JUST LEARNED WE GOT INVITED TO LIVE IN A PLACE!
WE MIGHT BE GOOD AND SAFE?!

Comparative details: Similar, but bigger (full house vs "upstairs" of a house).
Rent :800 VS current 625
Has a garden for doglet!
Decent internet available.

My ex is just phoning them up to confirm we'd like to go ahead with that! With only 39 days left, I don't want to play "This chair is too hard, that chair is too soft" and end up sitting on the floor. It's also in a town an hour-ish away, which is an hour *towards* civilization and being better connected.
Fuuuuuuuuuck.

I hope this goes through!

It will be VERY LONG and feature lots of detail for those curious how the last few days went!
Back hoooome. August 1, tourist season for my town so I'll try to hide a bit X_X.
39 days left until homeless also, woo!

Before everything went to shit, I booked myself a little vacation for a few days, many many many months ago.
I'll be going to Spain to see a very sweet and special "friend" :->. I fly the 25th but I won't be at the actual hotel until after midnight into the 26th (boo!).
But I'll have the 26th to the 30th as full days spent exploring a certain part of Spain <3.

I'll have my phone with me and can maybe offer a few replies occasionally, but as you can imagine it won't be my focus.
May do a picture dump once back!
Mostly just want to let people know.

Then when I get home the whiplash hits as I move from having fun in a new part of the world I haven't been in yet to applying for emergency housing against becoming homeless LOL.

I was expecting that.
But it still sucks.
The agent commented on how we were "such lovely people".
likely lip service.

;_; Fuckin boo.

We had a rental property invite us for a viewing.
I stayed home with doggo since she's super awkward, and my flatmate\ex went to check the place out. Seems like a 7\10 with no outstanding issues or surprises ! The rent is decent, so we immediately asked to have our application put forward. We may hear about this today, or within the next week.
I don't expect us to be the ones chosen just out of the other applicants you know, existing. But it would be nice. I bet they're not on a 51~day time limit lol.

And today I will keep lookinggggggg!

Well, we have a viewing for a place. 1 hour away but the local buses are *so dog shit*that we need to leave 4 hours before the appointment , get there with a 3 hour wait before the viewing, then wait 1 hour *after* for the bus to pick us up. 11:45 leave, 19:30 return.

But I'm glad we have a viewing. That's the closest we've gotten so far. It has a tiny mostly joke-tier "garden" that'll be good for doggo baby to dump her fluids into. Kitchen is tiny but cleaner, neater, more modern.
The rent is really good too! Our current one has been 625 for a while, this place would be 775 (And possibly a bit extra as a "Dog tax"), but even at 800 even it'd be great.
It's in a place about as big as where we live now but 1 hour closer to the big city and it has a rail station too.

So X_x. Whew. Two days, we'll see.

Yup.

I thought, oh cool my old employer heard I'm getting evicted. He wanted a chat.
He did offer some soft verbal help, but nothing concrete.

Quite the opposite.
He wanted a chat because the once-a-workday thing I was doing for him is now automated and there is no use for me.
Meaning what absolutely tiny income I had (340-440 gbp depending on working days & service being up so I can do my job) is now also gone.

I've got to move, with a time limit, and no guarantees, (58 days left), without even a *shred* of income.
I bet I look like an incredibly appealing tenant. No job, no income, lol.

Fuck and shit and piss and dicks.
;_;

Well, that went fucking awfully lol.

Loads of places forget to put "no pets" in so you jump through their assbag hoops to be told that post-mortem.
Quite a few places have this pointless "Must view" rule to protect their own ass. That means that our idea to move across the country to the cheaper north-east (From south west) is not likely to happen as going to a viewing would be 8 hours of travel. One way. And then 8 back. Not feasible.
Some people didn't want to do their jobs & simply failed to pick up the phone during regular work hours, on a regular work day (British are lazy AF).

I'm waiting for one "premier lettings agent" who failed to pick up to email me because her voice mail said she would. She's had four hours to do this as of writing this, but I'm not expecting much.
Some places weren't happy about us wanting to only move in September. So out of 32 properties checked in multiple cities and inquired about, there is only 1 "maybe" hanging around right now.

Mix of pissed and scared.

Okay, so uhh.

They said some stuff that didn't mesh with what happened & said some other things that stuck out. Very minor things.
My ex figured it out.

Their reasoning is bullshit. They always wanted to sell the place "soon" , no matter when they told us.
But remember, the window dudes wanted to work on replacing our windows while we lived here. It means we would have had lots of noise and dust and disturbance for 1-4 days, and either lose access to the rooms entirely (There are a LOT of materials), or they said they couldn't charge rent for it, since we have no room access, right?

Well that's just it.
They wanted to get the work done "around" us and STILL CHARGE RENT if it all went down without incident, *then* kick us out.
That's why they said a couple of things they said. And while their mother is quite unwell, they are using her state to justify their greed and wanting to swoop in and milk a tenant before throwing them out.

Gross fucking people :-\.

Few hours of waking up and going into town for a little baguette, then I gotta come back & start thinking of considerations on where we are even going to start looking.

Well, obviously, it's not great that we have to waste time and money relocating.

But you know what?
The place is small, badly laid out and there *are* things wrong with it that annoy us every single day.
I'm feeling happy about the idea of moving, just not the timing and costs and unnecessary nature of the one we are forced into lol.

