The Hoard

Looks like making a fanzine won the poll. I totally do not have FF loaded onto the onion though, not at all So I'll put some thought into that and see what falls out, which -- given my usual zine outputs -- will probably be 12 or 16 pages, maaaybe 20 (unlikely, especially for a first one) and either half-letter or quarter-letter. Half-letter feels like it would be less squashy? We'll see.

I make no promises whether this will actually see the light of day or when, though right this second I'm mustering rounding up ideas of what to put in it. (aside from the helpfully unhelpful "various ramblings and getting on my bullshit about FF in general and FFs in specific". probably setting ramblings. possibly some navelgazing. I make no promises about fiction but not impossible.)

If I was really ambitious I'd also add a smaller perzine, but I'm being brave just committing (more or less) to this one.

time to doodle a crystal or a chocobo or a silhouette of a castle

My tastes in FFs is going to make this interesting, I suppose --

I'm sure a lot -- a lot a lot -- of people even on DW have already spilled rivers of digital ink absolutely losing their minds at the crackaddled fuckery that the orange shitgibbon just threw at the world. I'm not even going to bother to dive into the details there because others better qualified have done it from one end of everything to the other.

No, I'm just posting so I can digitally scream and tear my hair out at how (on top of, y'know, basic living) all my major entertainments/hobbies, even semi-dormant ones, are deeply, deeply fucked.

Tabletop? Holy fuck that's the end of days coming and going. US indie and even not so indie ttrpg pubs can't absorb the mad fuck tariff charges (most printing is done outside of the US, usually China). I don't really play boardgames but they're fucked even worse. Here in Canada we take it in both fucking directions, with the shitgibbon's personal insanity jacking up the US prices and then a 25% Canadian countertariff on books (printed matter in general, practically) from the US on top of that.

Oh, yeah, did you hear about that countertariff? Everyone from gamers to fucking libraries are absolutely fucked.

Meanwhile the orange shitgibbon has also levied truly jawdropping tariffs on a fleet of countries (Vietnam, etc) where many companies -- like, oh, Hasbro -- have outsourced their manufacturing, moving from China (which is also eyewatering tariffs). I sure hope you all have your most beloved Transformers already.

Oh and Nintendo has lost its fucking mind with the pricetags attached to the Switch 2 and its games ahahahahahahahaaaaaa

I am so glad I have some backlog of games, and books I'll reread until they fall apart, and etc -- but this is going to suck.

Deeply, deeply suck.

And my FLGS is probably fucked and that sucks even more.

I guess this is more reason to keep making rpg blogposts and tiny printable zines -- but I'd rather any other reason, damn it.

Damn it.

Since I'm kind of/partially/something on the subject of Gundam Wing, and just managed to order a handful of Sean-nos doujin -- assuming they're actually in stock -- I've been put in mind of the trials and tribulations of when you're looking for specific books or sources. Not that this is unique to Wing (let me tell you about whiffing a Fire Emblem sourcebook last week), but the thought is there ...

Frex, there's a couple of Wing doujin (mostly by Rubiss) that I'd love to stumble across, especially since I lost the scans I had something like three or four drive crashes and two decades ago.

More importantly I would go to some lengths if I could just manage to find vol. 01 of Flamingo Nobeko's/Pooh Farm's May Fair -- and sure they're fantasy and have about squat to do with actual Wing, but I want the beginning of the story, damn it!

Alas the only time I've ever seen any of those was the exact time I snapped up vols. 02-05. >.>;; (I like Pooh Farm art anyway and these were an especial jackpot.) It's like never finding the first novel or something. *blrrgh*


It's not just doujinshi, though. Some stuff just goes out of print fast and I've learned not to assume I can find something later ... Again, Wing makes a good example. If anyone out there happened to think they could just pick up Frozen Teardrop in the future -- or some poor sod is just hearing about it now -- oww. Owwww. I can find the first half-or-better of the series for decent prices still, but how does 80-odd CDN or more sound for the latter third? To say nothing of the artbook. Whoof.

(I scrabbled after them all like a mad thing at the time because I had a Feeling[tm] and boy howdy was I right)


It's kind of fascinating to see. Like how the FE Awakening artbook can be found super cheap secondhand, but if you go looking for Echoes or even Fates or the Tellius books -- even though these were all published after -- you're looking at $200+. Ow.

Don't wait if you can help it on your fannish paper stuff, I guess is part of the rambling here? Or something. Lol.

It's not secret (except that I barely post about Granblue online, but whatever *shhhh ~*) that I've been eyeing Granblue Fantasy's degeneration over the last stretch of years for ... almost exactly that stretch of years.

