#going to do a couple of things to help kickstart my creativity + scare away this writers block ^o^ wish me luck !!!

[meowrimo]

hiyaaa friendz (⁠ʃ⁠ƪ⁠＾∇⁠＾) it is the weekend !!! YIPPEE ❤︎

[paene-umbra]

i accidentally deleted the anon for this and i have no idea how to get it back BUT somebody asked me to answer all the questions on the ask meme

END OF THE YEAR ASKS FOR 2018:

(disclaimer: this is going to be so sappy and emotional because I did so many amazing things this past year that I am so incredibly proud of and there will definitely be too much information shared but I don’t care! I can do what I want!)

1. what is one thing you’re very proud of having done this year?

- in 2018 I am proud of cutting my father mostly out of my life. he was the source of so much pain and anxiety and trauma and cutting him out has lifted a huge weight off my shoulders and kickstarted my healing.

2. what is one thing you feel you could have done better?

- I could have done better dealing with friendships. I was so incredibly stressed out for a long time and I let my frustration bleed into my relationship to the point where being around friends and groups was too emotionally draining. I dropped a lot of friends that deserved better and in 2019 I plan on rekindling relationships and giving my friends as much love as they deserve.

3. what do you hope to do better next year?

- since it is already 2019 (whoops) I have a lot of resolutions that I am planning on implementing this year. I am going to put in more effort towards maintaining my mental health while also balancing my classes, work, and friends. I want to get close again to the people I used to be close to.

4. what was something scary you faced and overcame this year?

- in 2018 I started to address a lot of the problems that were contributing to my poor mental health. I began really looking into why I was so afraid of real emotional connection with other people and trying to understand the blockages that were holding me back from being the best version of myself. for the very first time I was able to confront the fact that I have forcing myself to suffer in silence for the sake of my appearance and reputation. for the longest time, I could not stand the possibility of anyone knowing that I was hurting so much because that would have meant admitting that I was being hurt by people who loved me, so I prioritized the way that they felt instead of myself. I tried so hard to pretend that I was stable and well-adjusted because it was easier than confronting the way I let people treat me and all of the hard work that I would have to do to try to heal from my pain. I always thought I had to hide the bad parts of me to be the perfect daughter but hiding something like mental illness doesn’t make the pain magically go away. I’m not a lesser person for being mentally ill. I deserve to be happy and to get the help that I need, and it is not my job anymore to coddle the feelings of the people who hurt me. it was terrifying to admit that I was completely broken for so many years, but I am endlessly proud of finally being able to acknowledge that and start putting myself back together.

5. what did you think would be scary and then was not?

- I thought that speaking in front of crowds was terrifying in theory but after actually having to do it several times for my job, I realized that I have important things to educate people about and that speaking in large groups is the best way to teach them, so being afraid does not help my cause.

6. do you feel like you grew in some way this year? why?

- hell yeah I grew in 2018. I grew enough to be able to put myself before others, to not be afraid of rejection, to push for better treatment, to drop those who hold me back or don’t deserve me, etc…

7. are there people you credit with this growth? who?

- yes, I think that some people helped me to grow. first, I think all the people who hurt me are deserving of the credit towards me developing the strength I needed to drop their negative asses. I also need to give SO MUCH CREDIT to my wonderful boyfriend for showing me what a real man is like and forcing me to deal with everything head-on instead of letting life steamroll me. he is miles ahead of me when it comes to self care but he supports the little steps that I am able to take and he is responsible for so much because of how he lifts me up and encourages me to put in the work. he believes in me and knows that I can and will be better and he has been willing to stay with me as I deal with my issues.

8. what is one piece of advice you’d give other people?

- I think I would tell people that giving up doesn’t fix anything. nothing is solved by letting life overtake you. pushing through when you’re barely keeping your head above water is the hardest thing that you can do. it does not always pay off immediately and sometimes it feels so pointless to keep swimming when it looks like there is water for miles and miles and miles but there is always eventually going to be land. you just have to find it, and I know you can.

9. what was the nicest thing someone did for you?

