(whispers) I actually preordered the PS4 remake, haha. That’s the one I was worried about, actually, when I first mentioned it. I don’t even know how I’ll feel about it, honestly. I watched someone fight the 13th colossus (and one of my favorite), Phalanx, and had mixed impressions from that snippet. Wander seems to look very “generic JRPG boy” in the PS4 remake. I do look forward to revisiting a favorite and to hearing the remastered sound and music in particular.

Also, yay TLG! I hope it’s a fulfilling experience for you, whenever you play it. Also, now I want to get Dropsy, but I’m trying to set limits on how many PC games I acquire too quickly, lol.

Thank you, Laura. I’m sorry to hear about Kupo’s family members. It doesn’t make the pain of losing a loved one go away, but yeah, knowing that they lived a full life and that they won’t be in pain anymore makes it less bitter (if that makes any sense? words are hard, I’m sorry). I also never feel any more useful to people (be they coworkers or friends or family) who are grieving, even after experiencing losses myself. Thank you dearly for the love and vegan brownies!! Likewise, I’ll also send mountains of cookies to share with Kupo and lots of hugs.

It’s ok to ask for more info on how my meds and such work for me, no worries! About anorgasmia and sex drive, specifically - this might be really personal and a mite embarrassing, so apologies, eek. As someone who’s had a low and finnicky sex drive and confused relationship to my body in regards to masturbation and such, I had actually never managed to experience an orgasm prior to beginning taking my medication (which has remained at a 20mg dose of generic celexa, one of the more common SSRIs out there). After finding a really great, uh, personal massager (I may or may not have actually tossed around the idea of writing masturbation-based Hakuoki fanfic since…….jesus….) and getting a bit more comfortable with myself, I’ve since had a much better and more healthy relationship to sex. BUT!!! I say that all with the note that everyone’s body chemistry is different, that my experiences are an unscientific anecdote in the scheme of things, and that is not at all intended to diminish your feelings toward medication. In fact, I regard my experience has a very fortunate one - the first medication I tried worked well, whereas my sister has had to switch medications before finding one that worked. So I can definitely see the reason for holding back.

Being angry and having people to vent the anger to absolutely helps me. As much as I like my job, I have a coworker who is very draining to be around, and I have to be around her for about 30+ hours a week. I really do end up calling or texting someone some days just to incoherently babble and rage about it if it gets to be too much. Allowing yourself the space for anger is really important, I think.

Stories I’d like to see in the market, huh? That’s a tough one! Lady on lady love is always welcome, of course. Have you read Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue? That short story collection is decidedly not fully of shimmery make-out sessions, and while I had mixed feelings about it overall, I recall it having creative & nuanced depictions of women in various relationships, especially romantic ones. So if you ask me, with the way my tastes for fiction tend to skew toward fantasy, speculative fiction, magical realism, & fairytale retellings, I’d say the sky’s the limit. First person intergalactic backpacking sounds WAY more cool than anything I’d be able to come up with, though! Unless you absolutely want to avoid recalling Douglas Adams, I wouldn’t say that having that inspiration there would be a bad thing. One short story that I failed to mention before but that I read and loved in the past year or so is The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, which takes a character and setting from Lovecraft (who I’ve admittedly never cared about reading) but is almost completely different in tone and scope (and reexamines the misogynist, racist writing of HPL).

Gosh, functional pockets forever on every garment should be a must. I’d love to see a picture of the blouse you made if you ever want to share it! The more you make me envious of your sewing skills, the more incentive I have to get off my butt and see if I can learn it as a skill. I made a half-curtain for my cat’s litter box corner at my last apartment (IKEA had some adorable cat-patterned fabric, so….I had to…..), and I was only able to complete that with a lot of help & guidance, haha.

