Eluvianii

That it can be simultaneously infuriating and incredibly fun to live in. If you had to describe every good thing about your city in three words, what would they be?

The moment I stepped into electronic metal with computer components for song names I knew I was beyond saving. Also Enacore, if that even qualifies as a genre (honestly, I think it's just a branch of vaporwave or something similar. But I do like it because of Ena, so). Then there's Mili, with their fairy tales and cyberpunk tragedies told through a genre I can't even name (modern classical or something like that according to them?). There's a couple yeah. TPBM buys more books than they read.

Yeah, there's a lot to take into account, and a lot that can will go wrong. But being willing to dive in head first is probably the most important trait you could have. The first few times it might be rocky but I'm sure you'll figure it out. Now I'll have to take your bravery as motivation to eventually do the same.

I would have to go with the classic of having someone who looks like me and is dressed like me storm in mid-ceremony, with a sonic screwdriver in hand. They will then inform everyone that my death can be prevented, but the person who will be chosen to save me has to win a battle tournament. I don't trust my family to make it interesting so I will arrange for everyone to be assigned a random weapon, ranging from longswords to toothbrushes. Once the tournament is over, my doppelganger will confess my death is a fixed point in time, and it's already happened. But on the bright side, the winner keeps all my stuff.

The one with the Shardblade. For Christmas/birthdays/etc, do you prefer a gift you don't like but that was chosen for you, or simply money if they don't know what you like anyway?

I use mobile waaaay more but I wouldn't say I prefer it. I find a mouse and keyboard too comfortable. So much in fact that I'm studying to live off it. TPBM is hungry.

Those are not mutually exclusive depending on how you look at it, so yes and yes. TPBM enjoys coming up with new weird characters to use in the future (excited to use my pirate goblin with healing bombs).

There was this book called "No One Would Believe You", it had a chapter called "Blank Page". It was a blank page. What is your favorite fiction genre to listen to on music lyrics?

No, but that would be cool. TPBM owns a cool rock.

Good luck! Hope it went well. Remember, if they tell you the session will be 3 hours long, you should spare another 3 just in case.

I am, this semester I finally get to the interesting subjects. TPBM has enjoyed breaking a safety rule.

Very much. I'm sipping coffee as I write this. TPBM likes tea.

Been playing The Dark Mod, which is this dark fantasy stealth game where you're a thief. Now here's the thing. You can't steal food, because food doesn't sell as well as gold in the black market. But you can eat it. So now I have made it my calling to eat people's dinner in this game.

When you dream that, for some unexplainable reason, Brandon is doing a signing at a supermarket by your house.

I wish I had a reliable method. Sometimes putting on some music that's easy to ignore and doing the task for a few minutes does the trick. Like, I have to actually get invested on it. But it just happens sometimes and others I just waste an entire afternoon procrastinating as I try to get focused. Do you have a passion?

Not a literal cursor, I meant the line that appears when you write. But yeah, it's what I described. See. I go below the box Press backspace. It jumps inside the box and if I keep pressing backspace nothing happens. Alternatively if I touch the box itself, so it's selected. And press backspace, the keyboard disappears and the box stays. As I said, it doesn't work on my phone so I'm guessing neither in Hunter's. Heck, I just left the box below because I didn't want to reload the page and have to start over. Don't want to derail the thread too much but yeah, that's what happens.

Honestly? No. Going by numbers most people go straight into inactivity after joining. Those who are active also have a good chance of stepping away after one or two years. There's very few people that I saw around when I joined that I still see today. We're mostly on a rotation really. So without substantially more people I kinda doubt the downtimes will disappear. Is summer kind where you live?

Weird. I just tried and it's the same as ever. Which is to say, I can obviously delete the contents, but if I select the box itself and press backspace, the keyboard disappears and the box stays. If I put the cursor under the box instead and press backspace, it just jumps inside it and starts deleting the text. If I delete all the text and keep pressing it, same scenario, the keyboard disappears and the box stays. I don't know if it depends on the phone, but apparently mine can't do it.

From what I hear that is the "right" way to play them, but I don't think I can bring myself to do it. Ideally, I want to actually get good at the tactics part, but then there are levels like this one, where there are enemies who can one shot 90% of my army, and are only weak to archers (who they can one shot too). Best part is when you look for help and everyone is like "Nice to see there is at least one mildly challenging map in this game, but still really easy" and you regret asking.

Doesn't work on mobile for some reason. The only way I've found to delete them is reloading the page before posting. It will then save a draft of whatever you have written, tags included, and when you open it, it will give you the option to delete the whole thing. You'd have to copy whatever you want to salvage before reloading though. The moment you make any change to the draft, the button to delete it disappears.

