I’ll go with the grim first and then go into the fun. The grim being Hurricane Milton has my entire (rebuilt) life in its iron sights. This hurricane is astoundingly frustrating as how it formed, how quick it formed, how strong it formed, and the direction – it’s absurd and feels like a natural comical satire. We’re hoping for the best, but planning for the worst seeing as it could land anywhere on our coast as a 3+. The good is that hasn’t changed much so we just need to know where ground-zero is happening.
We’ve done planning, and have started to get shields up, and we’ll have all the final preparations before this thing makes landfall. Just really hope this doesn’t go awful… While being a traveler, there’s an enormous amount of rough weather encountered out there, so certainly not unfamiliar to things getting turbulent.
Fun side, saw the family like planned on Saturday, and that was a very wonderful time; the usual catching up on things with a very lovely dinner with it all.
Guess there’s not really much to say for this one, shorter I know. Posts this week might be a bit on the thinner side with what’s about to happen. Just… don’t take what you have for granted, it could potentially be erased in a matter of moments.
I really draw a blank on naming these general ones sometimes, but weekend is coming up and looking forward to seeing family Saturday for a lovely evening. I was initially planning on doing so the past weekend but with Helene, I decided against it until that critter went through. I would love to work on some of the audio project as well, but really depends on if I have the spare time for it. The good on that is there’s no hurry as I’m pretty knee-deep in redoing the entire digital library right now. It’s a fairly big undertaking, but taking it a few steps per day has made it not too daunting.
With it being Spoopy Month, seeing family tomorrow might be our big ‘Halloween’ one for the month unless we get together again before the weekend of the 26th. It’s possible but not likely, and that’s perfectly fine. We’ll catch up early November before all the holidays kick into high gear and everything becomes bonkers then. If so I’ll grab my cute Halloween theme leggings, socks, and shirt to wear and be festive. I should look into some comfy Halloween tights too the more I think about it.
There are other things I kind of want to rant about, but 1) it’s not necessarily going to be helpful, 2) nothing to do with anything RL – but I could site the past as part of it though, and 3) I don’t know how to express it well enough to utilize only words. It’s really a lose-lose scenario overall and so I just move onto other things. It’s just… getting harder to do, I suppose. Eventually it may not or it’ll evaporate, and that’s normally what it does so dwelling on it or typing anything beyond this ‘blip’ is probably all that needs to be done.
No thoughts, just me being happy I can wear a hood as a Viera.
Final Fantasy XIV related, there’s two events the weekend of the 26th that I may or may not go to. One is Burgundy’s 6th Anniversary, but if I go to that, I’d just go as a guest. The more I think about how I feel about it, the more I really would just like to leave the old uniform in the Archives; it might come out for a charity event at the end of the year if it gets off the ground, but that’s still to be determined and not in my wheelhouse. Instead, would just wear a nice dress, possibly bring Aikirees, and/or anyone else who would want to come along for the show as well.
Aside from that, an old friend’s Free Company is having a pretty big Halloween event that same night. That I’m leaning towards going to as it’s been a couple of years since we were able to go last, and that was a lot of fun when we were able to make it!
Taking a break temporarily from Castlevania to partake in the F-Zero 99 anniversary event along with the new patch 1.5 that added the Ace League. This League was originally only on the Super Nintendo’s Satellaview and only in Japan, so being able to play these now with 98 other folks is both a blast and absolutely bonkers!
I think that’s all for this one, bit on the longer end. Y’all have an absolutely wonderful rest of Friday and weekend ahead!
I don’t really have this week planned as well as I would have like due to ultimately messing around with a project that while was a fruitful endeavor took a bit of time in the process. The project in particular is another sub-project with the audio overhauling. Trying to use what existing equipment and technology and recycle it into the new set up has been rather fun but is taking time. The result was something pretty fun involving an old PSP-3000 and a PS3 playing music across the network; however, tinkering with it was both comical and a learning experience though.
