straightforwardly

► I’ve reached Day 10 of Yoosung’s route in Mystic Messenger, and wow, what a ride. ( cut for spoilers for Yoosung’s route up to Day 10 )

► The other day my big brother sent me a link to an article. He does this often (as in, multiple times a day often), but I found this one particularly interesting: Why It's So Hard To Make Games In China.

All of the games mentioned in the article looked pretty interesting. One of them, Hazy Days, was both free and short, so I downloaded it and played it. I… can’t say that I enjoyed it, precisely, but it was definitely thought-provoking, and I think I would recommend it playing it at least once. If nothing else, it’s an interesting example for how video games can be used for more than just entertainment. And it is really short— I didn’t time it exactly, but I think it took me maybe ten minutes to complete the entire thing.

► On Pokemon GO: I saw a Vulpix for the first and only time yesterday, but didn’t have any Pokeballs. D: What is with this Vulpix-related bad luck I’ve been having lately.

I did finally figure out how to get free Pokeballs from Pokestops, though, so that was excellent. And there seem to be a lot of Pokestops down Main Street, though the bit where they really begin to cluster together is a pretty far walk from my house, so.

Something that amused me: the local military school has a gym, and that gym is being held by Team Valor. Somehow, I am utterly unsurprised.

► Today's question/topic for the book meme-thing is Best Sequel Ever.

This... is a hard one. I have a thing about favorites: I don't like choosing them. At all. I'd much rather write a list of my favorites. Which make answering questions like this concisely difficult for me. Plus, what does this mean by "sequel"? Does it simply mean a book-that's-not-the-first in a series, or is it limited to simply being the second book published in a series/trilogy/pair/whatever.

In any case, for simplicity's sake I'm going with the latter definition.

My first thought is Wolf-Speaker by Tamora Pierce. While it's not my favorite book from the Immortals, but: 1) it is my second-favorite, 2) it introduces my favorite character, and, perhaps most importantly, 3) I like it much more than I did the first book.

I don't think I can call it a favorite, but Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor really stands out because I enjoyed it much, much more than I did Daughter of Smoke & Bone.

There's also The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin, although I don't know if I should count it. I remember loving it dearly, but for whatever reason... it doesn't feel very sequel-y to me? I don't know. It could be because I actually read it before I read The Wizard of Earthsea, but the same is true of Wolf-Speaker and Wild Magic and I don't have the same problem with those books, so I really don't know.

I'm probably forgetting plenty, but I have a few answers, so that's enough for now.

► Speaking of Crusader Kings II... I now have a dilemma. My interest in it has been sparked, due to the reasons I talked about in yesterday's entry. The problem is that today's Flash HumbleBundle includes the game the Russian & Norse Unit Packs for $16.

Which is tempting. Except Steam is also having a sale, and apparently, if I were to spend $40, I would be able to get both the game itself and most of the DLC— which apparently includes that fantastic idea of Aztecs invading Europe, have all my hearts. Which makes it the better deal, right?

Except, when looking at the HumbleBundle, I did become vaguely interested in some of the other games that would be included. I've never heard of any of them before, though, so I have no idea if they would actually be any good or not. I mean, I could just buy Crusader Kings II on Steam, and then pay $3ish on HumbleBundle and the not-Crusader Kings II games, but... I don't know. On top of all of this, I really, really should not be spending any money at all right now— I haven't even bought the ORAS remakes yet partially because of that (and partially because I'm still torn on what version I should get, ugh).

Honestly, if I know myself, I'm probably not going to buy anything from the HumbleBundle, and maybe not even the Crusader Kings II despite how much I really, really want to play it, because I really hate spending money. Still, I'm tempted. Very tempted.

► I'm going to finish this entry off with a bit of a link dump. Specifically, I'm going to drop links to some of the articles I've been reading over these past months, so I can get them out of my bookmarks. I'm not going to include the fandom-meta I've been reading, though— I think I'll save that for an upcoming post. That should make this list much shorter, but better organized.

• 'We Have Always Fought': Challenging the 'Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative (has some really, really pretty art embedded in it and, despite the weird llama metaphor, does make some good points about history)
• 5 Things in Historical Romance I Wantonly Desire to See in Epic Fantasy
• Confessions of an Awkward Teen Girl (...I am really behind in sharing, because this was written back in May. Whoops.)
• The Chilling Familiarity of Gamergate (I usually get a kneejerk reaction which involves hitting the backbutton when people bring up Nazis/the Holocaust, if only because people try to compare everything to it, even when it doesn't fit, but I liked this article despite it bringing up the Holocaust, at least in part because its conclusion is not "GamerGate is the second Holocaust!!1!" [and also because I felt like it took a fairly nuanced approach to the whole thing.])
• Disney Princesses Are My (Imperfect) Feminist Role Models
• Otome Gaming Guide For Beginners (I am definitely not a beginner— I've loved otome for years, for all that not speaking Japanese has made my access to games a bit spotty— but this had some really good information in it.)

AND that's all for today. Now I need to go do some more schoolwork, sigh.

► So, about a month ago, I went to see Frozen in theaters with a friend of mine. In short, I really, really loved it, and have been listening to a million different versions of "Let It Go" ever since. (There were other songs I really liked too, but it doesn't seem as though they caught on in the same way, so "Let It Go" it is.)

Some of my favorites include this male cover (if you want a direct youtube link, that's here, but I liked the pretty art associated with the tumblr link), the German version, the Danish version, and this ASL video (which, while not being different vocally, still is pretty awesome to look at), to name a few.

► Keeping with the Frozen semi-theme of this post... most of the articles about it that I've run into I've been irritated by, but I did like this analysis of the film, and wanted to link to it. It just hit a lot of points I felt strongly about, and articulated why I felt that way much better than I ever could have done.

Oh, and I just ran across The Frozen Girl: Visual Cues and Evil Femininity, which is another article about the movie that I liked.

► Speaking of music, I am kind of really in love with this (apparently) 1920's version of Lana del Ray's "Young and Beautiful". I have mixed feelings about the 2013 film version of The Great Gatsby, but I did really love both this song and the scene it was in, and now it's gotten even better.

► I think I make it clear that I fangirl Zeiva really, really hard. So when I found out that they decided to do a Kickstarter for their next game... well, I'm feeling so-so about what we know about the plot, and I'm still super-tempted to throw thirty dollars down, because Zeiva. They've never let me down. Besides, the second and third stretch goals sound absolutely AMAZING.