(also fucking depressingly hilarious was summer past and me + kalloway spending a weekend picking our way through three years of Granblue flagging where and when we estimated the rot started -- and then the Grand Reveal that oh, there was a new director! and surprise! he'd actually already been doing the work behind the scenes for ... about three years as of then. aka exactly where we pinpointed the cliff.)

Anyway this isn't about that, it's about me now eyeing the festering pit that is this year's anniversary + the leadup + etc, tightening the screws on my tinhat, and layout my cards about how it looks like hints trickling out that GBF is fucked.

(prognostication not guaranteed.)

( gazing into my crystal ball of stupid ... )

Whether or not anything plays out like the above, I do think the game's days are numbered. And sure I've been saying that for just over a year -- but beginning of 2024 I was saying they should end it, and start fresh. Now I'm saying it's actively fucking dying if not dead and just hasn't realized it yet.

2024 being a "year of celebration" ahahahahaha fucking lol.

I'm sure I've forgotten some of my recent commentary; I'm sure it'll come up again eventually.

Baaaah.

For a while there not that long ago (what, a few months tops) I was all-in on a pile of Fire Emblem translations, hacks, demakes, and basically bloody near everything but straight up release; then I fell off completely, foundering on a one-two punch of The Fucking Universe[tm] and trying to do a bunch of projects which, while not big in and of themselves, feel very big in the face of The Fucking Universe[tm].

I really should get back to them again -- or at least most of them -- because I legit enjoyed myself immensely and that's something that's become a rather rare bird when it comes to Fire Emblem. And it'd be a damn shame to wander off the ranch again when there's something there that makes me legit happy.

(even if I'm absolutely sure Seth is carking in grand fashion in The Princess' Lament. lol.)

Especially I should get back to poor Sacred Echoes, which is a truly gobsmackingly detailed and amazing SoV demake. And also the freshly re-fantranslated Mystery Of The Emblem (Heroes Of Light), because even just seeing the hilariously brightly coloured spriting brings me joy and they really went the extra mile with dialogues -- and dammit I just want to play MotE, lol.

don't ask me why I seem to be collecting AUs, tweaks, "rebalances", expansions, and the gods know what else for Sacred Stones; I don't think I could tell you, lol


In a similar vein and in the same timeframe I fell off of Nerdy Teachers' video course for learning how to use/code with PICO-8 (and flopped off some tutorials I was poking while I'm at it).

I might at well just start at the beginning again when I get back to it oh noooooo what a haaaaaardship *lol* ...


Slowly and with some flailing, I need to get back to these. Delishus pixels await.

I used to be so much better at multitasking lolsob

When FFVII Ever Crisis launched two Septembers ago finally I was absolutely onboard with it, because sure I'll go through VII and Crisis Core in a version adapted for my phone -- but the big draw was the First SOLDIER storyline that went alongside them.

Actually, now I'm going to sidetrack with a bit of clarification for the audience at home, because a year and a half on and people still keep fucking this up despite the information being right there:

The First SOLDIER storyline in FFVII Ever Crisis is not the same goddamn thing as the actual game (now defunct) called FFVII: The First SOLDIER. Said game was a make-your-own-PC first party shooter with no plot (but cool chocobos). The FS storyline in EC is an actual storyline. The sole connection is that three would-be SOLDIERs from the FS trailer are the majority of the cast (oh and Lucia does get a namecheck when FFVII: TFS closed and your PC graduates).

-- but this is also relevant because the FS storyline put into Ever Crisis for the ~first year or so was, actually, really fucking good.

I honestly wasn't expecting much, because "ooohhh come see young Sephiroth" waved more red flags than a flag store. I was wrong, and it was really, really well done --

( First SOLDIER story part 01 commentary )

... and then the first anniversary of the game rolled around and a giant steaming shit was taken on everything.

I could bitch a lot (a lot) about the other factors, like the jawdroppingly awful softcore bullshit that was the anni outfits, and more and more pushing playerscore bignums, and etc etc; but we're here for me bitching about the story walking off a cliff.

So.

(an aside: the game started off also giving us character multi-chapter mini-storylines. we started with Tifa, Aerith and Cloud. partway through the first year they added Barret's, which wrecked my shit. there's been none since. I don't think this is a coincidence.)

So with the first FS storyline wrapped up, it was time for another! Which kicked off post-first anni.

It features Spudiroth and a young Angeal and it is the worst fucking thing.

On top of, frankly, just deeply, shockingly poorer writing as a technical thing all around, this staggering mess (which is taking place in east-buttfuck-nowhere Wutai):

( First SOLDIER story part 02 commentary )

Herd of teal deer: I don't know what the fuck changed after the first anniversary of Ever Crisis, but it shot the game in the head (finances are proving that!) and, worse, it's fucking up everything because the writing quality yeeted itself so fast into the sun it left speedlines.

And I'm goddamn mad because it was so good. Just. Goddamnit.