Incoherent Thoughts

irreversibly @ 2025-10-28T14:22:00

2025-10-28T12:25:31Z

I was trawling YT and it kept recommending me KPop Demon Hunters song reactions on the side. I knew it was kinda big or something, I've been seeing content about it on my tumblr dash for ages it feels like, so I eventually clicked one.
And like.
Holy shit?
Trust me, Your Idol hits so many good spots for me that my soul would be gone in half a second flat.

That is all for today. :D

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irreversibly @ 2025-08-03T08:19:00

2025-08-03T05:43:46Z

You'll have to forgive me for not being around the past couple weeks. The last time I mentioned the sweltering heat. The heatwave continued, just in case you haven't looked at the news - I believe this one broke into the international news, everyone's been talking about it in my games' world chats. We consistently had 30° weather for over a week and the rest of it not much less than that. And the nights were hardly any better, with the temperature hovering at July's normal daytime temperature. I read on the news that this kind of heatwave in Finland is rare enough that while a previous instance of it does exist, it happened decades before I was born. Something tells me that this won't be once-in-a-lifetime event for us currently alive, though. :(

Anyway, suffice it to say I wasn't going to turn on the computer for anything but a bare few moments in the early morning when it was coolest ('coolest' being a very relative word, since it was still hot). I chose to spend that time looking up accumulated canon detail checks for fandom participation purposes (all my fandom notes are on the computer, why would I ever willingly work on the phone when I can just hop on the computer instead...says I, having just found out why having the computer on isn't always realistic in this semi-apocalyptic world), before the heat drove me off the computer again. It's been a weird couple weeks to say the least. I've mostly been reading, and playing phone games with Bones in the background. I managed to rewatch seasons 2-12 while the heatwave lasted, and just recently moved onto a rewatch of S1 Dexter. Which I finished yesterday. Anyway, it's a good thing I just upgraded my phone. I was quite shocked yesterday when I decided to try emptying the phone of screenshots for once. I'd somehow accumulated over 8000 screenshots over the course of July. Woops? That'll keep me busy for a while, processing them....

I think it's over now, which is why I'm making the time to catch up on DW. During the night I woke up with my foggy brain at first not registering what was wrong. Then I slowly realized I was shivering and probably needed more blankets than the thin sheet that I had consistently kicked off for the past three weeks since it was so hot. Even now, there isn't a single fan on in the house. Blessed quiet! :OO And I'm feeling a bit chilly kind of. What wonderful weather we're having! I mean, I could even leave the milk on the table for the duration of breakfast! It's been weeks that I've been able to do that, anything more than drinking it straight out of the fridge and then returning to the table to eat has resulted in undrinkable warm swill. What a blessing it is, to be able to sit down for breakfast and not have to hop off every time I want to drink something.
(no, I don't drink juice. They're always either disgustingly sweet or disgustingly sour. I'll take my mealtime liquids nice and neutral, thanks)

I wanted to write about my most recent app discovery to help with writing and worldbuilding but I think I'll leave that for the next time, I'm so ready to do something real for a change! Until the heat rises for the day, it's set to get pretty high even today, but hey. Maybe I'll even be able to get back on the computer tonight again. How cool is that!

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irreversibly @ 2025-01-20T22:06:00

2025-01-20T20:24:37Z

Played some FF7 Rebirth now that I'm finally in the mood and finished Intermission, I thought it might be time to write down my initial thoughts on it.

...which is that the world is very bare for its size. The most you get is the occasional gathering point, which is nice, but that's not exactly what FF7 is about. Where are all the monsters? You're lucky to see one group in ten minutes of wandering around. That's kinda. Bad.
There are games in which a large world is good, but regardless of the game it has to actually contain things. It can't just be 'eyecandy' (if you can say such a thing of the Generic Field with Cliffs that's what we see around Kalm). Maybe it'll fill up with content later, but in that case it's a bad design decision to force you to trek through all of it first before the unlock.

There's all sorts of weird changes to the leveling up systems so I'm withholding judgment on that until I actually get to play around with it sometime in the future. But one thing I do appreciate is the constant references to the history of the place, about how things used to be before Shinra took over. About technology that's no longer used since it's not Shinra tech. Not only does it give the world some much needed context, but it also serves to drive home just how deeply fascist Shinra is - and fascist in the Muskrat's style in specific. It's really an amazingly fitting comparison, and it serves to make the game's story even more relevant to its present day audience than it already was. Top notch approach there.

So some really good, some bad. We'll see how it develops, although it'll probably take me a long time to get anywhere. I have no intention of completely prioritizing this game to the detriment of my other current projects, so it'll be slow going.

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irreversibly @ 2024-08-25T16:27:00

2024-08-25T13:43:49Z

Free website builders these days. Geesh.
I've had this idea for a small thing in my mind the last...like a year by now, since I generate a lot of high quality infodumps while getting things straight in my mind if the info doesn't already exist out there, so I poked around a bit finally for it. Turns out the most popular/recommended ones right now have 'AI assistants', so I figured. Why not. Unlikely these types were trained on stolen art and writings.
It turned out to be a horrible experience. I mean, it started out simple enough, just answering a few basic questions, but then the damn thing generated some monstrosity of a site with features I most certainly didn't mention and quite simply don't need (blog/news section, current events, user registrations, a team introduction section, stuff like that), and there was no way to make it not add them. I mean, it went as far as to generate fake email address and mail address(!!) when I failed to provide them myself.
Then on top of it all when I finally decided it wasn't going to work any better the next try and went ahead to 'edit the details', I found absolutely no way to remove some of the extra stuff, and perhaps even more importantly, you could only add blocks of text and there was no text editor to speak of. For stuff like. You know. Headers and bold text and indents. Minorly important for a site that's going to be basically all text if I ever make it in the first place.

Yeah, that's the status of that particular free website builder. The most recommended of today (or, well, yesterday). So much for that.
I wonder how far down the list of recommends you have to go to find an actually useful one.

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irreversibly @ 2024-02-21T12:25:00

2024-02-21T10:47:23Z

Oh how..interesting. Has the FF14 fandom at large forgotten the stated effects of the long lifespan of the elezen on their development? I know this was common knowledge back at launch, but I just came across people who...genuinely think that Alphinaud and Alisaie are in their teens to begin with?!? Like...whut. What are you.....seriously?
If the fandom in general has genuinely forgotten, some may be really confused with my insistence just how creepy it is that Alisaie is crushing so obviously on the player character. Like....are you seriously not taking her age into consideration. The twins are stated to be 16 in chronological age at the start of ARR, and devs have explicitly confirmed that it makes them 12 in human years. This has been known since ARR launch or roughly thereabouts. They're twelve. Pre-teen. Now, even if you were to argue that each expansion takes as long as a year (you'd be hard pressed to argue for that in some cases, but let's say a year for the sake of the argument), from beginning of ARR to end of EW it's still only five years. So in chronological age they'd be 21, sure. But unless something seriously funky is going on with elezen puberty, you wouldn't be able to argue that they're even 17 in human age by the end of EW (12+5). No, I'm guessing 15-16 at most. And that's presuming the absurdly long year's length for each expansion. And then you have to consider that. Yeah actually. Alisaie started being creepy by Stormblood. Third year of your adventures max. At that point she's 19 at most chronologically, less than 15 in human years. Most probably 14 at most. Could well still be 13. Some might successfully argue they're still 12 at that point, depending on actual length of the expansions and how fast puberty hits for elezen.
And this literal child is just. Crushing on an adult player and making really creepy unsolicited advances and people just. Expect you to be okay with that?!

Just because the twins are intelligent, real actual genius prodigies in tried and true Final Fantasy fashion, that doesn't make them any less literal children. (and yes, consider the fact that the elven equivalent of a twelve-year-old set up the Crystal Braves endeavor. Do you really have to wonder why it failed?)

