Didn't even think to mention anything about it until now; I think it's because I've been all nihilistic and shit lately.






(Free will doesn't exist and we're all just bags of self-perpetuating chemical reacitons)

its 2017 now so here's some new years advice:
human capacity for kindness will always be limited while human capacity for cruelty will always be limitless
society rarely improves but is excellent at pretending it has so people will fool themselves into thinking things get better
faith in humanity is a terrible thing for anyone to have
optimism is nothing more than a slow-killing poison
all of human behavior is a series of chemical reactions in the brain and there is no true randomness so really every action every human has ever taken and ever will take was already set in stone from the very first moments of the universe

Happy new year's day everybody!

fuck oyu

A timeline:
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/w.....(Pok%C3%A9mon)
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/w.....(Pok%C3%A9mon)
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/w.....(Pok%C3%A9mon)
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/w.....(Pok%C3%A9mon)
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/w.....(Pok%C3%A9mon)
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/w.....(Pok%C3%A9mon)
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/w.....(Pok%C3%A9mon)



i mean
what a bizarrely specific thing to get horny for
tsareena has dominatrix boots for god's sake


(Florges not being a grass type doesn't stop her from being a sexy plant lady, bee tee dubs.)

yes

no

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Focus_on_the_Family
these jackasses are almost certainly going to get jacassier and I'm dependent on people who are wild cards with regards to coming out and my weird anxiety/reflex to avoid being sociable makes it difficult to maintain a support network and my ADD makes both work and college difficult and I just feel so scared and alone right now

But then Pretty Seal made the logical choice to become Prettier whilst Owl decided that logic was for other people and gave up on everything that actually made it interesting.
My heart is no longer torn.

(Meanwhile Fire Cat started out kind of boring and merely stayed that way.)

I'm not gonna lie, I was hoping that the next expansion would take place anywhere but Ala Mhigo, just because the idea of all the heavy handed foreshadowing in 3.3 and 3.4 being a massive red herring is hilarious to me.

This may literally be just a copy paste of the journal it immediately follows, but for SOME REASON it feels like it's quite appropriate to do so. Anyway:

Yadda yadda FA sucks blah blah the staff are all incompetent babble babble ALL THE SAME SHIT AS ALWAYS.
(FA is a lot like Youtube and Facebook; it sucks, and there are better alternatives, but all its users have already built a presence here and up and moving all that is a royal pain in the ass so FA is comfortable where it is despite sucking so much.)

Not leaving, since FA has this thing going on where I upload stuff and it gets noticed better than on other sites, but I try to keep my furry accounts as identical to one another as possible so you're getting pretty much the same thing anywhere. (Except Inkbunny. If there's one furry site I hate even more than FA, it's Inkbunny. I continue to post there for the same reason I continue to post here but my presence there is greatly reduced.)

https://www.weasyl.com/~ericthemoogle
Probably your best bet here, I consider Weasyl the least terrible furry site I use if only by default. (The entire furry fandom is still terrible on some level regardless.)

https://ericthemoogle.sofurry.com/
SF is just sort of there but it's there nonetheless.

https://inkbunny.net/EricTheMoogle
I'd rather not. I do anyways, because I'm some sort of moron, but I'd rather not.

No FN yet but I'll probably get one sooner or later (and phase out Inkbunny in the process; like I said, if there's one furry site I hate even more than FA it's IB). No Tumblr or Twitter or Facebook or anything because I prefer not to interact with the furry community outside spaces wholly dedicated to the furry community.

Yadda yadda FA sucks blah blah the staff are all incompetent babble babble ALL THE SAME SHIT AS ALWAYS.
(FA is a lot like Youtube and Facebook; it sucks, and there are better alternatives, but all its users have already built a presence here and up and moving all that is a royal pain in the ass so FA is comfortable where it is despite sucking so much.)

Not leaving, since FA has this thing going on where I upload stuff and it gets noticed better than on other sites, but I try to keep my furry accounts as identical to one another as possible so you're getting pretty much the same thing anywhere. (Except Inkbunny. If there's one furry site I hate even more than FA, it's Inkbunny. I continue to post there for the same reason I continue to post here but my presence there is greatly reduced.)

https://www.weasyl.com/~ericthemoogle
Probably your best bet here, I consider Weasyl the least terrible furry site I use if only by default. (The entire furry fandom is still terrible on some level regardless.)

https://ericthemoogle.sofurry.com/
SF is just sort of there but it's there nonetheless.

https://inkbunny.net/EricTheMoogle
I'd rather not. I do anyways, because I'm some sort of moron, but I'd rather not.

