from her higher-level Gengar, which turned into a war of attrition with the Poke Flute constantly playing in the background while she got extremely lucky on like eight Hypnosis hits in a row. 55% accurate move, but 100% accurate in the hands of the CPU AI.

Lance was also surprisingly easy. Putting Ice Beam on Tentacruel proved to be crucial, as was keeping Barrier. But Gary’s sheer level advantage was always going to be a huge challenge. 

Nidoqueen took care of Pidgeot easily enough, and Destiny Bond took care of Alakazam thanks to another strange AI choice, when it opted for Future Sight over Psychic on turn one, as I discovered that Haunter, despite putting all the EV’s I could into speed, was slower than Alakazam. Nidoking OHKO’d Exeggutor, but this is where I started to run into trouble. I threw one Rock Tomb on Charizard, but had to switch out after a much too powerful Fire Blast. Nidoqueen missed Thunder TWICE, and fell to Gary’s Charizard. RIP Nidoqueen.

Tentacruel was up next, and with Rock Tomb’s speed reduction, cleaned up easily. Rhydon never stood a chance, either. Gary’s last Pokemon, Gyarados, would prove much more difficult than any Gyarados should in the pre-physical/special split era. I figured Venusaur would be a good matchup, and I got one Leech Seed off before a Thrash critical hit claimed another victim. RIP Venusaur.

Nidoking was next and got off only a single Rock Tomb before Hydro Pump claimed him as well, but I did get the speed reduction I wanted. RIP Nidoking.

Tentacruel was my only Pokemon left, I tripled up on Barrier to max out my defense, and Thrash was doing like 17 damage. With Leech Seed, the speed reduction of Rock Tomb, and maxed out defense, I knew I was in a really great position for the long haul. After what felt like a dozen Full Restores, the AI finally gave up and I took the fight. 

Technically, only Haunter and Tentacruel survived the Nuzlocke challenge, which is a bit disappointing if I’m honest. But it was still a fun way to play an old game from a generation that isn’t one of my favorites.

[the-trans-folk-witch]

Post Herbalist, Pre Pre-Medical traditional Witchcraft: a Joke but a reality.

Before I hand feed you my BITTER solar-infused coffee-induced rant, let me give a few ( comically self made) definitions: *see notes

Post Herbalist witchcraft: "energy work**" and magics that are performed by peoples with no means, funds, or ability to obtain herbs and knowledge of herbal medicine for magic and health. This loss of knowledge is due to colonization, fear of herbalisms ties to witchcraft, and the push for modern"white medicine. Note*- I fucking hate the term energy work, yet the magic itself is very very real and used by me.

Pre Pre-Medical witchcraft: -Not to be confused with Pre-med schooling in preparation for grad school.- Pre Pre-medical is what I call the average knowledge of modern medicine that the average person can obtain by ways of public K-12 schooling and the internet. Its place in witchcraft is the knowledge of medicine and the dangers of herbs and or anti-vaxx/med dangers within magical communities. In essence, Pre Pre-medical witchcraft is the belief in modern medicine as well as magical healing methods. Not to be confused with holistic healing which is utter bullshit when taught as completely factual in organized religious spaces.

With these definitions explained less blurred in the mind of the greater trad witch community, and ignorant tumblr onlookers, I move on to my spiel.

As a professional witch, conjurer, seer, and drama queen, I struggle to find a home amongst communities that have watered down witchcraft for a younger, whiter, and less informed audience. Gone are the days of nuance and professionalism. Today is now ruled by forever-beginners, eternal-newbs, and influencers turned teachers. With this post I hope to separate the wheat from the chaff and find the cream of the crop.

