Chapel Orahamm's Blog, page 36
March 2, 2021
Video Game Review Tuesday: Bravely Default (3DS)
Sigh. Let’s get this over with. I have not gotten far in this game. This is the third time I’ve picked it up and given it a go. I think I just have no patience for turn based game systems. I’m more of a slash and hack or novel game, I think. It’s either that or the sheer amount of grinding involved.
The graphics are good for a 3DS game. I’ll give it that. Rendered from flat to 3D it’s still pretty. The dialogue is ok, as long as it’s on mute. However, the female lead is such a pity party. Maybe it’s the voice over, but I really would rather blame it on the dialogue. The other two characters that join up with the main are just about as annoying as she is.
The roll play mechanic itself isn’t bad in and of itself. I think I’m not the right audience for it. Looking at it objectively, the whole thing is a balance of numbers. Set up the character with good defense, good offence, and enough potions, eye drops, antidotes, and herbs, and set it to auto play for you. As long as you watch how your numbers fall and you know when to intervene in the system so the characters can consume something to reboost their numbers, then it pretty much can handle itself. Effectively you’re playing a game of subtraction-chicken with pixels.
I received the game as a present when I bought my used 3ds back in 2018. I had wanted one during high school, but game systems were way too expensive for my family. So, buying a used system for myself when I turned 28 was a weird way of reclaiming a bit of childhood I didn’t get to have. It was a lovely gift that someone wanted to share their favourite 3ds game with me. I greatly appreciated the gesture. Before this, I had very little experience with turn based systems. Actually, I can’t think of any I had played. I mean, I had never even played Pokemon. Yeah, that was how my childhood went.
Bravely Default is well rated by regular gamers. The cartridge is still expensive, even for being out for as many years as it has. There is a following to it, so for the players that like turn based gaming, this has to be up there in the market for enjoyability. Maybe it is because of the autoplay feature, where as long as you are grinding and letting it play for you, you can enjoy a bit of a story and probably work through thankless jobs like watching security monitors or waiting on programs to run in the background at work. Who knows? For me, putting in the better part of 10 hours of work on it and not getting very far made it into a thankless task game.
That leaves me with if I would suggest it or not. Again, this is where I sigh and say *I am not the target audience for this game*. I cannot honestly say this is something I would suggest, because I just can’t get into it. However, it probably is actually a really decent game for those who enjoy this type of system. If you like turn base, then I’d suggest checking this out. The graphics for some of the scenes are at least really good.
March 1, 2021
An Exciting Book Review
Allow me to just have a complete moment here of squealing joy. Yeah, this sums my book up. So, um, yeah, you’ll find me off with my head in the clouds for the next week.
Also, go check out the other bitesize book reviews!
March 2021 Posting Schedule
Manga Cafe Monday: Jujutsu Kaisen
Let’s get this out of the way first and foremost. I started reading the manga for Jujutsu Kaisen after having watched the first 14 episodes of the anime. I’m greatly enjoying that.
Getting into the first couple of chapters of the manga itself, it reads like the anime. Interestingly, in comparison to say, Black Clover, Jujutsu takes a little bit more time in it’s scene pacing within the anime compared to the manga. The manga fight scenes are surprisingly short, concise, to the point, and don’t provide you with the depth of strength the anime pushes. I have to wonder if this is because of the difficulty in representing the monstrous entities in any dynamic fashion consistently from frame to frame.
Though, thinking about fight scenes in manga a little more. I must argue against the frame to frame that initially came to mind. Manwa tend to have long drawn out battle scenes. Solo Leveling, which I read and reviewed last week had 140 chapters I got through. There were many panels with fight scenes. What I think it is, might be that manga is developed to be a published physical text for consumption where as manwa is designed for mobile reading. With mobile reading, there doesn’t have to be a limit on panel length. With manga, there is structure to how the page is read, how many pages are allowed within a printed book, and where the reader’s eye falls first on a page as you flip from page to page. Massive, dynamic scenes are often on the back of the page you are reading so that the page you open to and see first ruins the bits of dialogue on the back because you saw the dynamic before you read the important bits. Manga is a balancing act in structure. To keep the pace moving and be able to meet the publishing specs, fight scenes are most likely clipped to be smaller then in manwa. At least, that’s my assumption currently.