No FN yet but I'll probably get one sooner or later (and phase out Inkbunny in the process; like I said, if there's one furry site I hate even more than FA it's IB). No Tumblr or Twitter or Facebook or anything because I prefer not to interact with the furry community outside spaces wholly dedicated to the furry community.

Mmmmm... sodomy.

sure do wish I could get back into an unambiguously good mental place
sure do wish everything on the planet wasn't apparently conspiring to prevent it
sure do wish things haven't been going on like this for at least a year

Summary of my past week.
Well, that and "*sniffle* *sniffle* *cough*"

Anyway, how are you?

... I think we should all take some time to remind ourselves of the most important parts of Fire Embelms past:
http://serenesforest.net/blazing-sw...../raven-lucius/
http://serenesforest.net/blazing-sw.....s/lyn-florina/
http://serenesforest.net/blazing-sw.....legault-heath/
http://serenesforest.net/blazing-sw...../lucius-karel/
http://serenesforest.net/the-sacred...../gerik-joshua/
http://serenesforest.net/path-of-ra.....rts/ike-soren/
http://serenesforest.net/path-of-ra.....ts/ike-ranulf/
(bearing in mind that getting most of these conversations changes the endings of their respective games such that the characters in question live happily ever after, regrettably left out of the above transcripts)

(Also, bump. I still feel lousy but I'm still decidedly improved from the magical adventure detailed in my previous journal.)

...you're up until 3 AM because you can't stop crying.
And then you're up the rest of the night because you have to get up at 6 the next day and trying to get those last few hours of sleep is more trouble than it's worth.



why the fuck is everything so fucking lousy

Spend most of the day feeling like crap.
Birthday mostly served to remind me that I'm wasting everyone's time just by existing and I hate it.

I haven't been feeling great lately, in case you couldn't tell.

Yet another reminder that I'm of no use to anyone coming right up.

I more-or-less got FFXIV for the holidays this year (strictly speaking, what I got was a machine that can actually run FFXIV and got the game cheap from Humble Bundle, but whatever) so I've been going through it seeing how it compares to what I'm used to and now I'm babbling about it in a journal because I'm strange like that (also, with no organization of my thoughts whatsoever and plenty of unwarranted nitpick).

I reached level 50 (the highest I can go since the Humble Bundle didn't include the expansion) in two jobs AND completed the pre-Heavensward storyline in about a month (so about as long as it would take to finish a single-player FF game), as opposed to the literal years it took me to reach the same point in XI (granted I spent said XI time as a teenager with limited time to spend on games), rendering what was intended to be a throwaway character I'd created on Excalibur not-so-throwaway (I'd intended to simply do some fights and get some levels to test the waters but it turns out XI-style level grinding is a good way to get nowhere fast). STILL wishing XI would do the whole all-quests-give-EXP thing so that was actually fairly refreshing.

The Duty Finder ( http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Duty_Finder ) is a godsend and I would probably have killed for something like it in XI, at least back in the day. Never would have had to spend those hours in Bastok shouting for help with that damn dragon fight, at least (then again, if XI subscribed to the same design philosophy as XIV the dragon fight would probably have been solo-able from the very start instead of years later when the removed the level cap on the fight), not to mention stuff like Dynamis or skirmishes or Escha. Hell, I've done several dungeons without having to speak a word to any of the people I've worked with (thank goodness).
I wish things didn't get so chaotic once you get enough party members, though. Like, both times I've done something with 8 party members instead of 4 I had no idea what the hell was going on most of the time.

Speaking of things I wish were in XI: a few years back, Square polled XI users (in a poll I can't seem to find) and the top result was more options for character appearance. Square, being Square, never bothered with this in XI. This, of course, made it so I was very happy when I could make the most effeminate pretty boy of a Tarut- LALAFELL I could muster. Better yet is the ability to dye armor pieces different colors, meaning there's no more stuff like the Scorpion Harness matching absolutely none of the other armor pieces one typically combines it with or the Justaucorps +1 being hideously tacky in general. It blows you can't use them with everything but it's still a godsend when you're used to every robe in the world being the same boring brown color.
That said, one thing XI got right over XIV in this is that the /lockstyle command is so much easier to deal with than glamour prisms. I mean, I just want the stats of that jester's hat without having to actually have the ugly thing on my head, was it really necessary to postpone that till I was level 50 AND make me get the exact prism that matches the piece I want it to look like? I know this is petty of me but it just struck me as needlessly complicated for what it was.
('Course, that wouldn't annoy me as much if only XIV's BLM gear weren't so dog ugly. I mean, look at these dapper little numbers from XI:
http://ffxiclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:BLMAF.png
http://ffxiclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/.....e:BLMRelic.png
http://ffxiclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/.....ttire-Full.PNG
And compare to their XIV equivalents:
http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Wizard%27s_Set
http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Sorcerer%27s_Set
They look a bunch of stitched-together trash bags. Also, you get both sets at around the same time but I fail to see why you'd ever use the wizard's set over the sorcerer's one. Weird.)

