A lot is happening and changing, a lot of letting go (very hard to do)...
A lot of hurting in my heart but there's too little time in life to waste, I just have to try and make the best of what I have.

I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy II (when I have free time), and I love it even more than Final Fantasy I. It's funny, because people often complain about it, but I think raising your guys like they are little Pokemon is really fun. But also, I'm playing it on an emulator with a speedup function so I'm sure it probably is not as fun on actual hardware. Unless maybe it is 2005 and you are playing it on your Gameboy Advance or something, and then I imagine it would still be epic.

I have a crush on Minwu and I wrote a fic about Firion/Minwu which was nice to do because I've been putting off writing for a long time for a lot of dumb reasons. I think my relationship with II is just enough so that I'm entranced and having a lot of fun imagining, playing dolls, but not enough that it makes me sweat trying to get all the details PERFECT.
I made my Neocities profile public for a bit but idk for how long because I'm a very nervous person and I really don't like being looked at... lol...
I might be moving again soon but I'm not sure yet.

Ciel bought me a long cat plush a couple weeks back, maybe a month back. It was really sweet of her. I've been going through a really rough patch (aren't I always?) and so she saw it and thought of me. However, the poor creature was souless. She had that blank funko pop stare, a nose which could also be interpreted as a questioning mouth. Her head is strangely flat on the top, which is charming, but made her look all the more derpy. I decided I would at the very least give her a mouth and some sparkle in her eyes so she could have some life to her.
Before... and after!
What brand is she? I don't really know. Unlike the ones I have seen online, she doesn't have a zipper in the back of her head. This is like her distant cousin. Zipper cousin. I'll look it up at some point but it was from one of the stores in the mall that sells random bootleg stuff. I used Ciel's fabric paint on her eyes, some spare seed beads for her little mouth and Ciel used some scrap felt for the strawberry. But in beading her mouth I accidentally burned her fur. So Ciel sewed me a cute little strawberry for her to hold in her mouth. It looks even cuter. It was a group effort. Also her little kandi bracelet is her name, she's Rhubarb because I like strawberry rhubarb and she's a long, long cat like a rhubarb stalk.
She also is super squishy and cuddly. It's the same sort of material they use on the inside of Squishmallows. Which is the best part of Squishmallows. Seriously, I used to knock Squishmallows all the time and I'm obviously not a hardcore collector because they have that empty look going on BUT when you squat one you really *get* the appeal because there is nothing else like that pleasant texture. So Rhubarb is lovely because she basically is nearly the entire length of my body so...... yeah. #Winning #Finance #LongCat
There was this Japanese candy commerical series where the guy gets cucked and then there's a wedding and the Long Man guy who is eating hte Long Gum (it actually is a gummy. Sakeru Gummy) .. you think he's gonna say he loves the wife but then he say he love the husband and it was so yaoi-ful. it just was funny and cute so I like holding up Rhubarb and singing LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG MANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN dramatically and then swishing her back and forth a little.
Anyway, that is all. Lots of love to all of you out there, whenever and whereever you are.

Put a journal on feelings about Rainbow Brite here....

Hi again!! ~

Strap in. I will now be discussing Dragon Quest. In DETAIL.

So, as you may or may not know, I have been putting off playing Dragon Quest for a very, very long time. It was introduced to me as a young girl, by many a disgruntled Gamestop employee. On Playstation Home, many people would argue with me and insist that Dragon Quest was superior to Final Fantasy, especially since I would prattle on and on about X and Advent Children (to many a grown mans dismay). See, people took it personally back then, that a young girl was so interested and invested in these things. I'm not sure why. I'm sure if I grew up somewhere else, people would not have cared. If I had been born a few years later, no one would have cared. But it was an interesting place, at an interesting time. Somehow, Dragon Quest and I shared a personal grudge against one another. It became symbolic... a game series that, I would admit I had respect for, but I would use it as a punching bag any time Square Enix did anything I didn't appreciate. "Oh, that's Enix's fault. The Dragon Quest Guys..."

I told myself, long ago, that I wanted to play JRPGS where they began. I rented Phantasy Star at a young age, but had no clue how to progress or survive. I had been groomed by the ease of the GameCube and N64 platformers. I did not understand what was expected of me, to be making maps on scrap pieces of graph paper. But I understood that it, and its brothers, were special and signifigant. The air of magic that they held was very different than how JRPGS were beginning to feel (beaten to death) on the end of the life of the Playstation 2. As I learned more and more about the genre, heck, when I discovered that there was a GENRE that I liked to begin with (that it wasn't just called Anime Games), I knew I wanted to play all the ones that started it all. But it was always an eventual thing. There were always things that competed for my attention. High school was insanely busy. And it didn't get easier with university.

