#video games are awesome

[red-akara]

I NOW OWN PSYCHONAUTS 2!!!!

[morfinwen]

For the WIP ask, how about (a:tla) twenty years, The Stars are Different Here, Wait. Us?, and justice and scars, please?

(a:tla) twenty years

This is the one i told you about, with Dai Li brainwashing, OCs based on Austen characters, and focused on Zuko and Katara's oldest daughter Kanna. The placeholder title is due to it taking place twenty years post-canon.

Excerpt:

From how negatively her mother spoke of Ba Sing Se, and how her father never spoke of it at all, Kanna knew they wouldn't have wanted to revisit their old neighborhood even if they had been able to make the trip.

But Kanna did. The colony where her father had been born had been split into two separate cities after the end of the Hundred Years War, and from the sound of it most of what had been Lan Shi had been demolished to make way for new buildings. There was even less of the village where her mother had grown up, as it had been burned to the ground, its people scattered throughout the Earth Kingdom and further beyond. And while her parents talked sometimes about visiting the Fire Nation or the Northern Water Tribe, between their duties to the estate and the demands of raising five kids, it didn't seem likely they would ever do more than talk about it.

She had grown up surrounded by the Earth Kingdom, raised on it as much as any true Earth Kingdom child, but though there were pieces of her that were unquestionably, unchangeably Earth Kingdom, they could never replace the parts of her that weren't. Her hair and complexion were Water Tribe, and her eyes and chin were Fire Nation. She loved the spicy dishes her father made, and looked for her mother's stories in the constellations of the night sky.

The people of the estate -- Colonel Baome and his wife, their children, her mother and sisters, his staff -- had always been kind to her and her family, but she didn't fit. Not like Shara and her brothers and cousins did. Kanna loved the estate, she really did, but she wanted to know what it felt like to belong somewhere. She didn't think she'd find it in Ba Sing Se, not even if her parents had lived there for years instead of weeks, but who knew.

The Stars are Different Here

This is a branch of the Allwinter 'verse. To steal my earlier description of it, it’s about a boy who, recently resurrected after having been dead for four years, finds himself in a city that has been anomalously cut off from the rest of the world. He embarks on a road trip with some people from that city to reunite with his dad, who lives in a different city that has also been anomalously cut off from the rest of the world, just in an alternate universe, and approximately 30 years in the future.

Excerpt:

“Maybe not. Maybe we’re needed for something else. Maybe we won’t know till we get there,” Greg says, and takes a sip from his glass. She ‘hmms’ in acknowledgement. He looks up at her, eyes sparkling with the genuine, boyish excitement that never fails to charm her. “It’ll be an adventure!”

Sara smiles wryly. “Like everything else since the Storm.” Like the insects, she thinks, and the heat flares and the ghosts. The eclipses and the floods they cause. The storms in summer that rain strange, often dangerous materials. The way that nothing is truly predictable anymore, making every day a series of educated guesses (at best) on how to stay alive. 

“Like everything else,” Greg agrees. There’s something blue to his words, and she knows he means Warrick coming back. The colors she’s still getting used to that give warning, or a gentle nudge in the right direction, or a reminder. The voices he hears from a future that’s become more reassuring than it is alarming. The building where the dead come back. 

He finds the blue in everything; finds it, even where there’s barely a hint of it, and shows it to her.

Wait. Us?

This is easily the oldest story on the list, seeing as it's been six and a half years since i worked on it! It takes place after Knights of the Old Republic II: canonically, the Jedi Exile takes off into unknown space, leaving the various people she trained as Jedi behind to rebuild the Jedi Order. They're a motley bunch including a Mandalorian bounty hunter, an ex Sith assassin/torturer, a scholar raised in the Jedi Order but left untrained due to a lack of masters, a sheltered Echani warrior who basically left a cult made up mostly of her own family members, an engineer profoundly affected by the recent war (most pointedly, barely contained contempt for the Mandalorians, and PTSD and guilt over his role in ending the war), and the sole survivor of a planetary massacre who until recently had a Force bond with a Sith who was basically a walking black hole. The mental image of these different people, some of whom can barely stand each other, trying to rebuild the Jedi Order of all things is ... a colorful one, to say the least.

Excerpt:

"Confusing you isn't hard, Rand. I'm not here to stop you, but to give your brain a chance to catch up to your ego, or whatever it is that got you out here."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

Mira rolled her eyes. "Check your belt."

"Wha - ? Oh, come on, Mira - "

Quicker than thought, she stepped forward and detached the silver cylinder affixed to his belt, hidden under his vest and held it up in one hand. "Well, look what we have here."

"Congratulations. You found my lightsaber. Jedi points for you."

She waved it at him. "If you're really so committed to leaving all this behind, what are you still doing with this?"