I like how much item crafting is compared to XI (in that I can actually stand to actually bother with it without completely losing my patience after a few minutes). Synthesis and getting high-quality items being based on actual player input as opposed to XI's shoving materials into a crafting menu and hoping for the best kind makes me wonder just what they were even thinking with FFXI's synth system in the first place (which I guess is true about quite a few old games but whatevs).

Something that really weirds me out about Eorzea/Hydaelyn is that there's a LOT of stuff that looks and behaves like stuff in Vana'diel... and that it's pretty much entirely random whether or not it has the same name. I mean, I still keep thinking of my Lalafell character as a Tarutaru and keep mistaking "Roegadyn" for "Raogrimm" (the latter being a major FFXI character). Meanwhile, goblins look exactly like XI goblins and the Qiqirn and Mamool Ja both look the same and have the same name as their XI counterparts despite not being in the Aht Urghan setting that made them interesting. (I mean, what's the point of the Mamool Ja without an Al Zahbi to lay siege to? Come on.) (Also, Ishgard is totally just a shitter San d'Oria.)
The cameos from other FFs are even weirder, IMO. There's a place that gets destroyed that's named after Doma from FFVI. Is it really necessary that they have the same name? I mean, they both exist solely to get fucked over by their respective games' evil empires, but that being a reason to have the same name sounds more like an inside joke than anything else (bearing in mind that the place's destruction is a serious and important plot point). I know it's petty but it still bothers me. (On the other hand, being able to ride around in my very own Magitek Armor is pretty much the best.)

I guess the best way to put it is this: Eorzea feels like a giant playground while Vana'diel feels like a second home. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just I was pretty much right on the money when I figured I wouldn't quite reach the same emotional attachment to Eorzea I did with Vana'diel.
I think the reason for this is the immense influence from WoW, specifically in the way quests are laid out. Since your main method of leveling your character is through quests, the things are everywhere, and you're encouraged to just rush through any of them that aren't in the main scenario (plus a few that are) or the job/class storylines, meaning you only really have the opportunity to get attached to so many characters and places. For example: the FFXI character that people most remember is Professor Shantotto of Windurst. Thing is, Shantotto, at least at first, wasn't really relevant to any major storyline; all she did was give you a series of mini-quests to get a(n admittedly fairly important) Black Mage spell.
On top of that, since the main storyline isn't tied to your home nation except for a few early throwaway quests you don't really get a chance to get emotionally invested in it; like, I'm technically affiliated with Ul'dah, I don't really give much of a crap about it; by contrast in XI I grew a genuine fondness for Windurst and Bastok over the course of their respective storylines (San d'Oria was just too boring). Considering my national affiliation in both games was just for the sake of convenience at first, the contrast is kind of jarring.

(Also, I was able to finish that FFXI crossover quest before the window for it closed and it turned out it was mostly just fanservice of the hey-I-remember-that variety.)

Aaaand that's enough words that nobody else cares about. Looking forward to seeing whether or not the develop an obsession with "alternate universe where the world is doomed" as a plot point in this game too.

One of those days I feel like I'm wasting everyone's time just by existing.

Welp, that part of the cold still refuses to go away after several weeks. As usual.

So how you all doin'?

After all these years I have finally completed all the (main) stories Final Fantasy XI has to offer. Ergo, it's time for another FFXI ramble! Whoo!

Seekers of Adoulin left a bad first impression but the central characters were likable enough that it grew on me by the end so I'd say it was a net positive by the end. It's still probably my least favorite, if only because so much time is spent with the completely insufferable Adoulinian high council members. Far more interesting, I think, is the quest-line for obtaining the Barkarole earring ( http://ffxiclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/.....karole_Earring ) because the premise, while fairly cliche, is much more fun than the expansion's main plot; then again I'm just kinda un-fond of Ulbuka/Adoulin as a setting so I dunno. That said, I do kinda dig a lot of the new battles it added; Skirmish is pretty fun, for example... the first few times, until you've done it dozens of times in hopes that you both randomly get the stone for worthwhile equipment augments and the randomly chosen augment for your equipment piece is the one that's actually helpful to your job. :/
In retrospect, now that I've had some time to play around in Final Fantasy XIV, I think that what stands out about Adoulin the most is just how much of it, design-wise, was influenced by XIV (well, A Realm Reborn specifically). For example, Reives are an awful lot like FATEs, if a little more restricted and mandatory, and the Geomagnetron Waypoints are basically the Aethernet (as are the Survival Guides and Homepoint warps added to pre-Adoulin areas after the fact, for that matter). I kinda wonder how much, if any, overlap there is between the two games' dev teams now.

