#sephie rambles

[persephinae]

the one small critique i have of any fantasy or romance story with like werewolves, monsters, legendary creatures etc, is that they make them sooooo fucking serious

i would be the most unserious shapeshifter, valkyrie, elf, sorceress or whatever

like fr this would be me

i would be doing funky dances whenever i wiped the floor with my enemies, i'd be doing "AND THE CROWD GOES WILD (fake whisper screaming)", I'd be doing something goofy in the background while the fearless leader of the clan blah blah blahs about something boring or just straight up leave to go to the library

[persephinae]

well i had an introductory talk to the financial guy

he basically wanted to get an idea of how much money i was looking to work with and what my goals were

i told him i'm looking to invest a good chunk in something that will work hard for me, but i don't want High Risk/Volatile investments

then i would have a smaller chunk to play with and be able to access if needed (ie: emergency or something) so it would need to be liquid

i have a 401k at work where I'm maxed out on my own contribution and work matches it, so he was impressed that I had that and was happy for me

he gave me 3 options on how to manage my money:

they manage my account, but i direct them what to do with investments for a flat $75 fee

they manage everything, investing and monitoring on my parameters for a 1% fee of the money amount they're managing (which isn't bad at all)

they provide an in depth financial plan for me to manage my own money outside of their control and what to invest in blah blah blah for about $200

i think i'm going to go with option 2 for now, just to get a feel for everything and learn while they do everything. i can always add or deduct from my money, so i won't be trapped.

my ultimate goal is to be set up nicely for when i'm retirement age, or if i do FUCKING AWESOME, retire early. Also i want to have money for myself in case i never marry and have money for elderly care.

the guy was very nice, so now i just have to fill out this questionnaire of how i want to invest and get back to him.

[persephinae]

it's always so funny when a paranormal romance series has like dragon people, or aliens, or shifters or whatever, and they're all dudes because it's a romance series, except for maybe 1 or 2 female dragon/alien/whatever (smurfette principle)

and while they may be badasses in their own right, the female versions never fall for their own kind, and instead fall for human men because humans are hot or whatever

and what woman anywhere in the universe would choose a human man over dragon men/aleins/shifters or whatever

they're like banana pudding compared to the other guys

like it's just not happening and i never read those books even if they're part of the series. like be serious who wants this guy compared to dragon alien guy

[persephinae]

so my brother was talking to me about game theories for fallout 4, the big "you're actually playing a synth character" theory (which i agree) and we were discussing lore and stuff, when I told him that if you play the female character it actually highlights why the main character would be a synth for real because you play as a woman who biologically for real just gave birth to a baby a few months ago, and while she had been frozen for over 200 years, her body would still be on a baby timetable and be lactating and sore from just having given birth - and the female character has none of that mentioned or shown (i know because men designed it and the female character was designed as a secondary option and wasn't thought through)

and i told my brother what others have said, is that through Bethesda's laziness they actually gave the female character a more interesting character arc because she was originally a lawyer and never saw combat etc..

so he's nodding along but then stops me and asks me to explain how to play as the female character BECAUSE HE HAD NO IDEA THAT WAS EVEN AN OPTION

and i was like ??? you just move to her and she gently pushes him aside so you can do the CC for her. he didn't even know you could switch and he was so flabbergasted by it all, but excited because the female player character would have options to use her perks more widely BECAUSE THE GAME IS A SAUSAGE FEST lmaooooooooo

my brother is not.... the wokest dude, but as much as he loves Fallout 4 he noticed that his charisma perks mean dick fuck because the game is just straight up sausage fest. he was actually excited at the possibility of actually getting more out of the game as a female character

i just thought that was such an interesting conversation overall and i know the bar is in the literal earth's core, it was nice to hear a dude (especially one like my brother) say he was excited to play as a female character