Started Xenogears and I just finished what is apparently known as the first act. This game has mechas, desert pirates, martial arts, and special moves are the normal moves here. Probably a dream setting for me as a kid. Save for, of course, the fact that the game is fairly depressing and has quite a lot of talk about the weight of a sin, responsibility, the meaning (or lack thereof) of war. I won't be surprised in the slightest if the protagonists start planning a genocide for the greater good or something. The tone isn't too heavy though, whenever they're not on those topics, everyone stays on their assigned jrpg trope, which does make playing this a lot easier if you can believe it. I think I might be playing the game equivalent of Evangelion here. Combat is fun, though getting more moves can be slow if you don't have a guide to tell you which buttons to press. The moment a normal enemy takes three deathblows to go down you know you did something wrong. Music is good. I can't say how good just yet but I like it so far. I'm loving the plot too. It's bizarre and I can't tell where it's going, only that it will be really weird. Also the game is extremely cinematic. I said that about FF8 and now this, am I that easy to please? But this one is kind of different. FF8 relied on the creative way they used fmv's and prerendered backgrounds, but that did come with limitations. Here the visuals don't stand out nearly as much but since environments are actual 3d objects, they can do whatever the heck they want with the camera, and they squeeze every drop out of that feature. There are some genuinely breathtaking shots, low res textures and all. Not to say that the game looks bad visually, the sprites are gorgeous and I feel less detailed textures really fit the kind of playable anime aesthetic they seem to be going for. Overall really enjoying this so far. On another note, I decided to restart FE Fates: Birthright, maybe for the third time. Now, this doesn't mean I don't like the game, but my usual troubles with this series always come up. I do just fine the first few chapters, then they start turning into a reload fest that takes hours to finish, which gets progressively less fun. But this time I decided to bite the bullet and limit myself to just a few units, I'm thinking 12. See, I'm one of those people, the ones who just have to level every single unit they get. Of course that means that by chapter 10 or so, half my army is severely underleveled and it becomes a lot harder to make any safe moves. So now I'm gonna choose the units I like the most while trying to keep it balanced and level only those. Maybe sometime in the future I can do a second run with the characters I neglected but for now, hopefully this will make things easier, especially knowing you can't grind in Conquest. Gonna miss the supports though. Edit: I don't think it worked. I just said that and here I am now, 2 hours into stage 11, having reloaded about 5 times already. I swear, I love what I've played of this series so far, but sometimes I wonder if it's even worth it.

Welp, just finished Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It's hard to say anything aside from, yep, this is indeed one of the best animes ever made, I don't have any ground to argue. I just wish it had slowed down a bit toward the end. It's strange for such a long show to pack so much into every episode but yeah, the plot was lightning fast. Miss one episode and you'll be extremely confused on the next, and that continued all the way to the end. I do wish the final 5 or so were 10 or 15 instead. But maybe that would have screwed the pace, who knows. It also has some of the best deaths I've seen in fiction, even if the narrator has a bad habit of announcing them waaaay in advance. When an important character dies they usually don't bring it up as a surprise, and instead take entire episodes to build the moment, and the result is beautiful. They're so respectful to each character. He's not the only one I have something to say about, but I have to mention Oberstein as one of the most interesting characters I've encountered. I was so conflicted about him ever since he was introduced very early on, and that conflict was not resolved. Like, ever. I came to respect him by the end but I could never decide if I liked the guy or not and, well, that's pretty amazing I think. I also didn't expect the show to have such a focus on romance, especially during the last quarter, though I'm certainly not complaining. Who knew I'd find some of my favorite couples in a show so completely focused on politics and strategy. Finishing this just hypes me for the remake honestly. I'm tempted to start right now but that would just burn me out real fast I think. Maybe I should wait until it's finished. It's not like my backlog is twice as long as my list of finished shows anyway.

Storms, I have to see that. I like how cryptic the game is with details like that. There seem to be a few extra scenes with no clues whatsoever as to how to get them. As for Odin, I got him in disc 4, so I didn't even get to see him in action. Also missed like 7 GFs. I should play this again sometime and be more thorough.

That thing is extremely close to number 1 in the list of things that I like. TPBM has gone climbing before.

I finally finished Final Fantasy VIII. You can't possibly imagine the level of catharsis I'm feeling right now. I had begun to say I was cursed in regards to this game. Every time I tried to play it, something happened to prevent me from finishing it. My PSP broke, my laptop broke. Heck, last time it was burnout, because I had already gone all the way through most of disc 2 several times and it was getting repetitive. But it's finally over. This game is weird and clunky and I loved every second of it. I personally think breakable combat systems are a lot of fun, and this one is king when it comes to breaking. Even then the final battle felt just right difficulty-wise. I can't imagine what a "balanced" playthrough would be like. The characters aren't terribly complex but I love them. They're fun and charming. And I like having an initially unlikable protagonist who grows as the game progresses. Especially since it wasn't something quick. He continued to grow all the way to the last cutscene. Speaking of those, the plot advances fairly fast but it doesn't feel like it. Like, sometimes you'll snap from one plot point right to the next with no development in the middle, but the scenes are so well fleshed out while still being short that you don't really notice. Games like Trails spoiled me with more details than I could ever need but here you have to cherish every word because there aren't that many. In that sense, I guess if Trails is like reading a giant fantasy book, this game is like watching a well-paced action movie. Short but sweet. Soundtrack was amazing. There were some themes (namely Eyes on Me, and The Extreme) that I spent years avoiding because I wanted to hear them in-game. And let me tell you, it was worth every second. Eyes on Me is a beautiful song and I freaked out when it started playing. It was such a good scene. And The Extreme hit me like a truck when I thought the final battle was over, made my excitement go even higher than it already was. At some point during the "curse", I got stubborn and decided this had to be my first Final Fantasy. So even though I've become interested in most of the games in the series each for their own reasons, I restrained myself and waited. Well, I'm glad I did. First impressions are important and as first impressions go, this one was brilliant. So excited to see what else the series has to offer. That will wait for a bit though because next game on my list is Xenogears. The things I hear about this game sound hyperbolic. How it's on another league compared to other jrpgs, and how it changes your perception of video games when you play it. So I should probably control my expectations, but I can't help being excited.