There’s of course better ways to do it, but since I have these items and really like to recycle older things into new usable items, this was right up my alley. The rest of the project is more time-consuming than it is materialistically costly: this is both good and bad. The bad being the time allocated means time away from planning other things but at least there’s a low-cost for it.
I did manage to squeak out both two more episodes of Fallout, and go to Aethercon on Saturday. The Fallout series is still really interesting to me and I still am looking forward to see where this all goes. It’s kind of rare where nearly halfway through a season I somewhat can’t see where this is going yet. I think once I’m done with this show I’ll bounce back to Doctor Who and finish the new season with the 15th before the holidays ideally.
I’ll go into more about Aethercon in a separate post, but I am very glad we went. It was a very wonderful time even if it was more on the shorter side. Supposedly they’ll host it again next year and if so, we’ll probably put up our ‘RP’ flags then and get a bit more involved. We’re always in character, but it’s better to put the flag up to make sure everyone else knows it too.
Patch 7.1 Live Letter came out, sounds like Mid-November for the release. This is good and we’ll be full ready by then to take it on. Very excited for the Final Fantasy XI raid in particular – it will be nice to see somewhat of Aikirees’ first incarnation’s world.
Just some quick thoughts on it: the new Expert Dungeon’s atmosphere looks incredibly creepy, and Nashu of Hildibrand fame being in Solution Nine is (hilariously) concerning. The Extreme/Unreal/Chaotic AR/Ultimates are not something we do, but for those folks who do, kick lot’s of tails! The housing interior adjustments and sizing changing options are nice, but I don’t think I’ll ever make HQ’s interior bigger than it’s supposed to be. PvP changes coming are nice, with hopefully the 4th Frontlines coming back as that’s been gone a long spell. The Hall of Novice changes have been direly needed, as there’s a few (Dorito and Dice) mechanics that a lot of folks don’t fully understand, so hoping that will help alleviate this.
I think that will do it for this one; tomorrow is October 1st! Spoopy Month so soon! We cannot wait!! Until next time, y’all have a wonderful one!
Kind of an addenda thought from the other day combined with current adventures. This weekend, well starting today in fact, is an in-game event/convention called Aethercon that is supposedly a big RP-oriented event over on the Crystal Data Center. I kind of want to go along with Aikirees, but Datacenter Traveling’s new system may make that a smidgen more difficult unless I head there really early or really late. It’s doable, but unsure if I really want to.
Part of me wants to as if it is really more into the Roleplay side of things, that would be right up our alley and could be a lot of fun. However, I’m not too keen on the social side of Final Fantasy XIV right now, as the venue space/modding community has really turned me off from it. Lore purists don’t really worry me all that much, but anyone who is and berates that sort of thing to another person is just being an absolute rude piece of trash and shouldn’t ever do so nor engage in the RP community in general.
Happening as well is another Burgundy Room performance that is on my Data Center, and I’ve kind of been wanting to go to another show as it’s been almost two years since the last major drama event happened. That one in particular was pretty awful and turned me off from wanting to partake ever again. I may decide to visit Crystal for Aethercon, I may decide to just go to the show, or I may decide on neither and relax for the evening instead, especially after Helene came through.
Hurricane Helene came barreling through yesterday. We were not in the direct path, thankfully, but just skirted it enough to be a bit windier than expected. No major damage or what-not, but still need to check a couple of things around the house. The city is assessing things, but aside from being wary for the amount of water use the next day or so, should be back to normal by the end of the weekend.
It’ll be alright though, and I hope everyone who was in the direct path is safe and accounted for. Hopefully the rest of the hurricane season is a lot quieter for us now.
Until next time, y’all take care, and keep kicking lots of tails. Lots of love.
No, not that kind of Fallout; this is in reference to the game series.
Kind of a couple of days later than I wanted to get my thoughts out, but between RL being a bit bonkers and other projects, been unable to. The project I mentioned last week, speaking of, went almost near perfect in updating the multi-room audio with new hardware. There was one minor oversight and one technical failure, but it was part of the old set up so it wasn’t a major loss. I’m really happy with the final results though, and now have a road map as to what I want to do to enhance this whole thing even further.
