straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2017-10-07 11:09 am
straightforwardly) wrote2017-10-07 11:09 am
164 | Date Warp, Hustle Cat, and some brief ramblings on NaNo/Inktober/Pokemon
► I came across this tweet on twitter, and had to share it here:
Inktober: all your artist friends flood your TL with beautiful new pieces every day
— 「SPOOKNYTE ٩( 🎃 )و」 (@goodnyte) October 6, 2017
NaNoWriMo: all your writer friends go radio silent for a month and post cryptically about wanting to die
Hee. ♥ It kind of makes me nostalgic for NaNo, though—it used to be such an essential part of my November, but I haven’t touched it in years. ...Probably because I haven’t really written much original work in some years, oops.
I am actually doing Inktober this year, though, despite not being an artist at all. I decided to do 31 days of Pokemon, and even drew a prompt list up for myself to direct my efforts. (It boils down to one day for each type of starter [grass/water/fire], one day for each Pokemon type, one day for each region, and then one day each for baby/mega-evolution/legendary Pokemon.) The results of my drawing definitely aren’t good, but they’re not The Worst Ever and I’m having fun, so I’m satisfied.
Today, my theme was “poison-type”, and I ended up picking Grimer. I remember that I was pretty disgusted by Grimer / Muk as a kid, but these days I’m actually pretty fond of Grimer, at least. It’s pretty much entirely because of that episode of the Diamond & Pearl anime where Dawn is temporarily given a Grimer to raise. When she first gets it, the one-off characters around her basically go “ewwww” and the Grimer gets so sad...and then Dawn, with all her sweetness, goes, no, you’re just as great as the other Pokemon, and I’m going to show you off at your best! Their relationship was just so sweet, and I was honestly pretty sad that she didn’t get to keep it. ...I got a bit off-topic; anyways, I really like Grimer now because the Grimer in that episode was so adorable, even outside of its direct relationship with Dawn. When it was happy…! ♥
► In other news, last weekend I completed Date Warp! And:
I WAS RIGHT, YESSS. There was so much internal shrieking on my part when the reveal that the barrier’s only solid for Janet, not Bradley happened, and then all the endings that came just confirmed my theories more and more… *_* It’s always satisfying when you manage to put together the answer to an overarching mystery. ♥
I was initially really disappointed in the true ending / ready to write up a whole rant about the importance of memories, etc… but then that post-credits scene happened and YES PERFECT EVERYTHING I DIDN’T EVEN REALIZE I WANTED. The other characters do remember Bradley and Janet! And THEY GET TO GO ON INTERDIMENSIONAL ADVENTURES TOGETHER, YESSS. PLUS BIANCA LIVES. SHE GETS TO LIVE. Her and Alben’s relationship was easily my favorite thing about this canon, and I’m delighted that there’s any ending where they get to live their lives together without being stranded in time. (I’m looking at you, Rafael’s bad ending.)
No other ending can top that. I’m only disappointed that it’s linked to a pairing that I was indifferent to (Bradley/Janet) rather than the ones I really liked (Alben/Janet and Linds/Rafael/Janet, for the record). (...Though I don’t dislike Bradley/Janet, and ended up being vaguely intrigued by Alben/Bradley while on Bradley’s route...hm….)
Seriously an excellent VN.
► I also picked up Hustle Cat recently. This game’s been on my radar on a while, but I probably wouldn’t have gotten it anytime soon had it not shown up in this HumbleBundle—it’s in the first tier of games, so you only need to pay a minimum of $1 for it if you want the Steam key. There’s still about six days left on that bundle as I type this, in case anyone’s interested.
I’ve only played one route on it so far. I did enjoy it, but I’m not sure when I’m going to be getting back to it again. Not because of the game itself, though. (Without going too much into personal details—this week ended up being...not a great week for for my beloved old-and-blind cat, and I ended up finding the game a little painful during parts where it probably shouldn’t have been because of that. So, yeah, setting it aside for a little bit.)
Anyways: my thoughts on the actual game! I don’t actually have that many, but I do have a few. Such as: that job interview. That job interview was… *_* Like, if more job interviews were like that, than I actually wouldn’t hate them the way I do. It was so much fun!
I didn’t really like Avery (the main character). That definitely hampered my enjoyment a little. (By the way, I went with the she/her pronouns, so I’m going to be calling her “she” in this entry.) It’s weird, because I usually love or am at least fine with the main character in visual novels, but something about her just grated on me. Or. I say “something”, but I know what it is—she’s basically a compilation of a million minor character traits that irritate me. I could (and have in the past) ignore it if she’d only had one or two of those traits, but when it’s basically her entire character, it gets harder to do.
I actually had a pretty hard time choosing who to romance first—I was immediately intrigued and charmed by Finnley, Mason, and Graves. (Though I wasn’t even sure if Graves was romanceable, at first. It wasn’t until I checked the achievements list post-my first playthrough that I saw that he was, in fact, on there, though it looks like his route is only unlocked after you play all the other ones first.)
In the end, I did Finnley’s route, though I didn’t make that decision until the common route was nearly over, haha. No regrets. What a cutie she was. ♥ That scene where she does Avery’s nails made me particularly happy—I love nail polish, and I’ve watched so many videos like the one she was making in the past, so it evoked a pleasant sort of nostalgia in me. (Later in the game, when she talked about how she “wasn’t good at anything”, I kind of had to go wtf at the screen because that nail polish scene proved that she was good at something! Fancy nail art is not an easy skill to master!)
Also, I loved the confrontation between her and Nacht—she was such a badass in it, and it made me ridiculously happy.
Speaking of Nacht: I kind of had to giggle at his name. And I did genuinely think Graves was dead after their confrontation—it wasn’t until Mason got rusted too that I started to think that it’d probably be reversible.
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Coincidentally, today I decided to scrap my halfass inktober attempts and start over using a Pokemon prompt list!
Ha, that is an amusing coincidence. Pokemon are fun to draw, aren't they? ♥
Edit: Okay, "maybe" turned out to be "I'll get to work on it as soon as I finish posting this comment", so an entry with my first seven days is going to go up soon-ish.