Happy Bari day B!

Sorry I wasn't around yesterday, I was feeling useless and spent the day to myself playing games. But happy belated birthday to Barinellos.

Grazie you two!
I hope everyone has had a good day in general.

I finished playing Link's Awakening DX (the GBC re-release of the original) for the first time today, and to be honest I hated it. While I can see the kind of design philosophy it is made around, I just don't have the patience for it, despite how easy the game is overall. I'm probably going to need some time to stew on it, and I'm thinking it's worth doing another playthrough, my preliminary thoughts is that it reminds me of FEZ: obtuse for the sake of being obtuse. A lot of it, I feel, is that I just already played not one, but TWO better versions of this game in the two Oracle games, which were made by American teams by the way and not really aligned with the rest of the Zelda series because of that, and are really what defined what I picture when I think of "Zelda".



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Also it occurs to me that I never shared, and I don't know if anyone is into speedrunning enough to care, but I know you all are very kind and supportive regardless, so I want to talk about my progress in Celeste. I started speedrunning it sometime last year, though I typically only run once a month or so, so I don't have a lot of attempts built up yet. Even so, more recently I've been able to run through the entire game in around 90 minutes easily, and my personal best is a 1hr13min run.

So, how has everyone's week been?
Been kind of quiet around lately, but it seems like most everyone is some kind of exhausted.

Very nice! I've never played Celeste, but I watched a couple of runs of it before. I'm not a speedrunner myself of any variety, but I do respect the skill. I tend to prefer casual playthroughs to speedruns in general, and I particularly avoid tool-assisted speedruns, but again, the skill is something I find impressive.


Yeah, we're getting into that point in the semester where all of us, teachers and students alike, just sort of get burned out. Plus, I've been having a variety of health issues, one on top of another, for a while now, all of which is leaving me pretty tired by the end of any given day. I'm still around, and I drop in every day, I just often don't have anything to say or post.

On that note, I started my Halloween piece for around here, but I lost steam on it almost immediately. If I can't find motivation to continue and finish it soon, I may need to wuss out and just write another poem for it this year. We'll see what happens. I have half a month yet. The sad thing is, back in the old days, it NEVER took me that long to write a story, unless it was a collab and getting passed back and forth. I like my job in the sense that I can afford to eat and live in my own house, but man, do I miss the days before my full-time job when I could knock out a story I was happy with in two days.

Kinda; my best friends are both in difficult situations and it sucks to know I can do basically nothing except listening to them. Especially since I'm not a natural for reassurance and my skin crawls when I utter an outright lie.

I've been keeping up my Fallen London roleplay, which is steadily heading into monst- em, scandalous eldritch dalliances Prurient material aside, it has been attracting most of my creative energies lately.

I've watched No Time To Die, and I quite liked it even if the only Craig Bond I've seen before is Skyfall, I believe. Still, egregious toughness/plot armor notwithstanding I found myself engaged with the characters, and fascinated by Rami Malek despite being rather unimpressed by his character's endgame. I plan to catch up on his stuff (specifically Bohemian Rhapsody, since I adore Queen, and Mr. Robot) soon-ish. Casino Royale would be less axing on my mental state than Mr. Robot as of now.

As far as RP goes, I'm currently in a Star Wars themed D&D game that has been pretty fun. I play a plucky little Bothan spy working for the Empire, not because I want to, but because of a string of unfortunate circumstances. He's a gambler, but, as you can no doubt glean, not the luckiest...

@LUna-
Now I don't feel so bad for never beating Link's Awakening as a kid. I remember starting over at one point and ending up on a very different route through the game, with no idea how to get into what I originally thought was the "first" dungeon.
I've never speedrun, but I've played through Celeste. Except for that last postgame world.

"some kind of exhausted" about sums it up I think.

In part because of the student with me (and my reluctance to be "that kind of person" around someone else, particularly around someone whom I am supposed to be setting an example for), I've mostly managed to avoid reddit-hopping this week, so I feel a bit better thuswise. I've been forcing myself not to turtle up lately and actually reach out to the groups I'm in, at least. Also been reading up on reproductive synchrony.


My favorite thing to do with games, is to play through casually, but with a critical eye towards theming, design, et cetera, but I have noticed of myself that I prefer playing a variety of different games rather than perfecting any single one, but I enjoy speedruns so much that I decided to try my hand at them here and there. Celeste happens to be an easy one to pick up and easily see your progress, unlike older games which I might choose instead (e.g. Donkey Kong Country) due to being part of my childhood and knowing better, since I worry that it would warp my perception of them.

But thank you for the compliment.