That's today's two cents. Now maybe I can finally get around to playing, the last video from yesterday just finished rendering. :D

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irreversibly @ 2024-02-02T03:21:00

2024-02-02T02:23:28Z

All hail new Titania, teehee. :D But seriously though, that was a very nice ending to the Il Mheg leg of the story. Even though all the fucking about with the multitudes of sidequests (and the! giant! lake! in the middle of quest-fulfilling route!!) means I'm slightly behind my ideal schedule for the week. At least it was in pleasant surroundings, but seriously. I almost considered not having a day off today.
...good thing Sasare is not going to canonly be getting the opportunity to become Titania. She'd pick it up in a heartbeat just for the hell of it.
Well, anyway. I've been mucking about with a lot of things, and to my surprise discovered that I'm unexpectedly fond of playing sage. I mean...huh? Leaving alone the fact that SGE isn't even remotely the classic FF sage, it's actually closer to..however they translated that FF10-2 job, I'm pretty sure there's an official translation by now due to the HD remasters, even though I never played the 10-2 one beyond the first few hours. The one that's psychicker in Japanese? But here I go back to the Old argument again, although I'm not sure if I've ranted about it on this journal. I mean, it's no secret that I hate Certain aspects of the English localization team, and since Certain individuals in it were put in the lore team also they've started doing very un-FF-like things. Like taking the Yojimbo job and calling it Samurai, or, in this case, taking the Psychicker job and calling it Sage. Just because another job's name is better known, doesn't mean you get to shoehorn a less well known job into it!!!
(do NOT get me started on the removal of -ra -ga and such tiers in favor of numbers. Do NOT. But that at least is an English-only issue. Still enough of an issue that I never seriously considered BLM for main, it's too infuriating. And yes, even RDM has tiers instead of numbers in case you were wondering, Joltra and Veraerora and such are extant spells thank you very much)
Right. Well. Got sidetracked. My point was, if I had the time I'd be doing SGE more I think. But my hunting retainer is WHM and I don't want to start over on that, too much effort. So WHM it is for the healing job I concentrate on leveling, at least until I have the leisure to be bothering with such things as retainer's equipment micromanaging so I can level another job for him. And it's not like WHM suddenly became unenticing - the fancy new Dia and Glare spells brought a nice change of visual effects and all. I'll try content myself with that for the time being.

Managed to clear the Warring Triad story among other things, too. Just in time that I only got mogtomes from the last one. xD; But hey, I must be doing something right - either that or people were much too grateful for having been brought into Zurvan for mogtomes and first-time completion rewards. I mean, I got comms for it. Multiples. On BRD. What the hell lol. (I mean, I was also the only one on the Wit add besides the tank almost until it died, despite the giant '1' marker the tank put on it, and other little things like that. I think it's safe to say people have forgotten how that fight goes)
I'd forgotten Unukalhai used to be a resident of the Thirteenth. Now that I've actually played through the story, I remember reading about people's theories (and later commentary) on him back during HW when I still lurked at the official forums. So he actually joined the Scions at the end, that much I didn't remember or nobody mentioned. Is he ever seen again though? Seems like a bit of a waste. (also, what a way to go Regulus)

Hope all of you who celebrate had a wonderful Imbolc. I obviously didn't have time for anything special this year, but I did cook up a more fanciful dinner than usually, that much time I could spare.
As for today, it's the last of the Opera Omnia main story for me! It just got updated yesterday. And I need to do file management, resize those gigantic screenshots that iphone insists on producing these days (did you know, these days it doesn't even save the creation time of the screenshot in the file's data. How..inconvenient. Now I need to rename into the creation date (that much it still gives) and then give them sequential numbers and hope the sequence is at least remotely in the same order as straight up chronological order, because no way am I dealing with micromanaging thousands of DFFOO screenshots right now). And hopefully I'll finally get around to setting up that damn hard drive for the media server, I now desperately need more space with the pace I'm producing more videos and screenshots in FF14. x__X

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irreversibly @ 2023-08-11T17:23:00

2023-08-11T15:14:37Z

I know there are sentai fans in my mutuals. So how's this fanvid for you:

Lol? :D This Firefall Faire (summer event) in FF14 added the sentai suits. The even has for years already been very superhero-themed, but before this the obligatory event gear was swimsuits and beachwear. You can see they went with something different this year. (various superhero emotes were added in years before this though, those have been in the game for a while)
Everyone's creativity really got going with these suits, this isn't even the first power ranger parody I've seen today.
(what's with Final Fantasy and summer events with superhero themes. FF11 had(/has?) a magical girl, and in FF14 there's power rangers. Geesh!)
(anyway. yes, FF14 still has that free trial, the event just started yesterday so you'd still have plenty of time to reach the required quest in the main story to be able to do events)

What else...I actually got through the first of the Six Warriors challenges in Opera Omnia. :O My first beaten difficulty 300 fight too - at least the legit way, the lv0 diff300 fights for the weekly Crystal Room stuff don't count, surely. The don't have even nearly comparable HP to the actual diff300 bosses.
..that said, I completely overdid it, ah hah hah. I'd tried and failed diff300 fights so many times before that I didn't go in until I'd not only gathered most of the recommended units for that fight, but all of them with their FR weapon maxed out, all boards maxed out, with force level 30-50 depending on the chara, each equipped with an Ultima Weapon varying in level between 0-4... let's just say that after I built up my force gauge it was over, for both of those bosses. I ended up with +999% HP damage bonus within a couple turns. The damage was insane let me tell you. And due to the force levels, even after Force time ran out (damned boss went into Ice resistance phase) I still had over +400% HP damage bonus left. I didn't notice before that the 'inherited remainder' of the HP damage bonus works on actual percentage of the damage bonus, and not percentage units you get to keep (in my case 40-something percent for this party). That was...interesting. Just casually fighting with semi-permanent HP damage bonus higher than what I usually get in force mode with the little bosses because they die too fast... =D;
And why do this now? It's actually not a coincidence, although it was a coincidence that I had characters for the first fight specifically almost ready to go. See, the summer event bonuses have an interesting reward right now. Clear all of the current half-monthly challenges and you get a gacha ticket that gives you a free 50+1 pull, with the +1 being a guaranteed BT weapon. :O Clearing at minimum one Six Warriors challenge was one of the conditions, so I went all out in leveling a party for that. Went overkill on it yes, but now I'll get my 50+1 pull once they release the Faris event next week!

...let's just hope they won't add any more super good rewards locked behind Six Warriors clear count. I checked a few and it looks like it's impossible for me to beat them unless they bring back gachas of some very specific characters so I can get the capabilities I need. That's what I get for having taken a year-long break. Ugh.

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irreversibly @ 2023-07-06T08:46:00

2023-07-06T06:34:50Z

Tikiwiki. Raaaarrrgh. >(

After working on it this long, I knew something would go wrong. I got around to trying to add the auto-listing pages. I'm doing away with most automatic listing pages to spare the database, but there are those that I pretty much have to have because it's simply unrealistic to expect anyone to update them by hand, they change too frequently. So I was trying to add them and...
1) You can't change the listings by simple links like at Wikidot. At Wikidot I'd simply type in a ton of links that append the page's URL with a string of code that makes the page-listing module change contents. All handled neatly on one page. But at Tikiwiki that's not possible. No, if you want to create a page that at least looks like it has dynamic content, you have to create a series of pages all with the same content except the parameters on the page-listing module are different. The page-listing module itself is completely static, it can't be changed without editing the page itself. What the fuck. There's not even any page embeds that I could find, so I could put all the different modules on the same page and just change the embed as needed. The only somewhat comparable thing I could find in their knowledge database was tabs. Just imagine 30+ tabs on one page just to be able to view all forests and mountains and rivers and continents and all other various types of terrain listed neatly one by one, cities in one tab and towers in another, etc. Not a viable option!!
2) ...there are no exclude causes. What. The actual fuck. The default is 'or' clause, if you add a fancy bit of code you can change that to 'and', but you can't have a mix of the two. There is no 'but don't include this', full stop. I...there are no words? How the fuck am I supposed to create neat automatic page-listing pages like this? x___X The category system I have so far needs to be overhauled as a result. I've been working on the assumption that exclude clauses are a thing - I mean, who would presume there's no exclude clauses?! So pages that are only listings are categorized with, say, 'area' just like all regular location pages, but they also have category 'list' specifically so they can be excluded from showing when creating pages that list the actual fucking content instead of list-pages. But now as a result I can't list all 'area' pages without including the lists too. What a marvelous revelation at this stage of the game. What even is the point of being able to give multiple categories to a page, hmm?

Now I have to go through everything I've transferred so far and re-categorize all the list-pages. But how am I supposed to be able to quickly list list-pages of certain topics then? (like, say, pages listing locations in each different FF title) Do I seriously have to create a category for each topic's list pages? Like say, categories 'Area Lists' and 'Ability Lists' and 'Equipment Lists' and the like. I already have close to a thousand categories, I don't want to add more that wouldn't even be needed if the platform had basic functionality like fucking exclude clauses.
I've mentioned it before but I'm really growing to hate the techbros that do upkeep on Tikiwiki. I mean, it's still pretty much the only option to have all the features that I need for proper functioning of the site. Doesn't mean that it isn't hugely unintuitive in weird places and inexplicably lacking in certain basic functions...

At least I can cover up most of the difficulties so they're not visible to the casual user. Only people who update the wiki, who'll be saddled with all the extra work. x__x

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irreversibly @ 2023-05-24T13:13:00

2023-05-24T11:09:11Z

This here be a gaming entry, feel free to skip if that isn't your thing!

