If everything's a dream,

...yeah, I don't really know what to say.

I keep trying, which is good, supposedly. I'm tired of trying, though. I guess that's bad.

Rough couple of weeks, but maybe finally seeing some improvement. I don't really want to get my hopes up, but I don't think I'm imagining that I feel a little more stable. Yesterday's DND was marginally better than any previous week. I even actually participated for the first time in a while. What else… did I mention the painting is all done? I don't remember when that was, I guess last week. We picked our carpet yesterday too, at last, so hopefully it'll be fitted soon, even if that means moving furniture all over again. And then it's a few fixer-upper jobs, and hopefully I will never have to do decorating again. Until I move into my own place, but when is that going to happen really.

I spent a few days playing Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, which was… not entirely enjoyable. I was struggling to remember why I had only played it once, so I rolled for it against Dishonored 2, which I had already played in January, but then I started playing it and it kind of came back to me slowly how poor the gameplay is compared to other installments of the series. The other two games are big on 'play your way' but there are a handful of really bad bottlenecks in this game where you're forced to go one way. The worst one was definitely outside the bank, with a ton of guards and dogs that are always too quick to sense my presence even when I'm relatively well hidden, playing on easy, and in possession of a stealth upgrade… Well. At least I like the story a lot, short though it is.

Same can't be said for The Last of Us 2 I pretty much binge watched it on youtube and um… did not have a good time. After I'd noped out of playing Days Gone and it's zombie hordes, which I did preorder, I thought it was best to wait until I'd seen this first and made sure I'd be able to get through it. In any case, I've written up my extremely disappointed review of it over here.

I'm actually pretty proud of that actually. It was really tough to write, but I wrote it and posted it as soon as I could. Like, I got my opinions out there on the same day I finished watching it, that's kind of wild for me. I did that.

I even brushed the dust off a small fic I drafted a couple of years ago and started gently editing it, so maybe -- loath as I am to use the word -- there's hope...

A bit up and down this week, but good in general. I've been sleeping better -- seven hours! more than once! -- and I've been tracking my mood since the end of last year and the past few weeks it's been peeking out of my 'low' score. I don't think it's a coincidence that this happened after I moved my desk next to the window in a room that has the nicest view of our backyard cluster and most of the day's sunlight. I also figured out a way to nibble on my actual job a little bit at a time so I don't fry my brain trying to do big chunks of it, which I hope is going to work out well in the long run.

I got past the point of Caesar's peaceful campaign maps that I got stuck on as a youngling, because the mod really does make it a lot easier to play. I also played some more of FF7, after taking a break to play the remake and then deal with other brain weasels, which is going a little slowly because I'm trying to grind through the party's limit breaks, but on Friday I got through the Cosmo Canyon section. It's making me excited to see all this in the next remake installment… I've been craving a little bit of Dishonored, randomly -- maybe it was being reminded of this year's chocolate box fic?? -- so maybe if I get a chance I'll play a bit this afternoon.

In other news, I can and can't believe that it's the last day of May? It feels like it's been forever and the blink of an eye at the same time, unlike April and March which just felt like forever. I don't think I could tell you what the hell went on this month either. Anyway, posted a meme last week! Got some replies!

theseatheseatheopensea asked:

M: Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

I think… I have a lot of candidates probably but I think it would have to be either Eliot Spencer (Leverage) or Tifa Lockheart (Final Fantasy VII) because they're both have the perfect combination of sheer badassery and soft centres, as well as loyal, reliable, kind, and excellent cooks! They're probably not going to hesitate to frown at you a lot if you're being very stupid about something, which is always a good friend quality.

:)

R: Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

Barret and Marlene in FFVII Remake! I cannot believe they came for me with how much he loves to get in everyone else's face, but will utterly melt in a second in front of his daughter? How much he adores her? How hurt he is that he has to leave her while he does dangerous vigilante activities -- and later dangerous world saving activities? This scene absolutely murdered me.

U: Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

Cloud Strife (FFVII) -- Possibly the original fave. A poor, lonely boy tries to become a hero and doesn't make it. Then he has his home town burned down by the man he thought of as his hero, is used as an experiment that renders him catatonic, watches his best friend get murdered by the same people they serve with, ends up getting his identity turned inside out with the trauma of it all, and is basically mind controlled into making world ending mistakes. Still, at the end of it and with the help of all his friends, he manages to claw back some of his own personality and identity, and saves the planet.

Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells) -- Most recent fave. The saltiest half human half machine security construct tries not to be an object of mass murder but also not be a person because humans are gross why would you even? They technically don't have to do their job any more but does it anyway, albeit while watching massive amounts of tv to cope with the awfulness of having feelings, and even when they literally don't need to do their job any more still feels compelled to save every person they come across no matter how inconvenient this is to their personal goals?

Tough to fill the last spot, but I think I will have to go with Cullen Rutherford (should I call this one 'problematic fave'??), see the next question for more about that one.

Looks like a traumatic past and a broken sense of self and perhaps a desire (or compulsion) to help people are the main qualifiers for the fave club.

wheatear asked:

K: What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

I don't know if this is an actual unpopular opinion or my hindbrain just feeling like I would definitely not be wanting to say this on tumblr, but I've thought this over a bit because in most characters don't seem to change enough to be particularly memorable, or if they do then it's not always in ways that feel like good writing to me. I think Cullen Rutherford of Dragon Age particularly stands out to me as a character who is noticeably better off as the series progresses, and written in a way that I find satisfying, even though I played the games out of order (a fact that I think might have endeared me to the character more, tbh). Over the course of three games he goes from fervent believer in the Templar Order -- something that stems from childhood hero worship and being a devout follower of the dominant religion of the setting. There's some beautiful touches (in my opinion, of course) on the way he has to reconcile the fact that he loved the Templar Order, or at least everything he believed they were, with his whole heart since he was a child, and the fact that not only had it turned out to be something quite different, but having this guilt that he didn't wake up to the reality soon enough to do something about the things that Templars did, or could do, to others with impunity. There are still moments where he is kneejerk "mages are dangerous" but I actually like these because I think a lot of fiction makes it look a little bit too easy to change thought patterns that have been pressed into you for most of your life, and Cullen's in particular have been amplified by trauma. I love characters who have to turn away from things that have been part of them for a long time, maybe their whole life up to that point, and I love it when it's not easy, not linear, not quick. Cullen's arc ticks almost every box I have for a good one, and watching him grow (a little late, but that just makes him more relatable) into himself is a lot of the reasons he's one of my faves.

X: A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Hard to pick just one, but it might be found families, especially ones involving lowkey triadic/polyarmorous relationships.

enemyofperfect asked:

L: Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves.

Harold Finch (Person of Interest) is one that I have not always loved -- although I think this is more to do with the flawed overall writing of a couple of seasons rather than bad character writing -- but he's enigmatic, intelligent, and highly moral. He built the kindest, most big hearted artificial intelligence that I can think of, and has the capacity to be just as kind himself. One of my favourite episodes (2.11) there's a scene where he sits down with a guilt-ridden, genius teenager who's about to act on a long time plan to kill himself and then he doesn't do it and… I don't know, maybe I just find the moment painfully relatable, but… I really liked it, and I really liked Finch in this episode. He was good.

( transcript of the scene, so spoilers for this episode )

O: Choose a song at random, what ship does it remind you of?

Ah, as luck would have it, I landed on an easy one -- Ben E King's Stand by Me. It's not surprising that the ships it makes me think of are platonically Noctis, Gladio, Ignis, and Prompto, and romantically Noctis and Luna, given that Florence and the Machine recorded a cover for the end of Final Fantasy XV. Listen here.

Y: What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?

The Good Place? B99? I didn't get into the Good Place because it didn't really seem like my kind of show, although I enjoyed hearing about it from enemyofperfect. I don't have a clue what my excuse is for B99, I feel like I couldn't go two posts down my tumblr dashboard without tripping over a gifset for it and I always thought it was kind of awesome.

sideways asked:

B: A pairing – platonic, romantic or sexual – that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.

I'm not sure how much this counts as someone changing my mind, but there were two prompts in the 2019 chocolate box requests that made my brain do dinner plate eyes of why didn't I think of that before?!?! and I ended up writing treats for both of them.

One of them was Cassandra/Cullen (Dragon Age) and although the prompt I adore friends to lovers and obscene amounts of pining, and all the other characters shipping it. And courting, I love the gruff character trying to court the sweet one. wasn't ship specific I just couldn't unsee it, and now I have a little soft spot for the pairing.

The other one was a prompt for Emily/Corvo (Dishonored) because too much loyalty and not being able to say no because of it, the moral dilemma of it (for Corvo, because I wrote a high chaos Emily who doesn't have many of them), unhealthy and codependent relationships?? Sign me the fuck up, I guess!