- his one is hard because my memory is not the best. I can’t think of anything specific but I’m sure that lots of people did lots of nice things for me.

10. who inspires you? why?

- my little inspires me. from the moment she joined my sorority I knew she was special, and as I got to know her and fall in love with her personality, I got so impressed with her and where she is in life in spite of all that has happened to her.

11. what are your main sources of inspiration? why?

- my inspiration mostly comes from people and hearing about the incredible things that some humans have done. hearing about the strength of other people makes me want to be strong.

12. what inspires you more: words, pictures, or music?

- music, for sure. there are so many amazing songs that spark my interest and provoke my thoughts.

13. what scares you, creatively?

- I am not really very creative at all. I think what stopped me from being creative is my fear of rejection. I was so terrified that people would hate me for what I wrote or drew or said that I kept it all to myself and let my creativity die out. maybe someday I will work on rekindling the creative ability, but it is not at the top of my list.

14. what did you enjoy working on most this year?

- my fish! owning bettas gave me something to look forward to doing and gave me an outlet to direct my focus and frustration through. any time I was having a hard day I knew I could look at my lil fishy boys and put my restlessness into caring for them and making sure that they were doing really well.

15. what did you have the most fun doing?

- the most fun I had in 2018 year probably came from being able to live with my roommate/soulmate again this semester. we have had our ups and downs but I love her so much and she is my other half, definitely. she brings out a whole new side of me that lets me be silly and goofy and myself around her.

16. what did you have the least fun doing?

- the least amount of fun in 2018 most likely came from the introspection that I had to do to contribute to my self-care. I did not enjoy the work it took, but I am pleased with the outcome of recognizing what needs to be changed and actually getting to make myself better and happier.

17. what is the best compliment you’ve gotten? why?

- I was recently told “your confidence, happiness, and strength has always inspired me! you’re an incredible human and I’m so thankful to be able to know you” and that was so incredible to hear because I don’t often think about the impact that I have on other people. I never thought I was important enough to influence another person’s life, let alone contribute to making it better in any way. I think it is really nice to know that even when I am struggling, I have the ability to positively impact others.

18. what is the best compliment anyone could ever give you?

- the best compliment would probably be something about how they have seen me grow throughout my years and continuously improve. I am not the best at keeping friends for more than a couple years at a time, so I don’t know if I will ever hear that one.

19. what do you wish people commented on more?

- about me??? I don’t know. I don’t really like other people talking about me lmao but I guess I like hearing people’s first impressions of me and how they differ from how I actually am. those are always fun to learn about.

20. what do you feel is the most underrated thing you have done? why?

- during my high school years, I played therapist A LOT to so many people. I put so much emotional labor into listening to other people and helping them figure out problems or just giving them a shoulder to cry on. rarely was this ever returned by those people, so I felt really used a lot of the time but honestly if I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t change a thing because I want to help people feel better.

21. name (and reblog) at least three things you’ve made this year that you’re proudest of.

- sorry, this one isn’t applicable to me. I don’t really make things or post them to tumblr.

22. what are your goals for next year?

- I plan to stop telling people things that aren’t any of their business. I spent a lot of time keeping everything to myself and when I finally started getting friends I felt like I had to tell them everything about me and my life to keep them interested, but that isn’t true. I need to learn how to keep some things private when they need to be.

I want to rekindle a lot of friendships that I messed up in 2018. I let a lot of people fade out of my life when I should not have.

I want to go to THERAPY!! I want to talk to professionals who can help me structure my path of healing!!!

I want to get more comfortable with the body I’m in. that means wearing less makeup, using fewer snapchat filters and other photo editing techniques, and judging myself less when I wear clothes that maybe aren’t the most flattering. it is okay to be ugly and I am not worth less for not being attractive. I want to stretch more and maybe get into a routine of exercising every now and then to feel better instead of to lose weight. I want to eat healthier and drink more water for my health instead of for the purpose of becoming skinny.

I want to make an effort to be more outgoing and get more involved in my sorority and with my Greek life.

23. name three things you like about yourself – and name one think you like about the person you reblogged this from.