Had a very nice FF14 session yesterday! For a total of something like 10 hours. Maybe more. I am known for overdoing things, yes indeed.
There was so much to do though. First logged in to Gishane to get his glamour items, and then had to wait an hour or two for the mounts to pop up in his inbox. Ended up continuing his main story a bit while waiting, and at least he's caught up with class quests now too. Class, because he's not yet far enough to have jobs other than WHM that I unlocked for him in 1.x. Oops? I really did a dirty to my alts after ARR hit.
But then I switched to Sharcos and there was just so much to do! I even logged in at just the right time to pick up one set of kojin dailies, and when I was done with them (and finishing the post-Shisui Sui-no-Sato sidequests), it was already time for the next set of dailies. And when I was done, I noticed to my amusement that Carvallain tanks the lv61 main story dungeon, what. :D Pirate elezen supremacy! But there wasn't any time(attention) for grinding, so I went to the lv65 main story dungeon instead to do new-to-me stuff. Was flabbergasted to notice that a mid-boss wasn't in fact a boss but a dodging trial. Just...whut. With the kind of ping I get to the server (chosen for the community instead of proximity) and my refusal to look it up, it took me ages to get through that part. I am not looking forward to having to do that again for grinding purposes.
And then there was sidequesting. A whole lot of sidequesting. Insane amounts of sidequesting. (interspersed with some Triple Triad, because why leave unfinished content behind. Got all the new cards from every player I came across, thank you very much) Completed everything at the Dawn Throne, and the Dotharl camp, and the Uy...something? I want to say Uyghur but that's a real world thing? Anyway, finished their sidequests too. There's no quest markers on the map left, and the only things left in my journal for the Azim Steppe are the next main quest (return to the Mol!) and the final sidequest to unlock flying there. So yes, I did a fuckton of questing. Both my RDM and my BRD remain at level to do the unfolding new content, since I'm sharing the quest exp between the two of them to prevent overleveling.
...a horrible thought just occurred to me. I remember I've been keeping up with the RDM job quests, but did I..ever continue past lv60 for BRD quests? Errm. o__o;; There's so much to do! It's hard to keep track sometimes.

But. I am just so excited over this patch. I can finally do story content stress-free. You have no idea what kind of a weight that removes. I can actually fully enjoy playing the game now. I should even be able to do much of the old high-end content solo once I get a bit more levels under me, I've read up on it and it should be very possible (if somewhat challenging?) to do ARR high-end content solo. :D I'm aware the ping issues might be a bit of an additional challenge, but that's nothing I'm not used to already. Immediate sharp dodging or I eat the aoe, no problem.

Feeling the need to log in today again, but 1. let's let the ancient wincomp rest for a bit after yesterday's overkill of a gaming session and 2. I should very much not be continuing anyway until I edit away the raw video files from yesterday, because holy fuck did I end up with a lot after that much questing. (I record main quests and blue exclamation mark side quests)

My Opera Omnia progress is suffering. Skipped too many days while reading books, and then I was too caught up with catching up with everything else to gather enough gems to finish Kadaj's gacha properly, and now the next event is already out as of earlier today, and I'm still not quite done with Kadaj and I should already be pulling Irvine and Balthier... Fast pace, that one. Be distracted for a couple days and suddenly you're hopelessly behind unless you pay. :X I'm thinking instead of FF14, today will be dedicated to doing some more catch-up with old Opera Omnia content. I still have the majority of Hard quests from main story left up until the point they enabled you to get both Normal and Hard difficulty rewards at the same time by just completing the Hard content, that should get me a nice amount of gems to go towards Irvine.
I'm wondering though, if I should consider not pulling from the secondary gacha for new events unless I really like the character (or that character is very behind on equipment). I mean, I'll pull Balthier either way, but I'm starting to run out of old content to farm for gems and tickets, soon I won't be able to pull from either of the two if I don't start curbing my expenses a bit. Hmm.... :/

War of the Visions. Did you know, playing War of the Visions is extremely good for your kanji reading skills? I mean, all the cutscenes are both voiced and speech-bubbled. I have memorized so many readings of the kanji that show up frequently. :D (this in my series of convincing myself to keep playing for the story, even despite the overwhelming and distasteful grind)

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irreversibly @ 2023-04-24T13:49:00

2023-04-24T11:45:33Z

Yes yes, it's another game grumbly post, although about War of the Visions this time, feel free to skip if it's not your thing!

Eurgh, playing with others. Even with autoplay in effect. Just. Do not want. But I did really want to finish Galzac to lv99 (current event SSR chara) in WotV, so I grabbed myself by the neck and set myself up in some rando party for the five necessary multiplayer quest clears to get the remaining 60 character shards. Who on earth had the bright idea of forcing you to play multiplayer to finish event charas in an otherwise singleplayer game. :(
Not that it's the only thing you need to interact with others on in WotV. It's pretty bad in that aspect. Guilds are pretty necessary to get by (to get guild medals and access to free character shards to level up your characters that don't get shards given out any other way anymore), but I could deal with guilds since you don't have to interact with the other players in your guild in any way. And okay there's the arena, which is technically setting you up against other players but those are all AI controlled, nobody even knows when others challenge them in the arena. You just set up a party and forget it (other than those five times a day you need to challenge the arena to get arena medals, which are also pretty necessary to level up your weapons), I can deal with that no problem. But there's also PVP (in a phone game?!!) which gives up PVP medals, and that's where I gave up because no reward is worth that kind of stress. And there's multiplayer quests, which I mentioned before and it is THE most unfair thing in the entire game, I swear. :( Not even just the shards locked behind multi quest clears, but also the monthly multi quest grind missions. Not that I've ever tried for that, but it means that I'm that much less efficient in leveling up my characters, since finishing every month yields you rainbow stones and rainbow thread ball things. (no, I have no earthly clue what these things are called in the English translation)
There are indeed Reasons why I don't like actually playing WotV, despite the siren song of the story. And other than just the hours per day you need to play to get the dailies done even. Truly ridiculous levels of grind of the bad, extremely time-limited kind.

Yes, I'm still making (yet another) attempt to play the damn thing. The story, dammit. :( But I also need stronger characters (and more varied elements with those characters) to advance, hence why the constant and endless grind. I'm not even kidding when I say that this past week if I haven't had Opera Omnia open on the phone for my weekly progress, it's been auto-grinding in WotV. All. Day. Long. I've barely made a dent into the progress I truly need.
On the other hand, they were gracious enough to hand out a free Bartz when the FF5 event started, and with the current offering of Bartz shards everywhere and my current sky-high playing time which means I have the resources to get those shards, means I might finally be able to get a third lv99 unit. Aside from just, you know, Mont and Mediena, the freebie offerings...(or fourth come to think of it, since I also have Galzac now. But Mont and Galzac are only SSR so I'm not sure they count anyway)
(not that lv99 is good enough. Current cap is lv140. While trying to get those multi quests done I even had a person immediately close the quest when I tried to join with my poor lv99 Mediena. Rude, you should've put level restrictions there if you didn't want new ('new') players joining...)
(but it's not like I can do much about the lv99 cap just yet. I'm not far enough in the story to access the story quests that drop pink job orbs, and the grinding quests basically only drop the weapon stones, not the job orbs, and since five BLM job orbs are required to get her to lv100 even, I'm stuck with lv99 until I manage to get much further in the story)

Now I want cake. :( Imma bake myself a proper spice cake I think, despite the season. I have some syrup that's past it's best before date, it's technically not supposed to go bad since it's syrup but might be for the best to try use it away anyway.

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irreversibly @ 2022-09-24T16:23:00

2022-09-24T14:09:34Z

There's something really funky going on in Stranger of Paradise. From what I can gather so far (with six dungeons beaten, heading for second crystal), SoP is....an isekai story?

So basically, Lufenians (I'm going to presume it's Lufenians, it's always Lufenians) discovered that a part of their world would be consumed by darkness (or Darkness? Sounds like the same kind of thing as the Flood of Light and the Flood of Darkness in FF3?) in a couple thousand years' time, and somehow that ended up with inviting (or 'inviting') a string of Strangers from another world (unnamed and undescribed so far) and make them....do something about it. Unspecified so far what exactly. And they already had cross-dimensional travel and communication capabilities by that point in history, so they obtained some really fancy tech and science from other worlds and started experimenting with ways to change the fundamentals of their own world...meaning, all the dimensional disturbances in FF1 are a result of their science experiments.
Fancy. o__o Hits really different when you know that behind each side mission is a Stranger who couldn't make it in this world. I mean, they've said so since the start, but there was no definition to the word Stranger before this. Now I know they're isekai'd people, and...well. That's a lotta corpses.