Albeit this wasn’t technically a planned project, but cost-wise it’s not anywhere near a vast as the last one, and I play a lot of music regularly so having this all re-set back up before the next major project will definitely help things in the long run. There’s really only a couple of planned projects I want to do left before all of these initial ones will be completed. Then I can start to plan future ones whenever the feeling arises!
~‘They can be your Devil, or well, another Devil but disguised as an Angel.’~
I think those two enjoy their countering outfits a lot. The usual progress in FFXIV, slow and steady until 7.1 at least. There’s more things I’d like to say in regards to little observations that are occurring and reoccurring and even though it’s a little frustrating to see especially being around since late Stormblood, it’s not necessarily going to change anything. Just… be kind and patient with folks one doesn’t know what they’re going through. If things are going a bit slower that one would like, it’s very much completely fine. We’re all here to have fun, not a race nor a comparison contest.
I’ll probably delve a bit more into all that though once I finalize and get the EOCA story out; it was supposed to come out a year or so ago, but due to revisions and the size of it, I had to shelve it. Ideally by or before the 5th anniversary of EOCA (not the FC), but we’ll have to see.
Anyway, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is now on the last level at around level 40 as of this post. I think I beat the game originally at 45 or so, so we’re making pretty good progress. Still need to unlock the last two bonus places for goodies, and some hidden items once I get a smidgen further in said last level, but that should wrap it up. It’s been a blast going through it again, and looking forward to New Game Plus as well. Will probably migrate to Portrait of Ruin after this.
As for the Fallout call out (hehe~), I started the series that Amazon put out, and that has been a joy. Reminds me of my time in Fallout 4 from years back; haven’t gotten very far yet, only on Episode 3 as of right now, but looking forward to the rest of it.
That’s all I can ponder for this one, next Monday will hopefully start a new segment ‘Monday Morning Weekend Recap,’ with a header to match, depending on how the morning is going. Until next time~!
I had a fairly large thing written about my multi-room audio set up needing a rework since it stopped working with my turntable, the obnoxious time spent trying to fix all this, the practical use for some (but not all) smart home devices, large conglomerate companies adding a bunch of ads and unnecessary ‘features’ to said devices, and spending more time researching how to course correct all of this. In the end I decided against it as it was just too long, and there’s so much else going awful in the world right now for this to be a big deal as it really isn’t. I will say I do miss the days when things just worked out of the box, instead of having to jump through hoops and/or update all of these things.
That aside, last week involved a massive work-related project that turned out great in the end. It was a multi-piece recognition wall for a client, and it was probably my biggest solo-project since I left my industry the first time. Had a lot of parts that I had to plan out, cut out, and get to our installers all within a week’s turnaround. Tired my old rabbit self out in the process, but was great in the end.
The other project was hitting a milestone on a fun one I’ve been working at the office too, building out a Connect Four board with just scrap materials around the office. Last week the legs got made for it so now the board sits very nicely into that as opposed to being flat on the ground. Just have to put the game pieces box together and get the pieces printed for it all to be finished out.
FFXIV-wise, still moving along with the usual weekly tasks right now. Last Sunday being with almost everyone was very fun and made for a wonderful way to end the weekend. Hoping to be able to do that a lot more going forward even if it’s just chatting or running around a place like the Gold Saucer.
Castlevania-wise, Order of Ecclesia is coming along. Kind of got stuck but I remember getting stuck here on my first playthrough too, and it just takes a bit of level building to get back on track, and that should be soon!
I think that’s all I can think of for now, so y’all have a wonderful Tuesday!!
