straightforwardly

Reading: Plenty! More than anything else, tbh. I’m participating in the Autumn Equinox of the Orilium Readathon, and having a delightful time of it. I only have two books left to read for my main calling, but am also eyeing some of the side quests. We’ll see!
Listening: Fic Clique, mostly.
Playing: Most recently, Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which I beat (what I have osmosis-ed is only the first ending) at the end of June, but which I’ve been picking up sporadically ever since with the vague intention of 100%-ing it one day. It’s genuinely one of my all-time favorite games at this point. Otherwise, I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a new visual novel after I finish this post, so maybe that.
Watching: Last weekend, I finished Till the End of the Moon, which sparked the first true fannish passion I’ve felt in almost two years. So that was exciting! Considering a rewatch, but am also considering checking out some of the other cdramas on my to-watch list.
Writing: Nothing, though I am pleased with my output for this year’s round of Battleship.

► ( on twitter )

Though in the interest of not fading away like a fannish ghost, I am going to make an effort to have a little bit more of a presence online again. I have a lot less free time than I used to, but I feel like a goal of “at the bare minimum, some kind of fannish monthly round-up post on dw” could be achievable if I prioritize it? We’ll see.

► Have some scattered fic recs from the last two months of fic reading. (For context, I literally went to a spreadsheet I’ve been keeping as of a couple of years ago, and pulled out links from the fics I remembered liking from my July and August reads. Some were from WIP updates; quite a few were from Battleship.)

( various fandoms, beneath the cut )

► On that note, I did participate in Battleship this year, and got four genuinely excellent gifts: two for Naruto, and two for Stardew Valley. I feel like both fandom pairs had fics that paralleled one another in some way. One of my Naruto gifts tackles a classic time travel concept that never gets old no matter how many takes on it I read, while the other has an approach that felt so fresh and new that I was breathless while reading it. For Stardew Valley, I got one fic for each of my Abigail ships, one featuring a sweet established relationship while the other features an imo fantastic depiction of a first love and the thrill of realizing your feelings are returned for the first time. It just all felt very balanced and satisfying to me!

   Seven New Ways (Naruto, Izuna & Sakura, 6.2K)

—That you can eat your young.

Or: the deathless healer in her house on the Crossroads is a mystery that Izuna desperately wants to uncover.

   Twice (Naruto, Kisame & Sakura, 4.7K)

Sakura’s in the past, at least a decade before she’s supposed to even be born, with the strength to level mountains but not the strength to return home.

Meanwhile, Kisame’s pretty sure he’s never met someone who’s as intriguing a mix of truth and lies as the pink haired women named simply Sakura.

   A Life of Rock 'n' Roll (Stardew Valley, Abigail/Sebastian, 3.6K)

When Sebastian and Abigail joined Sam's rock band, they hadn't intended for it to involve so many literal rocks.

   Brave New Girl (Stardew Valley, Abigail/Haley, <1K)

Abigail and Haley decide to take a romantic weekend getaway and do things both of them like.

Of course, the two of them like very different things.

I think I’ll wrap things up here, for now.

► Chocolate Box opened a few days ago, and I got the most fantastic gift. It’s a Fire Emblem Awakening Virion & f!Robin friendship fic with a side of Virion/Libra, and it is absolutely lovely and deserves more attention.

Here’s the link: Captured Piece

► Since my last Mystic Messenger update, I finished Yoosung’s Good Ending as well as the first Bad Relationship Ending. More under the cut! ( As always, spoilers )

► I turned on Pokemon Go this morning to just glance at the interface, since I knew that Gen 2 had been released, and… saw a Murkrow standing in my house??? So I caught her immediately. My first Gen 2 Pokemon in this game! I suddenly feel actually attached to Murkrow now, haha.