There's also the tidbit about the dark crystals (the ones that the would-be Warriors hold?), about how they erase memories somehow, in addition to their main function. Whatever that main function may be. And that explains why none of the Strangers/would-be Warriors have memories. It also sounds like they recycle the Strangers somehow? They're transported in, they die, they get transported in again after a while. One has to wonder about their bodies. Are they in Manikin bodies? Curious...

I'm very suspicious about Sophia (the fifth Stranger in this band). She did appear to be a genuine victim fallen into some kind of a digital fault (or considering the appearance of Rift faults in later Dissidia series, it might be something related to that) during a battle with Tiamat. But there's also the sequence with Jack when the four would-be Warriors arrived at the Flying Fortress. It looked like a memory, which means that in the past she was stealing dark crystals off of other Strangers. That...isn't necessarily good but isn't necessarily bad either? I mean, those crystals do steal memories. But that's not to say she didn't take them for some other reason than for trying to save the Strangers there at the time. We'll see.

Dark crystals make me curious about the people of Cornelia too. When conversing with Sara it was obvious that her memory wasn't actually working. Like not being able to tell when Garland had left the castle except that it was recently, and then the NPCs around town say it happened over 30 years ago... The king and the chancellor were extremely suspicious too. I haven't forgotten, game. *squints suspiciously*
Echoes of Mobius too, although I never did manage to make myself finish the story in that game, before it shut down. So I'm left with just vague ideas. I should...look up the conclusion I guess.

The game is finally getting a bit harder. I think I may even need to grind a few more basic jobs to completion before continuing too much. Turns out, advanced jobs get stuff carried over from the basic jobs. Good thing I was already planning on leveling every job, you know!
Although it is admittedly a bit annoying. I have very definite favorites among the jobs, and the trickle-down exp you can get through equipping stuff that boosts the jobs you don't want to level yourself..well, it's not very much. Seems a bit unfeasible to get even the jobs I most hate to max that way.

Anyway, yeah. Isekai. Come to think of it, I've never before drawn any parallel lines about the start of FF1 and the start of just about any generic isekai story, but it's...the exact same? Is that just a coincidence or was isekai genre modeled after games like FF1? Interesting, highly interesting.
I love it. ;)
Flavor tidbit of the day: there's a Final Fantasy isekai manga called Lost Stranger. :O I mean, I doubt it's a reference to Strangers in SoP....or is it? Did the manga have enough of an influence on the series that Strangers are now an unmovable part of the series mythos? I did read the first volume or so of the manga back when it was new (I have no idea if it's still ongoing or if it was finished or cancelled or what). Perhaps I should get my hands on the rest of it and read for details, just in case.........

Final Fantasy at its best, my dudes. There's nothing better than getting to theorize!

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irreversibly @ 2022-09-17T14:54:00

2022-09-17T13:32:34Z

This is a Final Fantasy post, you non-geeks can go scatter off and do more interesting things. ;)
(this is also a no-spoiler overview, so I didn't bother with a cut. Any future spoilers will be cut as per my usual policy)

So, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. I realized as I started watching the opening movie that I was going in practically blind, all I knew about this game was that it's a Final Fantasy, set in the FF1 world, the protagonist is Jack Garland and he has a few buddies, and that it's an action game. I sure put a lot of faith in this franchise, eh.
...Cornelia is gorgeous. It's everything I ever wanted when seeing it over and over again as pixel remaster of FF1 followed pixel remaster with no hope of a 3D remake in sight. At least now there's this game. It's not complete by any means - in fact, the shallowness of its non-combat gameplay makes it ridiculously obvious that it was developed by someone (Team Ninja) who deals in action games usually. But the visuals are something whereas before there was nothing but the tantalizing hints of Amano art. The Chaos Shrine too! It's exactly what you'd think you'd be getting if you took (non-existent) Amano art of it and transferred it into 3D format. Dreams made flesh. I heartily approve.
The people too are rendered in 3D, although corners were obviously cut. Like the king of Cornelia, it looks like he had hyper-realistic face textures slapped on top of a not so realistic body. At least princess Sarah is pretty and detailed all over, although her dress moves like she's from a PS2 game when she walks. Like I said, it's obvious they aren't used to making anything with a modicum of story in it... There are no cities proper either, in that you can walk around in a few story locations like the Cornelia throne room when you're invited in through story progression, but that's the extent of what you get for exploring non-combat locations. Talking to townspeople is added in more like an afterthought, and functions exactly like those older JRPGs with a static background and anime avatars of the people talking slapped over it. Just with everything in 3D models. They didn't even bother making multiple locations to talk people in, or do so much as change the camera angle for different people. Nope, it's all same location, same camera angle, same kind of wooden gestures on each supposedly different NPC of the handful you're given the option to talk to. You choose each name to talk to from a menu.
...yeah. Basically no non-combat non-menu trawling gameplay here. I suppose they tried their best, or something.

As for the combat gameplay then. For the hesitant RPG player who hasn't bothered looking into this game because it's an action game, I can pretty much lay your fears to rest. There are three difficulties right off the bat, the lowest of them 'story'. Designed to appeal to people like us who don't like action games and just want to see the story. ;) Yeah, you bet I latched onto that one nice and tight. But it goes even further than that in accommodating RPG fans and in the story difficulty it gives a further reduced casual mode that removes all sorts of death penalties and stuff. I didn't go that far in nerfing the game, but it's nice to know that the option is there if the going gets too rough! (and yes, you can change difficulty on the world map and you can abandon mission at any time to return to world map) This game has so far not been just a corridor run even in the lowest difficulty (not for people like me anyway, who don't play action games), which on one hand does give a bit of a pause..but on the other hand, there's no access to most tricks this early in the game either, and the difficulty from my point of view dropped pretty fast as soon as I got access to jobs more suitable for my style of gameplay.
I'm still in the middle of the first dungeon (gotta protect that wrist and not over-play...too much), so keep that in mind, but so far everything's been manageable. There was a ten or so minutes of confusion at one point though, the game has stupidly strong (for when you first meet them) bombs stationed in one corridor in the Chaos Shrine. It wants you to take a side door to evade them...but I initially couldn't find said side door and ended up going through a loop right before that a couple times trying to find the right way to go since the bombs obviously weren't it. The doorway is seriously too hidden, it's not visible from where the enemies already notice you, and if you lock in the camera is liable to swing away from the doorway to follow the mobs. Ugh. Who designed that stupid corridor. D: That said, it's only one part of the Shrine (so far) and I have no idea if they've made similar fuckups in the dungeons further in the game. All other areas of the Shrine (that I've so far accessed) have functioned very well - and as mentioned before, it's seriously pretty and exactly as you'd expect the Chaos Shrine to be.

Plentiful jobs to be had in this game too! All the FF14 classes like lancer and marauder are there. ;) There's a job advancement system where you have to master these basic jobs to a certain degree to unlock advanced jobs, like Black/White/Red Mage all branching from a generic Mage (mace user), and Red Mage requiring progression in one other basic job although I forget which. Or how Berserker, Warrior, and Knight all branch off from the most basic of basic jobs Swordsman (a greatsword user, which is the reason I suppose it's called that instead of Gladiator like the sword+shield user in FF14), just with different secondary job requirements. You get job points for every job level gained, and can spend them freely on the branching job skill trees. Considering that there's an achievement for unlocking all jobs and the job unlocks are at the bottom of each skill tree, I'm very certain that you can get everything in the end! Excellent news for a completionist, lol. :P
I like how differently each job plays, although that's bound to create problems since this is, in fact, an action game. With combos. So many different button press combinations already and I haven't even beaten the first dungeon yet... Anyway, you get access to Swordsman from the very beginning, and get assigned Duelist (dual daggers) automatically after the tutorial is over, and can switch one of them out for a Pugilist (H2H obv) if you're into that much menu trawling without being guided to it. (you can switch between two jobs in combat, you need menu trawling if you want to change further than that) (and yes, I did go play around with all the menu options as soon as I could, which is how I know about the possibility of changing into PGL) On one hand it's nice to have options...but on the other hand, for someone as impatient as me that was the most horrible job combination they could have assigned to start the game with. You give me nothing but close combat jobs, Imma assume I can zerg stuff. Which...I can't, in this game. Yes, there were deaths involved before I got access to Mage and Lancer....... On the other hand, Mage and Lancer are both nice long-distance jobs and suitable to keep reminding me to play strategic.
Right when you get Mage there's a doorway that leads back to that corridor of death with the higher-level bombs...you can bet that I went back to kill them a couple times after that.... Oh btw, all you need to do to re-spawn mobs is touch a cube (a save point that lets you assign job points and other more involved menu stuff), and it'll also heal your HP and MP. There's also usually nice corridor loops near cubes so you can level (/practice your combos...), it's very convenient.
Anyway, Mage. It's nice to play, you get four elements (I assume Black Mage has more) and what level (-, -ra, -ga) you cast depends on how long you charged the spell. They're very nice for clearing large numbers of mobs all at once. And of course, Lancer has the Javelin skill which takes me back to 1.x days in FF14. If you don't know, all classes used to come with a throwing weapon, and Javelin was LNC's. The skill is basically the same as in 1.x, just with added action-game charging up possible. Just too bad it costs MP to use. With Swordsman and Duelist I kept forgetting to use the abilities, with Mage and LNC I'm constantly out of MP... xD; I really do prefer killing things from afar. Hopefully there will be an Archer unlock at some point.
What's that you say? The party members? Not controllable, although I read something about the first episode pack possibly allowing you to switch to them...? Dunno, I haven't bought it yet. You can change their jobs and equips like you can Jack's at any time from the menu, but their selection of allowable equips is more limited than Jack's. The big Black guy starts out as a Pugilist and the frail white guy as a Duelist. No surprises there, play those stereotypes honey. *eyeroll*