So, I’ve been back on Mastodon for about a week now, and while it’s been very nice to see folks that I haven’t since my departure, it’s overall… well I suppose ‘to be determined?’ Being gone from social media for so long has been really really good for me, but on the opposing side, it’s placed me in a nebulous state of what/how to interact there now. A lot of little things I’ve forgotten about social media have resurfaced – most of which can be summed up into basically ‘general negativity.’ Some folks I’ve tried to interact with that I used to only to be brushed off tends to have me lean more towards reconsidering this return. I do understand it though, I have been gone a very long time.
That’s not to say it’s all been doom and gloom. Folks/friends have general been pretty happy to see me come back, and there’s still a lot of positive/feel good posts happening throughout. It’s just… different I suppose and I guess that’s just social media in general? It might have always been there, and I didn’t notice as much (I know I contributed as well to it). Something to continue to ponder, but I’ve got enough going on to not either dwell on it and/or force myself to utilize if the feeling isn’t right. Time will tell, but in the mean time the folks & friends that I have been able to reconnect with have been for the most part a joy.
Switching subjects, recently Konami released ‘Castlevania: Dominus Collection’ for I believe all major platforms. This collection contains the three Nintendo DS games: Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia. Order of Ecclesia being my absolute favorite Castlevania game of all time. I’ve played the latter two back on the Nintendo DS, but being able to play them on modern hardware and on a big screen has always been a dream of mine. I picked it up for Switch, and for the most part, just played it in handheld mode. That all changed last night when instead of playing Final Fantasy XIV, I took the night off from that and played Order of Ecclesia docked.
This was just sheer joy, and a dream come true. One area of note when I did this is the music was stellar!! The sound effects sounded a lot better too, but that music was so gosh darn wonderful to hear. The visuals are crisp, clear, and being able to see both of the DS’s screens together like that has been very well done. I can’t recommend this trilogy enough for anyone curious about theses – they’re so worth it. I picked Ecclesia first because it’s my favorite, but once I’ve completed it, will move on to Portrait of Ruin, and then Dawn of Sorrow. This is in reverse order of how they were originally released, but they’re not connected (Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin are sequels to other Castlevania’s though), so there’s no loss there.
Oh, one last tidbit since I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it; posts here are usually scheduled at 10:00am Eastern Time every weekday unless I have nothing for that day or something got delayed. Occasionally a post will be retrostamped if it’s coming but a little later in the day. Every now and then something else will get posted (like this one!) but the standard 10:00 are usually the scheduled ones.
Until next time, take care y’all, and have a wonderful Tuesday evening!
Been really wanting to figure out how to post and talk about general things along with everything else, so came up with a general header for when the time arises. There will be a lot of these as we get closer to the end of the year and it gets a lot busier.
Starting off, after what I believe has been 8 months, I have finally returned to Mastodon**. Asterisks being that there is no way for me to return to the capacity of it like back before the hiatus, but it is really good to return and see everyone once again. The return was incredibly warm and heartfelt; thank y’all and I really did miss y’all dearly. This won’t affect anything here as I still prefer to post here, and have come to really enjoy it over all that time.
Star Bunny will come back, eventually – I think there’s two or three big posts in regards to that to get sort of caught up to where I am there. I hit a major burnout with it as once it gets up there in levels, it starts to feel like hitting granite with a paper pick axe. Don’t get me wrong I love that fact that I can fly around the known Star Trek universe and see/do things, but it’s gotten a lot slower to progress is all.
Couple of images from late that I wasn’t sure where to put them.
Meanwhile, back in Eorzea, just recently we all took out the first four Normal Raids of Dawntrail. Those are so gosh darn fun! They did a really wonderful job with balancing out the mechanics and the fights themselves making them very fair in regards to how they all work. A couple of them are a bit bonkers as a Black Mage, but we’ll get there! The story will be interesting to see how this goes down across all the patches it will be added in – 7.2 being the next set.
Fashion Reports, we’re still a bit backlogged for those, so whenever I can those will go up on Fridays until we’re caught up. Think there’s about six or so left unless we add more to the queue.
