basil-touche

[basil-touche]

for some reason, "you can just do an art project" unlocked a realization that "you can just make art" wasn't able to access.

like yeah i know i can set aside an afternoon and sketch a still life.

but also i can, like. select a random marine creature from a hat and then research them and then spend a bit of time in the evenings and weekends over the course of a few weeks making a diorama.

or i can make an abstract sculpture out of scrap cardboard and masking tape, and then paper mache over it, and then paint it.

or i can draw something with markers and color it in with crayons.

i dunno why it took me so long to realize that, in the same way that i can revisit the games and hobbies that i enjoyed as a kid, and i can orchestrate "presentation parties" so my friends and i can flex our slideshow animation skills, i can also Make Art, Grade School Style (and not just Grownup Art/School Style)

[basil-touche]

[basil-touche]

Everything costs me money and it's not even that good

[basil-touche]

Shout out to characters who want to be used. Shout out to characters who are so desperate to be worth something that they'll endure anything. Shout out to characters who build their entire self worth around being useful, being a tool. Shout out to characters who don't care how they are treated, as long as someone pays them any attention at all

[basil-touche]

[basil-touche]

Tomfoolery actually transitioned and only does she-nanigans now

[basil-touche]

Your immune system getting weaker when you're stressed has got to be the dumbest stress response ever like oh you've been having a horrible terrible no good week? Let Me Make It Worse.

[basil-touche]

there’s a cineplex ‘before the show’ thing that always cracks me up, because it features different types of annoying movie theatre people. like “don’t be a Tommy Texter. don’t be a Susie Seat Kicker.” but recently they’ve made a push for diversity and included a nonbinary person, and it just makes me smile because the motivation behind it is sweet but the actual textual messaging is “we acknowledge that nonbinary people can also be annoying in movie theatres.”

[basil-touche]

i’m so fucking sick of people taking aspects of historical gay sexuality and saying “but what if i made it squeaky clean and sexless so i can have it” sometimes not everything is for you babes!!! sometimes you don’t get to have everything!!!

[basil-touche]

cure of ra

[basil-touche]

Does Trump think that the lives of civilians and human beings here in Gaza are something that can be won until next Monday when he announces a ceasefire? Are our lives cheap to him?

[basil-touche]

the phantom of the opera and the hunchback of notre dame? opposite ends of same spectrum 

[basil-touche]

Marilyn Monroe is pictured with Ella Fitzgerald on November 18, 1954, at a nightclub in Hollywood, where Fitzgerald was performing.

[basil-touche]

[basil-touche]

How Bethesda fixed Vampires without realizing it

So there's a LOT of takes on vampires across media, and most of them are radically different from each other. The Elder Scrolls series has an interesting version that I haven't seen anywhere else, that incidentally fixes a bunch of lore issues with vampires, and yet Bethesda hasn't ever really leaned into any of that.

So, the issue with vampires in large RPGs like Elder Scrolls games, D&D, etc, is that a world where various elements of character building are supposed to be balanced, vampires are heavy on the upside and light on meaningful drawbacks. So in Oblivion, Bethesda completely reworked their vampires, coming at it with a blank slate:

Vampirism is a 4-stage affliction, with each stage increasing the numerous benefits of being a vampire as well as the middling drawbacks. Stage 4 brings with it all humanoid NPCs recognizing you as a ravenous monster and attacking you, basically wrecking the game. And, this is the unique part, you reduce stages by drinking blood. Being a vampire is LESSENED by doing the most vampiric thing out there, it actively makes you weaker.

And this is great. From a gameplay perspective, you vanish below ground to kill zombies/robots/whatever, and you grow stronger as the dungeon goes on. But if you don't rush through it, or if it's large, you surface having ignored your hunger for several days and have to do a whole second quest to sneak into town at night and drink blood, where the only reward is to engage with the game again. It's a drawback in the gameplay sense rather than the stats sense. And it lets game designers throw the player against weak vampires in town early on, and face dungeons full of max-bloodlust monsters later once the player knows how things work.

Meanwhile, from a lore perspective this is also great. Suddenly, it's not that vampires have to be evil, it's that they have a choice. A good person who flees their family to hide in a cave is going to starve, turning into a ravenous, uncontrolled, extremely strong monster. Someone who's comfortable sneaking around town drinking blood, meanwhile? They never lose control. They walk in the sun. They're perfectly human. Or as human as anyone can be while the blood of their neighbors flows in their veins.

And Bethesda doesn't DO ANYTHING with this. People you talk to in-game just treat it as "all vampires are evil, why would you expect anything else", when they've created a world where vampire morality is so much more interesting. The few vampires who exist in civilization that you're not supposed to kill don't really discuss their condition at all. And there's plenty of evil vampires choosing to live in caves running societies of vampires, when that makes no sense compared to basically any other way of life they could set up.

Bethesda games are a masterful disaster, in this as in everything else.

[basil-touche]