Now, online play. I'm disappointed they put something like that in, but so far it looks like there might be no need to touch it. It just lets you invite others to play with you or lets you go level while helping others progress in the game. I can live with that. As long as there's truly no need to touch it.

All in all, from a flimsy base of 2+ hours of gameplay (including loads of menu trawling) it's looking very promising. The story does progress almost exclusively on cutscenes so far, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - just look at Devil May Cry! And I'm very curious to find out what's actually going on, what with Jack Garland leading a group of warriors who each has a darkened crystal...
I've got to mention though, the story started out a bit incoherently. There's an FF15 style Big Bad battle to start out (Tiamat), and....then you're suddenly at Cornelia meeting buddies for the first time? And all of a sudden there's a time skip and you're returning from a royally sanctioned monster-hunting mission? I'm guessing that means the Tiamat fight was one of the big baddies that they were supposed to take down as a test for Cornelia's suspicious people, but I'm not really sure. I hope the rest of the story is presented more clearly.

That's about what I can glean of this game so far!

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irreversibly @ 2022-09-09T14:18:00

2022-09-09T11:36:11Z

thefridayfive had something interesting to answer this week...

1. What is the last song/bit of music you heard?
Physically I'm pretty sure it was the collapsed highway music in FF7R. I have a feeling I've had half a dozen songs in my head after that though.

2. What is the song you can't get enough of right now?
There hasn't really been one like that lately. I haven't been listening to much music over the past month, I've been way too busy with other stuff. I like music when I'm doing more mindless tasks, like data entry or cleaning the house or whatever. It just serves to scramble my brain when I'm trying to do something that requires actual understanding. Music is just too much of a whole-body experience for me.

3. What song/band did you just discover and think are great?
I don't trawl around for new music very often. The last one I got hooked on was Give That Wolf a Banana by Subwoolfer, from this year's Eurovision. I was initially hesitant to think about it as anything more than a joke entry, but it grew on me pretty fast. And the other songs they post on their YT channel are pretty great too. Go yellow alien lunar wolves. ;)
In short, it's got an excellent beat and the absurdity is to die for with RL being what it is! Absolutely recommended, and their other songs too.

4. Do you listen to the same song over and over on repeat? Why?
Yes, oh yes that I do. It's just impossible to find all the good or bad things about a song in one or two listenings. It takes some serious repeating. The upside? It creates very strong links to whatever else is going on while I listen to something for evaluative purposes. Like my inadvertently connecting another Eurovision song in a previous year (The Ride by Rafal) with the Whyborne&Griffin series I was reading at the time.
The downside? It creates very strong links to whatever else I'm doing....not always desirable.

5. Do you make music, or do you want to?
I've had my moments of wanting to. But I have too many interests as it is, and making music doesn't rank very high at all.
(I did once apply to a school for it, but that was only because it was one of the only sensible options I could apply to at the time and I was still young enough to be legally obligated to apply to schools - or face financial ruin. I wasn't too bummed when I didn't make it)

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irreversibly @ 2022-08-13T22:56:00

2022-08-13T20:29:31Z

thefridayfive for this week. Sure it can still count as Friday even though in less than an hour it'll be Sunday, right? ;)

1) What's the weather like where you are right now?
Hot. There's a late summer heat wave this weekend, temperatures going well above the usual 20 or so. Windows open at night-time it is, again.

2) Has your weather been seasonally appropriate lately, or has it been unusual?
Lately it's been fairly normal. Like I said, 20 or so is the norm with the occasional hotter days, and that's exactly what we've been getting this month. The rest of this summer though? Not so normal, way way hotter than normal.

3) Have you noticed any trends in the weather near you over the past few years?
Definitely. Painfully hot summers abound, and some winters no longer have any snow at all. I kind of have to notice this stuff for health related reasons so I guess I'm more sensitive to it. Extreme temperatures are no good. Summers are a health hazard in ways they rarely were before, and some winters have become much less deadly.

4) Are you worried about climate change?
I am. The effect is undeniable this far north, and it's steadily but quickly getting worse. Although it leaves me conflicted, winters take so much of the year that for me personally it's incredibly freeing when it some years doesn't get even cold enough for snow at all. Summer is a flash in the pan by comparison, even though technically the health hazard it causes is way worse being inescapable and all. Houses here aren't built to keep cool, they're built to retain heat. That's going to have to change one way or another going forward.

5) Are you doing anything to combat climate change?
Besides the obvious minimum regarding electricity, water, and recycling? I try to buy more lasting (read: more expensive) clothes when I can, and I try take advantage of the neighborhood farmers' market in summertime. Already being mostly a house mouse and either walking or taking public transport everywhere, there's not much else I can do to do anything more, if you know what I mean.

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irreversibly @ 2022-06-27T11:04:00

2022-06-27T08:53:57Z

Oh joy, what a happy Midsummer. The time that in Finland is so inextricably linked to thunder and rain that it's The day of Ukko (the god of thunder), that usually languishes around 10-15 degrees...and here we are. Yet again. In the middle of a close-to-30-degree heatwave, with nights barely going below 20, and skies as blue as can be.
(we did get a thunderstorm a week or two before though, before the heat hit. Midnight thunderstorms are pretty flashy, and quite literally too. The flashing woke me up before the thunder and rain arrived)

Bad astroweather all around. An account on twitter even pointed out that it's Mars-conjunct-Eris squaring Pluto right now, which I consider a minor miracle considering how little known Eris is especially on astrotwitter. But it was a very good point. Explosive and disruptive (Eris) violence (Mars) to be expected (and is ongoing) in the short-term future, and in the US especially it's linked to the ongoing fuckery of the US Pluto return. It's still three degrees from exact, so you can expect things to get worse for quite a bit yet, especially considering transit Pluto is currently retrograde (indicating digging up and battles and outrage over things previously thought settled). It won't end until 7th October, so there's quite a bit of time left for the US Supreme Court to take away as many more civil rights and aspects of bodily autonomy as they please. :) The retrograde could also be used to take away their power in some way, but I doubt it'll actually happen considering all the rest of the astroweather for US.
If you've forgotten specifics of the US Pluto return, a country's Pluto returns have previously been tied to civil uprisings and civil war. The US has a natal Capricorn Pluto in 2nd House (3rd WSH), indicating the civil unrest will be tied to legislation (Cap) and conservatism (Cap) especially as they pertain to values (H2) and how your class/race/etc impact your standing in society (H2), and in particular how those things impact communities (H3). The return won't be exact until February 2024, and the direct results of it won't be over until 2038.

Funny thing. In mundane astrology (analyzing movements of the planets by themselves, not comparing them to another chart), Pluto cycles have previously been tied to developments in women's rights and especially reproductive rights. Birth control in specific is closely tied to Pluto's movements.
This is, naturally, all tied into mythology, how Pluto/Hades is the same god as Dionysos and how Dionysos is accompanied by the maenads, and all that. It's interesting though, that astrologers don't even have to know the Hades-Dionysos equivalency from history to figure out that Dionysos would technically be a more fitting name for the planet (see also: Cosmos and Psyche by Richard Tarnas). Such is the nature of enduring truths. They always come out somehow.

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irreversibly @ 2022-05-13T10:36:00

2022-05-13T09:46:48Z

Isn't it just so fitting that Beltane(ish) season is Eurovision season?