Atton had a perfectly logical, totally explanatory reason for doing so. He just couldn't think of it at the moment.

justice and scars

Another A:TLA story. While i believe there's a lot of symbolic and narrative significance to Zuko's scar never being healed, considering both the likely long-term effects of it (vision problems, hearing problems, constant pain, etc.) and the traumatic way he got it, i also like stories where it gets healed, undone, or averted. In this story, while at the Western Air Temple, Zuko ends up making a small offering at a shrine of a spirit. Said spirit, having been neglected for a hundred years or so, takes a liking to Zuko on this basis and decides to do something nice for him. That something is ... well, see the excerpt. :-)

Excerpt:

Like an old sour scent, the memory of his son confronting him -- him -- came back to him, sharpening Ozai’s frown. All the satisfaction of shooting lightning at him had been lost when the boy somehow redirected it, blasting it back in Ozai’s face. If he hadn’t been such a weakling, Zuko would have killed him. 

It was incredible, really, how many ways the boy could find to disappoint him. 

Suddenly he was aware of a presence to his left side, sharp and sizzling. For a split second, he could almost see it on the edge of his vision, something powerfully present and yet not fully there, either. But it was only for a split second, because in the next moment there was something on his face -- 

Fire.

Ozai screamed as his face was lit aflame. He screamed as the fire burned through his skin into the nerves and down every inch of him. He screamed as the heat consumed everything before it. He screamed as the smell of burning flesh overwhelmed him. He screamed until all he could hear was the sound of his own voice.

----

Thanks for asking!

[priviie]

I have beaten 14 games this year, most of them over 5 years old. This is the most I’ve played/beaten video games in YEARS and it made me realize why I cut down on playing games.

I thought it was because I am getting older and I’m busier now with work, life, self improvement, etc. While that is partially true, the bigger truth is that modern video games are absolutely fucking exhausting.

You have to patch games and wait an hour before playing, agree to EULAs, connect to the internet, agree to even more EULAs, all that before even pressing start. Then there’s the siren call of FOMO being plastered everywhere. DLC, battle passes, exclusive timed skins and events, daily logins, level boosters, weapon boosters, cross promotions, advertisements etc., etc.. It’s all just so much and all designed to keep you attuned to ONE game as much as possible so they can suck as much money out of you as possible. Publishers don’t want you playing other games because if you play other games that means you aren’t playing their game and giving them money. It’s exhausting! It is draining logging into a game and having to dodge so many different things that are trying to get you to open your wallet before you even load a round/level. It’s even worse if you’re neurodivergent.

Even the AAA games that don’t have everything above, the single player games, are all trending towards open world infinite content nonsense, which is exhausting in an entirely different way and also designed to make sure you spend as much time on their game and not others as possible. It’s all becoming too much.

Meanwhile, I just beat 999 recently and it’s all self contained! There’s nothing like the above! I load up the game and just play without being assaulted by ad after ad after ad. I’m playing Umineko and the worst thing in that game when I open it is a link on the main menu to 07th expansion’s website. A website I can’t even read since it’s Japanese only!

I thought I was getting older and losing interest in gaming. No, it turns that I was just sick of constantly having assaults on my psyche to spend money.

[quoththemethod]

BREAKING NEWS: live footage from hyrule! Local royalty unamused

I know he isn't that big.... but i want to climb this man like a tree as I wield the stupidest “weapons”

[jaubaius]

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Legend of Zelda Sounds🎵🎼

Source

[huidol]

compilation of erika laughing about the sam dolls bc its my favorite part of the episode

[nyuheartbreak]

what a nice guy!

[mistyfarm]

being an rf2 fan is so stupid because im like this is my favorite character. hes a deadbeat father. he was killed by a dragon. he was resurrected by the child he abandoned. hes a stranger. hes an amnesiac. hes the seal of the apocalypse and also his name is. kyle and he wears a little crop top

[seryotonin]

[roychewtoy]

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Boss fight against Nyarlathotep where you're clearly not doing any damage, Nyarlathotep is just sarcastically lowering the boss health meter.

[red-akara]

Coolest thing I've found as of late!

It's a compilation of the Game Awards orchestra performing medleys of themes from video games that were up for Game of the Year between 2012 and 2022. It is so heartwarming and awesome to watch them tribute these incredible games at each ceremony. :)

[morfinwen]

Couldn't do Spotify Wrapped, probably don't have enough books read for an interesting Books Fortnight, but .... well, here's what i spent a lot of my time doing.

[soulzerofever]

"everything goes dark, and you die."

little blurry cause i wanted to try out a GIF BUT!! ive been HOOKED on @blacktabbygames 's new game slay the princess!!

i've been talking my friends ears off about this game so im pumped i finally got around to making some art for it! :]

PLEASE check this game out it is SO SO SO RAD WOWIE!!

[fujimousee]

day 1 of drawing papas pizzeria characters ....... chuck

[aero-filters]