I was gone for a couple of days, like I mentioned in my Mystic Messenger update, and I did play Pokemon Go a bit during that time. The Pokemon were pretty much the same as at home, though, but I did finally catch a Vulpix, so yay. ♥

► It’s been awhile since I’ve done a Mystic Messenger update (or any update at all, for that matter). Since I last updated, I've finished Zen’s Normal Ending, and am now playing Yoosung’s route. I’m currently on Day 7. My thoughts:( spoilers for Zen’s Normal Ending (and Jaehee’s endings too), and all of Yoosung’s route through Day 7 )

In other news… Cheritz has released a Valentine’s After Story for (I presume) all of the characters. Since it’s an After Story (which unlocks once you’ve beat a route), I’ve only been able to play Zen and Jaehee’s stories so far. I did Jaehee’s first, then Zen’s. My thoughts:
( spoilers for Jaehee & Zen’s Valentine’s After Story )

► I’ve also started playing Pokemon Moon! It feels weird, waiting this long to play a Pokemon game… I haven’t been playing a whole lot, though— currently, I’m on the second island. ( cut for length + possibly spoilers )

► Finally, today I (finally) started playing Pokemon Go! I’m slightly surprised that it took me this long post-new phone to start, and also still slightly sour that my having an outdated phone before kept me from playing when it was all new and everyone was super-excited about it. But I still had fun. ( cut for length reasons )

► One bright side about my relative lack of internet is that I’ve been able to get around to reading books and playing video games that I’d never gotten around to before during my free time. Of course, there’s a limit to this— with books, I only have those that I already had on my phone / that I can pick up for free because I am not going to buy a ebook when I already know that I greatly prefer physical copies, or that I can get from my library’s online library, and with video games, I’m limited to those portable games that I brought with me or, hypothetically those that I have on my computer.

Still, I’ve managed to chip away a bit at my backlog, to my delight. I’ve already read, in addition to a truly ridiculous amount of romance novels (I don’t know why; I’ve always read romance novels, of course, but usually I’ll read two or three, then return to my one true love, fantasy), Ivanhoe, Moby Dick, and am now nearly halfway through Les Miserables, which so far might be my favorite of the three, though I’ll have to admit that Ivanhoe did a better job of not running around with really, really long digressions.

( cut for length )

► I also mentioned video games above. I haven’t been playing quite so many video games as I’ve been reading books, mainly because it’s much easier to put a book down at a moment’s notice than it is to do the same with a video game, but I have finally gotten around to playing Pokemon Alpha Sapphire.

The short version of my thoughts on it: ( this is not so lengthy, but it’s being cut anyways )


► Now, I’m playing the GameBoy Advance version Final Fantasy V, which I bought used at GameStop many years ago. As some of you may know, I came pretty late to Final Fantasy as a series, which is kind of odd, considering how much I love JRPGs. I played my first Final Fantasy game, FFX, in 2010, and then played FFIV in 2012, and that’s about it, as far as the series goes. That is, I did play a bit of FFXI on my friend’s account, but I don’t really like online games, and ignore those entries in the series.

Over the years, I’ve also picked up copies of FFI and FFII, both on PSP (which I, unfortunately, didn’t bring with me), FFVII and FFVIII on PC, FFIX on PS1, and FFXII on PS2, but I haven’t gotten around to playing any of them yet. ...Which means, now that I think about it, that I own more than double the amount of Final Fantasy games that I’ve actually played.

Enough babbling about this. Here’s my thoughts on FFV. ( cut for length— and spoilers, if anyone cares about that )

► This was all written on 23 May, by the way; the biggest change since then is that my DS isn't charging for whatever reason, so I haven't been able to get further on FFV.

Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire Confirmed For Worldwide 3DS Launch in November!

I realized that everyone was already squeeing about this yesterday, but while I was (and am) super excited, yesterday was also Dead Day, and as I have two of my most difficult finals today, I had to study. I've taken one of the two already, and am technically studying for the second right now, but I just can't wait any longer to talk about this.

I. Am. So. Excited!

To be fair, Hoenn has never been a region that I've ever been super interested in. Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (as well as the Red/Blue remakes) were the games I missed during my hiatus as a Pokémon fan, and while I was curious about the games, and had an interest in some of the fanfiction written for it, I just never cared enough to actually hunt down a copy. So, Hoenn's actually the only region where I have never played through one of the games for it.^[1]

That means that, because of these remakes I will 1) finally be able to say I've played through all the regions for the first time since Gold/Silver came out and 2) be able to experience a new (for me) story, characters, and region!

I repeat: So. Excited.

---

[1] I have played Pokémon White, I've technically played at least one of the Unova games, but that being said, I technically haven't played Black 2/White 2 yet. Yes, I know. It's on my to-do list. Somewhere. As soon as I get around to buying myself a copy.

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.