hartlesshart - Tumblr blog

[hartlesshart]

"Machine hunter"🌿

[hartlesshart]

zo 🌿 she looks so beautiful in this lighting, i had such a lovely time drawing her

thank you @charger-lens for the ref :)

[hartlesshart]

a final silly animation for seyloy week! thank you to the moths for being amazing. i’m so happy to have met all of you and bonded over these two characters

Seyka has the uhaul packed after H3 to live a happy gay life ever after

[hartlesshart]

Hello hi I keep seeing Seyloy shippers talk about a discord server but can’t find a working link, is it still open to new people? I’ve fallen back into my Horizon hyperfixation recently and am constantly rotating those two in my head.

Yes, our server is still accepting new people! The server has been privated due to some unsavory people joining in the past but I am one of mods on Moth to Flame and I'd be more than happy to send a link. Feel free to DM me (this is directed anyone who is interested btw)

[hartlesshart]

I blame moths for this

[hartlesshart]

Since it’s been a year since Burning Shores came out, some thoughts on Seyka:

TL;DR: Great character, really happy with her as a love interest for Aloy. They do some really interesting things with her that I never really see addressed so I wanted to talk about them.

She is tangibly shown to be much more of a match for Aloy through gameplay. Compared to other npcs, she solves things faster, does more damage, is a much more formidable melee combatant, faster climber - she even has a fucking Valor Surge using her Focus that does pretty significant tear damage to large machines like Slaughterspines. Environmental storytelling- Seyka’s skiff has at least 2-3 Tiderippers’ worth of parts, meaning she’s been out on her own killing the things to build boat motors, and she has some ambient dialogue that strongly suggests she’s fought and killed Slaugterspines before. Is some of this npc tech advancements in Burning Shores? Maybe, but it feels intentional. 

Seyka has a natural probing curiosity about the old world that for the most part Aloy’s other companions didn’t have without some significant hand-holding from Aloy to get them started, and some of her close friend (but not base team) characters just don’t have at all. I don’t mean this as a moral judgement, everyone is different and has different strengths and priorities , but it’s absolutely critical that a partner for Aloy have that kind of curiosity - it’s such a big part of her character. While she lives in this new world, she’s never going to be entirely a part of it. Like she says, she finds belonging in individuals, and not really the tribes. I don’t really see Aloy settling down in Meridian or Mother’s Heart. She needs to have a life of exploration and discovery and Seyka seems cut from that cloth too, whether she was always that way or being marooned gave her a fresh perspective.

Seyka did risk death using the focus and decided to do it anyway- in Rheng’s notes he calls for capital punishment for her. The threat is never *too* present but honestly I think that’s a broader critique of the series and pretty consistent with the writing of conflicts in Horizon. I agree they could have played up the dramatic tension a bit, but this is a person who weighed the risk of a military execution by a totalitarian state and immediately decided it was worth it to save her sister and others. I think Aloy can intimately relate, given what she went through for Beta.

Even though it’s a DLC, she has a TON of screen time, probably comparable to Kotallo in HFW, and Horizon does SO much storytelling through gameplay and ambient dialogue. I think she’s given a LOT of narrative space to breathe. She’s also has her own musical cues and leitmotifs that do a ton of foreshadowing work through the DLC - in terms of musical cues and framing she’s very associated with the acoustic guitar, and the flute melody in ‘Her Sky, Her Sea’ has for Aloy and Seyka the same function that ‘It Can’t Last’ does for Ellie and Dina in TLOU2 - next time you play Burning Shores, listen for it. That and the guitar cues from ‘The Idea of Home’ and ‘For His Entertainment’ do a lot of emotional work. It’s great stuff.

Okay and lastly- YMMV on this one - I’ve def talked about it with friends before but I don’t think I’ve said it on Tumblr. I’m a firm believer that meta narratives and the way that stories are situated and created in our own world matter and that art deserves to be taken seriously and dissected. I love Horizon, but it, and Aloy as a protagonist, are absolutely drenched in white savior and colonial storytelling tropes. Every time I play Frozen Wilds, all I can think of is Jack Sparrow going “and then they made me their chief”. There’s a lot of iffy stuff in the games, as much as I absolutely love them. We’ll have to see how H3 goes, but Burning Shores is MUCH better about this and honestly Seyka is a huge part of it. The story centers itself on a queer woman of color who is pretty tangibly presented as Aloy’s equal with her own strengths and weaknesses throughout the story and takes the lead just as often if not more than Aloy does, which I find really refreshing. It doesn’t entirely fix Aloy’s white savior issues but I think it’s a really good move for the narrative that continues the themes found in HFW about community and connection.

Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds (2017)

[hartlesshart]

This machine kills AI

[hartlesshart]

While it's fun to get sucked into our favorite series, we must also remember that reality is riddled with injustices. In celebration of Burning Shores' first anniversary, I am opening up shop briefly and will be donating any proceeds to Palestine Legal - an independent organization dedicated to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom. I will be holding a print run and selling stickers in my stash for anyone who'd like one of my nerdy horizon arts. 100% of all proceeds (after manufacturing expenses) will be donated to this organization. You can find my shop at - https://ehartlesshart.bigcartel.com/

[hartlesshart]

Horizon Forbidden West is such an incredible game. I can't stop thinking about it.

[hartlesshart]

You knocked this one out of the Pangaea Park!

For Our Amusement - Lofi Cover

My contribution for Seyloy week! @hartlesshart suggested the fun play on the original title when she made this gorgeous artwork!

[hartlesshart]

I am experiencing brainrot!!

Them <3

[hartlesshart]

Happy 1st anniversary to Burning Shores' release! My final artwork of the week is some album art for my dear talented friend, @xamiipholia 's incredible remix of For His Amusement by Oleksa Lozowchuk! -> Give it a listen! <- spoiler: It's a BOP!

This DLC means so much to me! Currently offering this art as part of my print run fundraiser! Check out my blog's homepage for the link to the shop.

[hartlesshart]

tears rolling and im nodding in sync

Just Horusing Around

Happy Seyloy Anniversary!

Warning: some sappy shit incoming.

A year ago, I drove like, 7 hours in 2 days to help out my sister with watching her kids. I got home at 4am on April 19th, turned on my PlayStation for long enough to make sure the Burning Shores DLC was downloading, and zonked out on the couch.

I woke up the next morning at 10am (unusual, for anyone that knows me) and immediately booted up the PS5 to jump into the DLC. I think I finally put it down around 8 or 9 that night and only because my mother had let the ferrets out as she was getting ready to go to work. For anyone that does not know- it is very difficult to pay attention to cutscenes when there’s an angry ferret chewing on your feet. I’d gotten through the Horus fight at that point and was headed back to Fleet’s End when I put it down because Jinx demanded loves through violence. Well, the ferrets eventually left me alone. Mom went to work. I tried to wait until the fuzzies went to bed. But alas. Fleet’s End was calling. Or rather, as Aloy put it, she could get back with Seyka.

I’d been getting huuuuge gay vibes the entire DLC (and before, let’s be real). But never in a million years did I imagine we’d get the cutscene and ending that we did. To see a character in a world I’d come to love and be the slightest bit obsessive about admit feelings for another woman and share a kiss at the end of one of the best written stories I’ve come across is a feeling without compare. There are no words.

But there was yelling! I scared the hell out of my cat, I think she ended up on the other side of the house (sorry Olivia).

And hoooo boy. Less than a week later I joined a Seyloy-centric Discord server. I’d hemmed and hawed about joining for a little while and thought I’d probably join and just end up lurking and then leaving in like a month. Spoiler alert: that didn’t happen.

I’ve seen other people say ‘oh [whatever media] changed my life!’ And never really understood how that could happen? Like sure there’s been plenty of things I’ve been obsessive about and have created art for or re-read/watched/played whatever. But I get it now though- because being able to say ‘Oh yeah Burning Shores totally changed my life!’ is accurate. I’ve made some of the best friends I’ve ever had and joined a community with so many amazing people. And I’m so glad I joined the server and did something I wouldn’t normally do. Going from being terrified of even talking in text channels to near-nightly voice chats and streaming and bullshitting.

You all mean the world to me and here’s to hopefully many more years of Horusing Around. I can’t wait to experience Horizon 3 and beyond with you all. 💜

I’m too lazy to tag everyone but you know who you are.

[hartlesshart]

It’s been 1 year since burning shores came out and I’m still in shock about Aloy and Seyka being an actual thing in game, idk why but I think it still hasn’t properly set in yet lmao (also Pangea park is my fav area in the dlc I love dinosaurs sm)

I love burning shores

[hartlesshart]

she took the helmet off!

[hartlesshart]

give me smol seyka!

[hartlesshart]

another silly animation I made for my moth friends a while back and posting once again for the Aloy Seyka kiss week!

this was the ending to burning shores right?