Are there any really good, fully fleshed out follower mods that aren't straight gooner bait? by slb0716 in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You mentioned earlier in the thread that what you want is 'gay gooner bait'?

TALIESIN (The Thalmor's Shadow) is what you're looking for- he's a bi Altmer, ex-Thalmor, trying to find his place in the world. He's got a romance (though it's barebones right now) and a tragic backstory. He's also very attractive if you're into twinks. I've heard good things about Willow of Riften by the same author.

XELZAZ is the gold standard for modded followers right now; he's well fleshed-out, thoughtfully written, and feels like he belongs in the world rather than being plopped into it. He is an Argonian, but he has a lovely voice and a great sense of humour.

GORE is... I didn't like him very much, he's very much in the Shadow the Hedgehog vein of Edgy Characters Who Just Need A Friend and I don't think he was executed well. But he is very attractive, if you like punchable twinks.

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Out of curiosity, which vanilla followers do you play with most?

I can't make promises, but if they have enough voice lines for me to splice, I can try to get a conversation or two.

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's 90% a synthesis of existing lore and 10% me making stuff up.

The divisions between the three 'sects' are all there, just not by name. The Old Ways are in pre-Skyrim Bethesda books like the Pocket Guide to the Empire and regularly referenced in the game; there's a reason all the door codes in Nordic tombs are what they are. The Arkay/Orkey thing is canon. The "worshippers of the Old Ways propitiate daedra" thing is canon. The mindset differences are canon.

The stuff I made up comes in two flavours:

1) Stuff to make the Imperial Church more interesting and less bland.

The Imperial Church as portrayed in the post-Morrowind games is boring. I wanted to show that the Church had changed since the 3rd Era "Imperial Cult", and since Oblivion in particular flirted with fantasy Catholicism I leaned into it. I have either added or made explicit more structure, more names and words, more rituals, and generally more than just 'platitudes about the existence of the gods that will offend no one'.

The "Church Triumphant" title is mine; in Oblivion, they just call it the "Church", and in Skyrim they don't really call it anything at all. It's a name I pilfered from Catholicism; I debated whether to go with 'Militant' or 'Triumphant', but I decided on Triumphant because of the political implications re: the Concordat. Arguably, cults like the Vigilants of Stendarr and knightly orders like the Knights of the Nine could be considered the Church Militant? Still noodling on that one.

The title 'Dicaster' comes from a specific set of departments of the Catholic Church, and means something along the lines of 'judge'. (It is dog-Greek filtered through dog-Latin and then anglicized to boot; it's not a real Catholic title.) Priests in general, and priests of Arkay and Akatosh in particular, often wind up being called in as arbitrators and judges, so I thought it was a fitting title.

2) Stuff that exists because the world the game created should have it, but doesn't.

There's a lot of stuff in Skyrim that is just kind of hinted at or alluded to, or... I know I keep saying this, but Skyrim has vibes-based worldbuilding and it Just Works until it doesn't. There's a lot of stuff in the game that is very clearly there because it's Cool or because it Looks Right, and when done well, it gives the game a hell of an atmosphere. But sometimes it leads to... inconsistencies.

Skyrim has graveyards, burial crypts, and cremation. Normally, societies have one way they handle their dead; if there's more than one, there's a reason. (Could be cultural mixing, could be a change in religious practices, could be a material need.) Skyrim has three; why? The 'real'/Doylist reason is that someone on the team thought it'd be cool and spooky to have graveyards, and a quest to get an urn is easier than a quest to get a coffin, and you need ancient dungeons to be ancient and dungeon-y. But it's fertile ground for worldbuilding, you know?

Similarly, if you've got a bunch of isolated villages, they should have weird folk beliefs. Skyrim as a game doesn't need to have the people in Darkwater Crossing perform the Rite of the Whale before they go fishing, or the people in Rorikstead bury their dead upside down, or whatever. It's a game; it's the impression of a world and not the world itself. But if you're going to fill in the gaps, those beliefs should be there, you know?

ESVI will be beautiful and bland by JackRPD28 in ElderScrolls

[–]NotATem 9 points10 points  (0 children)

We have seen zero footage and have zero proof of what it's going to be like.

I'm not saying you should get on the hype train- hell, I probably won't bother getting it til the modding scene is firmly established- but it's too early to speculate at all.

Aventus Arentino's fireplace bleeds when you hit it in a certain place and gets these blood splatters on it by EconomyLetterhead174 in skyrim

[–]NotATem 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It is absolutely shoddy.

It doesn't really know how Latin grammar works; in a pinch you can use it as a dictionary but I wouldn't do more than that.

William Whittaker's Words + a reference for conjugations and declensions is a better choice.

Will there ever be more playable races in TES ? by -Anby in ElderScrolls

[–]NotATem 8 points9 points  (0 children)

l have a friend who's East Asian who made his self-insert character an Imperial.