We had fun working on the new airship parts with only a couple of pieces left to do now. We’ll have double the flight power soon enough! Probably will work on a submarine soon thereafter now that we have those unlocked as well. Over on the right is our crafting outfits; we’ve had those since we hit Level 90 back in Endwalker. I kind of doubt we’ll change them even at 100 unless something comes along that we like better.
Think that’s all that comes to mind at the moment. There’s RL items too, but probably will just put any of those in a separate post if I want to share. Y’all have a wonderful day!
I’ll probably do more of these as time goes on, but also just a heads up that from here on out, posts will start to show scenery based photos from various areas around Dawntrail up to the second to last zone. It will not show the last zone nor anything to do with the Main Scenario Quest unless specifically warned about with a spoiler disclaimer.
That’s not related to what this post is about, I just wanted to give a forewarning about images upcoming. However, with that being said & addressed, I’ve noticed some replies here, as well as us crossing paths with folks around Eorzea and beyond since my Mastodon hiatus. Just wanted to take this post & time to basically say ‘We see y’all, and thank you.’ I know I’m pretty not great at responding right in the now as either 1) I forget due to something coming up or 2) see it and don’t have that moment to reply, for in which it loops back to #1.
I’m going to start with the responses posted here; hopefully y’all don’t mind, but if y’all do please let me know! Caius, I got really emotional upon reading your response to Bahamut Day 2023. I’m really thankful and happy to have met you as well, and that day was such a wonderful memory for you too. I’m pretty certain everyone was a variable of nervous that day (I know I was!) Hopefully everything has been going well on your end, and I still remember crossing paths with you in the Gold Saucer that one evening before having to scurry off on tasks. Hugs & thanks for everything.
Sirena, just… thank you, Hun – for all the countless things you do. You and Juli both, thank y’all and love y’all lots. I think Aiki is mostly adapted to her new form, and the part of the tale we’re not sure about should come to light soon. I’m really happy you loved the tree; that’s one of my favorite festive items to put up each year – think that was the 2nd year too. We’ll have it up again this year as well! I know we squee’d a ton about Super Mario RPG – that was such a fun game to go back through again! Keep kicking tail, you know you got this; we’ll always be there to have your tail, and cheer you on too.
As to those I’ve ran across in Eorzea. T’lapka, eventually we’ll cross paths again, but thank you for wishing all of us a Happy New Years 2024, and I really hope your year is going wonderfully. Akari, I think the last couple of times you came around, I was either so gosh darn tired or dealing with technical issues. Always wonderful to see you, as well as Ellany! I know the last few times Ellany was around, I think it was just Lizz and Laureine busy running about through Dawntrail. Look forward to seeing your amazing drawings once again. Keep kicking tail, especially in your Extremes and Savage runs!
Donald, aside from the last time when we were in Solution Nine, I think we’ve crossed paths the most but usually been away from the keyboard, engrossed/distracted, or attempting one but being away more so! Hope everything is going well, give extra pets to your carbuncle for us! Azelma, I believe you and I crossed paths once in Gridania, but not entirely sure, if so my apologies – was dealing with a technical issue at the time. Always wonderful to catch up with you, and the couple of times we’ve been able to in the past have been incredibly nice to do. Hopefully soon again we can, but in the meantime – hope everything has been going wonderfully!
Michael, I’m still curious as to how y’all enjoyed House 2; still need to watch that one myself – perhaps this October. The Fish Percolator is still safely up and running in the ~ARCHIVES~ as well… somehow. Still bewilders me to this day, but I love the fact that it does. Hope you’ve been well on your adventures, and hopefully we’ll cross paths soon too. Albeit we might just mysteriously stop by the Inspector’s abode one night in the meantime. Congrats on finishing Endwalker recently, and that your journey through Dawntrail is absolutely a blast!
I think that’s everyone that’s either commented here or we’ve seen around. Thank y’all so much, and to everyone else – miss y’all lots. I know I’ve been saying for a long while now that I’ll return to Mastodon eventually, but every time I’ve tried to something happens™ and causes another delay. It will happen, but I just don’t know when yet. Hopefully though y’all are doing well and continue to! Keep being your absolute best ‘zee awesome’sies’ as Aikirees would say, and keep kicking tails.