I like my irises! my brown eyes are beautiful and unique no matter what anyone says. My eyes have rings like trees and uneven colors throughout. they are beautiful! I like how soft my hair is and I also like the shape of my lips.

something I like about the person I reblogged this ask from, @makingoutisgreat, is how strong and confident she seems. she is beautiful and she knows it and is not afraid to show it off. it is very inspiring.

[barbosaasouza]

Kingdom Come: Deliverance Review: Fantastically Frustrating

Kingdom Come: Deliverance has arrived after pulling in over $1 million in 2014 via crowdfunding on Kickstarter, and now those that supported have an opportunity to see what grew from the many seeds they planted. WarHorse Studios’ major debut is a great game that doesn’t entirely break under the developers’ ambitions, but surely does bend.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a loosely accurate tribute to medieval Europe and, when it comes to the dev team’s desire for fun gameplay based in realism, it executes in more ways than it doesn’t. The combat is challenging whether you focus on melee or ranged and I cherished the deep physics system is as I layered my armor and watched the attacks of enemies glide off of me later in the game.  Fighting is complex and, no matter how skilled I felt I was, I always ran the risk of returning to a save point if you’re not geared up correctly. 

Ah, the save point. Many frustrations found in Kingdom Come: Deliverance can be summed up by the way the developers address saving your progress. There are autosaves at regular intervals, but there are mechanics surrounding manual saves that can punish you if you abuse it. Early on, the alcoholic beverage you have to have in your inventory is an expensive item to buy, so I had to manage my time wisely and be extremely careful with my decisions. As you progress, you find that you can craft the drink via the Alchemy system to save a great deal of time and in-game funds, but it’s entirely understandable if you’re too frustrated to care by then. The save system is a creative mechanic, but the game isn’t polished enough to warrant a player’s investment into it. All too often a bug or series of bugs would put me in a position where I’d need to spin up on old save file, but I’d have to weigh the decision to go back a good bit into the game or just deal with the consequences. Thank goodness the game was fun enough that I didn’t completely hate the idea of a bit of retread, but it’s something that held a solid game back.

The quests are really well done, so it hurts when you work through such an entertaining moment only to be derailed by a missing NPC or some other bug that ruins the quest outright and you move on without completing or you replay it altogether. Witcher 3 is another game that comes to mind when I think of collections of side quests and optional activities that don’t bore you to death with repeated tasks with a slightly different theme to them and Kingdom Come: Deliverance executes in this regard. The herbalist suddenly went missing? There’s a fight club outside a home disturbing the owners sleep at night? A plague has broken out in the village? At every turn I caught myself diving deeper into side quests, rarely ever feeling like being roped into the mundane.

A place where things do get mundane, though, is with the random encounters that happen as your traveling between towns. At first, they felt as well executed as the full-on side quests. At one point, as I searched for the young man I mentioned early that had info about bandits, I came across a dead body in the woods. I checked it for loot, assuming nothing out of the ordinary, right before a woman ran up to me and accused me of murder. She scared the crap out of me, but I noticed she was a bit out of her mind and seemed to be carrying the murder weapon herself. I accused her, she took off running, and I ended up losing her in the woods. It was a briefly terrifying moment in a game with none of the fantasy elements that usually anchor similar situations, but it was sullied as I kept running into the same thing over and over again. There are other random events that occur as you travel, but they all lose their luster over time. In a patch, the devs even increased the frequency of these occurrences and I feel that took away from a cool idea.

Waiting to strike!

Kingdom Come: Deliverance afforded me a lot of freedom and that’s one of the most incredible parts of the experience. I can wander to essentially anywhere I wanted to at any time, as long as I’m ready to deal with the consequences. Quests were presented as is typical with an RPG of this kind, but, I regularly would take note of some little bit of information an NPC gave me and find ways to complete a task more efficiently. For example, at one point I was on the hunt for a young man that had information about an attack from a group of bandits. The quest log on my map showed me a handful of places where I could find the next bit of information, but a couple details about what direction he fled in and the friends he usually spent time with put me on the right trail faster than running off to each marker to ask questions. Those details weren’t saved anywhere in the menus and, if I hadn’t been giving the conversations I had with random villagers my full attention, I’d have missed out. The game does hold your hand for a little while as you work through quests, but you have an opportunity to run off into the wild and accomplish things your own way if you want to risk it. Time progresses in the game realistically and that’s another element that influenced what I ran into as I maneuvered through Bohemia.

