Phoenixsong

Whew. A narrow escape for me there.

Yeah, I guess I'll play. I wanna be Cufant!

Let me know if you need someone to sub in!

Yeah, I'll let her know for you once Discord resumes working.

Extremely minor suggestion: get Keldeo to click the Join Game button and then link the resistance thread to the sign-up thread in normal mafia way so casual spectators can remember who's playing without looking for your list?

Aaaaa, I totally hadn't heard! Thanks for letting me know. I'll definitely grab some old posts I remember fondly.

RIP Kutho. Haven't had more fun in an RP before or since.

Edit: JFC, there are over twenty-seven thousand posts on that board? It used to be so lively back in the day. :(

Huh, I'd never have thought from buying from a rental company. I'll file that tip away for if I ever get over my crippling fear of driving, I guess!

Yeah, doesn't sound bad at all! Congrats again, and I hope the job keeps treating you well.

Yeah, same, I'm willing to do crowds if there's something I'm actually interested in going on (cfe squeezing down the street during Dragocon...). It was definitely worth it in this case!

Durian was pretty weird for me. I did try actual durians in Thailand, and they really... weren't that big a deal? From everything I'd been hearing it seemed like people either find them to be MOST DELICIOUS THING EVER or SIN AGAINST GOD, FRUIT MOST FOUL, but when I ate them, they were... okay? I didn't think they were disgusting, but not my favorite flavor, either. I wouldn't go out of my way to get one again, definitely not worth the expense imo. They do smell pretty strongly, and not pleasantly, but it also wasn't bad enough that I felt like it was going to be sick or anything, and it wasn't anywhere near as lingering as I'd expected.

Part of it might be that there are a lot of different varieties of durian with different characteristics, and the Thai varieties are supposed to be more mild, I think. So perhaps I wasn't getting the full durian experience. All in all it was kind of an underwhelming experience. Those specific durian desserts tasted pretty authentic, although they didn't smell too much. They weren't bad, but I was disappointed they weren't actually mango.

That's awesome! Really nice to be able to work from home, too. I'm just really crossing my fingers for a position in a place where I can take public transit; seriously nobody wants me on the roads, least of all me. =/ I hope your family's car situation improves, though. As tech support, are you strictly answering questions for people, or do you also do any coding or, like, general unfucking of plugin stuff if people screw it up somehow? Like, if someone e-mails you like "help I can no install" do you walk them through how to install, or can you log in and do it for them?

Anyway, I hope that it all goes well for you. It's great that you're working with nice people; that definitely makes a huge difference.

Thanks for the birthday wishes! I was in Hong Kong at the time; visited Japan a couple weeks later.

I did get to do something cool! I wanted to be in Hong Kong for my birthday, because Chinese New Year fell two days before it, and the celebrations go on for several weeks. So I got a parade as a pre-birthday thing (and stood around for three hours to make sure I had a good spot on the route, haha) and then on my actual birthday I went to a well-wishing festival, the centerpiece of which is writing a wish on a piece of paper tied to an orange and throwing it into a tree. If your wish catches on a branch, it'll come true!

These days they use plastic oranges instead of real ones, and you're not allowed to throw them at the actual wishing tree, because so many people attend these days that the tree would get damaged. They set up a fake tree for people to use:



It turns out it's prett hard to throw a hollow plastic orange up into a tree, but I did eventually get mine to stick! Aside from the tree there was a market, lots of stalls with new year's decorations, good luck charms, that kind of thing, and best of all traditional new year's food! Most of it considered to be lucky one way or another. I got to try souffle pancakes for the first time (admittedly not a traditional food) which are basically the best thing ever and I'm sad now that you can't get them around here. I also bought some yellow rice treats thinking they were mango flavored, and they turned out to be durian flavored instead, which was a surprise! Aside from food and gifts there was a shrine where people could pay their respects and wish for good luck, lion dancers going through the crowds periodically, and performances from some of the groups that had participated in the parade. Some of the parade floats were parked there, too. I spent the whole day there and had a fantastic time!

What's up with you? I saw in the mafia thread that you got a new job. Congrats! How's that going?

Thank you! :D

Great! Amazon pulled a bit of a fake-out on me, since originally it said the mat would come with the figures and the markers would be by themselves, and I just tried to picture you getting the markers, only the markers, first and going "wtf is this." Glad you got some nice minis and they were decent quality, since that does seem to be a problem with prepainted miniatures. Was kind of tempted to throw in one of those giant lots of horrible knock-off pokémon figurines that could also serve as enemies in a campaign, but if you didn't want to do that then you'd just have this giant box of horrible ugly pokémon knock-offs and nothing to do with them. :P

Ahh, damn, I was afraid of that. Hope you get some use out of it, anyway, and happy birthday again!

If you want the one you want the other in this case, trust me. :P

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday Kratos! :D Hope you have a great day!

Happy birthday! I hope you have an awesome day (once you wake up in the morning presumably, heh). Amazon says your presents should be arriving in the next couple days, so keep an eye out! It also split things up into two shipments, one of which contains only one item that makes no sense without the context of the other stuff, so hopefully that arrives... second.