But hey. New area, new explorations to undertake! Better connectivity, less assholes idling outside with their car engine on for 20-60 minutes. New sniffs for doggo.
It's weird, but I'm a bit excited about it, actually.

Well.
Balls.

So the place was done up by an idiot and several things were wrong. Some of which we didn't know about (The ceiling area under the roof has always been locked but there is apparently possible roof damage?), some of which can be structural and they want to work on it.
But they can't work on it because we live here and there is no space.

INTERESTINGLY, they got people in to replace the windows, and were okay for them to come in and do that.
Except when I told them look at the zero space, they said oh yeah no, that's a problem, it'so nly AFTER that, today, did I hear "Well, you lose access to the kitchen and bathroom during those works, so it wouldn't be fair to charge rent".
But you were okay with the works being done with the windows and blocking off those rooms before, so what *actually changed* ?

Anyway. Discussions were straightforward and civil.
"unfortunately", they need the place vacant to be able to work on it.

Issue 1 : Who is this [new name] tenant?
Solution : Explained to them what I said in text : We have a deed poll. She changed her name. She is still [dead name].
Result : Apologies, embarrassment for "projecting" and "assuming" (Thanks for thinking I'm a liar, appreciate it!)

Issue 2 : Why dog?
Solution : Explain to them the situation in an earlier journal, we have verbal permission.
Result : "Oh okay, we see" (So nothing lol)

The big issue is the house is in a shit state, and so they want to be able to work on it to fix it. Reasonable on the surface as it should have been their mom's job (Original landlady we signed with) to keep the place done up well but unfortunately uh, that didn't happen soooo.
There is no way we can avoid being evicted, I think.

So that's a lot of stress.
Once the notice is served (Which MAY be Tuesday on the 8th, where they will come back to talk to my ex as well), we have a minimum of 2 months left to figure out what to do, where to go, etc.
I don't have an escape plan.

Ask me about my anxiety.

They've sent some rude replies back today.

I mentioned that [my ex's new Trans name] isn't back and if this concerns the tenancy, we should wait for her, Tuesday.
They said that her name is not on the tenancy agreement, so she doesn't matter (Paraphrasing only a tiny bit).
I realized just then I half-outed my ex as trans, since they only know her by her dead name. What a weird and awkward situation. She's not mad and I'm okay to clear things up.

So basically.
As I suspected, one of their problems is they think I'm subletting (Because [new name] is not whom the agreement is with *eyeroll*) , even after I *explained* in English why it's [New name] not [deadname]. ..oh well.

There's also "Other things", still nice and vague. They don't want to leave a paper trail of what they said, for sure.
Guessing one of these is going to be Daisy since that was also not in the original agreement, but if they say they want her gone, they've got a very pissed off dog dad on their hands.
I'll find out more when they show up around 10:30 tomorrow.

As a note, landlords are required to warn tenants 24 hours in advance of when they want to drop by so someone can make accommodations to be home. *I* offered the date tomorrow, *they* didn't ask me about anything, so if they want to come in, I'm not going to let them. Pissed off at the reply style being used today and the wanky vaguery to be honest.

Title.

The answer at literally this moment is, "I don't know".

What happened?

Well, our landlady we signed with has developed dementia and has been relieved of her duties by her son & 2 daughters, and I've been in contact with the son for the year or year plus since (Honestly can't remember), and it's been fine.

A few weeks ago, I got a text saying oh we are having some folks in to look at the windows, see which ones need replacing. Ok, cool. Dude comes, dude measures, dude goes.
So we live in the upstairs flat part of a house that was split into 2 flats (badly). We've been here 8 years and 3 months now, and the only time we "missed" a payment is when the landlady changed bank accounts and didn't tell us >.>;.

Well, the actual dudes doing the window swaps went downstairs and worked like busy bees for 2 days. On the second, I come down and ask - oh how much space do you need to do your job, when are you coming, etc? Basic courtesy questions, so I can make space, accommodate, etc.
Well they said, about 1 meter from a window. Oof I said that's difficult with how full this place is with our stuff, so I asked the guy to come look around & the only room they literally can't do anything with is hard packed to the brim and not even tetris will fix that issue.

He said ok, I can see that, I'll talk to the office & see what could be done.
That was yesterday, about 3-something PM.

Today, 8:51 AM, I get this text from my proxy landlord : "[My name], I need to discuss what happened with the window installation yesterday and the tenancy in general. Can you give me a time convenient to discuss please?"

Rapidly descending into panic because of a couple of factors below. I'm not sure what he meant by "what happened" yesterday. Does he think "Can't possibly be done" means "We refuse 2 of your 7 windows for no good reason lol" ?
I didn't tell the guy "Ah shove it, too much hassle", after all - truly, my best guess is they think our situation is interfering with them in some way and we have suddenly become a nuisance with something so small. We don't host noisy parties, we don't make trouble, we pay on time and 8 years of that consistency gets you what I suspect will be "Ah ok you gotta go now" at best.

Why do I think so?
Here are those factors.