Learning to read actually helped me investiage a murder.

The freedom and realism also made me question a few design decisions from WarHorse Studios, one being the decision to not allow players to create a unique character. Henry is the game’s lead and, while you can shape him in many ways as you play, he has a story for you to experience. Thankfully, it’s a good one. Henry is one of the most endearing lead characters in recent memory and I enjoyed watching (and shaping parts of) his growth to see how it impacted his interactions with lowborn and nobles later in the game. My Henry had a pretty wonderful relationship with both, which is something that can even be influenced by some skills you earn, but it is interesting to navigate both worlds. Regarding Henry's skill progression, you must really practice to get better at everything. Whether it be lockpicking, combat, reading, or crafting potions, all the mechanics are really involved experiences and practice legitimately made me more adept in addition to earning me skill points.

On the other hand, the attention to realism made other elements stand out in a bad way. I played as a character whose energy, nourishment, and overall health I had to manage by taking to time to eat and sleep. If I didn’t take care, Henry’s performance would suffer in various ways. These survival mechanics weren’t overwhelming, kept me engaged throughout, but were strangely absent when it came to my horse Pebbles (I never upgraded from the starting horse). Not having to worry about my horse’s well being other than when it gets skittish during a storm or battle was a missed opportunity by the devs, but the real problem is when I would hit “X” to instantly summon my horse to me. Those moments snapped the immersion right in half and the list of places where I couldn’t summon him to me was pretty small.

I played the game on a GTX 1060 and, initially, I got really good performance out of the game at high settings. After I made it through the well-crafted segment of the game that serves as a four to five-hour tutorial, I started losing a lot of frames. I dropped the settings down to “Low” so I could have a smooth performance throughout my playthrough and the game was still quite pleasant to look at. Lighting, textures, and characters didn’t take too much of a hit at all and Kingdom Come: Deliverance was a visual feast on higher settings.

It’s a long path to the final chapter and the devs made one head-scratcher of a decision in the end. No explicit spoilers, but the path to the game’s final conflict starts off beautifully. There's a twist focused on Henry that kind of falls flat, but the events around it get the blood pumping. For the majority of the game, I felt that I’d have a pretty neat bow tied on the game’s major conflict. The first turn in the final chapter bucks that entirely and set me on the exceptionally jagged path to the final battle, excitement at nearly every turn. After a few significant moments that are obviously building up to the big crescendo, the pace completely falls off a cliff.

Wasted a lot of time waiting for this thing to be built.

At this point, I’d already experience the “point of no return” message and taken on some big quests. Right before the big battle though, I’m offered a ton of optional quests and an accompanying main quest to the final battle that forces me to return to the slower pacing of the game before we’d reached the point of no return. While it does play into the realism that the developers so excitedly aspire to in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, there’s plenty of opportunity before the point of no return to get these things lined up in the open world and keep from crippling the pace before finishing.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a fantastic and absolutely frustrating experience. I was treated to a memorable lead character whose agency and development was largely wiped away with a twist late in the game and a collection of incredible gameplay mechanics and quests repeatedly stifled by bugs. Despite its downfalls, though, the good parts of the game are so good. I spent 50+ hours in the game’s version of 15th century Bohemia and that’s with me rushing through the latter half of the game, leaving plenty interesting side-quests to be unfinished. I’d have done a whole lot more if I didn’t want to get the review out in a reasonable amount of time, and I will definitely be returning in the future.

This review is based on a PC code provided by the developer. Kingdom: Come Deliverance is now available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One for $59.99. The game is rated M for Mature. Check out our Kingdom Come: Deliverance Guide and Walkthrough for tips that will help you survive Bohemia.

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