But then, this summer came. My attention span has repaired itself after a year of practice. I had lots and lots of time. I know there are many things I could be working on, but right now, the most important thing is killing time with something so I can get to the next part. Almost at the finish line. I was staring at my backlog, thinking to myself, you know what, it might be time to do a Dragon Quest game. I've got the time to burn. I've got the paitence. It probably wouldn't take that long. Then at least, at long last, I can have the bragging rights to say that I completed at least one. Should I meet a fellow JRPG fan in the wild, I could bring it up. I would know what they were talking about. My expectations were incredibly low. But it seemed the right time for the adventure.

I looked through my options for what version of Dragon Quest I I should play. This was the most challenging choice. I could go with the original Dragon Warrior on the NES. But to be frank with you, I have something of a lovehate (mostly hate) relationship with the NES, and I find that the saturation and color palette leaves much to be desired. In my PERSONAL opinion. I thought about the SNES version, at least, I think there was a SNES option. But that would mean a fan translation, which is great, but I wanted to see what the game felt like as if I had somehow purchased it instead of purchasing Zelda: Oracle of Ages, way back then. Don't even get me started on the mobile ports or the Switch ports. I don't do those, I won't acknowledge them. I get that they're convenient, but it really is just sad.

So, I settled on the collection of Dragon Quest I & II as it was released on the Game Boy. This seemed great. I love the look of the Game Boy. I love the graphics, I love the sound, I love the controls. Basically anything can run it, so I had my pick of the exact way I wanted to play it. Which was really nice. I even found that the box art was adorable. I could tell things were changing already as soon as I booted it up. There was a little start of a smile at the corners of my lips. I was more interested in this than I had been in I don't know how long. There was something about it... something that made it feel like finally, I had returned from being lost at sea. Finally, I was about to play a real game again, for the first time, in a very, very, very long time.


The box art. Compare the Japanese to the North American version. It's sad!

I figured I'd chip away at the game (before starting it) in 30 minute chunks. But when I started the first session, I had played hours. I beat Dragon Quest one in two days. It was that good. And to tell you how, or why, is difficult to express. It's simple, but it's pure. It's charming. The grinding was nice, actually. The world was the perfect size. The details all made sense. The characters spoke in a way that I enjoyed. The silent protagonist worked. The world worked. At the end, there was a surge of feeling in my heart. I understood why this game had touched so many people. I got why it was so iconic. It felt.. amazing. And honestly, its hype was well deserved.
So I figured, how much worse could the second game be? It was already in the same cartridge. I might as well give it a shot.
While I will admit I didn't like Dragon Quest 2 as much as I enjoyed the first game, I still absolutely loved it. Which is crazy to me, even now. To complete both games, and to do everything there was to possibily do within only took me seven days (a few of those days I didn't touch the game at all). I liked it SO much, that I went out and bought a used copy (well, I traded in some other games from my collection that I didn't enjoy as much). And now, we arrive to this moment, where I am *hooked* on Dragon Quest.

It feels like my imagination has expanded. And the wide ocean of all there is Dragon Quest is available to me. Better still, is people claim 3 is where it *really* gets good. I'll be playing that next. I've realized I really like this style of game much better than other games I was trying to play (looking at you, modern JRPGs).

I really want to go into more detail, but I am hoping to do a game review (that isn't this personal) on my site somewhere, sometime. I still have to review Corn Kids 64, and a few other things that I felt strongly about.


Anyway, the lesson of all of this is that you can fall in love with basically everything and that there is always something new and wonderful to explore. I always feel like I am alone in this world, that everything feels all twisted and messed up, that I'm longing for something from before. Thankfully, things like Dragon Quest can take me there, at the very least mentally, to that magic and wonder and the warm way the world used to feel, the world that I belonged to. Sometimes it feels like I've mined all that I could mine that has that feeling, that there's nothing new to discover. But, as always, I find out that I mistaken, and that there is more and more for me. Which is a great comfort.


Oh, also, before I forget, Ciel and I have started watching Rainbow Brite. Which is also very awesome. You should watch it. It's fun and there's a lot of panty shots. The unicorn and girl are in love and I think that had an influence or vice versa? on Sailor Moon's Chibiusa and Helios situation. I'm too lazy to Google which came first but you get what I mean. That'll probably be the next entry that I bother to put here.

AND... Littlest Pet Shops new toy line is finally here and it's really good. Ciel is enjoying them a lot. It's cool that there are more and more cool toys like that. Now that I have an adult income to blow.