1) The original tenancy didn't allow pets. However, our dog Daisy lived with 2 at the time capable people. Since, one of them fell ill with terminal cancer and has passed away while the other (*months* away from a serious heart surgery, I might add) took care of her as she did so. On mentioning this to the actual landlady we signed with, she agreed to let us keep Daisy up here. This may or may not be a problem, but I'm guessing it either is, or will be painted as such (All I have is a verbal confirmation :-\)

2) The rent has not moved an inch in those 8 years and 3 months. Especially if there are upgrades being done for this place (And it very badly needs it), my guess is they want to be able to get more out of the tenancy. We are paying 625 GBP a month for our apartment, and my guess is they will give us a figure like 750 (Minimum) 825 (probably) or 900 (Ugh) a month or they will void the tenancy. They have a financial interest in getting rid of us.

---

I don't like the tone of incoming "reprimand" in that text, personally.
But because this country offers renters close to zero protection, we went from safe to at their mercy at the drop of a hat. I'm not quite sure what to expect at the moment, but if they are going to tell me tomorrow (When they apparently show up live) it's X or move out, that'll strain our already bad finances quite well :-\.
Reality won't change for the window people who can't install windows in that room either. Yes, the banging, noise, dust, sawing and drilling is a hassle - objectively - but we aren't trying to stand in the way of them doing this. The room is just impossibly full of crap.

So I'm going to have a full fun day of worrying my ass off because if they do tell us to go, well we sure as fuck aren't finding rent this cheap, even for a badly done up place like this.
Plus, you know. The panic and hassle of having to organize boxing up things, paying hundreds to get moved, new services, new contracts.
Oh and naturally *finding a place to rent* which is absolutely not guaranteed. They are only obligated to give us "at least 2 months notice". The irony is we are already trying to find a place to move - have been trying for months - so putting a timer on that is not going to help things there, either.

Fuck me.

Beat those two last week, close to 100% as I could get without going insane lol.

Started with Dawn Of Sorrow. Starts fun, nice and responsive!
It's swiftly sidelined by forced DS gimmicks like using the touch screen for various gameplay elements -one of which was changed to QTE button presses, thank fuck. That then dovetails into the game having a LUCK stat that instead of working and boosting drop rates, has such a horrid formula that you get an approximately 0.01% boost in your luck per every 8 LUCK. Your max is 99. You can see the problem lol. The game relies on obtaining souls to use their attacks and makes you spend souls to craft stronger weapons. Some souls are incredibly rare (This enemy has 50 HP, takes 1 damage unless you back attack it with a special soul, it spawns in only 3 locations and has a drop rate of 1% or so, so have fun hitting it 25 times repeatedly for one attempt), and some souls required for weapons are...run-unique boss weapons. So you have to NOT Craft any souls to be able to spawn a special ring saying you got them all in the game, or you're locked out of that one lol.

That is to say, the design is kind of messy. One of the earliest, most useful enemies, the Peeping Eye (Lets you see breakable walls) has horrific drop rates even though it's a super basic, simple, common ass enemy. I took 242 attempts to get my first soul. Game laughed at me, came through that same screen later, killed it OMW through and it dropped a 2nd one >.>;.
It's certainly enjoyable if you just go through it all regularly, but the enjoyment might start to taper off. A decent translation of core 2D Castlevania to DS with some issues.

---

Order Of Ecclesia reverted to a different art style after Aria\Dawn's complaints of being too "Animesque" (??). I don't know, it looks FF12 as hell now with weird hairstyles and uh whatever.
Gameplay wise, your MP bar is a stamina bar : You attack with glyphs you find or absorb from enemy attacks within the mp bar limit. Don't attack for 1 to 1,5 sec and it rapidly refills.
To be honest, I'm not really a fan of this. The "True ending" is something you'll go towards naturally if you explore anyway, and on reaching it it was a whole lot of "Oh, well. Okay, bye" . I've rarely been blueballed by a game story-wise but this absolutely does it. The fake closure it attempts to give you isn't adequate enough.

On a gameplay level, this is the toughest Castlevania I've ever played. You don't start out with good runes, but you do have annoying enemies for the first half of the game, first and foremost, attacking you.
You have no range? Have some pokey spear enemies! You can't quite move the same underwater? Have this worm enemy that is awkward to hit and inflicts poison (Sapping hp slowly and tanking your stats) if it touches you! Fuck off with that. The pinnacle if this just might be the Lighthouse boss - a cool idea actually - of a giant crab you have to avoid as you damage it so it breaks floors until you go up and crush it with the elevator. The problem is he's underneath you and you have almost nothing that can attack straight down except the (for me) 5 damage axe. It...took a while.

Another huge downgrade in the gameplay department is that it consists of small areas you visit - about 12 to advance the plot. There are 2 challenge locations (1 platforming challenge option testing timing and sense and 1 cave with hard as fuck enemies in annoying formations doing insane damage), and one major location - the true ending unique location that feels more like one BIG area.
The problem is you go from little ho hum locations that take a few minutes to clear to that whole mess where you are tasked with finding 3 sigils, going to the middle to use it, yadda yadda. It has no idea what it is, or wants to be.

I appreciated some parts of it, but I'm mostly just frustrated it was designed to be so fucking annoying on almost every front.
Glyphs are a neat idea. Except you take *quite a while* to get upgraded glyphs so your crap attack power can move forward, as well.
If you're emulating it with save\load states, fine. If you like to be annoyed, fine. I wouldn't honestly recommend this game to pretty much anyone however. While it's not bad, it's definitely malicious in some design elements.
Oh, did I mention some chests randomly appear each time you enter a location to explore it?
And that those chests at 10% can be rare chests?
Or that some ones are just *open palm gesturing* hidden and you need to wear a super weak hat or randomly slide where they are to find them?

