Random SSO things

[savvawilf]

This is a sub-blog. If you get a follow from savstaroth, it’s me. 

Just a fair warning though, if you want to check out my main blog: it’s a roleplay blog and a lot of my content is 18+ and nsfw. That content is also tagged #nsfw, so if you have that tag filtered you should be safe. 

[dorianwolfforest]

SSO blog Masterpost

Hello!

We’ve had another big wave of new sso blogs, as well as a few people messaging me and asking to be removed from the old SSO blog Masterpost, so I figured we should redo it completely to clear out any outdated blogs and blogs that might not want to be on it anymore.

Reblog this post and I will add your name to a masterpost of all ssoblr blogs that can be linked to new members asking about who to follow, as well as act as a reference for older members to look through and find new blogs they might not have seen yet :)

[savvawilf]

Most of you have probably caught on to Star Stable nerfing the pintabian so it isn’t the fastest horse to compete with anymore. (I’ve heard that the Morgan is a contender now bc it has a fast start, but i digress)

I think we can all agree that it shouldn’t matter which horse you ride on in order to get the best time in competitions, or to win championships. Your skill as a player should matter the most. 

In the aftermath of the pintabian getting nerfed, I had a look at the icelandic horses again. The icelandic race (or “the competition for gaited horses” as its actually called) is just like every other race. You can beat your personal best, and you can get the best time of the day, week, month, etc. And there is also, of course, the payout of jorvik shillings for getting the best time. 

Like with any other competition, I don’t think it should matter which horse you choose. You should still have equal chances to get the best time. As you all know, the generation 3 icelandic has a much slower tölt than the generation 2. Yesterday I tested out how much slower the gen 3 icelandic was in the icelandic race compared to the gen 2, and there was a difference of ca 36 seconds. 

36 SECONDS

The horses were equally happy, I used the exact same clothes and gear for both, and I switched gaits at the exact same spots. The gen 3 was still 36 seconds slower than the gen 2, only because ot its slower tölt. Someone who is better at the icelandic race short cuts than me could perhaps get a shorter time difference, but still. 36 seconds is a HUGE difference.  

I don’t care if Star Stable nerf the gen 2 tölt so it gets slower, or speed up the gen 3 tölt (which I personally hope for bc I hate the slow tölt), but the two should still be equally fast when they tölt. It doesn’t matter that the icelandic race is one of the competitions people compete in the least in the whole game. The gen 2 icelandic still has a very unfair advantage that they shouldn’t have.over the gen 3 icelandic, and I hope star stable will correct this some day.  

[savvawilf]

Combination for the hidden stairs

Star. Sun, Lightning, Moon

[brilliantdisguises]

Hello again. I decided to write another post on Sabine with additional points as well as taking into consideration people’s replies. My original post is here. Since this is a bit of a long one here is an outline of this post and I'll put the rest of it under a readmore:

Personal response to previous post

Sabine

Update on her scar

SSO is diversifying all their characters

Various "what ifs"

Sexualisation of Sabine by fandom

Dark riders

Redesigns of Katja and Jessica (Jay)

Released image of the new Dark Riders

First, I’d like to address why I’m bringing this up. I’ve had it proposed to me that, as a white person, it’s not my place to talk about this as I’m talking over people of colour. As said in my last point this isn’t my intention at all. I’ve spoken with people of colour about the points in these posts. (Thank you to them for taking time to do so) However none of the points in my posts are new ideas by me and have been brought up by people of colour as being harmful stereotypes. I think it should also be noted that I wasn’t copying another post I’d seen by a POC about Sabine and ignored theirs, I wrote the post because I had not seen anyone speak about it. I do also think that putting the burden on people of colour for calling out racism/harmful stereotyping and such is completely unfair and unjust. White people have a responsibility to tackle this. This is not the same as speaking over people of colour, but amplifying their points and their right to exist without discrimination. I don’t feel like I should have to put this disclaimer but I’d also like to make it clear that not every POC/masculine woman/disabled person will agree with my statements. This is just my opinion that I’ve done my best to fact check with various academic sources and speaking with people affected by these issues.

Her scar

A correction on my last post, the reason behind her scar was discussed in the Star Stable book “The Legend Awakens” (thank you @mudpuddlenll ) Her scar is from falling headfirst off a bridge. However the passage raises more points by saying Sabine isn’t even human which is why she survived the fall. I’ll go into detail later about why saying Sabine and the other Dark riders aren’t human could potentially be harmful. But for now to focus on her scar, if Sabine isn’t human and therefore has the physical capability to survive such a fall – how come her face can scar? Is it just to help signal that she’s a villain? I’m aware Star Stable has weak logic behind a lot of things so I’m not particularly interested in trying to justify her scar being there – the point still stands that is it there.

An additional point brought up in the discussion of my first post is that Anne’s scar, the other character in the game with a facial scar, is a lot more feminine as well as being unrealistic.

Oh but SSO’s diversifying ALL their characters! Sabine isn’t a problem!