[persephinae]

this shot. this shot here with the Creature's short hair before Victor shaves it back

the Creature is made from pilfered bodies, some from criminals, many from the dead soldiers fighting the war. The Creature says he gets flashes of memories sometimes, from the people he's made from

Elizabeth was known for speaking so passionately to defend the soldiers because they were expected to become cannon fodder and die, but spoke for them because in them she saw they were caged too - conscripted and too poor to be able to buy themselves a commission or officer's position and thus buy their way out of the war. She saw them being sacrificed for rich men's desires. She spoke for the voiceless and had great empathy for them.

i know GDT alluded to this connection, but nothing more deeper than that, but like.. the Creature is made of the soldiers allowed to live again. His heart, his face (stitched together as it is).

they make me want to eat drywall

[persephinae]

i didn't want to get into a deep discussion or argument with OP because i don't know them and i'm still sleepy, but i did think this question was really interesting

i do think the dwemer would mop the floor with the falmer. they not only fought and had wars with the chimer, but they know all the ins and outs of their cities and underground roads, and they know how to program the automatons that still do defend their cities thousands of years later

they could reprogram them to only kill falmer

they could sit in one master control room somewhere and press 1 button to activate "Kill All Intruders", they could have a backup master kill plan for falmer (since the falmer were there before they disappeared) that's like a tone specifically designed to kill them (just in case they got uppity in their forced slavery and mass blinding)

but who knows, maybe if they did come back, maybe it was conditional on the dwemer forgetting everything they knew with tonal magic or their knowledge of the spheres/science - all that advanced knowledge lost, and they're at square one with the rest of Tamriel and everyone points at laughs at them

[persephinae]

ok, so having played 6 hours of Ghost of Yotei, i can see where some of the criticisms are coming from

the combat is, imo, not as good as the last game. it's kind of jank and there's no lock on. guys can gank you if you're not paying attention. some of the combat animations and styles are good, but the overall feel of combat so far is jank and not good.

also sometimes mechanics aren't explained clearly and it leaves you guessing for hours until you go back to it and something clicks. it just does not feel good.

the initial couple hours of story feel rushed. I get where they're coming from with story beats and structure - instead of Kurosawa, they're going for spaghetti western in Japan. Which IS an amazing concept and sometimes it works SO GOOD, but how they decided to start the game and story, just feels off. they tried to copy Tsushima's opening with something dramatic and then work backwards to what happened, but imo, especially for something so personal, they should have started with the backstory FIRST, then did the abrupt night of fire that set her on her quest for revenge.

idk the story just feels crammed to fit in this story structure, and it should be working, but the story beats feel off and disjointed, not flowing properly, because they're doing spaghetti western/Magnificent Seven in Japan with telling everything in flashbacks, and i just don't think they have the chops do to this.

even when you're out fucking around, you FEEL the pressure to quit fucking around and get to the story, with the game even REMINDING you like "hey, you should go find that guy" like literally

it doesn't let you breathe in the world

also i guess it feels different because Atsu is a loner and has become a very broken woman who is seeking death, so for many hours of the initial game, it feels lonely as she does not have any friends. She's seeking death and the game feels lonely. Jin died and came back, but he's still that sweet charming man from before, he just had his eyes opened to systematic injustices and as such his empathy expanded to include others. Atsu has to relearn how to be human it feels like.

There's some very interesting characters throughout the game, but sometimes the npcs feel rushed and disjointed and not part of the story. idk how else to explain it.

the story finally picks up like 5-6 hours in, but it feels like you really dragged yourself to get there

[persephinae]

this was being passed around bluesky and i agree, sometimes grief doesn't leave, because there's too much love or unfinished feelings or unresolved conflict that you never got to resolve. love is complicated

but here are my thoughts

sometimes it's not even grief over passed love ones, sometimes it's grief over trauma that you can't let go, grief for your past self. you can certainly get therapy to talk it through, but for me it helps to help others and try to be someone to depend upon.

i'm not perfect, and i fuck up a lot, but at least i try idk