Oof.
I have 77 hours and all achievements (A core system is entirely bugged so if you beat every major boss, it won't ever spawn for you unless someone else HASN't beaten them all yet, and it's 25% then lol).
Anyway.

The game has potential and does have fun moments.
Except of course if you go with randoms, who will ignore you, act idiotic, braindead, not look not listen not anything and cost you 45 minutes because either one or all of those or they simply can't dodge for shit.
It's Elden Ring in a group, on crack. Run around, with classes - and they mostly all feel nice (Except the Guardian lol. Shame).

The problem is, FromSoft has peaked - in a bad way - with boss design.
You have 8 major bosses , and you're required to tackle the first one before you can unlock the others. That's all good.
What's not good is that, off the top of my head, four of them don't fucking stop moving, and \ or like to be OUT OF MELEE RANGE in the air if they do - to some extent. Um. Out of the current playable roster, 2 can use ranged attacks naturally. Out of 8. So if you don't have at least one ranged unit (And the caster, the "Recluse" is clunky AF), well. Good fucking luck.
Anyway, let's break down the boss issue and bad design.

The first boss you're meant to fight is Gladius. A cool three headed Cerberus type fire-spitting wolf who periodically splits his 3 heads off into a single-headed wolf body. But there's three of use now, so you have to dodge a whole lot more. It also has a chain on its back that can slam down or do moderately large aoe swings 1 or 2 times - these are readable, intuitive and well telegraphed. It has a reactable grab attack, comfy delays (no bullshit fakeouts) and is generally a fun fight, even if sometimes it also gets the fucking zoomies and won't stay still for melee LOL. If doing 3 players, this one and *every single boss* has way too much health, especially given their damage windows being so fucking small, so keep that in mind.

The second on the literal list is Adel, the "Gaping Jaw", a gross tumoresque dragon who uses Gravity (Explains his dog shit grab hitbox lol) and whose weakness is allegedly poison. I say allegedly because all that does is when poison procs, he stops for 5 seconds to retch it out, which is often barely enough to catch up to him, since he loves to do 2-3 bite chains, headbutts, aoe slam his damn feet and his movements are all total ass. Unreadable, undulating, infuriating mess with some "good FromSoft camera action" thrown in - if you get close to him to melee, the lock on point is high up on his feet, meaning you will be looking up and miss more than you hit due to the awkwardness because your position is bad. He is very prone to "STOP FUCKING MOVING!" syndrome, and in phase 2 loves to up the aoe range and damage and just spam the shit out of it. Annoying, but very moderate compared to what comes soon. Here, the bad design is that he's basically fucking unreadable and the grab hitbox has a bastard delay on it so 85% of the time you will get caught.

Third up is Gnoster,Wisdom Of night. It's the Moonlight Butterfly but faster and more annoying, aligned with poison and dealing magic damage, weak to fire. Oh, I lied. It also comes with a rando new big ass bug that harasses you with ground based attacks, swipes, etc. Think of it as weird ornstein&smough. Not too bad, although you have to dodge most of the relatively well telegraphed attacks or they hurt. Phase 2 the moth lands on the bug's head and they unlock some new attacks, one of which is 2-3 charges right across the (MASSIVE) battlefield, all the while shooting large magic bolts at you in a dodge-able rhythm. Actually not too bad if you have at least ranged unit and people can dodge. Focusing on the ground bug is annoying though as it likes to harden its shell (Attacks bounce) or spam short range aoes.

Fourth, we have Maris, Fathom Of Night. It looks like some weird space jellyfish that likes to float in the air to move and attack. RARELY he will come down for 2-5 seconds before flying off again. He loves to put you to Sleep, which for this fight also saps your hp&MP. 2nd time harder, 3rd time harder. Hitting this guy for melee is totally miserable, and his attacks suck. He can jizz 1 or 2 waves of splashy water at you which *look* like you can dodge *now* but actually no, it's a split second later. He may summon dozens of homing jellyfish that stop near you and explode 1,5 seconds later. He may also run slightly away, go to the floor and charge up sleep on people in a huge area unless interrupted by most - but not all - ultimates. So have ranged or get fucked. Finally, when really annoyed, he may drop an egg from very high, very slowly. If this lands, you take MASSIVE damage and MASSIVE sleep bar damage. So if you survive the impact, you are put to sleep and sapped to death. If you have no ranged, fucking GG . You can run the fuck away outside of its GIGANTIC fucking aoe area, and technically anyone can use bows but um. Most people don't. Oh and did I mention the targeting system is complete dog shit and refuses to target the tentacles he will repeatedly summon in the fight that will bitchslap you from behind for 50+% of your hp and interrupt you constantly? Because that too. I think he's weak to lightning.