Amen. Oftentimes I think I complain unnecessarily about my job, but calculating it out, I have just about as much "free time" (not including sleep) as I do time involved with work (including commute), so it's no **** wonder I don't have any energy to do what I would love to do. I just don't want a full-time job, but I've never known anything that wasn't more than full-time.


Man, I'm jealous. I'm too stretched thin to act as a DM (besides my common complaint about not having time) and the one game I had been in got put on such a long pause because of the faeces-filled hand the DM got dealt that it's fallen through. Instead, I've been writing for myself in part to guide my world-building, which of course led to a major detour when I had to stop everything to figure if a woolen sweater and thigh-highs would be too outside the realm of "Roman fantasy" and what kind of materials were in use in the past.

Side-note 1: despite what I was raised to believe, wool can be almost as fine as silk, and is harvested from many different animals besides sheep, like llamas and rabbits.

Side-note 2: socks have been in use for a few thousand years, and possibly were much longer in the past (more like stockings). Relatedly, pants in general seem to have been invented for colder-weather climes, as many ancient peoples wore things like togas, dresses, and wraps.


I got the impression that, like most Zelda games, LA is linear and you can't enter dungeons out-of-order, but I guess I could be wrong. One thing that's been on my mind the last few days since I beat it, though, is how my opinion of Pokémon might be different if I hadn't had guides for the 2nd and 3rd generations (don't ask me how tf I figured out the first gen), because those games can be similarly obtuse. Like "level up your Eevee past lv.30 while within so many tiles of this random ice rock to get it to evolve". Some evolution mechanics seem more crazy than early Zelda because the game's mechanics do not allow for you to "rub x on y".

I played through a large percentage of Celeste my first time through, getting all the berries and hidden rooms I could find, and I unlocked the first post-game area, but there's a second post-game area that requires you to find everything which I haven't unlocked yet. I've seen it speedran and it looks insane.

Yeah, that 2nd bonus area is insane. I had to admit there was no way I'm getting through that.

I was playing some Bloodborne this weekend -- for the first time in months, mind you -- and found myself getting mad at... myself?

Basically it had been so long since last I played that I forgot where all the locked doors were, only remembering the "cleared paths" I had, and after I beat the boss Vicar Amelia and not getting a key or path or anything, I was getting frustrated over seemingly not having anywhere to go, thinking I would need to tread all over the map for some event like I was just complaining about Link's Awakening for. However, once I looked up a guide (something I'm really, really trying not to do for my first-ever playthrough) and followed the path I'm supposed to take, I realized, "oh, wait, I have been down here, and this door was locked."

I mean I still think it's a little bit unfair that you're given a "password" via a cutscene-flashback, but my frustration was entirely brought on by me. Would be nice to have a decent way to keep track of your progress, though.

Had a big Halloween party for work (which strictly speaking they reeeeeally don't want us doing things like that because it's getting the entire work force in close proximity) and that was fairly fun.

Unfortunately, pretty much everyone bounced before the finale, but twas to be expected. So we watched Dune to top it all off.

While I'm still worried it probably won't have the necessary draw to get lots of people in the seats, sweet gods that is a movie you have to watch on the big screen. It's a stunning film.

Oh yeah, the visuals are ridiculously good. Really something else. Was a bit weirded out by the climax bait-and-switch at the end though.

~HS Tryst snickers~

Admittedly, I'm surprised by how many people seem to have been unaware it was only a part 1, but I also have to keep in mind that folks don't usually follow movie news all that closely either

TBH I'm kind of surprised and maybe a little jealous because it seems most places (my own workplace included) are almost trying to get people to do parties and get-togethers to get back a "sense of normalcy". Not like management is willing to put in the work or money to actually do that themselves, but they have no problem telling a bunch of people to come to a tiny break room whenever a representative provides lunch.


Huh. I've always been under the impression that the average John Q. Public keeps up with the "hype" surrounding movies almost as much as the average gamer{TM) does with "triple-A" releases. I hate it, but everyone always seems to know more about new movies than I do.

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I just mentioned it the other day, but I already got a new personal best in Celeste ereyesterday: a 1:07:52, knocking another 6 minutes off of my record.

Other than that: bluuuuuuuugh

Good to hear that about Dune. I was thinking of going to see it (At a Drive-in because I found one showing it and am not comfortable going to a regular theater) and hadn't known it was to be Part 1.

You know, there's an extremely weird feeling associated with trying to square away the idea that something is worth mocking, but also genuinely liking it on the merits that invite mockery.

That pretty much sums up how I feel every time I hear a song by Vangelis.

Yeah, it being a Part 1 wasn't it as much as