If this was the case and also the be-all and end-all of my argument: where are all the “good” brown butch women in SSO? Why aren’t they redesigning “good” female characters to be muscular? Why don’t they have non-violent butch women? Diversity in characters is a good thing, but you still need to make sure those characters aren’t negative stereotypes.

“What if she’s just tan!”

Then Star Stable is trying to make it seem like they’re increasing diversity by redesigning characters as ethnically ambiguous/darkening their skintones and not putting actual meaningful representations of people of colour into their video game. I don’t think I need to explain why this is a bad thing. Additionally if this is the case, then many of my points about female characters of colour still apply to Jay’s redesign which I further discuss below.

“But she’s going to become a good character/have a redemption arc!”

I do not care for hypotheticals. Even if she does redeem herself, the point still stands that SSO has a villain that looks and acts like her and no “good” characters that look like her. The game portrays her as a villain.

The continual sexualisation of Sabine by fandom

It is in bad taste to brush off the issues people have with the Sabine redesign by saying things along the lines of “but she’s hot though”. Even more than that, it adds to the over sexualisation of women of colour in media. I am not saying SSO is sexualising Sabine, let me make that clear. I am merely commenting on the reactions of many players of the game which I have seen online. There is an abundance of people thirsting over Sabine. I am not saying this itself is an issue. I’m a lesbian, women are great. But I think that is important to be careful of the ways we talk about female characters of colour, especially compared to how the same people talk about white female characters. If all you can take away from a character design, especially when pointed out potential issues in it, is that the character is sexually attractive – are you simply treating that character as a sexual object? And how does that reflect your treatment of real people with these characteristics? An additional sub point to this is comments similar to “Sabine can step on me”, “I wish Sabine would crush me” which is also prevalent in fandoms when aimed at women of colour and butch women. This enforces the idea that WOC and/or GNC women are inherently violent, are incapable of non-violent romantic actions, and also serves to masculinise them further.

Dark riders

I’ve been told that since Sabine is only one of the villains/Dark Riders so therefore my points don’t stand since there’s a diverse range of villains. So I shall discuss all of them.

While it’s true Sabine is the only redesigned Dark Rider released in game, SSE has released the new designs of 3 other Dark Riders on their development blog here. They are:

Katja, who has appeared in SSO and earlier games before. She has always been a white woman.

Jay, who has appeared in SSO and earlier games before. However this was under the name of Jessica and appearing as a white woman.

Chiyo, a new character to Star Stable. She appears to be a young East Asian character. This post by @yasminewestbank goes over some of the issues people have with her character, which I agree with.

While I have less to say about Katja, I find it interesting that the only white woman of the group is portrayed (as a general rule) as the most polite/self-controlled /”well-behaved”.

Jay’s redesign shares many of the same points as I have with Sabine. She is now darker skinned, has an androgynous name, and dresses more masculine. Again, I am not saying these are bad things or that a villain can’t have these traits.

SSE also released this group image of them on the same development blog post.

It makes me uncomfortable for several reasons. It reinforces the idea that Sabine is violent and brutal – literally holding Chiyo up by the neck – even towards the characters that are meant to be her allies. It shows that she is much larger and physically intimidating than the others, which as I stated before isn’t really a great thing having the most masculine woman being the most violent.

It additionally reinforces the stereotypes outlined in @yasminewestbanks post about Chiyo’s character as an East Asian woman. She appears much more childlike and infantilised than the other characters in being much smaller and picked up in that way by another character. My points about Chiyo are less concrete as we know little about her character – she may in fact be a child (which is then a point to be said about having the game’s main East Asian character be a young “cutesy” girl), but something just seems “off” about it all to me.

Of course I agree it is a good thing that Star Stable is creating more diverse characters. But I think there is a need to be careful when redesigning characters that were originally three white women into two more masculine women of colour and a white woman, and then adding an additional woman of colour that you do not fall into using negative stereotypes for them. Especially when you add in the fact that they are the major villains to the game – the antithesis of the player character(s) – and are not even human. As mentioned before in this post and my previous, it is common rhetoric from bigots that certain minorities are “lesser” than them, often to the point of them not being deemed human.  Therefore it should be taken into consideration when designing villains that look human but aren’t, who are also minorities.

To summarise, I am not accusing Star Stable of doing or even intending everything I said in my posts. I simply wished to highlight issues I found with some of their character redesigns, and then, with how fandom tended to brush off things like this or ignore them. This post is long enough as it is so I shall post my sources in an additional post, but if anyone’s wanting specific reading/resources on a point feel free to ask. Thank you.

[windforestsso]

Im a scout leader (dont know why, I dont like kids).

And we recently had a meeting and I just got this sudden realistion that Jorvik most likely has Allemansrätt (All mans right).

Its a thing Sweden has. I think some other countries have something similare but not to the same scale as Sweden has it.

Its a right that pretty much mean that everyone has a right to be in nature. No matter if its private owned land or puplic place.