To practice witchcraft in a time where herbs are expensive yet taught as the only means to perform spells; and at a time when cities and suburbs have ruined free access to native plants; I find myself performing more prayer and power based magics. No longer do i spend money on herbs, candles and the like. Nor do I plan to purchase the land required to grow my own. I invest in verbal charms, prayer, writing, movement, and my own bodily secretions. I jokingly call this "Post herbalist Pre Pre-Medical witchcraft."It is more informed and rooted in history than generic "energy work". And is less concerned with the consumerism that is forced upon modern witches via herbs and more. The joke is the name is so humorously long and ignorant that it kind of works. I expect the internet will love it considering you folks love putting every adjective before "witch" such as "solar witches" and "crystal witches". Although I suspect people looking for such titles do not have the attention span to read this wordy blog post.

In 2020 I challenged myself to go a year without spending a dollar on my magic. Here we are in 2024 and I'm still going. Yes I use plant materials. Yes I buy things for spirit offerings. But no. I don't have a huge cabinet of herbs and candles. I fully rely on my spirits, my witchflame, the land, and my body to produce magic. No money required. I could spend another fifteen paragraphs explaining how to do so. But alas, i don't care to share. As I said, I am done engaging with forever-newbs who are at the same place they started in witchcraft ten years ago.

I hope my short yet long* rant leads you to... something useful

*note: this is actually a very short read. But in the modern internet sphere we are all unable to process information that's not in video format consisting of no more than 2 minutes. so this is a long post nowadays. hehe im really on a soap box today. sorry im so bitter.

[nikibogwater]

Niki Blethers: Echoes of Wisdom gameplay (spoiler free)

I've only been posting about EoW's story/characters/aesthetic so far. I think it's time to gush about the gameplay itself for a while. Honestly, I would've done this sooner, but I've had the hardest time finding the words to describe just how GOOD this game feels when you're playing it. Like the title says, there's no spoilers in here, just discussion of raw gameplay, but I've gone ahead and put most of it under the cut to avoid clogging everyone's dashes.

First thing I noticed right off the bat is the movement and controls. I don't know what voodoo witchcraft the devs used to make this, but just moving around in the world feels so silky smooth. Which is excellent, because it turns out a surprising chunk of the gameplay involves rudimentary platforming.

You can jump in this game. Just, right off the bat, no items required, that's a thing you can do. And it's not like Link's little hops in Breath of the Wild either. These are proper jumps.

Outside of combat (which I'll get to in a minute), you mainly use the Echoes to explore. Building bridges, getting up on high ledges--stuff like that. There's no weird collision or confusing perspective that makes placing Echoes difficult. When you move, you move in the way you actually WANT to, and when you interact with an object, it goes the way you'd expect. I know this shouldn't surprise me--this is Nintendo after all--but janky platforming is one of my pet peeves when it comes to gaming, so I deeply appreciate how polished EoW's is.

EoW draws a lot of inspiration from Breath of the Wild when it comes to puzzle-solving. Once again, there are multiple different solutions to any given challenge, and progress isn't locked behind acquiring specific pieces of equipment. But unlike BotW, EoW doesn't give you all the puzzle-solving mechanics you will ever need at the start of the game. Instead, it merely provides you with the means to acquire those abilities for yourself.

Once you've made it through the tutorial section, you will only have a handful of basic object Echoes, plus a couple of weak monsters to help you fight. At this point, the world opens up for you, and you can go just about anywhere you want (though the story can only be progressed by completing Main Quest objectives, which are a bit more linear than they were in BotW). There's a real incentive to explore Hyrule here, because discovering new objects and creatures is the only way to expand your arsenal of Echoes.

Case in point, I've mostly just been focusing on the main quest storyline, and haven't spent as much time exploring all the different areas. As a result, I ended up finding myself encountering a puzzle in the main quest that I wasn't able to solve with my current collection of Echoes. I had to leave and go find new ones. If that sounds like a tedious backtracking nightmare to you, don't worry. This game is very generous with Waypoints that you can warp to at any time and from anywhere. Getting back to where I was after I'd found the Echo I needed took roughly 30 seconds.

