Currents of Time

Now, I'm not saying that the FFXIV free trial period is about to be extended to level 60 and entirely through both the launch game AND the first expansion (this is at least two JRPGs worth of content!), and I'm not saying that the first expansion, Heavensward, is actually amazing (content warning: religious cult founded on vore-martyrdom*), and I'm certainly not saying that they've finished trimming A Realm Reborn (launch game) down to be considerably less tedious and ridiculous (THEY'RE GIVING YOU TELEPORT TICKETS FOR THE WAKING SANDS ARE YOU KIDDING ME I HAD TO WALK UPHILL BOTH WAYS), and I'm not saying that I'm more than happy to help folk out in-game (PC and PS4 accounts even all play on the same servers!, buuuut................

If you were ever interested in trying out FFXIV, the day about the August 11th path drop is gonna be a really good time for it. :)




* YES REALLY, check out this entire thread of absolutely insane canon facts/

I tried to post last night and couldn't get this site to load and NOW I'VE FORGOTTEN WHAT I CAME HERE FOR but anyway life update, I'm still a depression beast (brain pills continue to work wonders though we're also still approaching DISASTER SEASON) with low-level generalized anxiety but also now I've been diagnosed with ADHD and am playing the fun game of trying to decide if I want to try medication. I feel like I get by okay at work for the most part, but I can't deny that my apartment and life in general OUTSIDE the office is kind of an extreme crisis, so uh. Idek.


...... All my Rana icons are from Legacy and her hair color looks drastically different even though I didn't make any changes to it (I only changed her tail style) and it weirds me out.


oh god I'd forgotten how much tagging entries on a phone sucks if you're not using the tag editing feature help help help

Had some bad times and hit a downswing. Have re-emerged and started taking the vitamin D supplements again. They help!

Work is still awesome, though one of my coworkers left at the beginning of the month. The new girl starts tomorrow. I wonder what she will be like! Hopefully awesome. I like awesome people.

Supernatural is back again, yay, and I have liked it so far (all two episodes) but also I am kind of worried there is going to be some secondhand embarrassment in the coming episodes. OH GOD SO AWKWARD. Aauugh, I can't watch. *hides behind hands*


I have just finally managed to detach myself from my Kindle and have started reading actual, physical books again! It's pretty exciting. But for the e-book readers! I read a series that I thought was really awesome! It had snark and action and adventure and an awesome female main character! It is sort of steam-punky, I guess? And the first book is free on Amazon! Check it out, if you want. :3


FFXIV check:

One of my friends in-game came after me a bit ago because I hadn't logged in for a few weeks and they were worried (we are all connected over Steam). ... that is one of those things that basically never happens to me. I was really touched that a. they noticed, and b. they went looking for me. That gave me just enough of a boost that I was able to start crawling back up out of the aforementioned pit and I started logging in again. And now I have completed the current story-line (the benefits of already being level 50!) AND earned my beautiful, beautiful relic sword and shield. s-so happy ;o;

My server is finally open for character creation. Or it was earlier. Maybe it's closed again. The point is that now it's been open. Yay!


ALSO. XIII's Lightning is coming to Eorzea! I AM READY.

Do you want to know what I did with myself this weekend? IT IS PRETTY SAD.


FRIDAY: 6:30pm I LOG IN to play more phase 3 beta. I do not log back out until 1am SATURDAY MORNING. And then I stayed up even later to group chat with my linkshell mates. Because fuck schedules and tiredness.

Saturday, I sleep in until 9 (that is a whole 3 hours! But then consider I went to bed 3 almost hours late...), and after I finally haul my lazy bones out of bed, I decide, okay yeah I guess I should attend to a few things today... post office, pharmacy, few other things... aaand then I came home and LOGGED BACK IN. And remained so until, AGAIN, 1 IN THE MORNING. (Actually, I suffered a bout of exhaustion and took a three hour nap in the late afternoon. But whatever.)

It is like a disease I just cannot stop this is worse than last week oh my god AND I DO NOT EVEN CARE BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT MAGIC OCCURRED BETWEEN THIS WEEKEND AND LAST?



FUCKING CHARACTER IMPORTING.