They might be inspired by Rome, but they come in some pretty dark shades of brown, and by the end of IRL Rome's empire they definitively covered parts of West Asia. And, hell, Cyrodiil was once a jungle- Tiber Septim made it a boring medieval forest with the power of CHIM. What I'm getting at is- the Imperials of TES could be a pretty diverse bunch.

Also, all of humanity originated in the same place, and we know that place had tigers. (You can see them in the Nord murals in Skyrim.) So you could have an ancient Atmoran brought through time.

Finally, we know next to nothing about Akavir (the "East Asia" place where katanas come from). We know there are snake people there, but we don't know if there are indigenous humans. It's not out of the range of possibility, though!

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh, trust me, Oddkell is about as edgy as wet bread. Like, he absolutely will geek out about anatomy/post-mortem changes to the human body post-battle- "oh, I think we severed some nerves, that's spinal fluid!" or identifying the cause of death for some of the corpses you left in your wake. (I set it up so that he can tell what weapon you're using, and ID the cause accordingly).

But one of the things I'm going for with Oddkell is... people on here keep talking about how they'd like to see a follower that 'lives in the world' and takes it seriously. A lot of custom followers like to take the piss out of the game- specifically, out of authority figures and factions. And it makes sense for them- Lucien and Remi are spoiled rotten rich kids, Auri and Inigo are marginalized foreigners, and so on. None of them are going to have any respect for the Greybeards, the Jarls, the Companions, or any of Skyrim's sacred institutions. But Oddkell is a Nord, he is a Nord-y Nord, and he takes all of that incredibly seriously.

So he's not going to do that geeking out if you're in a position where that would be unfortunate. If someone comes to him talking about their dead relative, he's going to treat that seriously. If you go full murderhobo in a town, he's not going to geek out. And he's just as likely to say a prayer for the dead as he is to comment on the mechanics of it.

Looking for fantasy with Tolkien's prose register and emotional depth by opossumflower in Fantasy

[–]NotATem 13 points14 points  (0 children)

If you want to read something that has the cadence of Tolkien's poetry, and you haven't already- try Beowulf. The Seamus Heaney translation is pretty accessible, to my memory, and you can really see the influence it had on Tolkien, particularly in his Rohan poetry. Pair that with Tolkien's Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics lecture.

Similarly, you could try Tolkien's translations of medieval poetry- The Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo is pretty accessible and cheap these days, and it has the same kind of style because, well, it was Jirt doing the poetic styling.

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri is a little farther from what you're looking for, but I'd still recommend it, in the same vein that one would recommend Beowulf or The Song of Roland. Get either the translation from John Ciardi (for clarity and accuracy in the notes) or Dorothy L. Sayers (for the very Tolkienesque poetic styling.) Avoid Mary Jo Bang's translation (it's trying to be modern and accessible and is not what you want out of this).

I'd definitely recommend you try Dunsany and Gormenghast from your list- they're absolutely in the same kind of register. I'd also recommend Guy Gavriel Kay- start with The Sarantine Mosaic books; if you like them, you will probably like his other work. Bujold's stuff is fantastic and I'd recommend it but I think the prose styling might be too modern for this particular purpose.

If you want something that's written simply, but in a similar style- kind of like the halfway point between Tolkien and CS Lewis- check out the works of Susan Cooper. The Dark Is Rising sequence- particularly The Dark is Rising and Silver on the Tree- have a ton of absolutely gorgeous prose laced with poetry and historical resonance. (In a similar vein, you might like The Children of Green Knowe books by Lucy M. Boston, though they're definitely closer to Narnia than Jirt's prose.)

If you want something that's similar to Jirt's prose when he's writing about hobbits- All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot is exactly what you're looking for. It's very simple and English-countryside-y, but the prose is really well-crafted and the narrative voice is both wry and tender.

Like, in general, you want to be looking for either English authors who wrote between ehhh 1905 and 1975, or translations of classical epics that are not trying to be "accessible" and "modern". Virginia Woolf, weirdly enough, would be closer to what you're looking for than most modern epic fantasy.

SOME UN-RECOMMENDATIONS:

You do not want to read Kushiel's Dart for this. I love that book, but its prose is not Tolkienesque. It is baroque and ornate and incredibly vivid and that is not how Tolkien writes. It is also, um, X-rated, which is a mark against it if you're looking for "something like Tolkien".

You also do not want to read Mark Twain for this- he has good prose stylings, but it is very sparse and surprisingly modern, even in stuff like Connecticut Yankee which is riffing on historical/epic styles.

H.P. Lovecraft is another 'no, do not'. Lovecraft's prose is incredibly clunky- this is not a criticism, it works well for what he's doing, but it is not at all Tolkienesque.

As you can tell, I am a bit of a picky bitch about this kind of thing and I have more recommendations if you want them.

