megaTEN

GUESS WHO DEFEATED THE HARDEST OPTIONAL BOSS IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY ON THEIR FIRST TRY? Without using the Red Star method?

I DID.

Oh my goodness and I was tired when I did the battle, too.

According to my stopwatch, it took me just over 1 hour to beat the Demi-Fiend. I only had to survive two Gaea Rages, since I killed him like 1 turn before I was about to induce a third one.

I'll post tomorrow with ~*PHOTO PROOF*~ + preparations (and how to minimise the amount of grinding you need to do) + battle notes. I had a different setup to what I read on FAQs and the videos I watched for reference. I admit, if it wasn't for MasterLL's videos, the fight probably wouldn't have gone nearly as smoothly as it did.

Well except that one part...

Edit: Oh yeah, I should probably mention. I finally finished that Picture of Soma and his 117 monster souls [semi-NSFW]

Whoops I kind of ended up dropping everything just to play Tales of Innocence, which I started 2 days ago. I've clocked 17 hours on it in 3 days, despite the fact I also had presentations and went out during two of those days (and played SD3 with levikitty during the third day). I thiiink the fact I am doing this thing where I can't stop playing even though I know I'll appreciate the game more if I took it slower is making some of its flaws stand out a lot more, which is exactly what happened with Crisis Core. But... I'm still really enjoying the game so whatever.

For those unfamiliar, Tales of Innocence is a Tales game for the DS that was released in Japan (and only Japan) in 2007. Absolute Zero Translations later released a fantranslation of the game in 2010 once it became clear Tales of Innocence would not be getting a localisation. Tales of Innocence follows the story of Luca, the somewhat timid son of a merchant, who had recurring dreams about a great leader named Asura. He lives in the city of Regnum, a peaceful city despite a long lasting war that is still raging. But people with a special power, a power granted by memories of their past lives, have begun appearing in the world. While the ordinary citizens of Regnum fear these people, all sides of the war have an interest in them for their own gains, and unfortunately for Luca, it seems like his undiscovered past life is at the centre of everything...

( So... basically my thoughts on Tales of Innocence so far. Spoilers, obviously. )

It's really weird though. While I genuinely do enjoy playing the Tales games I've experienced, I just... can't get into the world building or plot with the same level of enthusiasm I have for other games I've played. I love the aesthetics of TotA and the concept of everything being based on sound, and ToV is an incredibly pretty game. But I couldn't get into the plot and world building of both games, though the latter's may partially be due to the fact I've been playing it over the course of years.

I apparently am not completely recovered if I take a break from the computer and then suddenly sleep for the whole afternoon without warning. I still have a slight cough, but I'm definitely a lot better than before, where I would wake up and be like "... I can't move."

BUT TEN. WHY ARE YOU POSTING AT STUPID O'CLOCK? Because what sounded like people shouting and general thumping from my backyard when my neighbourhood is generally very quiet woke me up. When I can see the shadows of people in my yard from my window, I'm like OH GOD WHY ARE THERE PEOPLE IN MY YARD WHERE IS MY FIRE AXE WHEN I NEED IT. Basically I thought they were going to break in and I pretty much spent the whole time going mentally aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa /)_(\

3 hours later, I still can't sleep :|||

Edit: Yeah I wasn't imagining shit in the middle of the night. Our side gate was open and there's beer bottles strewn across the front lawn.

( SPAMMING YOUR F-LISTS FOREVER. I APOLOGISE )

WHY AM I STILL AWAKE

Shooter: Yeah, bro! It’s like your fiery passion slams into the other guy’s, like WHAM!
Joshua: Hee hee. Sounds like a fun time.

( Some snips of the TWEWY Game Script as I work on updating it. In which Joshua is more perverted than I ever hope to be + stupid + poignancy + some commentary. And me getting lazy halfway )

( A little theorising about the conversations between Joshua, Neku and Sho )

... I've also apparently lost a bunch of other scripts (like, all the Knights in the Nightmare work I did) when I did a tag clean up. Google has FAILED me.

My mind's a massive jumble of thoughts right now, so I apologise for incoherency.

( Thoughts on chaptered writing, the Fifth Act [FF7 fanfic], my own writing ability and practice )

On the subject of writing me not being able to write good multichaptered stories, I just started the Digimon/TWEWY crossover. I've been kind of dragging my feet about pimping it at their respective fandom communities (digimon and subarashiki_ds), though. I guess I kind of feel bad about putting it up when (in my opinion) there's so little content at the moment, and in the case of the TWEWY community, it feels bad to pimp it there when most of the first 10 chapters will heavily focused on the Digimon cast. I'm still kind of undecided about pimping the crossover out (I've never been all that good at advertising myself to begin with).

What do you guys think of me pimping out crossovers in fandom communities, especially if they may not be particularly relevant to a particular fandom until chapters later?

I WILL GET TO BE SIMON THE DIGGER FOR MY UNIVERSITY PROJECT.

Edit: I am totally (re)psyched about this project and I want to hold his usability study and make it my baby.

Nearing the end of semester, and, of course, I want nothing more than to draw/game/not do uni work. I've been pretty good about not spending much time doing non-university work, so I'm mostly on top of things, even if it means I take longer to respond to RP things. I think a tag every two days is actually an improvement since I'd fallen from a tagging speed of a day per tag to 3-5 days a tag.

I did take a break one day to paint this picture (viewed at 25% size and is incomplete). Like my other paintings, it's done in a free version of ArtRage, and once again, I'm running into trouble painting the people in it. I actually did start painting the characters in it, but aside from their hair, it looks um. really bad imo. The biggest difficulty I have with ArtRage is drawing... well... detailed things i.e. most non-scenery things. I'm actually considering doing the characters in a new drawing/colouring style in photoshop to make them stand out from the background. I don't think it'll be too noticeable that the characters won't be on the 'canvas' the background is on, since it's hard to see the canvas texture after you resize. I mean, it's not really noticeable in that WIP as it is, anyway...?

I still also have to finish what I wanted to write for this TWEWY prompt, but I might forgo the art I was planning to make for it; I've redrawn it several times and I'm still not happy with the way it turned out. Maybe grab a picture of the inside of crowded train in Japan or something... I still have Rhyme's 'Journey' one-shot to finish, along with its related art. Also gotta do all the art I owe people, and do something for my dad's birthday...

ON TOP OF ALL THAT, I also want to put an entry or two in the starmen.net 2010 Earthbound fanfest. I'm thinking of going for the Scaraba GPP (due Nov 11th), Lost Underworld (due Nov 29th) and/or Magicant (due Dec 1st). Magicant has the most tempting prize (unopened copy of the Japanese MOTHER 2 soundtrack!) and the longest time for me to work on the entry, but as much as a wonderful mindfuck it is, atm I don't have too many ideas. I definitely wouldn't do both Scaraba and Lost Underworld though, since my ideas for them cover a similar topic. The prospect is exciting/daunting to me since I guess it's like... HNGHHH HUGE FANSITE AHHHH NERVES /)_(\;;;

( CUT for Masterchef Australia season 2 finale and Ten being stupid in a good(?) way )

I was actually going to speak about an observation about the Election Debate because something annoyed me but I think it's been crushed overwhelmingly by Masterchef fangasm.