Now, while I love the Echoes as a gameplay mechanic, they are also the source of my one and only complaint with this game: namely, the inventory system. Throughout the game, you will inevitably collect dozens, if not more than a hundred individual Echoes to choose from, and finding the specific one you want quickly becomes a chore after a few hours of gameplay. I've said this in another post, but Nintendo really needs to figure out a way to give us a customizable quick-select function--some way to equip just a handful of Echoes to a scroll wheel so that you don't have to bring up the pause menu to avoid cycling through your entire collection of Echoes. Coincidentally, this was also my biggest complaint for Tears of the Kingdom. I guess someone over at Nintendo just really enjoys scrolling through long lists of items. Anyways, it's not a huge issue, it's just one of those annoying things that feels like it should've been ironed out at some point during beta testing.

While EoW feels very comfortably Zelda-ish in all other aspects, the combat is radically different from what series fans are used to. I think that more than anything is going to be what makes or breaks this game for people.

Outside of Swordfighter Mode (which I will also get to in a minute), Zelda cannot do any direct damage to enemies by herself. If a monster gets close enough to hit you, you don't have any immediate defense or counter-attacks. This means that every encounter with an enemy has to be approached from a small distance. You have to think about how you're going to defeat enemies before you actually fight them, otherwise you will get overwhelmed.

While you are given plenty of objects to hurl at your foes, a lot of the combat will be fought by your own monster Echoes. There's a large variety of creatures to collect Echoes of, and they all have different abilities and fighting styles, which means certain monsters will fare better against one kind than another. But the game doesn't tell you about any of those advantageous monster match-ups. You have to figure those out for yourself.

Creature Echoes can be directed to attack anything you're currently Z-targeting, or they can be let loose to attack according to the whims of their AI. Echoes can also be directly moved around with the Bind ability, which is handy for repositioning any monsters who might've gotten stuck on some terrain or what have you.

You have a limited amount of energy to spend on Echoes, which means you can only have so many out at once. That energy is immediately replenished once an Echo is defeated or recalled, which allows for some pretty hectic swapping strategies that are a lot of fun to pull off. Individual Echoes have their own energy costs, based on how strong they are. So you can't just sic 3 copies of the same mini-boss on every Moblin who is unfortunate enough to cross you.

The best way I can sum it up is that the combat is like a turn-based strategy game set in real time. And as someone who has played an ungodly number of hours of Fire Emblem, I really enjoy it. I downright revel in strategically summoning minions to fight for me (my favorite attack is spawning in a bunch of crows like a malevolent little witch). However, if you're someone who prefers the more direct style of fighting from past Zelda games, this might end up being a deal-breaker for you.

Swordfighter Form is your other major weapon in combat. For a limited amount of time, Zelda can assume Link's abilities and weapons, allowing her to attack enemies directly and do a lot of damage in a short amount of time. But since this ability has limited duration, and the energy guage has to be manually refilled by collecting a specific item, it cannot be your go-to default way of handling every fight. Swordfighter Form can be upgraded as you progress through the game, allowing you to extend its duration and increase its moveset and damage output. But it's always going to be something that you use sparingly, mostly just to get yourself out of overwhelming combat scenarios.

So yeah, I think that just about covers the major gameplay mechanics. In conclusion, Echoes of Wisdom is not only its super cute aesthetic, banger soundtrack, and engaging story. Ignoring all of the more superficial stuff, at its core, this is a really good game, that feels really good to experience. If you've enjoyed any of the past 2D Zelda titles, or even just want to see what all the fuss is about, I genuinely cannot recommend this game enough. Regardless of its differences in presentation, Echoes of Wisdom was made with the same level of care and craftsmanship as any of the other entries in the Zelda series, and I've adored every moment of it so far.