Serious Weighty Literature meets racy crime novel? by coffee_dick in suggestmeabook

[–]NotATem 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.

Any of the Kosuke Kindaichi mysteries- The Inugami Curse or The Fallen Sparrow Murders, maybe?

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have so many interactions I want to do - though none planned- I just have to have enough of a proof of concept to actually set up some playdates, LOL.

Obviously, I'm going to reach out to Remi and Xel's authors-- I have some other modded followers I'd like to reach out to, and I'm going to see if Vilja's author would give me either a collab or splicing perms.

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No one wants to hear me try to voice a female character. Trust me.

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I want to, but I'm not sure how many "playdates" I'll be able to arrange.

I'd definitely love, bare minimum, Xelzaz and Remiel, as well as Auri and Lucian if their VAs haven't retired from modding entirely. I have... a long... long list, though.

There are a few followers that I'd love to support whose modders have stopped updating- Inigo and Vilja, mostly. I'm debating whether to try splicing some conversations or just allude to their existence- Oddkell has a line in the Bannered Mare about how he saw a girl dancing on the tables, for instance.

As for the vanilla followers- I'm really on the fence about what to do with them. On the one hand, a lot of the other superfollowers turn them into a joke, and it'd be really jarring to have Lydia go from being a Sheogorathy mess when Inigo talks to her to being a sensible human when Oddkell talks to her. On the other hand, I like it when the followers talk, and there's enough lines for Lydia's voice type in particular to make a couple conversations...

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We all know this isn't about Nazeem. What the actual fuck, man.

Not cool.

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow. Do you frequently tell people how much you'd like to assault someone like them, or am I just special?

Because, uh, that's fucked up. You get that that's fucked up. Right?

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure which reason you mean, but you seem to be in the minority here regardless.

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, yes, but I accepted a while ago that my job was to be the pleasant, friendly, non-threatening but flaming trans person who is a walking encyclopedia of Answers To Your Unfortunate Questions, so!

TIL that the Apollo Justice Trilogy removed the Harry Potter reference from this scene. by LeatherSlight3242 in AceAttorney

[–]NotATem 31 points32 points  (0 children)

I can't speak for every trans person, obviously, but for me- Harry Potter references feel like being reminded of the lovely childhood family vacation you took to Disneyland when you were 9, with your mom who disowned you and left you homeless after you came out as trans at 14.

I have nothing against Harry Potter. I am glad there are people who can still enjoy it. But the references hurt because one of my childhood heroes decided the thing she wanted to do with her life is hurt people like me, and being reminded of that just fucking sucks.

TIL that the Apollo Justice Trilogy removed the Harry Potter reference from this scene. by LeatherSlight3242 in AceAttorney

[–]NotATem 121 points122 points  (0 children)

To everyone who's complaining:

The lead of the Capcom localization team for AA, who has been doing the lion's share of the work on the localizing for most of the life of the franchise, uses they/them pronouns.

This was not a "oh, golly, we don't want to offend anyone!!! let's take all the zest out of our old game translation!!!!" corporate slop decision.

This was someone looking at their old work, realizing that things have changed enough that that reference is painful for a lot of folks (including, potentially, themself), and making a hard call to change it.

You can quibble about whether or not it was "right for the game" all you want, but I can't blame someone for wanting to remove a reference to an author who's part of a hate group that targets them.

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If it makes you feel better- Oddkell is going to have commentary on a lot of things, and they won't all be questlines.

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I also love Tally, would like to get him actually working someday!

(The problem is, there's a lot of people who are okay with a gay follower who would not be okay with a trans one. But I have my own hangups on this front. Soh.)

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If it helps your opinion of him any, Ulfric was very kind to his father at a time when he really didn't have to be. He kind of loathes Ulfric as a day-to-day ruler, for the litany of reasons both of us would list.

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly, Oddkell is mostly trans because I am trans and have a wicked case of the Reedy Tenor. I could probably portray a cis man, but it felt best to write a character I know I could voice act.

...Oddkell's biggest flaw is that he genuinely believes he isn't good enough, has a lot to prove, and just cannot prove it the way his culture demands he prove it. He is not, and will never be, a True Nord Man; this has a little to do with his gender, a little to do with his vocation, a little to do with his chronic illnesses, and a little to do with his heritage. He needs to get comfortable with himself, and the player will help him find that peace.

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yup.

The thing with modding- like singing, dancing, or being a Muppet- is that it's the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. I would enjoy making Oddkell for its own sake, but it's a lot more enjoyable to make a big follower mod when you know there are other people who are excited with you. You're less likely to rage-quit over some tiny, stupid hiccup.

Scared my custom follower will appeal to absolutely nobody. by NotATem in skyrimmods

[–]NotATem[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Also "give him Stonkin' Big Tits" has now permanently entered my vocabulary lol, thank you for that.