Forgainers has missunderstand it and dont realise there are rules.

Main rule is 'Dont destroy or disturb'.

For exempel:

- You not allowed to disturb people at their homes and enter peoples yards. (some forgainers have walked into peoples yards to pick apples. Not ok).

- You can enter pastures as long as you closes the gate after you.

-You not allowed to enter tree nursery/garden/ farm land or any other field thats used to grow plants on.

- Dont pick endangerd plants or break branshes of living trees.

- You can put up a tent for one day, after that you need to ask the land owner to stay for more days, or move the tent.

- You can ride a horse anywhere once. If you want ride one the same path for more than one day you need to ask the land owner for permission.

Ofcourse its more game logic that mc can run into peoples yards and over their flowers and farm land.

But canonly it would make sense that Jovik would have Allemansrätt.

[savvawilf]

Lord Wolf Teaton of Hillcrestshire

[savvawilf]

It’s time to say good-bye Say good-bye Say good-bye We hold our heads up high And with tears in our eyes We face the first of days  Without you here beside It’s time to say good-bye

[savvawilf]

The amazing @willowspiderrock has been hard at work these past few months drawing crowns for every member in our club, Alpha Kings. Everybody got a title on my fifth year anniversary  as club owner in November last year, and finally the last crowns were finished. Here is mine

I am of course the dictator of the club

All crowns and titles can be seen at our instagram: @alphakingsofficial

[savvawilf]

most people: omg we’re going to be able to change the horses’ gender and age O.O !!!

Me: OMFG WE*RE RENOVATING THE RACE TRACK!!! FUCKING FINALLY!!!

I’ve been waiting for this day so fucking long, ever since I started playing and unlocked the race track. I’ve waited eight. long. years. 

[phoenixravenport]

The Warriors herd really confuses me. With the other two herds the daily quests feel like things you would expect, like fetch the thing and deliver a letter but the gathering quest you do with the Warriors makes you get stuff like arrow heads and pieces of horse shoes and these are wild horses??? why would they have these things? Was there a super ancient human civilisation that lived there at some point?

[alanismoonstorm]

It really solidifies my head canon that jorvik wilds are feral icelandics that the absolute first settlers(the kallter?) brought with them that then got contaminated with too much pandoric energy seeping into the ground water around the sentinel tree and it changed them.

[savvawilf]

That actually makes sense. 

Then there’s also their pottery and their masks, as well as the other tools and jewelry they have. Someone must have showed them how to make those, or even help them make those. I don’t think the jorvik wilds are as isolated from humans as they claim to be. A part from Gary they at least must interact with the Kallters. 

Horse hooves (or even mouths) also aren’t dexterous enough to really make anything, and even with all the magic they’ve absorbed I seriously doubt that they have the fine coordination required in any case. They must have had some kind of help, unless they have developed some mental powers that allow them to make things that usually require hands. I seriously doubt that they have mental powers though. I mean, they can’t even write letters without asking the squirrels to write for them if I remember correctly. 

[savvawilf]

When you make things for Farah and suddenly get yourself an identical twin

Guess who’s who

[savvawilf]

It’s so cute and fluffy i’m gonne die. They look great, I love the coat colors and the flying pace is soo good! I love that they added it. I also like that they got all new mane- and tail styles instead of any of the old ones. I seriously hope that all gen 3-horses will have updated mane- and tale styles one day. 

However: I love the new icelandic horse in every way except one: Their tölt is fucking SLOW!! Much slower than the tölt of the gen 2′s. 

The gen 2′s at least tölt in about the same speed as extended canter, perhaps a little bit slower. It’s at least slightly faster than the slow canter.

These fuckers can’t tölt faster than a trot. There is no chance to get any best times with them at the competition for gaited horses when the gen 2s can tölt circles around them.  

Seriously: if you do the competition for gaited horses with these icelandics, you can just slow down to a trot in the tölt sections. No need to switch to tölt at all. Trust me, I tried. The  tölt makes 0 difference. It will actually just cost you time to switch to tölt if you want to finnish as fast as possible. 

I seriously hope that players will point this to SSO - i certainly will - and that they’ll fix it. I want to tölt around in at least the same speed as with the gen 2′s, if not faster. 

[blog-of-gourd]

lgbt win! the worst person you can think of is married to the multi-dimensional horror threatening to destroy your world

[savvawilf]

I found the edge of the world

[savvawilf]

When you’re out climbing and find a new NPC 

This is Sahar. She looks suspicously like a Kallter. She is in  the Wild Woods Mountains

[savvawilf]

Soul shards needed for this year’s halloween gifts:

The green pumpkin pet: 99 shards Everything from the cauldron: 339 shards The build-a-raven: 50 shards (+ 80 bones, 20 feathers and 1 witch’s eye stone)

Shards total: 488

The easiest way to get a lot of shards: collect shards from the lost souls under the whirl winds, relogg, repeat during the entire 20 minute window the whirl wind is  there.. You can collect up to 30 shards/hour from each whirl wind this way.