Again, happy birthday and I hope you have a great year!

My one true goal as a writer or something-approaching-a-game-developer is to be able to pull off all sorts of wonderful little pointless flourishes like that.

Yeah!!! Something that's always gotten me about the Ace Attorney series, and Ghost Trick as well, is that they're just delightful games. I think there's a real difference between games that are good and enjoyable and those that are actually delightful, and somehow Ace Attorney keeps delivering on the delight. It's all the little details that make you smile, I think--little call-backs, bits of humor, and things like that that are technically superfluous but add an extra layer of fun. It shows so much careful attention, and it's such a lovely feeling when you think, "You know, it would be cool if they..." and they totally do, or when they completely surprise you, but the surprise feels perfectly right for the characters and setting and you almost can't imagine you didn't see it coming.

...anyway basically that's something I've actually thought about a lot and would love to emulate in my own work, too, definitely. Even if I don't work in particularly lighthearted genres, usually. :P

Ah, okay. I generally don't follow Nintendo news that closely. And yeah, at least they clearly still have interest in the franchise and think there's a market for that sort of game... Of course, I continue to be super-apprehensive that a sequel would just screw up everything that made the first game great anyway, but pine for a sequel anyway...

It's going to be even more interesting because they have to have battle work in both two-screen mode when the console's hooked up to the TV and one-screen when you have just the game pad. I suppose you could still do the split-screen interface with it hooked up to the TV, except now the TV is the "top screen" and you're mostly working with the game pad? Would be weird to be sitting at the TV but mostly staring at the little screen in your hands, though. At least they have a working one-screen version from when they did that iPad release.

I'm totally going to visit Shibuya and take all the fagirl photos when I'm in Japan next month. :P

Oh yeah, I must have skipped that post! Or at least I have absolutely no recollection of it. Which given that it was posted over two years ago oh God I put off finishing that game way too long is also entirely possible.

Overall, I enjoyed the game, although I really wasn't feeling either Case 2 or Case 3, which is why it took me so long to get through. In general those two felt super egregiously long to me? Case 3 in particular, lord I thought that one was never going to end. I also wasn't as big of a fan of most of the new characters introduced there in the middle. I really, really disliked Ray, and although kid!Ray was pretty innocuous I also didn't find him terribly interesting. Likewise Edgeworth's dad; he's a nice enough guy, serious but with some quirks, but I didn't find him tremendously, like, compelling to work with.

Case 4 was definitely a great payoff, though. I felt proud of myself for noticing

Sounds like a pretty standard "third version," then. Which has always been "wouldn't bother getting the first games if this had been available." I would say they tricked me into buying Sun, since after B2W2 and Gen VI I was thinking they might not do "enhanced" versions anymore... but let's be real, I wouldn't have been able to resist getting it even if I had known. Damn you Nintendooooo...

Yeah, RPGmaker games would be a pretty big pain. I figure I'll try surskitty's hack, then, and Vega sounds like a good additional choice. There's also Prism, if I'm remembering the name right? The other one Nintendo went after? I've heard good things about that one as well. Should be plenty to keep me busy.

Ooops, I meant AAI2, ahaha. I assure you you're way more up on the Ace Attorney franchise than me, heh. Which, I don't remember if I ever asked you what you thought of that game in the end? Seeing as I've now actually played all of it, thanks to Butterfree.

Okay, noted!

I ended up taking a pretty great cooking class! It covered mango stick rice, which is the only dish I'll be consuming from now on...

How's Ultra Moon? I've been hearing the games are pretty similar to the originals up until the third island or so and the implementation of Rainbow Rocket was disappointing (whyyyyy I believed in yoooouuuu), but overall I think people have enjoyed it? I'll probably pick it up one way or another when I get home because I'm a sucker, but. And I hope you enjoy Spirit of Justice! I'm so behind on all the AA games, ugh.

I never actually finished Uranium, haha. Can't remember whether I did the final gym or stopped before the final tournament, but the game file's on my other computer anyway, so it's moot, really. I've never actually heard of Altair! Vega, though, that one's at least vaguely on my radar. I had no idea it was a sequel to another game, though I imagine it stands just fine on its own anyway. I'll put those two on my list to check out, although I can't abide grinding so I don't know how I'll do with them, haha. Gaia I'm vaguely aware of, too, probably worth looking into. Unfortunately with a lot of fangames (like most of the ones on Relic Castle for example) they're Windows-only and I don't feel like mucking about with Wine or something just to run them, so I'll have to wait until I get home to give them a shot. Fortunately there are plenty of hacks out there that work fine with my Linux-ported emulators! (Although, funny story, I was playing through AAI3 with Butterfree and got stuck at one point because it turns out the Linux version of DesMuMe doesn't properly implement the DS mic properly, so I couldn't do one of the damn puzzles where you're supposed to blow into the mic? Good times.)

btw, I'm planning to send you a birthday present (that will hopefully be closer to almost on time for once), and I'm wondering whether I should use your home address for that, or the one I've been sending postcards to?

Hope you had a great Christmas and new year! And got to enjoy playing some great games!