Far more important than Adoulin, however, is Rhapsodies of Vana'diel. Final Fantasy XI is an MMORPG that can be beaten, with ending credits and everything. (With an ending credits theme that's pretty great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVZgBk7_jTM ) It's actually pretty clever: all the previous storylines became more and more self-contained as new expansions came out and Rhapsodies ties them all together by having a plot point from one of the early ones be the reason for the world being threatened with destruction time and time again and requires you make progress in other storylines as you progress in it (this also leads to some mild amusement from how the required progress in previous storylines is significantly less than the plot assumes you've done; Rhapsodies cutscenes just love to assume you're BFFs with characters you're really only mild acquaintances with at that point). It's not entirely flawless, of course; I'm not especially fond of how the final boss - that is, the final boss of Final Fantasy XI as a whole - is directly lifted from another Final Fantasy game... but since said boss is more of an abstract concept than a character in both games it's not really so bad, especially considering the closest thing FFXI has ever had to a Big Bad was Promathia, who was already used up in the second expansion ever.
A pleasant surprise is that they didn't take the opportunity to advertise FFXIV when they easily could have. I mean, FFXI is absolutely obsessed with its alternate universes, they could have easily used that as an excuse to somehow work in something to the effect of "Hey look, here's an alternate universe that's really awesome! It's called Hydaelyn and there's this place called Eorzea there that you should totally go to! It'll be great!" and they didn't, surprising for Square in this day and age.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do in FFXI from moving forward, TBH. As we know, FFXI is an MMORPG and at the end of the day the point of an MMORPG is getting your hand on equipment that makes your numbers bigger, even slightly, and I'm not really sure how much time I want to spend on that now that the more interesting stuff's past. Now that I think of it, I think the biggest problem with the whole MMORPG-with-a-story setup is that I can't just start a new game to experience the story again like in a single player FF game, you also need to go through the whole MMORPG leveling-and-equipment rigamarole too. I dunno, man, I just dunno.

May your gluttony and consumerism bring you great joy this [insert fictional Christmas analogue of your choice]!

For example, I'm greatly enjoying New Computer Day! Huzzah!
I mean it's not really anything special, honestly, but compared to what I've been using since 2012 I still feel like I was an ant who was suddenly transformed into a giant. The true meaning of Decemberween: having a computer that runs better than "just barely!"

(At the very least I can finally run Final Fantasy XIV after all these years; I'll be giving it a shot in the next few days (I already got it in the Humble sale since it doesn't last very long but I have some other stuff I wanna do before I actually try anything).)

Went something like this:

me: hey brain how you doin'
brain: feelin' moody
me: wait what
brain: yeah this seems like a good week to spend moping around
me: brain it's finals week
me: we have to get work done
brain: oh
brain: well them's the breaks

And then finals were even more miserable than they usually are.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/382900/

Con: A port of a port is not necessarily a bad thing... but for whatever reason it's a port of the mobile port, which means it resembles a Flash game.

Pro: Maybe someone will release a mod to make it easier on the eyes? I mean someone modded the mobile-to-Steam verson of III so the menus are actually sensible and not awkward for-a-touch-screen-but-not-actually-on-a-touch-screen nonsense.

Con: FFV is in basically the same boat as VI is Steam-wise and nobody's really done anything meaningful there.

Pro: VI is considerably more popular than V so maybe there's still hope?

Con: ...but it's still a pre-VII FF so the chances of people giving a crap is still kinda up in the air

Pro: FFVI as a base game is strong enough on its own so maybe that'll be enough to compel people to make the only real PC version less awkward.

Con: I already have access to versions of the game that aren't so awkward and I imagine most people who care do too so it might still not happen.

Con: I've wanted a way to play this game on PC in an official way for a long, long time now and now that we have it its this version. Did I wish on a monkey paw and forget about it or something?

Con: I just transcribed my argument with myself about whether I should pick it up now or wait for awhile, what the fuck is wrong with me.