T: Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

Vernon Roche (The Witcher) is ace? 1000% married to Temeria, at least.

Sam Drake did not intentionally con his brother into the events of Uncharted 4, he's just damaged and fucked up. And a fuck up.

Nothing else is coming to mind (^_^;) Maybe I'm not a hard and fast headcanons person? (^_^;)

Z: Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go!

I recently got put onto an anime by enemyofperfect that's about a girl that dies as a teenager and gets reincarnated as the villain of her favourite otome game and sure I was expecting something cooky and fun, which it absolutely is, however! It's also so fucking good?!?! It's a harem anime, but… wholesome instead of slutty? The main character is such a… hapless sweetheart (please interpret this literally, all she wants to do is be nice to her friends and eat cakes and cookies) that all the people who are supposed to hate her in the game to the point of killing her are head over heels in love with her instead! The guys AND the girls! The girl crushes are even more into her than the guys are and the show isn't even downplaying this in any way? It's so cute and adorable and fucking funny. This is where I've been watching it, please watch it too!!!!

Two weeks out four down. Halfway to having my regular routines back… or at least, my regular quarantine routine? Regular sleeps. Regular waters. I miss them. Productivity has not been so great this week, there was a disappointing amount of things that I wanted to get done that I didn't, but I suppose also not the worst ever?

We had a few mishaps with the blinds, but they're here and two out of four have been installed today, including mine, which means the sun is no longer the boss of me.

I finished the Murderbot novellas and then devoured the new novel Network Effect and I can't get over how good it is??? It's so good??? It's got everything, and it's amazing, and I can't wait to read it again????

Um… I don't remember what else has been going on tbh. Anything you guys want to hear about? Ask me anything?

Barrelling through the finale here. It's been wild. It gets wilder.

Part 5/5

( Chapter 16: The Belly of the Beast )
( Chapter 17: Deliverance from Chaos )
( Chapter 18: Destiny's Crossroads )

( General Thoughts )

Goodness there has been so much flailing! If there's anything you'd want to hear me talk about in more detail, please ask me!! :)



PART 1 -- PART 2 -- PART 3 -- PART 4 -- PART 5

Regular grumbles. Even the adverts are all centred around coronavirus now -- here's the moisturiser for all your post hand-washing needs! Here's the software for your newly remote workplace! At least there's no more midday meal where I am subjected to the TV for a while.

I've been enjoying my room. The sunsets haven't been very noteworthy -- maybe it's a time of year thing? -- but I've been washing the trees get greener and greener all week and it's beautiful. I can't see the magpie nest any more. The cluster of back yards aren't exactly aesthetic either, but it's still nicer than the street traffic. Speaking of aesthetics, I've set up a sort of manual timeblocking grid just off my desk that I think looks pretty cute. I think it's helping with keeping me focused too, so far.

The past few days have been kind of rough. The fasting disrupting my sleeping patterns has left me with some ultra vivid stress dreams lately that leave me just as tired as if I hadn't tried to nap that extra hour or two. My feelings are still a minefield, of course. I don't think I mentioned it, but a couple of weeks ago I read Docile, which I thought would be right up my alley, even with the sexual content trigger warnings, but turned out to be (in addition to a good book) a seriously severe and unexpected trigger for some personhood issues, and yesterday I finished reading the first book in the Murderbot series, All Systems Red which set off my rejection sensitive dysphoria early on for mumble mumble reasons I'm still too embarrassed to admit, but I otherwise really enjoyed it. Scorched feelings aside, that also means I read two books in a month -- in fact I binge read them over two or three days each -- and that's pretty awesome for me. I've got a decent handle on the Docile feelings by now, so I might attempt a post about it some time in the future.

This is a pretty interesting part of the story, with everything shifting up a gear. The gang has a plan, and they're going to see it through. The end of Chapter 4 would be the official start of Act 2, and we cover around the first third of it here. If I were looking at a plot embryo I might say this part covers the go segment, and part of search.