[demdozeguys]

Strap in for a long one, because it's time for:

REVIEWING AND RANKING EVERY GAME I GOT FROM THE STEAM SUMMER SALE

ramblings under the cut:

UNRANKED: ULTRA STREET FIGHTER IV

okay look I know I said I'd be ranking all of these but putting a fighting game up against six linear-progression single-player adventure type games feels a bit unfair.

as for whether I liked it: yeah it's alright. it's street fighter, it's fun. only time will tell how much my brother and I will get out of it, but I'm already feeling like I don't like it quite as much as 5. how much of that is due to 4 not having Urien is anyone's guess.

#6: CROW COUNTRY

I'm gonna be honest I didn't fuck with this game nearly as much as I thought I would.

maybe it's because I'm new to the genre. maybe it's because I've been spoiled by autosave. or maybe it's just because I can't aim to save my life. but losing upwards of 20 minutes of progress every time some creature I failed to hit or juke tagged me one too many times got frustrating pretty fast.

I didn't hate my time with Crow Country. the environments are gorgeous, the story kept me intrigued, and filling out my mental list of "oh shit I can go here now"s was still satisfying. if this is your thing don't let me dissuade you, I just wasn't built for it.

#5: KAMIKO

Kamiko is decent fun, but there's not really a whole lot to say about it. It's a short and sweet zelda-esque game where the meat of the playtime comes from trying to go through it as fast as possible, and as you'll see later I happen to enjoy going fast. enjoyable, but not super meaty. if you like routing and time management give it a shot.

#4: PONY ISLAND

Alright, this is where we get into the Good Shit.

Pony Island is a game in which you play a game called Pony Island made by The Devil From The Bible. every few minutes there's some new weird meta setpiece to keep you on your toes, plus the code puzzles and pony sections between are solid fun on their own. it's a great time. and if you're interested, there's a pretty solid reward for getting 100%.

if I had to dock points, it didn't seem to have much in the way of replayability, but that's not a huge dealbreaker. I really need to get my hands on Inscryption now.....

#3: SPOOKY'S JUMPSCARE MANSION REMASTERED

I'm not normally big on horror but Spooky's kept me coming back. despite going into it already knowing what all the specimens did, they managed to keep me on the edge of my seat because you never know when they're going to show up. combine the legitimate building terror with an offbeat and self-aware sense of humor and you have a damn fun package.

it's worth noting that as of writing this, I've only completed the main story. the DLC campaigns probably won't affect the final ranking? but I have a feeling they'll make me appreciate the game more.

#2: PEPPER GRINDER

Pepper Grinder is fucking awesome.

The level design is great, the soundtrack rips, and just moving around with the core gimmick of "what if you could drill and then jump out" is so good. I just really wish there was more of it.

I was able to get all the major in-level collectibles and reach the end in under 3 hours. the bulk of my playtime came from the time trials, which do manage to hit a sweet spot of encouraging you to push yourself without requiring CBT perfection. demolishing the gold medal on the final boss took me well over an hour's worth of attempts and may have been one of the most viscerally satisfying challenges I've ever completed in a game.

Pepper Grinder is really, really cool. But if it had another world's worth of levels it would be even cooler.

#1: CHICORY: A COLORFUL TALE

Man. I fucking love Chicory.

The vibes are immacculate. The story made me really feel for these gay little animals. The soundtrack is delightful (Lena Raine, everybody!). The exploration is rewarding. The painting mechanics made me actively want to go back to areas I'd already been to and recolor them better than I did originally, which is like. not something most games do. You can even draw penises everywhere if you want. There's something for everybody.

I'm having a hard time putting down exactly what made me fall head over heels for this game as much as I did - especially when I wasn't expecting to going into it. Maybe it was just in the right place at the right time. No matter how it cheated the system, Chicory is easily the best game I picked up.

And that's that. this was my first time doing something like this (especially on tumblr) so it felt kinda weird but idk lmk if I planted any seeds in your brain

[fayedartmouth]

Questions for Authors

I was tagged by @thewildballyntynesgrow

I got bored and made up a quiz! Feel free to give as much or as little detail as you want!