Some nice songs this year! I was thoroughly impressed to find out that not only does France's entry have nice lyrics (very paganish), but those lyrics are actually in Breton. How cool is that! Reminds me a bit of that pagan project of Eluveitie's. I think Fulenn is my second favorite of this year's crop. My most favorite being the absolutely stunning Austria. It's very disappointing that they didn't make it past the semifinals. I can definitely see myself listening to that a lot. I'm convinced they could have made it much farther if not for the stage show, it was positively underwhelming compared to just about everyone else. Such a shame.
Cyprus is my third favorite this year, very beautiful song. It could've been improved by being entirely in Greek, but it's very pretty even partially in English.

As for Eurovision-worthy performances/songs, wtf Norway. 'Give that wolf a banana', lol. Completely absurd! Magnificent! And nothing worth listening to normally of course, but damn does it fit Eurovision to a t. If you're not familiar with Eurovision and want a summary in one video, just watch that one. Essence of Eurovision right there. ;)
And Moldova! Very appropriate too. I love how they made fun of their country's (/countries') historical division even under such circumstances - if you didn't already recognize the country's name, it's the one right next to Ukraine that Russian forces are trying to make way to to connect with the Russian separatists. The division they're singing about being the part where they broke off of Romania. (There's a translation of the lyrics available in the video of course, would have no clue what they're saying otherwise.) That combined with the laidback folk rock type of thing...marvelous. The video's story is also really appropriate for the song, quite ingenious really.
I'm glad both of them made it to the finals.

As for Finland, well. We made it to the finals again? I was a bit of a fan of The Rasmus circa 2001 or so, somewhat concurrent with my HIM phase but before I found my way to the really good stuff via The 69 Eyes. I far prefer the song's live performance, the music video's hard guitars drown out their distinctive sound, it only comes out in brief flashes, more's the pity. But the semifinal performance makes it come out loud and clear, gets me nostalgic. All the luck to them, although I don't think they'll win or anything. Despite maybe deserving everything they can get, I definitely remember them as the most hardworking and earnest band ever.

Other songs I enjoyed this year? Romania, Albania, Ireland, Estonia, and Czech Republic. I'm actually really surprised Ireland made it to my kinda-favorites list this year, it never has before. Ireland and Britain both (and Australia, let's not forget Australia) tend to send very uninspired songs in my opinion. Too bad their break of pattern didn't get them further than the semifinals.

It'd be interesting to see who wins this year, but let's face it. It's probably Ukraine. Too bad they didn't have their 2020 song this year, I would've definitely been behind them winning with that song. It's still on my playlists on the regular.

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irreversibly @ 2022-04-28T12:44:00

2022-04-28T10:57:05Z

I was walking home through a park today and my mind automatically did maths the way it's wont to do sometimes. "Oh hey look, it's a year number. It's been a total of eight----y-two....." and that's how far I got when I damn near froze up in surprise.
("It's been eighty-four years," says old!Rose somewhere in the background)
Let's talk Uranus returns. Uranus takes roughly 84 years to complete its orbit around the Sun. Titanic might have only gotten a movie to commemorate its Uranus return, but Uranus doesn't only signify disasters (natural or otherwise), it's involved in various types of wars too.
The Winter War then? As in when Russia(Soviets) attacked Finland unprovoked in 1939, for no other reason than land-greed? Yup, that one. It's going through its Uranus return now, although the exact won't be until June next year. No wonder we're going through a bit of a volatile period with Russia. And then one might notice that the Winter War is also going through its Neptune opposition as of a few weeks ago (seems to signify reversals of position on unity, which tracks with what's going on right now with Nato), and a Jupiter return to boot (that's something that western astrology says should be good and Chinese astrology says is really bad, and in my experience for the first half of a human life it's bad but might just be a good thing later on but I don't have the data gathered yet to prove that hunch). And oh, let's not forget that in exactly a month and a day (you know, by the time they've prolly already sent that Nato application?) the Winter War will have a solar opposition.
*laughs nervously* That's...a lot of commonalities in the Big planets. At least Pluto and Saturn (both signifying death and suffering) aren't in any significant place as far as I can see. Whatever the outcome may be (I mean, it could very well just signify joining Nato to avoid a repeat invasion, since there's no other markers of violence and Finland's inception chart doesn't say anything all that significant should be going on), I think we're in for a rougher couple years, at least until the War's Uranus return is properly over. At least that much is nothing new, antagonism from Russia is constant and has been at a moderately high level for almost all my adult life. Anyway, depending on whether retrogrades back into the sign count or not (another thing I have yet to analyze), the return will be over sometime summer 2024 or spring 2025, and it won't be back for another eighty years. By which point it'll hopefully be irrelevant enough that it won't matter anyway. Not that any of us will be there to see it.
(although I'm thinking the state should really consider hiring astrologers. They've said multiple times that they'll be ready to send the Nato application May-ish. That's when the transit Sun goes into Finland's 12th house. Are we really sure that's a good idea? I mean, the 12th signifies secrets or things that fly beneath your notice, but also hidden enemies that block your way or stab you in the back...)

I think I may have a small need to analyze more war charts. Hooray for identifying deficiencies in your self-study?

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irreversibly @ 2021-08-17T12:03:00

2021-08-17T09:36:07Z

I am mildly pissed. At fanfic. You know, if you insist on including a random neurological condition in your fic, you might actually want to do a modicum of research. Not just go by the name and decide you've nailed it.

The offending diagnosis in question being 'selective mutism'. Do you have any idea how many AftG fics have that in the tags? But they aren't actually writing about selective mutism, not a fucking single one that I've actually bothered to check. Selective mutism has very very specific criteria and NOT A FUCKING SINGLE ONE of those fics gets anywhere close to filling them. Randomly becoming whole-time mute for a time or randomly mute one day talking another day simply does not qualify. Let alone those miraculous fabulous occasions of let-me-just-push-through-this-one-word-because-I-love-you-so-much. As if people don't shit on autism spectrum disorders enough even without this shit.

Moral of the story, do not go by what you think a diagnosis would be according to the name when including a random diagnosis in your fic. You'll make yourself look like an ass. Signed, someone who actually had medically diagnosed selective mutism and it's NOWHERE CLOSE TO THAT.

(if you're one of those people who've written or liked 'selective mutism' fics before, here's a news flash for you: selective mutism is trigger-based. It's selective precisely because it triggers your mutism when the trigger is present in some form, and only when the trigger is present. The rest of the time you can speak normally. Hence, it's selective. The end.)

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irreversibly @ 2021-07-22T00:53:00

2021-07-21T22:31:18Z

One day I'll successfully pick up my studies again. I've got a couple false starts below the belt by now, but it doesn't seem to take very easily right now. Hmph.
At least it's cooler, temporarily. I even had to wear a hoodie for the most recent grocery trip. I even have to wear long sleeves at night with the window open. Is this bliss? It certainly feels like bliss.
And it might as well be. The heat hell will continue starting next week, if all goes according to predictions. Gotta try get this place as cool as possible in these intervening days.

Nothing much to write about. So here, have another AftG fic rec:
Heartbeat. Finished at just over 14k words. Andrew has agreed to go to Faery in Aaron's place, after Aaron made a desperate failed deal to try revive their mother. He's looking at the next 15 years in servitude. And Neil? Neil is a redcap. A redcap! Guys, Neil is a literal murder gremlin in this one! :O How could anyone possibly not love that, especially with how truly alien(fae) Neil is written.
The story, short as it is, concentrates on how Andrew came to survive in this foreign land and what happens when his time is finally done. The story's format and style take advantage of the theme and go more than a bit fairytale-like, making it memorable and magical. It was a real pleasure to read and damn if it doesn't deserve oodles more recognition than it got.

(yes, I have now browsed back to early February in AO3's AftG fic selection, reading everything that looked even a bit interesting (and not abandoned). 402 more pages to go? Let's hope it doesn't come to that, I really want to study for a change. I just can't change tracks without some serious effort)

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irreversibly @ 2021-07-08T20:16:00

2021-07-08T17:50:48Z

I don't have much to write about. It's hot. I can't think, it's too hot. So while I no longer have any desire to delve into the depths of the mlm genre (for the moment anyway), I've been reading AftG fic while listening to music. It's not like I'm up for anything else. It's really, really hot okay? Most days it doesn't get bearable until 2-3 AM, sometimes later, and by that point the incessant heat has drained me enough that there's not enough left to do anything real.

Fic rec: Corpse Road, finished at just short of 75k words. Andrew is a thrice-over college dropout who now owns a failing bookstore. Neil has been stuck on the corpse road for endless years, not alive but not quite fully dead yet either. Just stab my heart and be done with it, okay.

I'd have a ton more, but. Uhh. I'm not reccing unfinished works? And even though many of them have over 50k words and some over 100k, they aren't finished yet? Man, the AftG fans are prolific. For fuck's sake, some of them write chapters with length in the multiple tens of thousands. Fucking impressive.

