straightforwardly

► I’ve been (slowly) making my way through Crisis Core. Right now, I’m at the point where( cut for spoilers/length )

► I know I haven’t really been talking about Liar! Uncover the Truth here (mainly because I haven’t had much to say), but I played through the last one standing’s lover’s route about a week ago, and I had thoughts. ( spoilers for the final liars / who the last one standing was )

► I’d been planning on doing the 6th and 7th Uncover the Truth liars’ lover’s routes after I finished with that one, but then Liar! Office Deception decided to celebrate its release with 1) ten tickets per day until 9 June, and 2) a very tempting reward (which, if my eyes did not deceive me, includes Azusa!) if you finished the 6th liar of Office Deception before 15 June, so… I started paying that instead.

I’m finishing up the 3rd liar now, and… I kind of love it? Possibly even more than Uncover the Truth. The main character is a dream. The only downside is that there are three potential liars that I’m already really attached to as people (as opposed to having only one I really loved/hoped wouldn’t turn out to be a terrible person in Uncover the Truth). Hopefully one of them will be the last one standing, and none of them will turn out to have done something unforgivable.

► Some fic I've written since I last did a round-up:

• Concealed [AO3] (Fire Emblem: Awakening, Tharja/f!Robin, 1.1K)
• The Intervention [AO3] (Dragon Friends, Bobby & Freezo & Philge, 1.1K)

► Two days ago I beat Final Fantasy VII for the first time. ( cut for length, and...maybe spoilers? )

I’d already decided before beating it that I was going to continue on through the compilation. I know there are mixed feelings about it, to say the least, but I want to form my own opinion on it. Plus, I already own Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core. (I bought DoC many years ago in GameStop when it was on sale; it was the first FFVII game I bought, and quite possibly also the first Final Fantasy game I ever bought. I got Crisis Core essentially for free when, about 5-6 years ago, my best friend at the time sold me her PSP, and gave me all the games she had for it.) I wasn’t quite sure which one to start with first (DoC is shorter, but Crisis Core is portable and, since I’m mostly unspoiled for it, I actually have a stack of promising-looking-but-unread fic piled up to read after I beat it), but DoC won out because of length + Vincent & Yuffie.

I did want to rewatch Advent Children first, because basically all I remember about it is a fun fight between Tifa and someone (named Loz?) that made me fall in love with her, just a little, and a vague impression of Cloud talking to Vincent at one point. And motorcycles. But it’s not on Netflix, and I’d have to pay extra to stream it on Amazon, which, no. But I was pretty sure that at least one of my brother’s friends would have it, and asked him if he’d ask one of them to borrow it. I ended up not having enough patience to wait before starting DoC, but he did succeed: he handed me his friend’s copy this morning. So I’ll probably watch it soon.

► So, Dirge of Cerberus. I started it yesterday, and while I'm not very far yet, I do have some initial impressions: ( length, and maybe spoilers? )

(A note on tagging: apparently, Dirge of Cerberus breaks the character limit when I pair it with "video games" and "final fantasy", even before "vii" gets into the mix, so... I'm just going to leave it under FFVII's tag for now? I'll figure it out later.)

► I’m still playing Mystic Messenger, though I did take a break for a few weeks. I just don’t have too much to say about it right now? I’m mostly just collecting endings. Though, I did have a very belated realization about ( spoiler for Seven’s route )

► Oh, wow— despite my constantly thinking, hey, I should update my DW soon, it’s somehow been over a month since I last updated. A whole other exchange has finished up, author’s reveal and all, without my talking about my gift in it— hell, I haven’t even talked about my thoughts on the fic I wrote for White Dwarf Rabbit Hole, despite saying in my last entry that I would do that soon!

So, that’s going to have to wait a bit longer, because I need to share the fic I got for Press_Start, and, again, for whatever reason, I feel weird talking about my own fic in the same entry where I brag about my gifts.

ANYWAYS. Gift-bragging time! Here’s what I got:



Sleep(less) (2616 words) by Rose Argent
Fandom: Final Fantasy IV
Characters: Cecil Harvey, Rydia (Final Fantasy IV), Gilbart Chris von Muir | Edward Chris von Muir
Summary: One night in the desert when no one could sleep and said nothing, and one night when they said much.



It’s SO GOOD, and so perfectly tailored to my interests! A Cecil & Edward & Rydia fic that touches on the implications of Cecil being a Dark Knight? DO WANT. I loved so much about this fic, but the dark knight stuff and Cecil’s consideration of Rydia is the stuff that’s making me melt right now, when thinking back on it. Seriously, if you have any fondness for Final Fantasy IV, you should go read this. ♥

► Speaking about things I meant to post about, and then never did... there’s the Trespasser DLC for Dragon Age Inquisition, which I played two days after it came out, and had intended to make a game-blogging post about. I’m not sure if I’m ever going to get around to doing a fleshed-out version about that now, actually, unless I play through it again— I mean, I might, as I do have notes for at least the beginning of my playthrough, before I got so absorbed that I couldn’t pull away— but I can’t guarantee it. So, as a quick summary: ( I don’t think there’s any spoilers here, but I’ll be safe )

