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)

► I’m nearly finished with my replay of Fire Emblem: Awakening. I’ve finished Chapter 25, and now I’m just going through all of the DLC Paralogues I couldn’t do in my first playthrough because I didn’t have internet at the time. ( cut for length and spoilers )

► I meant to mention this in my last post, but I’ve been working a bit on cutting down on my backlog of indie games. I have a bad habit of occasionally going on downloading sprees. It’s really hard to resist, especially on itch.io where there are so many intriguing-looking games— and for free!— but it does mean that I have a lot of games on my computer to play through.

One of those games is Roguelight, an incredibly charming roguelike game. You play as an archer going through I love the pixel art, the use of light and shadow, and, of course, the gameplay. I haven’t beaten it yet, but I’m getting closer— I’ve unlocked all but one of the extra abilities/boosting items, and have seen what I think is the boss, though I haven’t beaten it. It’s very fun, and I definitely recommend it!

I’ve also played the first two games (out of four) in the Lonely Wolf Treat series, Lonely Wolf Treat and Friendly Bunny Mochi. These games are pretty much purely story-driven, and pretty short— maybe 15-20 minutes each. They’re really cute! I love the color palette, and the snowy setting. I ship Moxie/Mochi a little bit, and I really like Treat and Mochi’s friendship. Moxie’s definitely my favorite character, and not just because she’s a fox, though that definitely helps.

I played both of these games on the same night, about a week ago, but I haven’t moved on to the third game Clever Fox Moxie yet because I haven’t managed to finish the demon summoning sidequest in Friendly Bunny Mochi. I just can’t get the weak light bulbs! I know where they are, but ( brief cut )

Other than that, I liked the games a lot, and am looking forward to Moxie’s game.

► I do have a lot to say about the past day of Mystic Messenger (mostly along the lines of goddamnit, Zen), but this entry is long enough, I think. Tomorrow, perhaps.

► Still making my way through all of Yoosung’s Endings in Mystic Messenger. Since my last update, I’ve gotten Bad Ending 01, Bad Ending 02, and the Normal Ending. ( cut for spoilers )

► It’s… already been a few days since Chocolate Box authors were revealed, haha, but I wanted to share what I wrote! I wrote a few fics, but nothing longer than 1K. For Harry Potter, I wrote a Lucius/Narcissa fic and a Tom/Ginny, pre-Harry/Ginny fic. The former was my assignment. I also wrote Emma Woodhouse/Harriet Smith for Jane Austen’s Emma and Lucina/Severa for Fire Emblem: Awakening. (In unrelated news, I now have a new FE:A ship. :P)

► Speaking of which… between writing Fire Emblem: Awakening fic for Chocolate Box and receiving it, I got struck by the urge to replay the game. So that’s what I’m doing now. I’ve just finished Chapter 14. ( cut for spoilers and length )

►My big brother and I have started watching Wolf’s Rain together! God, it’s been ages since I’ve watched this anime— well over a decade, I think. We never finished it— we only knew it through renting a disc or two from Hastings. (I remember it as being only one volume— the first one. My big brother remembers watching the first two volumes. He has the better memory, so I’m tempted to defer to him.)

Speaking of which, I’d forgotten… pretty much everything about it? I remembered that the main characters were wolves, and that their human forms were illusions, and I had very clear memories of them standing on those pipes in the first city talking to one another, and a few bits of memory about how Kiba was re: Cheza, but that was about it. I’d even forgotten about some of the main characters! Kiba and Tsume I remembered pretty decently, but Hige and Toboe kind of blended together for me— I remembered there was a character who was the “youngest”, and I kind of remembered Hige’s character design, so when he showed up I went, “oh, he must be the youngest.”

One thing that strikes me: I remember when I was a kid, I was very focused on the “ooo, pretty boys!” bit, but now I’m very much focused on the fact that they’re wolves and that the human form is just an illusion. I just find it such an interesting concept? And I love the moments where it shows what’s happening underneath the illusion so much. ♥

We just finished up episode 8 tonight, and I’m cautiously intrigued by where this is all going. Post-apocalyptic futures with wolves, yess. ♥

► So, I got the Captive Prince trilogy for Christmas. Yesterday, after posting my Yuletide recs, I started the first book. And then I read it, and the second one, and the third one, because at some point in the first book (near the end, to be precise), I realized that I couldn’t put it down. ( more under the cut, spoilers included )

► Now for something I’ve been wanting to post for ages! I started playing Fire Emblem Awakening in September, and (with a few long pauses in between), finally beat it in November. And now I’m actually talking about it in December (and questioning myself about just how much I’ve forgotten in the meantime, ugh, I have such a terrible memory.)

This was actually the first Fire Emblem game I've ever played, despite me loving both JRPGs and tactical RPGS. My overall impression: I really enjoyed it! And I'll probably be replaying it at least a few times.

I’ve spent some time thinking about how I’m going to talk about this game/characters, and I think that I’m going to do it by first talking about who I married to whom, vaguely in the order in which I decided on said marriages, and use that as a jumping ground to talk about the characters in general and their children. Sounds good? Let’s go.

( cut for spoilers for the whole game, and also ridiculous length )

I also wanted to get into some of my thoughts/problems with the actual plot of the game (especially the aspects involving Robin), but, well, this entry has gotten long enough. Maybe another time. Right now, I'm mostly relieved that I managed to get this much written up.