While my feelings really haven’t shifted all that much since my first State of Things, I have been busy both in and out of Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve been very slowly working on a project in lieu of Dawntrail that I believe I mentioned during the benchmark about a couple of new PC’s to replace my aging ones. That project I started back in mid November with it coming into fruition in a couple of weeks.
However, what I didn’t wholly consider along with this is where and what I was going to with them or place them when this was all said and done. Where I miscalculated was deciding to completely rearrange a room I really didn’t utilize for all of this (I wanted to do this over a year ago, but tabled it), so deciding to start this part back in mid-April, wasn’t a wise decision.
This basically boils down to since by not allowing the proper amount of time has now caused a time-crunch of sorts. Sure, I could let this go into June and cut it close to Dawntrail, but that in itself would cause more stress and plan-shifting. Rather keep letting this linger out even farther than it has and continuously generate a knot in my stomach, I’m just placing the hard deadline for Memorial Day weekend.
In doing this, it just means that us here may or may not be posting regularly until the end of the month when this is all said and done as I’ll have to spend time on the weekdays playing catch-up sort to speak to make sure everything is set enough to get it all aligned and running properly. There might be another Star Bunny this week but I’ll probably hold off on posting the backlog of Fashion Reports so it doesn’t look like a bunch of them were put up at once.
Just bonkers for a bit longer and back to relaxing/adventuring around Eorzea like we all used to, and I’m very much looking forward to it.
I really can’t believe I’ve hit this threshold. When I decided to take my hiatus from Mastodon nearly six months ago, and soon thereafter started up this blog, would not I have thought I’d have kept up with it as frequent as I have. I remember some bloggers I follow over on Mastodon, one being Belghast, mentioning posting something at least once a day whether it was something small or more grandeur. I understand why they all had recommended that as it does become easier over time to sit down and write something out on the regular.
I do know some of them are just slice of life screenshots of our adventures across Eorzea, but evolving even those into little small tales has been so much fun to do! Alongside that, being able to sit down and write out longer thoughts and stories has really been a wonderful treat too as I have really missed writing altogether. It has been a rather long time since I had written anything really; the last thing I wrote was my manuscript back in 2011(ish), and I do eventually plan on getting back to that. That’s a whole different topic though, and it does need a few more look overs before the eventual self-publish then off to work on the sequel story.
Here’s to the next 100, 500, 1,000 posts about whatever comes to mind really; whether it’s directly related to Final Fantasy XIV or another game entirely, looking forward to sharing the tales with everyone who comes across my little corner of a colossal world.
There will probably be more of these as time goes on, but this is a departure from my usual types of things I post here. Sort of a “how I’m feeling” stylized written thingamajig I suppose. What I didn’t want for this to be was something more emotionally driven than anticipated and I’ve been mulling over exactly how to write/say what/how I’ve been feeling. Way back in the beginning of November 2023, I departed Mastodon on a much needed break from social media.
The Social Media Departure/Break
The apex as to why I departed was caused by getting into another quibble with another person in the Final Fantasy XIV community that was saying that parsers (a 3rd party tool used to check how well someone’s damage output is) were okay due to their wide usage within the community. I countered back stating it’s not as it’s still against the Terms and Services of the game itself. Both of us doubled-down on our sides of the debate, and something just clicked that it was time to leave.
It wasn’t the first time, and I doubt it will be the last time I got into a discussion that changes to something more heated, but in that moment I think I just finally realized it wasn’t worth it to have this keep happening. Before this ‘final’ one was another having to do with someone perpetually liking practically 100% of anyone/everyone’s discussions/posts, which triggered memories of someone who was attempting to stalk Aikirees within FFXIV (even if that wasn’t their intention, it was still an unsettling feeling.) As a result I said something, not well stated, and that in itself resulted in a not-so-great ripple effect. I still feel bad about how I handled this to this day.
