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I started playing Persona 5: The Phantom X and am enjoying it but I have a confession to make...I've never played any of the original games. I have watched some of a let's play for P5, watched the anime for that and for P4 but I think that's it (besides reading AkeShu fic). I never planned to actually play the games for reasons I don't remember (though P5 made me consider it). Now I've changed my mind and am diving in with the first game. I got it through Vimms which gathers old school games.

So far? It's good to know that the music was good from the beginning! Navigating the school's hallways makes me dizzy, does it go that fast on the original console?? I hope I didn't miss anything because I kept getting lost lol

The designs are very interesting, they all look American or English. In JP Masao's mom calls calls him Maa-kun so the EN version called him 'Mark' as a nickname. Looks like Hidehiko's nickname is the same in the JP.

Masao is sweet with Maki, seems he can be reliable. :)

I don't normally play with English voices but beggars can't be choosers and the voices aren't bad here.

Yamaoka and Nanjou's relationship is funny and sweet too.

Oh no you have to pick your stats in this game? I'll just follow this.

In a hospital full of doctors Yamaoka still wasn't helped by anyone. 😵 Also that promise he made Nanjou make...may as well ask him to become the emperor;; Agh poor Nanjou, I hope this group all become close so he doesn't feel so alone.

I don't like that it's not clear what you're supposed to be doing at any given time. No quest log or tracking. If you stop playing for a while it can take a bit to remember what you're doing. Sometimes characters remind you but...Instead of safe rooms there are 'Agastya trees' where you can save.

Maki showed up at the school with no memory, she probably didn't even realize her mom was injured in the infirmary. Masao get captured by the demons and apparently they just put him in jail instead of killing him?? They even put the key in the key box lol

Oh ok apparently demons can take over humans??

I'm curious how the earthquake, Maki's waking and the DEVA system are connected, plus Maki's missing friend? And of course Personas. Apparently anyone can have them, not just heroes.

Noo, using Persona skills isn't part of auto?!

I love how irritable the characters get when you don't go to the next quest point fast enough. Sorry but exploration is life!!

In the Abandoned Werehouse, how do they know Ayase doesn't have a Persona too, since it's happened to the last few people who joined before?? Now she's in danger on her own. Also with the school going under, I hope Maki's mom is okay.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is amazingly hit-or-miss for me, but this looks like it's coming up "hit". The sapient arthropods are a swarm of bees. If there are any spiders, I haven't met them yet!

While doing very boring work, I listen to spoken radio, which because BBC Sounds recommendations and "your next episode" are rubbish*, means going back through the schedules of Radio 4 and Radio 4 extra day by day and seeing what's been on. Yes I could Subscribe to Podcasts but I've been listening to speech radio since I was recording it on my cassette player I was given when I was 7 so I could listen to it again, and I like being in control and searching for what I want rather than having things piling up like an external obligation. So using this method, recently I have listened to:

1977 by Sarah Wooley
Which is a play about Angela Morley composing the music for Watership Down. Before transitioning, Angela Morley had written and arranged music for the Goon Show and wrote the theme tune to Hancock's Half Hour, and the play begins when Malcolm Williamson, Master of the Queen's Music is overwhelmed with writing music for the Queen's Silver Jubilee and has totally forgotten he is supposed to also be writing the soundtrack to Watership Down. Several times in this play people say something like "Oh God, the rabbits!" Malcolm Williamson is really not in a good place and stops answering the door and then runs away to the Carmargue with his (male) publisher, leaving not very many minutes of not arranged music with the symphony orchestra and the recording studio booked for something like 10 days' time. And people go "oh shit" and "the only person who can do this is Angela Morley" and go and grovel and promise it's not going to be about her, it's all for the sake of the rabbits and persuade her to just watch the film, no strings, and of course she does it and it's brilliant. 

Limelight: Pretender Prince
about Bonnie Prince Charlie and the 1745 Jacobite rebellion
This is part drama and part author (Colin MacDonald) telling us why he has dramatised it the way he has, and part interjections from historians, which worked much better across all the episodes than I thought it would the first time the drama was interrupted by the writer or the historians. Bonnie Prince Charlie doesn't come out of it all very well. The only Stuart history I did at school (in England) was James I to Civil War and death of Charles I (A-level) so all I really know about that bit comes from folk songs. So it was good and I enjoyed it.

As it's a Limelight drama it might be available as a podcast other than on BBC Sounds which now won't let you listen to it outside the UK. I've liked a lot of the Limelight ones, though they tend to be tense thrillers and not about Bonnie Prince Charlie, but I dislike the way BBC Sounds views all of them as a series and is now telling me to continue listening to my "next episode", which is about the CIA and not at all the same thing.


*You listened to a play. Now listen to another play that was on at the same time the next day.

I used my boardgame here.

I finished 6/7 from my last PTW list. I actually got a lot watched in general this time!

Avatar:


Kagami (if I land on a tile I don't want: roll a dice, if Even go forward one tile, if Odd go back (not trap tile)

Roll #1:

A 2, slow start. Prompt: villainess. Guess I'll be watching more HameFura already!

Roll #2:

Aand a 9! Mystery element. It's too bad the next season of Kamonohashi Ron isn't out for this. It's been over 10 years since I watched Durarara!! but why not. I had totally forgotten I was reading the novels and I have entries talking about the first season which I'll look through before continuing with season 2.