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irreversibly @ 2021-06-19T15:11:00

2021-06-19T13:16:04Z

It's too hottttttttt. They say we might be beating a June record next week if things go as predicted.

Arm soreness thankfully almost gone now. It still hurts if I deliberately poke it but not otherwise. The first day though, damn. It kept getting worse the whole day and by the time it was time for bed I could barely get my shirt off, moving hurt just that much. And when I forgot it was there (even at the worst it only hurt when moved or touched) and tried to turn on the wrong side...let's just say it wasn't pleasant. Stars in the eyes and such. Dropped the phone even, I was trying to read. That definitely turned out to be more than a usual reaction, but at least the worst of it was gone by the second day.

The reading over the last couple days (aside from all the AftG fics) has been J.F Smith's books. One of them was recced in that list I've been going through and I liked it enough that I picked up another interesting-sounding one, called The Fence and Then the Trees. It's about this conman who goes to prison after his lover and his friend set him up. His cellmate is this older man who over his 13 years in prison has beat multiple inmates to permanent disability and put away untold others into prolonged hospital stays. He also doesn't talk, he doesn't ever even acknowledge anyone else exists until they do something to set him off. The story is all about how the conman survives and changes over his prison term (and of course, finds love in the process, since it's that kind of book).
I honestly thought it sounded interesting when I read the blurb so I just picked it up. I never think ahead on these things so I was not-so-pleasantly surprised when the inevitable happened. I mean, it's set in a prison, what'd I expect. Almost stopped reading the first time the protag got raped but thankfully the author doesn't go full explicit, and I'm glad I stuck with it because the story of building intimacy with this scary brute who doesn't speak was really something to read.
The first book of J.F Smith's that I read was Latakia. It's about this guy who volunteers with Doctors Without Borders sometimes. He takes up a job that sends him to Syria to the town of Latakia, and things kind of go wrong as he gets kidnapped by a bunch of terrorists and subsequently retrieved by accident by SEALs on a different mission. The structure of the book is a bit weird, as only the first half of the book deals with the terrorist plot, the second half only deals with his budding relationship with one of the SEALs who got him out. It does somehow work (and the book is long enough that the terrorist half of the plot isn't completely ruined by the halfsies treatment) and the story is fairly good - you can probably see that by the fact that I chose to read more things by the same guy after this book. There's nothing too awful in this book (part of why I was so surprised by the rape in Fence I reckon), the terrorists would have had plenty of time to do something much worse to him if they wanted to.

All in all (and despite Latakia's weird story structure) they're both very solid reads, they just float around in that sea of 'very good' and never make it to 'excellent'. Although Fence gets much closer than Latakia does, IMHO. Worth a read if they're you're kind of books.

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irreversibly @ 2021-05-23T14:53:00

2021-05-23T14:11:41Z

Digital omnibuses can be a bit scary. Over four THOUSAND pages, omg. On the other hand, since the preview portion is percentage-based, it did allow me to read basically the whole first book for free before deciding whether to buy when it'd otherwise cost a little bit.
In other words, I picked up another series from that mlm list, one that had actually been on my to-read list for something like three years already - the Whyborne & Griffin series by Jordan L Hawk. If you're not familiar with it, it's about a philologist-cum-sorcerer and a private detective in the fictional town of Widdershins, Massachusetts, set at the end of the 19th century. They deal with the obligatory necromancers, cults, ancient Egyptian demons, and otherworldly invaders, among other things. It's a good enough story that's slowly turning quite interesting in its absurdity (book #7 especially made me go 'what the actual fuck' at the main character), and has all the obligatory mediocre erotica bits.
It also means that (counting all the books in the omnibus separately) I've bought 19 books and an assortment of short stories in the space of a month, which is a number that is becoming quite concerning. I don't usually read that much in a month so book apps with subscriptions are not a good fit (quite aside from the ideological and other practical issues I have with them), but 19 books is a lot. At least I'll be able to read all of them again later without paying for them again, but yeah. A lot to pay for in a single month. I've got to tune this down for a bit.

Eurovision happened too. Holy fuck at Måneskin's drummer. Wow. My Twitter feed this morning was half full of pictures of him and it may have overloaded my brain a little bit.
Well congrats Italy for the win. I know from previous experience that they make the rockers a bit hot down there. The song isn't half-bad either, for once I actually like the winner! And Go_A (Ukraine) absolutely deserved to go as high as they could go too, I've listened the fuck out of their last year's song, it was THE absolute best of last year's selection. Finland's entry this year I've never heard of before but I'm no longer even nearly up to date on music so that's no surprise. They were quite solid though.
Another repeater I liked enough both this year and the last was Hurricane (Serbia), although it wasn't in my real favorites either year. Too bad the other repeaters from last year didn't really live up to my expectations though. I liked a few of them last year like Efendi (Azerbaijan), Destiny (Malta), Gjon's Tears (Switzerland) and Stefania (Greece), but this year they weren't nearly so good in my opinion. I couldn't even make myself watch all of Destiny's this year's song, ugh.
As for the other entries, I found Latvia's quite...unique. Nothing I'd like to actually listen to but for Eurovision purposes it was quite good if you know what I mean? Germany's was also very...Eurovision. (That's not necessarily a compliment!) RAFAL (Poland) I loved to little bits unironically, the best entry this year hands down. It's too bad others never agree with me in these things. Other songs that will quite likely end up on my playlist(s) are Israel, Croatia, Sweden, Estonia, Cyprus, Ireland, maybe San Marino and Albania, a couple others. From the length of that list I'm thinking my standards really are falling, just like I thought last year. I didn't even skip listening to more than a fourth of the total list of entries. Bah.

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irreversibly @ 2021-05-03T19:47:00

2021-05-03T18:16:14Z

Well that was one way to spend a Beltane. On one hand, the intensity certainly fits, but I might have preferred other ways to be intense on a sabbat weekend. Lol. Completely didn't think it through when I started reading.

Anyway. The All for the Game series by Nora Sakavic.
I adore it to bits, really. I would not have expected to love something to this degree so suddenly, but life has a way of surprising you.

As mentioned before, on a surface level it's about this fictional sports called exy. The protagonist Neil plays a bit in high school and gets scouted by a college team. For reasons of his past he tries to refuse, but they manage to persuade (or 'persuade') him otherwise, so he scraps all his previous vague plans and joins on a sports scholarship. The series follows him and the team for the duration of one year as they try to pull off a miracle championship.

On a slightly deeper level, it's about mob/yakuza violence. Neil is the son of a mob boss slash serial killer, and he and his mother have been on the run for (I think 8?) years, traveling all over US and Europe dodging hitmen his father keeps sending after them. And in fact, they killed his mother a year ago, he's been on his own since then. And oh, Neil isn't even his real name, it's just one fake persona/ID in an endless procession of fake persons he's been. Which is exactly why he doesn't want to do an eye-catching thing like joining a college sports team that's getting high visibility in the media. It's suicidal.
His actually joining the team has pretty much the expected consequences considering his past. While I don't mind graphic depictions of violence (of various kinds) in my fiction, you might want to give the issue some consideration, because these books go dark and no kidding. Pretty much everything that could be inferred from 'mob violence' makes an appearance (although isn't always instigated by the pro baddies, there's plenty of that to go around to the other baddies). I mean, the only things I can think of that they miss is like gang rape and grooming in the strictest sense of the word. Some of the stuff included happens off-screen, but. If you like to see your protagonists mentally and physically intact.....
....well.
Yeah.

On a deeper level still, it's about trauma and survival. The exy team Neil joins only accepts people who are more or less fucked up somehow. In no particular order it includes, among others, a guy who did time in the juvie for almost killing four men in a single fight, several (ex) drug addicts, a stripper who had to do it to support her family (it's a co-ed sport), a gay conversion therapy survivor, as well as a previous national (college) champion of exy who injured his hand so badly he can't use it anymore in sports. The catch with that is, it wasn't an accidental injury. One of his previous team mates did it and he can't tell anyone because the culprit is Riko, a rich and influential brat who can get away with anything. Riko becomes the main antagonist throughout the series.
But no matter what is going on on the surface level, all of it leads back to learning to be and to live even with everything that's been thrown at you and continues being thrown at you. These people can't make a functional team unless they do some serious work on themselves. It's far from pretty but it's hugely, incredibly satisfying to follow.