Ooh, thank you for the recommendations!! Including the note about the CMBYN audio book, haha. It’s funny, because I read the book years ago - the cover and synopsis caught my eye while I was still a library page. While I found some parts of the prose, such as descriptions of the setting, very evocative, it’s also….way overrated at this point, I feel. And I have lots of thoughts about the way the movie has been produced (with no out lgbt cast members and the text of the novel having been written by a straight man), and how it’s being hailed so positively in most circles, including some lgbt ones. Funnily enough, I found a really good article that detailed why the author of it (themselves a gay writer and participant in drag communities) thinks of it as one of the straightest works of media about a gay couple in recent memory.

Okay, so asked my sister, Becca, about her FF thoughts (she seemed really pleased that someone wanted to know her thoughts, hehe), and she had quite a few! If she had to pick a favorite of the ones she’s played, she’d say FFXII. She loves systems-based games and lore, so she really enjoys setting up her party and getting them to handle battles strategically, along with reading about the world of Ivalice. She also played the DS ports of a lot of the early FF games like 3 and 4, and unlike me, she enjoys their turn-based combat (I’ve gotten a little better with certain turn-based games like FFX, I still tend to find them a little alienating most of the time). She vaguely remembers playing FFVII, but not much, so she said she was looking forward to the remaster, however it turns out. She also said she liked VII’s offshoot games more than VII itself, like Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus. She hasn’t played anything from VIII to XV other than XII, though she said she almost feels like she’s played XIII after hearing me talk about it with her. I did tell her that you seemed to enjoy XV if she was ever interested in playing it! As for the series on the whole, she said it’s had its ups and downs, but remains optimistic about its future (with exceptions like the thought of X-3, lol…)

Speaking of Becca and FFX, I was discussing the novella with her the other day, and we were both flabbergasted by the course the writers decided to take with it. Beheading Tidus with a blitzball-shaped bomb? And sexual content? We can only hope that the response to the novella discourages SE from actually going through with FFX-3.

It’s funny, because I commented on a language-learning forum I visit for the first time in a while in a topic about video games, saying I was hesitant to play X-2 after beating X. Someone replied also encouraging me to play it for the sake of commiseration and because one of the endings, for them, made it all worth it. So maybe I will go back to it! I definitely think you should make Kupo wallow with you, too.

Ooh, a bushwalk! I do still hope to travel to all sorts of places at some point in my life - whether its two years from now or twenty - that sounds like a wonderful place to visit. Actually, I’ve considered allowing myself a sojourn from work to travel around a bit if I manage to finish my degree in a reasonable time frame. We’ll see, I guess!

First off, sorry it’s been almost a week since your last message! I got sick and then had a minor stress-induced anxious internet avoidance spell, but I feel better now, thankfully. Also, I love your banner art! Who’s the artist, if you don’t mind me asking?

Re: the shift away from tumblr seeing like the LJ migration - yeah, I can totally see that. I’ve dialed down on social media use a lot as well, though tbh, the only social media accounts I’ve ever used with any regularity are goodreads and tumblr. I ended up leaving tumblr because of how vehemently terrible “discourse” (particularly the stuff stuff about bi, nb and ace people) was getting in some lgbt tumblr circles. I miss seeing the art and some of the funnier, sillier memes, but that’s about it.

Oh wow! As someone who never played the original, that’s really fascinating to hear. The lag is present on the version I played on the ps4 - nothing as drastic as cutting movement speed in half, though. It did make getting Lulu’s celestial weapon with that terrible lightning dodging challenge a pain in the ass (even if I think I ended up being worse at the Chocobo racing stuff, haha). Yeah, the voice acting has not aged very well. And no worries, I almost always crave commiseration and validation, haha. Which summon is your favorite? Late-game, I ended up using Anima the most, but I always enjoyed using Shiva.

Woah, that information about the reason the camera angles is like....you know the gif of that guy having his mind blown?? I think it's this one: [Link] That’s me. Since I never played the original on the PS2, I had no point of comparison and thought it was as the developers intended. That’s just...wow! It affects how I perceive those scenes now, for sure.