straightforwardly

► This update is basically all the various little things that I wanted to talk about during the end half or so of October/first few days of November, but didn’t get around to because of ToT / real life stuff / because the entries I did make took too much time to write and I didn’t want to make them longer. So it’s more of a hodgepodge than usual.

► I did finish the second Oden Cart game. I think it was a bit over a week ago? There are a few brief things that I wanted comment on.( spoilers )

► Me, while watching flying witch: “I want to be a witch T_T”

Which isn’t exactly a new feeling, tbh, but it was particularly intense while watching that anime.

(Very soothing series to watch, though.)

► Apparently, Solmare (the company behind the Shall We Date? games), now has an online store with merchandise? ...Nothing for Niflheim, though. That’s not too surprising, seeing as there hasn’t been any events or anything for it since the one that ran February-March 2016, but I still had to check.

► Speaking of Solmare, I’ve started playing one of their newer games—the first time that I’ve picked a new one up in quite a while, actually. I think the last one was Blood & Roses? The one I’ve started playing is Shall We Date? We the Girls, and it was actually a misunderstanding which led to me picking it up. ( no real spoilers, I think? but this is a bit whiny )

► The other day, my brother sent me a Kotaku article about how mini-maps might be going away in games, and all I have to say is, noooooooooooooooooo. I already have a hard enough time finding my way around in open world games with the help of mini-maps! I don’t even want to think of how I’ll flail around without one.

► I decided to (slowly) start catching up with Dragon Friends, and episode 3.05 was pretty fun! Two highlights: ( spoilers )

► So I just realized that there was a Dragon Friends Christmas Special podcast???? I managed to listen to it in the dying hours of 2016, and it was SO GOOD. So, so good. I mean, it was basically two hours of Freezo and His Christmas Adventures, so it’s not surprising that it was amazing, but still. That was a delight. ( cut for spoilers, and probably length )

► In the last few days, I also got a new phone, because my old one was dying a slow, drawn out death. I bring this up because, now that I have a new phone, I’ve decided to start checking out some of the visual novels/otome games that have gotten so much love on FFA, starting with Mystic Messenger. So far, I can definitely see why this one is so beloved, even though I’m still baffled at the thought of a visual novel fandom having so many fics.

I’m on Day Four right now, and I am in love. ( cut for the usual reasons )

►This entry’s getting quite long, but I don’t want to leave it off without doing one last thing. Reveals have happened over at Yuletide, which means that it’s time for me to talk about what I wrote. I wrote five stories, which is a Yuletide record for me— and that was such a nice surprise, considering that I'd barely managed to write/finish anything else this past year!( cut for length )

► I might actually get a second entry out today, because 1) I want to get my usual my-year-in-writing retrospective up, 2) the Fandom Snowflake Challenge has started and I’d like to do that as well, and 3) there was another end-of-the-year post I wanted to do, but forgot about yesterday. We’ll see if I get it all done— I still have a lot of real-life stuff that I wanted to do today too.

► I just realized when I went to post this that this is my 100th official post here. So yay for that?

► I have become so incredibly charmed by the podcast Dragon Friends, which I started listening to sometime last week the other week because I needed something to entertain me when I was trying to get through a tedious-but-necessary portion of an otherwise good game. Whereupon I then got so completely hooked that I basically started listening to it throughout all of my free time, even when I wasn’t in the middle of some sort of menial labor, which is pretty much unheard of in regards to me and podcasts.

And now I'm in love (or at least very strong-liking), and am seriously considering requesting it for Yuletide. I adore pretty much all three of the main characters, though who stands out as my actual favorite keeps changing.

( cut for length, and spoilers through episode 2.10 )

► Speaking of fandoms that I’m considering requesting for Yuletide… I’ve also recently played A Little Lily Princess, which is a VN based on A Little Princess— a book which I hadn’t read since I was a kid, but actually reread in preparation for playing this game, as I could remember very little about it.

I played the routes in this order: Mariette, Becky, Lavinia, Jessie, Lottie, Ermengarde.
( cut for length & major spoilers for pretty much all of the endings )