Roll #3:

Another 9! Prompt: Lowest rated on list. This sent me into SUCH a rabbit hole. The anime is Flaglia from about 2 years ago and it was licensed by Amazon Video but there was some delay and then just...nothing, it's not anywhere. I did find it on Youtube but it's half Japanese half-Korean and the subs are auto-generated. I can understand the Japanese parts okay but not the Korean. Maybe I'll be okay between them all??

Roll #4:

A 1, PTW list tile. I'm going to use my skill because I have too much I want to continue right now to start something new. I rolled Odd with 1 so I went back a tile. Prompt: animal on the cover. Picked the first one I saw with Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu LOVE!. Not the prettiest animal around but it'll do.

Roll #5:

A 10, right past the trap tile (I was sweating). Prompt: Reincarnated into another world. Welp the only other one besides HameFura on my CW list is TenSura, wasn't planning on watching more so soon but why not. That seems to be my attitude today.

Roll #6:

A 9 and the end. Reward: Wind Breaker.

Where to watch:
Flaglia

"Why work here?"

"Weekly pay!"

Yup, that's why I would like to apply for any and all jobs!

(On a side note, A has been sending me a lot of job links today. I'm a bit inundated, but I somehow don't think that "Great, please don't send them to me, just fill them out with my resume for me" is going to go over very well.)

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Asked where I lived, was concerned that the answer is "Staten Island". FFS, it's not Siberia!

I need to start telling people I'm moving in with a friend in Tribeca. Just straight up lie.

Ellie is a Lipan Apache teenager in a world where magic, vampires, ghosts, and so forth are known to be real. She’s inherited the family gift for raising ghosts, though she only raises animals; human ghosts always come back wrong, and she’s happy with the companionship of her beloved ghost dog Kirby, not to mention her pet ghost trilobite. But when her cousin, who supposedly died in a car crash, returns in a dream to tell her he was murdered, she finds that knowing who killed him isn’t as helpful as one might imagine…

Ellie’s cousin Trevor told her the name of his killer, Abe Allerton from Willowbee, but he didn’t know why or how he was killed. Ellie enlists her best friend, Jay, a cheerleader with just enough fairy blood to give him pointy ears and the ability to make small lights. More importantly, he’s good at research. They learn that Willowbee is in Texas, near the town where Trevor lived with his wife, Lenore, and their baby. Jay brings in help: his older sister’s fiancé, Al, who’s a vampire.
All of them, plus Ellie’s parents and a ghost mammoth belonging to her grandmother, play a part in the effort to solve the mystery of Trevor’s death and bring his murderer to justice. And so, in a sense, will a major character who’s long dead (and not a ghost) but who’s a big presence in Ellie’s life: Six-Grand, her great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, the last person to have a gift as powerful as Ellie’s… and who vanished forever into the underworld.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. I mean, come on. GHOST TRILOBITE. GHOST MAMMOTH. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s heartfelt, it has lovely chapter heading illustrations, and it’s got some gorgeous imagery - I particularly loved a scene where the world transforms into an oceanic underworld, and Ellie sees a pod of whales swimming in the sky of a suburban neighborhood.

It's marketed as young adult and Ellie is seventeen, but the book feels younger (and so does Ellie.) I'd have no qualms handing it to an advanced nine-year-old reader, but it also appeals to adult me who misses the time when "urban fantasy" meant "our world, but with ghosts, elves, and so forth."

Just went through the website and applied to everything I meet the minimum qualifications for, for what good it may do.

They could, in theory, save my information from one application to the next. They don't do that. They could also not require me to answer "where did you hear about this?" every time - but the joke's on them. "I went to your website and clicked on every job where I meet the minimum qualifications" is not an option, so I've just been lying and saying "hiring event" because that's the first choice. They will get no useful data from me, no thank you!

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is the constant whiplash between panic and popcorn.

Right now I'm hovering over "popcorn" - new political parties? With added drama and infighting? LOL, okay, let's see how that works out for you!

(Look, I need a break from panic now and again, and I will take my fun where it appears.)

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English vs Original version comparisons of Twisted Wonderland

Asian BL TV show recs - They did them for a friend but they have a useful rating scale attached!

The Ethics of Looking And The “Harmless” Peeping Tom - Wonderful job, this is the second video like this I've enjoyed by them.

When Sunshine Falls for Mr. Grumpy: BL Couples That Own This Trope! (Asian TV)

the death of the "monster of the week" = less whump

"I finished reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in my life. With all of *vague gesture at everything* this going on. I Am Not Okay" - Really moving talk about their experience, it really made me want to cry tbh

Eirenicon: A proposal to resolve disputes and reconcile differences in order to advance peace, strengthen or establish unity, or foster solidarity.

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( Though, upon reflection, it's surprising that this hasn't happened before in 30+ years of menstruation )

I'd say that was the worst thing to happen this weekend, but then I glanced at the news, and how do things keep getting worse? I thought we might at least get a reprieve over the holiday weekend, Congress would all go on vacation and not pass any terrible bills in the interim, but I guess not.

I'm not linking to it, not today. I know how to take a break, even if they don't. Take this article on amenorrhea instead.