Fifth is Libra. He's cool. Starts the fight by offering you a tainted deal. You want more Estus flasks? Sure, but each time you use one, YOU LOSE A LEVEL. You want a strong weapon? Cool, give me 2 levels. You want more stamina? Ok, but lose 10% HP. That kind of deal. He looks neat after this and transforms. "Mode 1" is him in smug caster mode, where he can conjure up Madness inducing pellets, machine gun pellets, aoe impacts. He has some basic melee attacks in this form and can seal himself up for about 15 seconds to buff, where he spawns sigils that need to be dashed through, attacked or shot. First time it's 4 and on the ground, 2nd time it's more and some in the air, etc. If you interrupt this *or* inflict Madness on *HIM*, he loses his shit, drops his staff, goes absolutely feral for a solid 30-40 seconds and becomes a simple melee beast. This is absolutely what you want. This is a really, really neat fight, but if you let him buff, some of his attacks upgrade to cover more ground, rotate, etc. He also has a somewhat unintuitive move where he will massive aoe force Madness bar fill at a rapid rate while spawning yellow "coin" looking things on the floor that slightly heal you and *HEAL YOUR MADNESS BAR* so you are forced to run around picking them up until he stops this or get chunked and stunned. Neat fight.

Next up is Fulghor, Champion of Nightglow . Shithead centaur. Tall, infuriating. *Constantly* moving, big ol sweeps, swipes. Aoe spam, large aoe spam. Has an extremely fast dash back and forth along the stupid arena. People literally call him harder than the final boss of the game *and they are right*. A total mess that perfectly exemplifies FromSoft's "We give up, we are out of ideas lol" Boss design philosophy which was already peeking in Elden Ring : BIg stupid target with camera issues. Won't stop, huge health sponge, massive damage, weird tells, aoe, aoe spam, aoe range spam. Oh and hits like two trucks having hate fucking sex too, because *of course*. Cunt. Weak to lightning - like a lot. Good luck if the main gameplay rolls you ZERO lightning drops though.

Following him is Caligo, Miasma of Night. Ice dragon. Absolute cunt. Shit camera, huge, can stay still randomly but never too long. Massive AOES and ice breaths. His weakness is fire, but it doesn't do much either. He loves to fly around, wasting your time, making you chase him. He has a mechanic where walls spawn you have to hide behind or get slammed. Another mechanic is he vanishes with - as far as I can tell - ZERO TELLS inside a heavily fogged up arena and you're meant to ???? I don't know. If I randomly find him it seems like he stops charging up to drop the frozen ceiling on you, or I'm just miles away and I'm out of range. Unfun to chase, unfun to fight, supposed to be easy but if you have mostly melee, you're not gonna be near the bastard very long. So yet again, spongy spammy get back here bullshit to waste the player's time.

Finally, the NightLord, the big one. He starts like a weak humanoid with some slashes and whatever. About half of phase 1's health over, he starts rushing, dashing, having more swings and harder damage output. He can get annoying but mostly fine. A waste of time until phase 2 starts.
In Phase 2, he will do very quick stabs, dashes, medium aoe slams until you annoy him enough. Then he flies up, simply rips the universe open to draw on one of the other defeated Nightlords properties and some of their gimmicks, then lands with the absolute biggest AoE in any FromSoft game ever released. The scale of it is insane. For those who played Elden Ring, it easily runs from one end of Stormveil Castle to the other, and the actual damage spots it generates are about 1.5 to 2 Malikeths big. EACH. Dodge-able but has a "ha, gotcha!" cuntbag delay because OF COURSE it does.
After that, he gets faster, with more wide ranging dash&slash aoe bullshit, and for a minute or so each slash creates fissues in the direction he swung near or behind you so if you dodge wrong, *you still get hit*.
He tends to have such fast and high range moves that , again, melee people have a lot of problems with him. Which is most of the cast. I think his weakness is meant to be holy?

It may be better to look up some boss fight videos to see what I mean.
But this all just sums up to me probably not buying anything FromSoft again if this is all they can do now. I've played Black Myth Wukong with reactive bosses, clever mechanics. I wasn't "Gotten" be a 3 second windup and a 0.10 slam like Lies Of P's badly designed bosses have, I wasn't "gotten" by a weird bastard delay built into attacks to catch you rolling what should clearby be the attack.
Nightreign can be fun, especially with friends and especially with at least 1 skilled friend - and while Libra is actually a very fun fight and like 2 of the other ones are "okay"...
..most of them aren't. Ignoring melee characters who still move like shit, attack slowly or have crap range. It's not great. There's a new "Storm Dash" for Elden Ring - pressing L3 or the left stick - and outside of combat it's zippy and will be you 98% of the time, costs no stamina. IN BATTLE however, if you press it, it takes about 30% of your stamina and eats it very quickly.
You could theoretically regular run with circle...but good luck fucking getting anywhere with that shit LOL. So as a melee character, you slow run and don't even reach the boss, or you storm run and you *may* reach the boss...only to have no stamina to attack (or at most once) before it leaves again.

There is disinterest in design and disdain for the player and I'm just, you know. DONE with it. I'll keep playing Nightreign until I get bored of it, but I don't trust them to design fun bosses any more, just "hard" ones through bullshit, bad and broken mechanics. Malenia was not a peak, it was a fucking warning of the impending failure. Remember her? 2 full health bars, loads of aoe slashes and swings. Inexplicably heals if she hits you (including shields, invalidating turtle builds, nice!). Has her Anime Bullshit attack that needs a martial arts lesson to learn how to dodge (Unless you're locked into an attack since if you don't react IMMEDIATELY, well...).

The thing is, the Ironeye - the ranger - can plink plink with arrows and do weaker but reliable damage to shit out of range. The other caster can generally cast stuff (depending on what you find in terms of staves as their spells are pseudo random within a set pool) , but the travel time is also generally longer. The magic caster is either stronger but slower damage or very good damage if you have the weakness castable.
Like, to the point where my 90-150 per R1 arrows are 33% to 50% the average swing from a *strong* melee unit. Except, you know. They can't get into range and can't actually DO anything.