IN MORE RECENT NEWS, I think I have become addicted to heartbreaking romances in this game. (Stupid Solas. >_>) Why do I say that? Because I’m starting to notice a pattern. A pattern where I suddenly become 100% more invested in a ship when something makes it really sad, really complicated, or both. ( actual spoilers for Trespasser/DAI in general beneath this cut )

► My bookmarks are getting really, really cluttered, so I’d intended to make a link-dump in this post, but… this entry’s gotten long enough as it is, I think. Next time, perhaps. I might talk about Yuletide then as well, since the nomination period’s going on, and I’m working choosing my final requests so I can get started on my letter. And I’m going to stop myself here, before I start rambling on for another thousand words, thus utterly defeating the purpose of my deciding to not do a link-dump in this post.

Right now I'm kind of regretting promising myself that I would update this at least once a week, if only because it's preventing me from procrastinating on writing this entry. Well... to be fair, in my head Sunday is the last day of the week, not Saturday, but that nice little calendar hovering next to me disagrees.

Moving is... progressing, for anyone who is curious. There's not really much I can say about it, though. At least, not anything that would interest anyone.

► Progress on Final Fantasy IV: there hasn't been any. I... need to get to that, haha.

► In more interesting news, I decided to claim some prompts over at female_fest! I can't lie, I'm a bit nervous about this, if only because I haven't written anything (at least, not prose) since last December. But the prompts looked so interesting, and I did feel the faint stirrings of something in the back of my mind, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

I claimed:
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Homura/Madoka, an almost perfect timeline
- Final Fantasy IV, Rydia, belonging in neither world

So, I suppose I have to finish playing Final Fantasy IV now, seeing as I passed up some equally intriguing prompts in favor of that one. To be honest, though, I'm a bit more excited about the Homura/Madoka one, which is... odd, considering that I actually don't ship the pairing.

► In regards to Pokémon X/Y— I'm quite excited about it, something which surprises me in the best way possible, considering how disinterested I was in Pokémon Black/White.

Side-note: How disinterested was I? Let's put it this way: I am ridiculously obsessed with Pokémon, yet, I somehow have not finished playing Pokémon White, despite buying it the day it came out, nor do I own the sequel. Granted, there's a "yet" at the end of that sentence, because 1) I am a huge fan of Pokémon and 2) it's not like I disliked the game. I just have a difficult time summoning up the interest to actually sit down and play it.

So my being this excited about the new games makes me quite happy.

Also, the depths of my desire for a Gogoat more than makes up for Chespin being 1) the first grass starter I've ever disliked and 2) the first time I haven't wanted to use the grass starter since the first generation. (Sorry, Bulbasaur. At least you have a friend now?)

► I don't know if there is anyone in the Labyrinth fandom reading this, but just in case... a drabble series I've been following just wrapped up, and I wanted to share. It's pretty short, only thirteen drabbles, but it's different from most of the fic I've read in this fandom.

The first drabble in particular had such a kick to it that, while I did enjoy the rest of it, I can't decide whether I liked that one better as a beginning to the rest of the story, or as something that stands on its own.

The story's called This Mother's Choice, by kzal.

Yes, that's three zeros. I don't know if I'll ever hit 1000 entries on this journal— in my six years on livejournal, I only posted 705 entries— but I figured I'd be optimistic.

Life's pretty busy at the moment (although the way I spent my day today may suggest otherwise), as my mom bought a new house recently, and we're in the processing of slowly slowly moving into it. We've progressed far enough for my little brother and I to actually be living and sleeping in this new house, but there's still quite a bit to do.

I'll probably talk more about that later, but for now, our regularly scheduled fangirling (since that's the reason why I wanted to make this post in the first place):

► Yesterday, I caught up with Welcome to Sanditon. (And I just realized that there's not one single playlist with both Clara's videos, and Gigi's from Sanditon, only two separate ones. Which, what? That's not very convenient, especially for linking purposes.) Before this, I'd only seen the first episode, and while I did intend to watch more eventually, I definitely was in no hurry. As much as I love Gigi, I wasn't a fan of the Domino app videos in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and the Sanditon videos seemed to have the same air to them as those did.( some more thoughts, up to episode six,  )

► Last night, around ten, I did something a bit stupid, something I also don't regret at all. I started played Final Fantasy IV for the first time. I have it on the PSP, so that's the system I'm playing it on, although my brother does own it on the PS1. Why was that stupid?

Because: I barely got any work done today, due to my playing it so much.

Some more thoughts below the cut. (Side-note: If you've played it, please don't spoil me for later parts of the game. ♥ Thank you.) ( possible spoilers up to and through Lodestone Cavern; this is going to be rather lengthy )

And that ended up being even longer than I thought it would be. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, at least insofar as it being a useful account of my thoughts when future!me goes back to look at it. But if anyone else actually read through all of that... kudos to you. ♥