It is nice to approach a manga that considers the darker side, the darker aspect, of characters and stories that deal with death. Often, most anime and manga, say Fullmetal Alchemist, Naruto, and those where characters die, there are moments within the anime that address these circumstances. The characters cry, there’s a funeral, there’s a little bit of misery after, but addressing the situation prior to these circumstances happening isn’t often pushed heavily.
Usually it’s a “you know people die in this line of work, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“I’m strong, I can handle it.”
And that’s that.
No, this one does it a bit different. This one makes it so that the character has no one to blame for their actions and failings. That a grandfather’s last wish isn’t their excuse or their crutch.
This particular series, both within the anime and the manga highlight a changing opinion in the shonen world. One that is allowing strong female characters with depth. One that is allowing male characters to be more than just a tank. It’s providing a platform for a changing mindset. It’s pointing out in a subtle way or sometimes in a blatant way, the tropes that have composed this genre for decades now. It’s trying to deconstruct the scaffolding holding up old ideas that need to be reassessed and dismantled.
Really, with Jujutsu, I’m hoping to see the progression of not just the art style utilized rippling through the rest of the illustration community, I’m hoping the deeper psychology and social organization of ideas it’s punching holes in makes it’s way into other manga genres. I’m hoping it creates an opening for the audience to demand better representation and also for the illustrators and authors to point to the publishers and production companies that change is acceptable if not necessary for the progression of the industry at large.
The art is good. The story is regular. Its the little lines, the little actions, the little pokes and prods and jabs and punches at the accepted gender stereotyping and expectations within the genre that is absolutely beautiful to watch.
If I could say something to the illustrators, the design team, the author, the production company, and the publishers and distributors of this, it would be:
Thank you. Thank you for cracking the mold.
Affiliate Link DisclosureFebruary 24, 2021
Mobile Game Review: The Arcana
I got it in my head, while sitting board, that I rather like the non-chalant mobile games. Some video games are a bit too intense for me, but casual games are something I can spend time on without getting overwhelemed. Hence, I dropped into the Play Store and selected a couple and figured, what the heck, might as well review them, see what I think, and if they’re really hard to get into the next level without some type of coin grab gimmick. Most have them, because it’s the way the producers and designers can make their money. I get that. Some are just set up harder than others and makes me not want to spend money on them.
With that, let’s take a look at a game I’ve been seeing advertised on Instagram for a bit: The Arcana.
It desperately wants me to connect either my facebook or google account to it, even as I enter in as a guest. Selected around that will load the guest though, so if you don’t want those accounts connected, you don’t have to.
It asks for a name and a pronoun of she/he/or they, which is refreshing.
We open on the Prologue: 1 The Magician, in the tarot deck. 0 is the Fool, so I’m curious why we didn’t start there. Shall we find out?
Ah you start out as a student of magic in Vesuvia, that’s why you don’t start out with the Fool – though…hmmm
We have a white haired character named Asra, the student’s master and fortune teller. He’s off on a journey.
Let’s just get this out of the way, I love the art style in this for both the character design and the background work. The music is on a well paced loop that sets a decent mood for the storyline, and the couple of other audio sounds, like the cards flipping, are nice and not overdrawn.
We have a pair of new character, a Countess Nadia and Julian. One of Magician, one of Death. One dressed like a Persian queen, the other a plague doctor. Interesting. We’re going into this type of fantasy world.
II: The High PriestessHello new guy in a collar…
A market, a chance meeting, a raven, and Portia. I have to wonder where the paths lead if I had taken a different answer. This is rather well done if it makes me want to change my answer just to see the divergent path.
III: The EmpressDinner with the countess, a strange painting, and a bit of a history lesson to pique the player’s interest.
Intro dogs and a creepy staircase.
Alright, we’ve hit the first spot that requires coins – this is an extra content area and it requires 50 coins. At the beginning of the game, I was provided with 150 because I took the guest account rather than hook it into my other accounts.
Seeing as it is extra content, I’m going to avoid spoiling.
IV: The EmperorIntro Asra and another money grab for 125 coins, and all I had was 100, so I had to let him go.
Ah, Julian and Asra worked together, okay, things are conglomerating, and they were working on a plague cure, so that’s why Julian has a mask, interesting.