It's a shame. But between the bad design infesting most of their bosses now and the whole Switch 2 exclusive weird ass bloodsuckers or whatever that was, at least for Souls stuff, pause and wait to see if they get their shit together because it's amateur grade shit now.

TL;DR : Enemies won't stop fucking moving for the 75% melee cast : Unfun, wastes time, awful *or* Enemies for the 2 ranged classes are much too fucking spongy and take too long to fight = not really fun either *or* fucking both. That's what it is. Unfun.

Are you sick and tired of nickel-and-dime $70+ dollar, microtransactioned, day 1 patched, cut content, season passing fucking TOILET WATER games?
Do you yearn to experience the purity and magic of videogames that were done by creative people - with care and attention?

Clair Obscur : Expedition 33.

I beat the fuck out of it over a week .It consumed my time. It consumed my thoughts - and still does. I 100%-ed it technically yesterday but *whoops missed a situational combat achievement*.
I have not felt this swept up and enthralled and just CARED FOR by a product in so very, very, *very* fucking long.
Those who know me longer than ten minutes know I had absolute gushfests about Persona 5 and especially its Royal addition updating things, fixing things and tacking on pretty substantial story content.

This is that, but multiple times stronger. Clair Obscur has unseated my last all time favorite game *ever*. This is GOTY material right here.
The emotions, the music. "Show, don't tell" acting means less "GRR I AM MAD NOW!" acting and lines and more tentative glances, uncomfortable pauses.
There is nuance. There is MAGIC in this fucking game.

If you like JRPGs - or in this case a "J'RPG" (Je. Get it?) , you MUST play Clair Obscur. Rarely is the hive mind droning about something justified. This is justified and absolutely orbital grade nuclear amazing.
I have 2 things I hate about the game, and only 2.

1) I can never experience it again for the first time
2) I did not contribute to making this marvelous moving piece of actual ART in any way, but *desperately* want to. If ever this comment is found by the dev team - and I have no idea what I can do lol face scan? Performance capture? Voice acting? - please let me know ;_; oh my god.

Clair Obscur wasn't just good, or great, or fun. It was OUTSTANDING in all areas, from start to fucking finish with a deep and complex story full of nuance, intricacy and *well done* tragedy.
I can go all day. Lord knows I've been GUSHING at  ragingflamey for a few hours now but I best stop.

If it wasn't on your radar, look at trailers.
Check it out. It's AA , it costs less than a modern game, and not only is it worth your time, you will literally have a better life for having experienced it.
This is a once in a decade game - unless the developers can pull another magic rabbit out of their exceedingly French hat before the next ten years!

I'm in love.
[Questions about game welcome, answers might be dodgy to avoid spoilers]

Been a user almost ten years and I hope I can continue to at least hit that awful milestone (Ten year anniversaries are horrible for me, I've noticed).
What's going on?

https://www.computing.co.uk/news/20.....ntergrate-grok

That idiotic diamond mine kid has an AI it wants to shoehorn into Telegram and the idiots who own it who already make enough money off it said yes.
I refuse to support Elon Smell in anything, so unfortunately I'll be thinking for a few weeks on where to very likely migrate to.

It sucks because I have literal actual HUNDREDS of people on Telegram. So maybe I'll just do "something else" besides using it OR migrating *wink wink*

WELL!

After the messy, restrictive, frankly almost-awful Doom Eternal, Doom's back proper!
It feels nice and weighty without being "slow". Countering certain attacks feels great, the systems *actually* mesh and work with each other instead of Eternal's "ok now press this button because you're out of armor, but now you're out of ammo so press THAT button but now you are out of..." bullshit and horrific ammo counts and forced weapon juggling. DTDA chills the fuck out and lets you linger on a weapon if you want. Played on what counts as normal and people are both right and wrong : I wouldn't call the game easy, but if you are good at blocking and moving and paying attention to your surroundings, you can get through it without a single death just fine.

On the other hand, if enemies DO hit you, it *fucking hurts*. It was surprised to see basic enemies hitting me for 25 or so of my 100 starting health. And harder enemies have nastier , more complicated attacks, too. So if you play like an idiot, you will absolutely get hit. After beating the game I tried Ultra Nightmare and uhhhh random grunt shot across the map after I picked up the purple key hit me for 30 damage. One of those super fast, insanely accurate shots when the game wants you to not try taking potshots at distant enemies, so I couldn't really even anticipate it as the key animation ended and I got hit lol. Didn't get off level 1 on UN lol.

It's a really good game and absolutely worth buying and playing. Runs great, the loading times are sub-3 seconds in every possible instance. It's great!
The only thing I find great issue with, and hence the [SPOILER] tag is one very VERY jank bit of writing.

You see, the game wants to be vast, so lots of battlefields are large and let you roam with objectives in mind. Often between large battlefields across a massive field, you will be able to mount [giggidy] a new friend, the sexy AF dragon Serrat. Lore says the Slayer is the only one he acknowledges as Alpha, and the Slayer rescued him from being half dead, hence the robotic parts. That's cool and metal as fuck! Serrat is fast, has some good firepower and is essential in navigating the flight maps that involve him.
GREAT. [SPOILERS BELOW]

What's *not* great is that besides the mechanical justification, Serrat isn't really there, except for 2 scenes. One of which is him being tossed some creature's arm - okay.
And the other, of course, is the "We gave you this dog to kill it to elicit emotions" moment. I'm very much not a fan. It comes in the penultimate level, the Slayer gets injured and is reeling from pain. Okay.
But then Serrat comes in to buy the slayer time and beefs it in mere seconds.
Now, I don't like this for many reasons.