OMG


RANA


MY BABY




....SWEETHEART, I THINK THEY FUDGED UP YOUR HAIR COLOUR, BUT IT'S OKAY WE CAN FIX IT IN PHASE 4/OPEN BETA. WHEN THEY ACTUALLY START ALLOWING ALTERATIONS AND ARE SAVING THINGS.


i missed yoooouuuu never leave me again :(



But seriously thank god I'm going to be in San Diego next weekend, because I don't really fancy a repeat of this. (Of course, next weekend won't be my first time putting Rana back in the field since bloody October - exempting the actual apocalypse event - so it probably wouldn't be as bad, regardless.)

My brother's current hobby is inflicting color tests on the family. Have an infuriating hue test.

ANYWAY I THREATENED TO TELL THE STORY OF MY CUDDLE KITTY TODAY so I am here to make good on it.

( The sad story of the saddest kitty )

IN UNRELATED NEWS I have just learnt that at some point in the recentish past, the original FFXIV servers went down FOR. EVER. Remember they rebooted them after the apocalypse for the people who said they still wanted to play, but I guess things finally dropped below a 30% log-in rate. I am... really weirdly sad about this. It's not like I've been logging in, but it was still, you know, that wonderful world I'd come to love was still there, even if it canonically isn't. It was kinda, I dunno, comforting, I guess. But now it's really gone, gone, and I can never, ever see it ever again. (yeah yeah chill the hug out it's just a video game jecca geez)... Also I still cry like the emotionally unstable lunatic I am when I watch the "End of the Era" video.

... also female roegadyn are hardcore badass and I find myself wondering if I won't have to start a second character just to play as one because holy crap.

BILLING FEES FINALLY ANNOUNCED

Fee Type Service Period Price per 30 days
Basic Service Fee 30 days $6.99
90 days $5.99 (total $17.97)
180 days $4.99 (total $29.94)


$30 for half a year start on January 5 omg I can totally afford that.



GLEE!

This hasn't better be a joke, or I will scream in rage. (It was posted, what, yesterday? And I doubt SE would like their representative posting a joke like that on their official forum. BUT PARANOIA.)

FFXIV is getting auto-attack omg yesssssssss NO MORE 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 1 (WHY IS IT STILL ALIVE??) 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 'You cannot attack a KO'd target' (oops). I mean, I kinda like their set-up now (it does have some good ideas), but god, I really hate having to click EVERY TIME I want Rana to even just swing her sword.


So, yeah! I give XIV (and SE) a hard time 'cause, look, that was an embarrassingly bad launch, and it only got funnier and more embarrassing as the months went by. But they are doing a really good job of working to turn it around. I am so proud of you, SE. (For example: some of - I don't even know what the hell all the problems were - whatever they changed has allowed the game to run significantly better on my computer. I mean, no, this isn't a hardcore gaming machine, but wtf, it shouldn't have run as poorly as it did. People with hardcore gaming machines had troubles running it.) (They've been running surveys asking the player base what they want to see and in what order, and then they listen, which you'd think would be obviously, but this is SE we're talking about, man, they know what's best so stuff it.) (You can even navigate the menus now! Yay! ... yes, really. The menus were horrible on launch, almost unusable for some.) (Also, the love they've given XI since XIV flopped helped, too.) (... that said, if they suddenly announced they were going to start billing, I'd probably cancel my account, because it's still not good enough for me to pay them to play it.)


I'm almost done packing (should be working on the straggling bits, but, well... I'm tired of it), woohoo. But, 'cause I'm an idiot, earlier today I went to the game store (...I went to pick up the key, then I went to the bank, and then I got lost on the way back and magically found myself at GameStop) and bought more things to pack. Genius me r. (Someone else's post recently reminded me that I need to pay attention to DS game launches now, and then I wanted to go check it out, even though I'd already looked up the price online. And then, hey! They had a used copy of Birth By Sleep that included the cover art and booklet - and the product registration code, which was a surprise - and I've never even seen a used one, never even mind one with all its parts, since for some reason everyone else throws out everything but the game when they buy things for the PSP. I will probably never see another one! So I had to buy it. And then immediately pack it, since it's not like I can get to my PSP right now, anyway! Since it's packed, too.)