Then there's the romance. I knew from the start that Neil would end up in a gay relationship by the end of it, that's why I noticed the series after all. But by the time I picked up the books I'd completely forgotten who the other party is. All throughout the first book I was all '*headtilt* gotta be that one right?', but by the time I hit second quarter(ish) of second book I was more a wide-eyed 'NO FUCKING WAY this CAN'T BE HAPPENING', and I mean that in the best possible sense and accompanied by a huge enthralled smirk. :D Due to his on the run all the time past Neil's never been in a relationship and doesn't have a clue he could love (or lust) other people, the paranoid compulsive liar he is. But oh boy do sparks fly regardless. Unlike the fenced-in attitude published stuff generally has, imagine a fanfic no holds barred sky's the limit attitude, and that's how you get what happens here. I never thought I'd see the like, and it hits sweet spots I didn't even know I had. Now THIS is quality relationship building.

All in all, the writing is good, and even though there's one fairly major instance where the only answer to 'why did this character do that' that I can think of is 'deus ex machina', that one instance doesn't majorly detract from the story. The why question never gets shoved in your face and the action itself is only referred to in passing as the 'how' to another question, it never gets the spotlight by itself. In addition, there are one or two minor to medium details that simply don't match up, but again they aren't enough to ruin the plot. Both of these are probably due to lack of a real editor, it's hard for self-publish to be perfect.
Regardless, I'd rate this series as most excellent and very heartily recommend it, but. As I said, I don't mind the violence. You do your own evaluation on that.

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irreversibly @ 2021-04-28T19:36:00

2021-04-28T19:02:37Z

It's been years since I first read the series, but I was reminded recently of the Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. Figured I'd say a word or two since I don't recall ever doing that here.

Spoilers for setting-ish parts of the series, can't say anything meaningful without that.

It's a YA fantasy series about this group of teens on the hunt for the Raven King, more commonly known as Owain Glyndwr who is a real historical figure. He was a Prince of Wales back when Wales was still struggling to free itself from English rule. He's a fascinating case, one of them kings who's storied to be not dead but sleeping, and will one day rise under his banner of the golden dragon to bring back his kingdom. He died shortly after Joanne d'Arc was born, and his life was part of the events that a few decades later led to Joanne being burnt at the stake as a witch.
...err, sidetrack much. Anyway. These teens are after Owain Glyndwr, in the book claimed to be sleeping on a leyline somewhere in USA (...I know right. If only the day would come when US stops appropriating European myth and history, but that day appears to be far away). Or at least, one of the teens is looking for him, the unconsciously snobby but trying real hard not to be Gansey ('that's all there is'). He's a history enthusiast and thus he gets a free pass on a lot from me, although I do take note he takes too much responsibility for things that aren't actually his responsibility. The main-main protagonist is Blue, daughter of a psychic and the only one in the family who can't see the future...or ghosts, usually, even though she sees one particular ghost the night before she first meets Gansey and his pals. I found her almost unbearable (for reasons of her political activism) the first couple times I read through the series, but she always manages to stop just barely short of 'throw the book away' kind of annoying.
Accompanying the two of them are Adam, a local son of an abusive redneck who's determined to be More. By the time the first book starts he's gotten to the posh school for rich heirs that happens to be in town, that's how determined he is to get away. Then there's Noah, who not much attention is paid to...and it turns out it's because he's a ghost and isn't always there. The boys (and Blue) don't notice for quite a while. Lastly, there's Ronan, another rich guy but this one with a mean streak painted all over him and a penchant for night-time road racing. And he's a Dreamer, capable of bringing back objects (and people) he sees in his dreams.

...

I don't actually give a crap about Blue and Gansey. If the series was just about them I would've read it once or twice since I bothered to buy the books, but I never would have mentioned it anywhere, just like all the other YA series I read. One YA is almost indistinguishable from another. But then, there's Adam and Ronan.
Ronan is gay.
Adam and Ronan get together by the last book.
I'm not sure how to properly convey the monumentality of that.
This series was the first time I ever came across a gay relationship out in the wild, just like that. A regular YA fantasy series. All the usual suspect accolades for a critically acclaimed series. With two gay protags (well, one gay and one bi). Who get their own developing romance. They get their hesitations and their uncertainty and their kiss. They get their time together and their unshakable trust in each other by the end of it. In fact, they get treated just as a straight couple would in any old YA fantasy.
My mind was blown to teeny little bits.
When I noticed Ronan waxing lyrical any time he looked at Adam or Gansey, I told myself I was just imagining things. Silly thing, me, get out of that headspace, it's just a YA fantasy. When his road racing nemesis straight out called him gay, I was cursing the author for writing stereotypes, and when the two of them got strangely...close, I cursed the author for queerbaiting, and when Ronan later admitted to himself he likes Adam, I was miserable for him because there was just no way. I really and truly didn't believe any of it could lead to anything. But in retrospect, everything was right there in front of me the whole time, it's just that my mind was committed to not seeing it for what it is. The kiss and the relationship left me feeling really wonky, and to some degree it still does every time I read it.
Like I said, mind blown to teeny little bits.

So yeah. The Raven Cycle. A story about a group of teens after a sleeping ancient king on a leyline, and two of them just happen to be guys who get together like it's no big deal for it to happen in books that aren't explicitly gay lit.
And that's it. Nothing more needs to be said.

....well, one thing. There's a sequel series that's in publication, that centers on Ronan. It's started popping up sometime after I reread the Raven Cycle the previous time. On the one hand the new series could be a good thing. But on the other hand, I am absolutely and stupidly terrified that something will come and jeopardize their relationship. I'm not sure if I could handle giving it up. I can't think about it rationally in any way, the two of them meant too much. Too much. I need them to be okay.

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irreversibly @ 2021-04-05T09:26:00

2021-04-05T07:45:45Z

So, dating sims/otoge. I was bored and uninterested in doing anything real, so I figured what the hell. Let's check how they do those things on the phone since I've never bothered before. Poked around, downloaded a few.

One of the first things I came across was this title called Ikemen Vampires. Which is just what the title says. But the vampires. Are. Like. Mozart, Da Vinci, Napoleon, Isaac Newton, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others.
Umm........who comes up with this stuff?? xD;;;
But it was absurd enough that I downloaded it. That's how I discovered the horrid state of these games on the phone. Only get to read a certain amount of story per day and you have to pay if you want to read faster? Sure. Tedious, but whatever. But this thing also has a totally random card collection aspect added in (featuring the male leads, and the cards come from a gacha of course), and you have to do battles against other users to get stats to be able to advance through the game's intimacy checks, and the battle system is complete with slowly regenerating stamina. Like...what the actual fuck?
To make it worse, it's impossible to judge if the story's any good since it moves as slow as molasses thanks to the reading limit. The prologue was free to play, sure, but it was fairly average and noncommittal, there's no telling where this'll go just from that. Not sure if it's worth it at all, no matter how "*gigglesnort* historical guy vampires" I was to begin with.
Looks like it's a month's worth of daily reading for one route, presuming that the intimacy and beauty checks don't hinder your progress. You'd have to log in multiple times per day for the battles for that though, and since I'm not that far yet I can't confirm if just logging in multiple times per day is enough to give you the resources to clear them. Definitely not sure if it's worth it.

The other (acceptable, I discarded a few right away) title I ended up with is called Arcana, which sets you as a magician's apprentice and you're tasked with catching a murderer. Both the alleged murderer and the victim are romance targets, lol. :D This is a western game I think, and I don't much fancy the art style but the story turned out to be fairly engaging??
It's just not good as a dating sim. The romance aspects feel totally tacked on, especially since most relationship building options in dialogue are behind a paid lock. You do get some currency for free, but it's mostly just 5-20 per day depending on how well you do in the daily minigames, when picking each paid dialogue option costs upwards of 100 coins and can cost more than 200 for some. To pick all paid options in one character's route would set you back some several thousand. But on the other hand, for the first 24 hours it lets you read as much of the story as you can stomach, I ended up clearing two characters' romance endings with that. Which is why I can say for sure that the story really is especially good for this type of game (and can also say that not picking the paid dialogue options apparently doesn't lower your romance score? Unless I completely misjudged the meaning of 'reverse ending' with its dead-looking symbols). It even features a system of magic that's based on real-world principles and it does so well enough that I, an actual real-world witch, can't find any faulty logic or points in it. Sure, there are fantasy elements all over, but those are grown logically from the real-world principles and don't feel out of place at all. Color me surprised. This quality from a (supposed to be) dating sim! They really did their research for this one.
The game'd really function better if it didn't force the romance. But it does let you choose your character's gender (he/she/they) and doesn't block any route no matter which option you pick for yourself, so there's that. There's (at least currently) 4 male romance targets and 2 female ones.
In the end, I'd recommend this game if you ever have 24 hours of leisure time and feel like doing some light reading. Just don't go in expecting actual dating sim, but do go in expecting a coherent and engaging visual novel. Aside from the tacked-on romance bits.

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