#I know my arts kinda lackluster now but It's been a really tough year for me in every sense of the word

[4chtungb4by]

My reward for writing a 21-page research methods final and getting 100% on it <3

[wrestlingisfake]

It’s difficult to properly eulogize the Undertaker’s career because it feels like we’ve been slowly doing that for years, as each Wrestlemania raised new questions about his ability to carry on.  Now that the end is finally here, though, something should be said.

I started watching WWE about a year before Taker debuted, and I cannot adequately explain what it like hearing about him right after Survivor Series 1990.  No rock music, no neon colors.  No weaknesses for the good guys to exploit.  No passion for anything that would be his undoing.  The only thing that really did make sense was that anybody managed by that jerkface Brother Love had to be seriously bad news.  He didn’t fit in with what I understood about pro wrestling.  Looking back, that was because he would help change what pro wrestling was.

My brothers and I were fascinated with the Undertaker.  How do you beat a guy that’s already dead?  People would hit him with foreign objects and he wouldn’t flinch.  One time Greg Valentine put him in the figure-four leglock and he just laid there like he didn’t care.  I needed to make sense of this guy, figure out how his magic worked.  At some point I came to realize that there were no answers, that the enduring mystery was the real source of his psychological advantage.

I’ve seen Undertaker described as the gimmick to end all gimmicks.  Not that that stopped promoters from trotting out all manner of wrestling plumbers, wrestling dentists, and wrestling revenuers.  But most of them had to square off with the Undertaker, which ensured that all of them looked ridiculous trying to compete with a wrestling angel of death.  I think that situation encouraged the trend, beginning in the late ‘90s, of wrestlers being presented as athletes first and “here’s my shtick to psyche-out my opponents” second.  By 2000, that trend was starting to make Taker himself look ridiculous.

Undertaker had a sort of second career at that point, where the character was less about being goth Frankenstein than the aura of work ethic and respect that surrounded a legendary company man.  The awe of associating him with the spectre of death sort of took a back seat to the awe of knowing that nothing you did would ever overshadow this man’s career.  Even if you managed to beat the Undertaker, the odds were pretty good that he’d outlast you.

It’s tough to pinpoint exactly where Taker went into decline, but for me the symbolic turning point was Wrestlemania XXVII, where the angle was that he could beat Triple H but couldn’t walk out under his own power.  It was kayfabe to set up a rematch the following year, but it injected a new kind of mortality into the character--it became a legitimate question whether Undertaker still had it, whether he’d have to lose soon because he might retire at any time.  After a lackluster performance at the 2017 Royal Rumble, I think everyone kinda knew his time was up.  Better to go out now than to wait another year, chasing the perfect finale.

This isn’t the first time the Undertaker has left his gloves in the ring, so some part of me believes this may not really be the end.  I hope it is, though.  I want to know this guy gets to enjoy retirement and undergoes whatever surgeries he’s been putting off.  I want to see the day when he can do interviews out of character, and talk about the sacrifices he made for his art.  Mark Calaway has been the Undertaker for just over 26 years.  It’s high time he gets to be just an ordinary man.

[hyper-elastagirl]

Finished Deadfire last night, and I have some thoughts.

Overall, I enjoyed the game but due to game breaking and sequence breaking bugs, I rushed my playthrough and am having to wait for it all to be patched to truly enjoy the game as I want to. Minor spoilers ahead

I’m gonna go ahead and get the bad out of the way, and the bad is Bad. Most of the bugs are related to companion content, not core gameplay itself. But I play these games for the story, lore, and characters, so this made the experience pretty crummy for me. My running list is:

Eder had the wrong import save 

Eder’s quest bugged where a NPC I had to talk to did not appear in any of the three arcs

Pallegina’s quest would not trigger

One of the NPC’s I had to talk with for Maia’s quest never triggered

Companion party banter activated during conversations with NPCs

Reputation with certain companions would not go up or down, barring me from forming a relationship or triggering their quest

Unique companion dialogue would trigger later in the game that it was supposed to. 25 hours in, 5 separate conversations triggered at the same time when I walked in a random inn

A LOT of dialogue options triggered during the end game, where you cannot talk with the companions, meaning I could not progress companion quests

NPC’s walking paths would glitch out and they would be stuck running into walls and become non interractable

So that sucked. Because Palle, Eder and Aloth are my favorites and I had issues with all three of them. I really, really wanted to romance Aloth, but I got no dialogue that was not plot specific. Nada. Despite managing to get one positive rep towards the end of my game. I was shocked when my night marked Eder started shit talking Eothas because I chose to restore his faith during my import save creation. And I might as well have not recruited Palle because she would not talk to me.