1)Noooo sexy dragon don't die D=
2) So you exist in this prequel just to justify bigger levels and
3) ...to get killed to upset people who grew attached.

I've never, ever, *ever* liked the cheap shit trope of "THE DOG DIES D=" . It never serves any purpose, and it's always a dangling, shitty cheap shot.
I especially don't like it here because there shouldn't have been a reason to have it happen. Like yeah okay, swoop in, blow fire, buy the Slayer time, fine.
But the series can still rescue this. They can pull ANOTHER "...but he wasn't quite dead" and bring him back for future games. Which isn't just a good idea, but basically a necessity.

Dark Ages' place in the timeline, as far as I'm currently aware, is right near the beginning. If I'm remembering right, Doom Eternal had implications that a crazed Slayer came to them mumbling about death and murder, so I'm guessing that's after the original doom games, Eternal shows us pre-Dark Ages moments. DA happens, then we are missing a game which will probably end with the Slayer being coffined and ready to rip&tear for 2016's DOOM remake (Which I did play&beat on its hardest difficulty, incidentally), then go on to Doom Eternal's letdown gameplay and story.

By pulling a "...but he wasn't quite dead" on Serrat, we can use the good boy again in the next game. If it does end up with the Slayer coffined, that's a time skip of ??? years, so we can simply say Serrat isn't in the remake & Eternal because it's been too long. Ideally, he wouldn't be dead because DRAGONS, MAN and we'd get to actually play with him in a post-Eternal game when they find each other again.

But yeah great game but fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck the crap writing lol.

Whew X_X. okay.
The lost voice, constantly coughing period is over. I was gunked up extremely hard - that's been cleared.
Now for the damage to heal. My throat was really messed up the last 2 days especially, but I'm feeling pretty good, just got to wait for my body to catch up.

So uh, fuckin woo on that! <3

Hi folks!

Uhhh.
So this is day 3 of getting RUINED by my allergies.
From 0 to 500.

I sneezed so often and so hard, that on days 1 and 2 I *lost my fucking voice* within 6 hours of it starting.
I can't breathe, everything itches, aches, etc. Not like the flu, but almost like it. Like, I'll sneeze and 3-5 spots on my will just radiate a dull pain like I was hit by a fucking hammer , it's awful!

*ahem*.
So basically, I feel like absolute shit and I'm not in a big mood to chat. Sorry about that X_X. But uh.
Well, I woke up at 2:40 today unable to breathe *at all*, so I started my day in exhausted panic and I've been awake 14,5 hours now as well.

*luckily* a neighbour is also allergic and gave me 1 month of her medication which ought to keep me going until I can get stronger stuff in like, nine days or so.

Trivia : I *thought* that I was safe from this until early-mid-June which I dub my "hell period" , which it has been for the last 3 years in a row.
Uh. Surprise, I guess? It's a whole month early and destroying me.
Can not recommend.

I sort of want the game.
But I'm very awkward about people I regularly play with, and so I don't have literally any.
Despite talking to tens of people each day X_X.

So erm.
Who wants to play Nightrein? Not much point buying it solo apparently, soooo.
Yeah!
Looking for people's steam accounts to add for when it comes out.

Hands up if you think the way to deal with your flatmate snoring is to theatrically stomp over at (What I guess was) 2:30 in the morning, try to slam the door to their room, fail to do so because you hit a large bag of dog food that you then angrily drag out of the way and leave in the hallway for said flatmate to trip over later, then half-slam the door.

No?
Nobody?

Because guess why I'm awake at 4:05 AM after an hour of trying and failing to go back to sleep with my INSOMNIA and my ANGER.

[Has literally 20 pages worth of angry shit to say]

I guess the one thing I can say is, fuck you. Fuck you for deliberately disturbing my sleep. Fuck you for choosing to be an obnoxious asshole about my night breathing this way.
Fuck you for making me feel awful about myself constantly, like by EXISTING at night.
Fuck you.

I've started rewatching House, the 2004-launched show starring Hugh Laurie, recently. It's a great time, hard recommend if you haven't yet.
Just be aware that if you haven't seen it yet, the show loves to....well, show you things that may be incompatible with eating.

That having been said, it's been a wild ride rewatching the show a good few years after the last time I'd done it.
There will be mild spoilers for a few Season 1 episodes mentioned.

For those who haven't seen it, some context. House is an incredibly unique doctor who is widely knowledgeable and has strongly correct hunches, but sucks at personal relationships and a lot of the niceties involved. He also has tenure at the hospital in the show and can't be removed, except by unanimous board meeting votes.

The reason for this journal is the character of an awful "foil" to House in Season 1 - Edward Vogler.
Vogler is a rich asshole who in episode 14, aptly titled "Control", leaving at the conclusion of episode 18.
It feels longer. Much longer.