These were the two big ones that made me realize it was time to step away. There were, of course, incidences and typical drama that online communities have that happened before these two. Even from within our little group of friends we had made there were things that happened as well; however those were resolved, resolved themselves, or happened outside of what I knew was happening and ultimately resolved there too. I did step into some of them to help cool down heated parties, which sometimes worked and other times it didn’t.
Starting up this blog site and posting here as regularly as possible has really been good for me though, and whatever I end up doing in the future, I’m going to keep posting here because I really like doing it and it’s pretty therapeutic. Eventually EOCA’s Eulogy will go up and that will tell the tale of how that started and it’s eventual closure, and that will also touch on some other things as well.
How I’m Feeling in General Towards the Final Fantasy XIV Community
Generally speaking, my feelings towards the FFXIV community as a whole have really begun to deteriorate over the last few years. I’m not flat out saying the FFXIV community has become completely sour by any means because there are so many lovely and wonderful folks out there that I’ve come across, and the community as a whole is very friendly and welcoming. It’s just since the community has gotten so huge over the last few years, that the bad actors are starting to appear a lot more often than they used to, which is unfortunate but expected.
I’ve made mention of this in passing of times of the past where when doing even content folks were more warmly welcoming and content runs were light jogs with talking banter sprinkled in as opposed to now with the mentality of ‘go go go!’ being the primary driving force. Anyone with a ‘Legendary’ title or has one of the weapons from those series of Ultimate fights seems to very much amplify this. I realize this is a very generalize statement, as I do still see the more fun laid back style of runs, but I just wish it was the norm again.
The Modding/Plugin community I fully detest now as opposed to just having sour feelings towards – and this debate has been done to pieces with the argument being a near stalemate from both sides of it, which is unfortunate because it really does split the community up into separate camps. A community close to me decided to ditch traditional methods of making dances & performances via macros and go full-blown into using a plugin really didn’t help my feelings towards any of this either.
Content creators I personally feel are becoming another sour space in the community with I think only a small margin that are alright and genuine. Even one that I was a guest on, a simple podcast, fell into that trope the rest tend to of just looking at numbers and statistics. I understand that may not be the case in its entirety, but when that’s all you hear continuously is “look at how my numbers/followers I’ve acquired” as a status symbol, then there’s something off-putting about that. Chasing after more popular content creators/players within the space is something else that could be debated as well, but I know this is well beyond what I can discuss aside from what little observations and hearsay but that’s not helpful.
One last thing that comes to mind since you cannot get away from them in city-states are the perpetual spamming of Venues. To the best of my remembrance, venues started to really pop up during the pandemic, with before that I’d only hear about small tavern-like RP oriented places. I really miss those and I know they still exist, but seem to be on a much smaller scale nowadays. I stylized having small events like that over at EOCA HQ’s fire pit because it reminded me of an old cafe I used to go to and do the exact same thing. Nowadays, at least of this writing, they’re full of adult-themed pleasures and twitch-streaming DJ’s. I know I can just disable shout in chat, but they do come in handy to hear on occasion in city-states and while out adventuring.
This is really exhausting to keep seeing these every. single. time.
“Keep Moving Forward“
I suppose it comes down to ‘what now?’ I’m still not exactly sure, and I’m still hurting a bit.
As for Mastodon, I miss the little group/community we started and created within it, and I will return to Mastodon eventually. Just, not exactly sure when yet – it could be a day or two after writing this all out, or it could be another month or so. There’s no other social media I’m involved with (Instagram I kind of used to parallel, but stopped long ago), and if there’s a time that I depart from even Mastodon, then that will more than likely be the end of any social media for me. Without Mastodon and the friends I’ve made there, EOCA would still not be a home and just a house, nor would I have had so many wonderful memories and moments throughout most of 2023 and late 2022 when I departed Twitter.
These and so many more wonderful memories & moments, all thanks to our little community on Mastodon.