Like many, Tekehu jumped me within minutes of having him in my party. After initiating the romance with my handsome fish though, I did not unlock the rest of his romance dialogue until act 3 despite doing multiple quests for the Huana before that. Literally right after I recruited Palle her and Xoti got in a fight that I believe is supposed to trigger at negative one reputation. One of the people I need for Maia’s quest was literally never where he was supposed to be, and I tried everything because I love her and wanted to complete it.

All of this made my playthrough pretty lackluster. I am sincerely hoping a lot of this is fixed in the patch because I am not happy with companion content AT ALL. I really hope I got locked out of a lot, because it feels pretty shallow right now. Aloth’s personal quest especially was nothing compared to Poe, I was expecting more about how his character has grown over 5 years.

Now, on to the good! This bit is more spoilery

The one thing I wanted coming out of pillars one was more interactions with the gods. Now that we know that they are a lot closer to us than they like to admit, I wanted to see that humanity and personality. And they delivered! You get to interact with all of them! Magran and Berath unexpectedly became favorites of mine, I went from being indifferent to loving their writing (and I am lowkey gay for the pallid knight). And I love how Ondra is with Tekehu. Speaking of the godlikes, A+ job with that reveal. I always knew they existed for a reason, it was awesome to see the gods talk about them.

Speaking of godlikes, the reactivity to everything was so much better, and I loved it! I played as a moon godlike and the comments and reactions I got were great. The way they Incorporated your choices from pillars one was great too. If you encourage Kana to become an explorer, you get to run into him! Him and Maia are too precious.

The general plot was okay. I might enjoy it more when my game is debugged, but as it stands it felt very poorly paced and very thin. I know that’s how pillars does it, 10 to 15 hours of critical path and hundreds of hours of side content, but I would have like a bit more critical path content scattered in there. This game felt very much like it was geared towards setting up a sequel with how the ending played out. I wonder how that’s gonna go.

The graphics and visuals completely fucking blew me away. This game is GORGEOUS. The watercolor style illustrations especially got to me, and I am going to be arting up a storm in the next few months.

Combat was a lot easier for me to manage. Granted, I play every game on the easiest difficult, but I have some serious cognitive issues (like, needing brain surgery serious) and a physical disability that affects my hands. Pillars one was tough and I died. A lot. It was way easier for me to control the characters and actually understand the flow of combat in deadfire, which is awesome! I didn’t feel like I was drowning in endless feedback and notifications anymore. 

Another thing I love about pillars in general is how accessible the game is for people who are hard of hearing or have other sound related issues like me. The game pausing when combat starts has saved my ass again and again because I didn’t hear the very subtle sound cues that enemies were nearby. The text matches the voice acting perfectly, there is no need to go hunting for the subtitles option because it is automatically there.

And, the companions. Despite my game being bugged to hell, I loved all the new companions. I got like zero content for anyone but Tekehu, which seriously sucked. So I don’t have a lot to say about them right now besides that all I want is for everyone to be happy and please fix my game so I can smooch everyone, thanks. Also, Obsidian, we want Rekke to be a full companion!!! Give him more content in the DLC, please. 

That accidentally got really long oops. I’m going to come back and re visit my thoughts once everything (hopefully) gets fixed. I honestly kinda can’t believe I paid $50 for a game I can’t fully enjoy until it gets patched after launch. I loved the game, but I have to say having so many game breaking bugs seriosly sucks. If it weren’t for the discord and youtube my opinion would be very different, because they have been filling in the gaps for me.