[Admin] Interlude

Well, it’s that time again where I flip over the record and start working on my FFVII stories for a little while, which I don’t actually post on this blog. But I feel like I still want to do some posts anyway, so I guess I’ll talk about some stuff.

I’ve been in a little bit of a rut when it comes to writing lately, and mostly it’s because I just want to try something a little different and new – whether that’s a new series, or a new style. It might also be because lately I’ve been too preoccupied with making stuff and not diligent about consuming it. Depending on how the things I have in the pipeline go, I may end up easing off a little on the workflow to avoid being burned out and recuperate.

As for what else I’ve been doing, I’ve been playing a bit of Skullgirls lately. I’m still an absolute novice at that game, although I can just about faff my way through Arcade and Story mode on Normal with any character – good progress for a dyed-in-the-wool rpg player with all the reaction speed of a sheet of lead. I haven’t done it with all of them yet – I still have Eliza, Squigley, and Fukua to go, but I have a fair idea of the characters I like to use. Rushdowns like Filia and Ms Fortune are pretty fun to play, since I enjoy high mobility characters, but I also have a soft spot for Cerebella. Parasoul is very far away from what I felt like I’d like, but she’s surprisingly very fun; there’s something in her motions that make her feel a touch more mobile than she probably is. Double also fell into that camp. A character I wasn’t expecting to like but ended up enjoying was Robo-Fortune, who seems much too zoning based and keepaway orientated for my style of gameplay, but her weird, off-beat air combos amuse me. Beowulf, Painwheel and Valentine ended up being some of my least favourites.

I’ve also been playing Skyrim. Having gotten the achievements for amassing bounties in all holds and doing the Dark Brotherhood questline (after more than a thousand hours – I really, really prefer to be the good guy!), I’ve started what I hope will be my last run for a very long time, where I clean up all the loose achievements and bring my Skyrim experience to a satisfactory conclusion for a while. I’m playing more or less as the gods intended – a big old Nord with a big old sword, light armour, and the various crafting trees to make me wtfbbq OP. I’m playing with the Ordinator perk mod, though, so the results are slightly more muted than if I had been in vanilla.

I also got Dead Cells, which I’ve been enjoying a lot. It reminds me very much of the Megaman-like, 20XX, in how swift and satisfying the action is; the entire game can and usually is taken at a run. The various items could use a little more balancing, though. My favourite combination so far is Phaser + Assassin’s Dagger, which is strong enough to really do a number on a lot of beefy enemies if supported by the right stats – and the only stat you really need is strength. Its weakness is in dealing with swarms, which is where something like a grenade, blade storm or cluster bomb comes in handy. Other mentions go to the Turret, which is usually strong enough and survivable enough that you can toss it on a level with some enemies and just allow it to clean up for you, so you can go about your day in safety, and the Heavy Crossbow, which I was expecting to be not great but which ends up being a very good supplement – you just use it like you’d use your main weapon, and be careful of the recovery period.

As for anime, I haven’t really watched too much lately. I tend to go through swings where I’m really addicted to it, then don’t watch it for months; right now, I’m on the downswing. I have half a season of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid (a series really after my own heart; the general thrust of it feels really similar to my own stories) to go through, and I’m trying to slowly work my way through Dog Days, which is lighthearted fanservicey fun.

My other time has been split towards learning Japanese, which I’m doing with some friends on a discord server – although I have to admit, I’m very much going at my own pace. I’d prefer to get the basics down as well as I possibly can before moving on, since that was always where I struggled in regular language classes at school – some link near the start of the chain wouldn’t quite be strong enough, and my entire understanding would falter as soon as I needed the knowledge. I’d like to avoid that this time around, so I’m making sure I’m absolutely sure of the basics before moving on, which means I’ll be spending quite a while on learning and absorbing hiragana.

One thing I might do in future is resume playing The Legend Of Heroes: Trails In The Sky FC, a game that I really enjoy but which is such a slow burn that I just have to take breaks from it sometimes. I believe I had just gotten to the fourth ‘segment’ of the story, where you meet Tita, before I stopped playing for six months. It’s a huge time commitment, though. I’d also like to replay FFVII, since it was such a formative influence on me and I haven’t replayed it in a long time, but… ehh.

As for stories, after the FFVII ones, I’m intended to start writing some Touhou stories (which I’ve been wanting to do for a while), and then try a little Orange Juice sequence with – gasp! – an actual plotline. Shock and, indeed, horror. We’ll see how it goes, I suppose.