1. Do you prefer fanfic or original writing?

Since this is about writing -- I'll say fic. (The answer is probably the same for reading right now too.) I like that fic gives me the ability to connect with other people online -- it's more communal in a sense. And while worldbuilding is fun, it's also time consuming. In some cases, you can get to the point faster with fic because there's less background to establish. When I want to write something short, that's a huge thing.

2. What stars need to be in alignment for you to write?

I mostly just want the room to myself. I prefer writing on my desktop as opposed to my tablet, and the perfect writing scenario is me in the sunroom of my house with no one else home and/or around. This rarely happens, so I tend to take what I can get. I can write anywhere on my phone or tablet, but it's not nearly as good. writing on the small screens is harder to be accurate and harder to track the overall plot for a longer fic. But yeah, I just need to be alone.

3. What is a line you've written that sticks with you?

I don't even know; I don't tend to hold onto the things I write in my own head. Since I don't reread it a lot, not a lot sticks with me. This one, though, I do like, from Fun Fact (Everyone You Know Will Die)

Mortality is a son of a bitch, is the thing. Sooner or later, you have to bury your hopeful aspiration. You have to bury your youthful ambitions. You have to bury your naivete, your vanity, and your selfishness.

And what's left -- what's still standing on the other side -- well, that's the shit that matters.

That's the part of you that lives forever.

I also have some older lines from non-OBX fics that stick with me. In particular, I wrote an H50/Oceans crossover, and the ending is always one that I reread and am pleased with.

It starts as a bet.

It ends as another one. Because Turk doesn't know what life is like in Hawaii and he's got no guarantee that he'll get more visitation if he moves, but one thing he knows is that some risks are worth taking, and the trick is knowing when to bet it all.

4. What is one thing you struggle with while writing?

Moodiness. I get so moody when I get into a fic. Starting fics and plotting them -- I just do that second nature. But getting into the thick of it, connecting the dots, getting the whole thing done. I get so petty and mad about it, and anyone who knows me knows how much I whine. Because it moves into the "work" side of things and not pure "inspiration" which is normal and fine and annoys me so much, lol. I love being able to finish fics though, and I know that the work is required, but just pushing through that part is like the worst.

5. What's one (or more!) thing you do to fight writer's block?

Usually I'm okay if I just go to a different fic. I'm always writing a multitude of things at once, so if one fic isn't working for me, I'll try another. Another thing that really helps me is writing something short. I'll take prompts and try to do a fic/contained scene in one sitting. The challenge usually gets me going and the satisfaction of having a complete thing in a single sitting usually excites my muse.

6. What is a story or scene you've written that you are incredibly proud of?

Oh, who knows. LOL. Like beyond OBX, that H50/Oceans crossover is a thing for me. I'm really, really proud of that. In the OBX world, I am actually really proud of This Dying World (You Brought It Back to Life). Probably also Best of a Bad Deal because that's so long and took so much effort and I did it. For pure whump reasons, the climax of God Have Mercy on the Man Who Doubts What He's Sure Of makes me really really happy. Like, as a whumper, I'm pleased with the plot twist. Also If I'm On Fire (You'll Be Made of Ashes, Too) because that fic just works and I'm pleased with it.

7. Who is someone (irl or otherwise) that inspires you?

I love fic because it is a community. I love talking to people about fic and getting feedback and brainstorming together. That's why fic is so fun. So, the community at large! Specifically, though, there are a few people. One is a longstanding friend for over 20 years; we've been through multiple fandoms together and even though we don't like all the same things, she's still amazingly supportive and talks to me about my fic all the time even when she's not reading it. I love her.

In OBX specifically, I have @woudsohfiv, who helped me with the entire fix-it and is an ongoing source of whump support. And @princessofnothingcharming, who has been so sweet and so enthusiastic, and I love that we get to goad each other on with fic. Those two are very important to my writing and brainstorming, and they should both know it by now.

Tags for @princessofnothingcharming, @tpwk1321, and anyone else who wants to play!