Part 2/5

( Chapter 5: Dogged Pursuit )
( Chapter 6: Light the Way )
( Chapter 7: A Trap is Sprung )


PART 1 -- PART 2 -- PART 3 -- PART 4 -- PART 5

Hello from my new bedroom. It's still a work in progress, but it's nice. I like my desk and my blue wall, and I like being next to the window and being able to see the trees moving in the wind, and the birds flying, and occasionally getting a peek at the neighbour's cat. And I can put flowers on my windowsill and see them, without having to give up desk space. In two weeks or so I will have nice new blinds up too, which is good because the first two days I was in this room we had a solid wall of cloud and then yesterday I learned just how vicious the sun can be on the spot my desk is for a couple of late afternoon hours, yikes. For now I've doubled up some netting that helps with the worst of it. Having a bit more space to move around and not feeling smushed in by clutter might be helping my mood a little bit, although I still get pretty sad sometimes for no real reason, or sometimes for real reasons that I feel like no one really cares about, and in fairness I don't really know how to talk about them, and no one can do anything about them either, so that's fun. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I forgot to mention last week that I had been wanting to catch up with Critical Role for a long time but was never doing it, and even though I thought their quarantine hiatus was the perfect time… I just never managed, and I think I've finally realised what the problem is. You know that bit in the movie where the protagonist has feelings for someone and oh hey, are you waving at me, and then it turns out no, they were waving to the person behind you, the one who is richer, more skilled, prettier, more socially adept, cooler and more of a person than you in every way… and then you're just standing there for a minute with your hand up and the smile fading from your face thinking of course, why would anyone be looking at me, let alone them… So… it's not that I specifically resent CR in becoming as successful as they now are, but it turns out that, in doing so, they unwittingly triggered all six hundred miles of abandonment issues I have.

I'm still vaguely grumpy about quarantine and all of that, but mostly about having to listen to Conservatives praise the NHS like they haven't been cutting the budget for a decade.

I've caught up on a bunch of complicated work things that I was struggling to do while I was exhausted painting, and I feel better about that now. Other than that I've still been turning over how the hell to talk about FF7 feelings… I'm hoping that I can at least post a list of random observations and things I love, because I'm still struggling to collect my thoughts about all the deeper things. It would be nice if I managed to start writing again -- besides the fact that there are a million things I want to write, the game has also made me want to play around with some new ideas as well as brush the dust off some old ones -- but I'm not sure I have the bandwidth. But at least I seem to be keeping up with these posts?

An update:

( Stardew Valley )

( FF7R )

( DND )

( the home front )

I love Stardew Valley and also hate it. It's easy to play -- except for the fuckin fishing, of course, fuck fishing. But I can't stop playing even when my eyes want to fall out, so that's a bit annoying. When a day takes ten minutes or so, "just one more" is so tempting.

I want some more nice sprinklers, watering is exhausting. I love my cat Puff and my chicken Lilo, and petting them is my favorite part of the game, I think, although I also like watching things grow. I want more chickens. I'm trying to save up for a kitchen, but I might need more chickens first -- get eggs, make mayo, money in the coming winter. Of course, because I am me, I have looked up spreadsheets for the most profitable plantings and things, which makes me feel better about knowing what the hell I'm doing.

I'm kind of enjoying the community centre bundles, which I wouldn't have guessed; fetch quests are commonly annoying, but this isn't, maybe because the sprites there are adorable. And the jellies, the beautiful glowjellies!

I like Robin and her family. Penny seems sweet too. I might romance her or Elliott. I feel kind of soft to Shane and Sebastian, too, although I don't know much about them yet. I gave Shane something that made him really happy, a gold star hot pepper. I don't know if the star does anything apart from sell price, but it was worth it to see him happy. Leah seems nice too, but I don't see her very often. I like being nice to Linus, as well -- the event scene where he's almost caught dumpster diving and then (I don't know if this is choice dependant?) when Gus catches Linus too and just straight up offers to feed him. Ugh, my feelings.

It made me sad when no one wanted to dance with me at the Flower Dance. I talk to characters when I see them and I've given the odd gift, but I'm just so busy with my farm. It's hard work!

I had an idea for a fic -- well, it's not really a fic, but sometimes I just get little pictures in my head of Pelican Town life -- mostly just my PC being grumpy and lonely and not liking it here very much and not having anywhere else to go and not knowing where she belongs. It would be pretty tragic and very on brand, I guess.

I'm still only in my first Fall. I installed it on… Tuesday? Tuesday. Because I possibly or probably have the thing that's going around and I needed something that didn't take too much brain and it's taking over my life now. I only feel a tiny bit bad that it's put my FF7 replay on pause because it's just more convenient, but! three more weeks exactly until the remake!

Thanks again enemyofperfect