He gets on the board by making the in-show hospital a $100M "Donation".
Initially "just" a basic, gross businessman who wants to run the place "more like a business" by eliminating waste (Reducing patient care). He immediately chafes with house over minor things that then turn into these massive, ego-driven offenses. For instance, he seems to take it very personally when House refuses to wear the generic doctor lab coat.
The justificiation the audience is given is that everyone must be a team player, and House just does his own thing, unaccountable to anyone. While not without merit, this ignores the end results entirely to come to this pre-baked conclusion.

Well, ultimately, the asshole's arc concludes on episode 18 by ordering a board meeting to try and vote House out, while making clear it's either "him or me" (As in, his $100M)
His best friend, James Wilson, votes no, so it can't go through. So he asks Wilson to leave the room because he'd be in conflict - and is told because the next vote is to remove James Wilson.
Outraged, Wilson quits. The next day, he tries the vote again, and now it fails because the administrator of the hospital votes no - and of course the bastard tries to just immediately vote HER off.
Similarly outraged, she makes a brief plea to not let Vogler's money own them, and so they vote against his interests, and he takes his big green ball of money and fucks off home.

An irritating, generally irredeemable character who interferes with House's treatment of patience, risking their lives. He's also had a few episodes focused around making House fire one of his 3 specialists under the excuse of wanting less expenses for the hospital (That he just poured $100M into, mind you, so there would have not been a financial risk for quite a while). House can't pick, until one of them displays certain signs of assholism. House ends an episode saying he will fire that one - only for Vogler to say "No, pick someone else". Said target for firing was feeding Vogler information, for his protection from being fired. Said doctor also DID NOT NEED to retain his job [in-universe reasons], versus the other 2.

Finally, Vogler semi-forced House to take a politian's case and to give a "ten minute" speech about a product. Made by his company. That's the same company as last time, but minimally changed so a new patent could be created for it and the price jacked up. It was fleecing, at best (Although the show repeatedly notes that the product works, at least). Vogler says by taking the senator's case and doing this speech, House would be allowed to keep all 3 of his members (So...cutbacks WEREN'T needed? Shocking!). Not even a minute into the speech, House rightfully fucks it off and when Vogler tries to force him to keep going, he humiliates the bastard.


Now, what was point of the journal?
This episode is 20~ years old. Ed Vogler's character is a cartoon caricature of a villain. Selfish, greedy, obstructive, more a joke than a story. This is what they thought "Rich people" were like 20 years ago, and today I'm turning back towards our unfortunate reality to say - yes, yes they are. But brazenly. Publicly. Uncaring of talent, uncaring of how things were. They will change things to be good and comfy for them - everything and everyone be fucked. No matter how good and unique you are, you are replaceable, of dubious value (if any!) to them.
Maybe in my old age I've got a compromised memory, but I don't remember rich twats being that out and about with their rule-bending, rule-breaking, their casual everyday abuses. That's what made him a cartoon character at the time, it was all so needlessly personal and stupid, so overreaching. It wasn't super conceivable at the time that this was a real, actual person. Luckily, the storyline sucked and viewership dropped, so they wrote him out swiftly.

If only we can get rid of rich assholes like that.
Just strange how much worse perception and reality has come to intermingle in 20 years with what was a far-fetched fantasy.
Fascinated, but largely hate it lol.

House though, well worth a watch. It's on Netflix!

$80 DIGITAL for a game?
$90 for "Physical"? ( https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-.....ey-on-the-card IT'S A DOWNLOAD CODE ANYWAY!)

Yeah Donkey Kong who-cares is $70 because they know nobody will buy it, but they can kindly eat my fat european ass with the shiniest golden spoon with this bullshit.
An already brutally anti-consumer company takes it to all of their potential customers' face, not just streamers and content creators. Get it through your heads, people, Nintendo HATES you. You personally.
Switch 1 printed money, this is unjustifiable as anything other than greed - or, at best, sheer stupidity.

Additional "Fuck you" from Nintendo : Need to buy a new special SD Card for $60+ USD which has a capacity of 256 GB, so enjoy your 3-5 games on it before needing a new one (Not counting saves). So add $60+ to the price you see.
They ALSO want you to PAY for the fucking tutorial game that comes with the system.
It's also not fully compatible with some Switch 1 games, hurting fans once again.

You bet your ass Rockstar will watch this closely, and if idiots buy into this, they will bump GTA VI prices up even higher, $80-100 guaranteed. This is the literal exact thing they have been coasting towards, ffs.
Remember after ET pickled the market and fucked it for everyone ages ago, Nintendo credited as the savior of video gaming with quality games?
This feels like they're putting alllll customer goodwill into the fire, setting it to burn and contributing *to* another crash when the market can't handle all the overpriced, unfinished, shit games and interest will implode.

Don't subsidize a garbage company's bad decisions by being dumb and being this product.
Wait for the necessary pirates to come in & do what they do if you "MUST" play the games. It will be swift and inevitable at these prices.

I had a friend visiting from wednesday last week to sunday last week.
Very good friend I've known 20~ years now, since before a lot of sites existed. I may likely know this person from before *FA* existed, in fact!

It was lovely to meet him, laugh at dumb stuff, show him around what passes as a town down here :-P.
It also taught me some good lessons about how life & people could be - since I'm stuck in the ass-end of nowhere right now & have had high walls up for a long time, it was nice to let someone hop them and hang out <3.

So thank you,  Avon for your wonderful visit, was great to finally meet you! Rwar!