And while I was there waiting in line, two things! One, apparently there's another Silent Hill title (STARRING A PRISONER, whee, I'd say more but this is getting too long and it would mostly be WTF, whining, and fan-bitching, anyway) coming out at some point. The girl in front of me was reading the Upcoming Games! list and was like, what, another one? So then we whined a little about how the more recent ones haven't been any good. And then I found out the guy working there had also played FFXI and wanted to play FFXIV (and to get back to XI, but POL kept crashing when he tried to update, so I gave him some hints on how to get around it and a bit of a summary of both their current states). Kinda cool! Never met another SE MMO player (or, rather, met someone who played either and not because I'd talked them into it). (No, really, all the people I know who play/ed it are people I knew before it launched or people I met in-game. And I've only tripped - ie, met in a place that wasn't a FFXI/V-based community/forum - over one person online who played XI. I WAS EXCITED OKAY? ._.;)

What is this entry even really for? I DON'T KNOW. That is my disclaimer and your warning.

So, anyway, hey, I was clicking around YouTube, as you do, from one of the videos in the last entry, and ended up tripping my way to the FFXIV theme song. It's called "Answers" and is sung by Susan Calloway. I was familiar with the name, but I hadn't placed her as the singer in the clips I'd heard before. (They play a short bit of it during your intro, no matter which town you choose. The whole WALK FREEEEE bit, for those of you who witnessed the picture spam.) I'd been rather unimpressed, really, but that might've just been the repetition getting to me. Now that I've heard the whole thing, I find I rather like the song.

Except it is kind of not so great at being The Song for the game! Which is kind of disappointing! Maybe it will make more sense once they add in a storyline (BE FAIR THERE IS A STORY it is just rather a bit scattered and you haven't seen much of it). And, as far as I know so far, they never actually play the whole song. Final Fantasy XI's main song (well, I suppose there are two of them, now) was played in its entirety in the game's opening, and because of that (and probably in part because they actually say Vana'diel in it a few times), it's very much FFXI's song for me. (Said opening video. Or, if you'd rather just the song, click this one. The former has the benefit of including the lyrics and their translation - it's sung in Esperanto. OR, they're also up on SongMeanings.) (Memoro de la Stono's melody pops up all over the place, actually, though you only hear the lyrics in the opening movie.) And the other song is also heard in game, at the end of the Chains of Promathia story, which was huge and epic and definitely deserving of its own song. (Link to that, as well. AND OF COURSE. Obligatory lyrics link.)

I cannot listen to either of those without thinking of the game. (Despite having not yet finished the Chains of Promathia story, myself. Also, for reasons I am pretty sure I am never going to understand, Memoro de la Stono manages to slam right onto my IRRATIONAL EMOTIONAL REACTION button every single time I listen to it. Nostalgiaaaa. And sometimes eye-watering. I don't get it.) (Actually, the phrase "That world was [called] Vana'diel" also triggers something similar. MY BRAIN. I do not understand.)

...SINCE I'M ALREADY LINKING EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE, THIS ONE - sung by the aforementioned Susan Calloway - is the version of Distant Worlds that I much prefer. It also has a nice version of Memoro de la Stono in front of it, though they cut out the last verse, wtf.


But what was I saying. Right. Yes. So then I listen to "Answers" (the lyrics have trouble, I picked it for the pretty video. If you want the lyrics, this one has a better version of them), I think, wow, this is actually a pretty song, and I like it, but I do not see the connection. And I don't know if this is SE failing to get XIV up and running properly, or if it's just not a fitting song, or what, but it kind of makes me sad that I don't get it.



While we're here rambling pointlessly and incoherently about Final Fantasy music, though, here, have a listen to the English version of Suteki da ne and then wonder with me at why on Earth they would feel the need to do such a thing. I dunno, maybe I just have too much of an emotional attachment to the original (by "emotional attachment" I mean DAMN IT FFX STOP MAKING ME CRY EVERY TIME I BEAT YOU). ...(lyrics! - which, if you look at, you'll notice the English version isn't really that far off, but that doesn't stop me from wondering why they bothered with it.)

guess who's back

back again


rana's back at least until the end of the month when the free trial ends



tell a friend




(...DAMNIT, SE, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS WIN)