As for the general Final Fantasy XIV community, I’ll probably stay on the side of extreme caution as I have been doing. Normally all of the above doesn’t really bother me, and I know it should never, but sometimes it just all hits me and doesn’t… feel as warm as it once did. It’s disheartening to think about sometimes, and then just adding in all of the perpetual venue spam as a reminder, hits it a bit harder.
Regardless, I won’t leave Final Fantasy XIV for the foreseeable future as I really and truly do love/enjoy the game. Even with all these rougher spots appearing and happening, there is such a vast and larger more positive force within the community still and we’re all here just trying to have fun and enjoy the world, share our adventures & stories, make some wonderful friends & meet folks along the way, and look out for one another.
I know there’s a lot of wonderful & helpful folks out there, and I’ve met so many along the way as that’s the majority. I’ll keep moving forward, taking care of my lovely small FC, enjoy making new adventures, remembering all of the wonderful ones prior, and listen/share them with all of the friends I’ve made along the way. ♥
A smidgen late since the holidays have begun, but this took a little bit of work to get up and running this year. This is the first year I put together a permanent track for my small holiday tree, prior to this I would just use Bachmann’s E-Z Track. However, over the years those poor connectors gave out and the electricity didn’t flow throw it properly any longer.
Last year I took a break from even decorating the tree since I wasn’t able to get the train up and running, but took that sadness and converted it to determination to make darn certain I was able to do both this year. Overall I’m pretty happy with how the track came out and allows for the tree to sit in the middle with all of the wires feeding underneath it fairy well. The next thing now is to get the steam locomotive repaired and try to expand the track to allow for both to be running at the same time for next year.
Some of the highlight ornaments on the small tree.
Every year, along with mentioned about expanding the track itself, I want to add one or two decorative village pieces around the board too, making it look like a small town with this massive tree they festively decorate every year kind of vibe to it.
The N-Scale model train passing by in the foreground
I hope everyone is having and has a wonderful holiday season and here’s to a great New Years’ ahead!
I meant to do this shout out last week once it was initially posted, but derped out with everything else happening (sorry!!) Over the course of 2023 on Mastodon, we started up a community that is wholly within the social media platform for all of us who adventure around Eorzea and beyond. It’s a fairly loose and very low pressure community with no mandatory obligations of any sort; we just gather from time to time for social events and getting together to do group content as well.
Bearmine, the wonderful artist and good friend behind the work above, suggested creating a Cross-World Linkshell (CWLS) to make it easier to keep in touch while in-game. The group of us agreed and made some remarks that adding our friends to the CWLS would be akin to collecting everyone in a Pokedex from Pokemon. Nearly moments later, I chimed in with the comment ‘Frendedex!’ which became the name of the CWLS and our little (at the time) community.
A little bit later on, I decided to create a logo for our community for folks to use in various things: whether it was for posts, flyers, blogs, etc., and I got feedback from everyone in regards to the design. After a few revisions based on said feedback, the logo was completed soon thereafter. Bearmine asked for a vector copy to do something with it, and what came of it is that absolutely beautiful scenic rendition!
I highly encourage y’all to check out their work, and the link directly to the Tome of Frendedex with higher resolutions renditions is right here!
While not necessarily a ‘bad’ thing to be in a perpetual state of busyness, both in and out of RL work, it does tend to make the ears a bit on the heavier side sometimes. Ah well, the holidays will be here soon and they’ll be some nice downtime then. In the meantime, just need to rest when I can, and hopefully soon. Hope everyone out there is doing well! ♥
Survived the week before Thanksgiving, it’s typically pretty bonkers and this one was no different. Looking forward to the weekend now and playing a lot of Super Mario RPG for Switch that got released today! Here’s to a nice relaxing one with a wonderful holiday week after that!
Also think I got all of the elements either up and running where I want them or, at they very least, in place to expand as more things go up in time. Haven’t done this in quite some time, and since a lot has changed over the years, it’s been a bit of a learning curve. Glad to be doing it though.