From a half hour or so of game play, I would say that the pacing is decent. It is a slow game, set up as a book-game, rather than an action system. The extra content might be a bit steep if you want to see each one of them, but the artists, designers, and people running the servers need to eat too.
I’m not sure about a star rating as of yet, but it’s proving interesting and I would rather not give away too many spoilers. There are other websites for that.
I’ll put in a bit more time on it and see where it leads.
PS – once I got out of the prologue, I took Muriel’s route. It’s still in development, but come on, who isn’t going to be curious about tall, dark, and collared? Also the music with him is calmer. Davorak’s is brash and he goes all fidgety over Asra, so I’d rather not deal with that hot mess that is being the after a messy break-up snack and the Countess is a complete drama nope for me.
Do you have a casual game your working on right now?
February 22, 2021
Manga Cafe Monday: Solo Leveling
Sung Jin-woo – MC, the weakest of the E-rank hunters upon introduction. Static sick mom, younger sibling going to college, needs to be the grown up who does the stupid stuff to keep the family going trope.
Kim Sang-shik
Bak – a man with a wife anticipating a second child
Ju-Hee – worried healer, first female introduced, doesn’t understand why Sung is even a hunter and needles him to tell her his life story quite a bit.
Song Chi-Yul – party leader on introduction raid of story
SettingSeol, South Korea – the opening location following the dungeon
Gate – a portal that connects dimensions on a timer between Seoul and the dungeon area.
My OpinionI tend to be wary of getting involved with Manwa. I stumbled into Killing Stalking as my first introduction and made it about a chapter in before noping out of that. It didn’t help that a lot of screen reading wasn’t set up to scroll Manwa, which was designed for screen reading in Korea. I have read a couple since then, though I have allowed them to fall by the wayside seeing as they are so long lived and sometimes arcs drag the storyline. Solo Leveling is an ongoing series, and I am writing this in 2021, knowing full well this is not going to be a “completed manga review.” I liked the cover art and decided to give it a try.
Can I just say, starting off the story with the gradient colors and OMG the flatting is spot on. The pacing is clean and the line weight gives good texture without being dramatically stylized.
We’re acknowledging raids, guilds, leveling, and Hunters in Seoul and not in an AR video game. Intro to monsters and dungeon levels. Monsters produce cores that have value. Many of the hunters are able to use those cores to buy better equipment, there by increasing their ability to raise their levels and stay safe. Our MC, because he has financial obligations to his family, is unable to put away enough money off the cores to be able to obtain equipment he needs to level proficiently and be able to bring in more money for his family. It’s a nasty cycle that feels pretty tropey, however, this is pretty accurate to the current socio-economic state of affairs of most nations in that many people living within a certain economic bracket find themselves so entrenched in debt that they cannot find a way to climb out. Some days writing tropes is really writing about the world around you and acknowledging that history repeats itself.
This story hits the ground running. You get a sense of the desperation in the background of people dealing with feeling insignificant and bound to a world not built for them, as a person looking at the author of the manwa itself. If you dive into it, it’s refreshing to start with a character that acknowledges being weak and doing a job they’d rather not be doing, rather than starting out with a bored OP character. This is all acknowledged within the first couple chapters. So, a paced background on the character during forward momentum of the intro to the rest of the story. As said, well paced, could be fast paced, but it’s not skipping important information for sake of length, or dawdling on details that do not benefit the story’s progress.
Grant it, the way these types of stories run, the MC is going to turn over powered. People are going to die. Something about flagging yourself on introduction about having a pregnant wife, etc. etc.
I have to appreciate the effect of introducing powerful individuals who are taken down by a boss without problem. So often there are all powerful characters that might get a bit beaten, but to set up true despair for the MC by watching people much more powerful than himself get taken out, its a good way of building up “The One” style storyline. Also helps with how the title is going to be woven into the script.
It’s dark, and bloody, and a touch gritty. It’s enough psych-horror to touch my apatite without crossing lines like Stalking. I don’t think I’m forgiving that particular Manwa anytime soon.
This one is proving to have my interest currently. It has good atmosphere, good tension. It makes you question actions and feel satisfied with the slight twists in familiar results. I’m running with this one being a good read. The first 9 chapters have proved to be exciting.
*Edit update, having reached chapter 57 on the same day as the post. The art is keeping up if not surpassing the initial chapters. The pacing is fast, but balanced. Character development is spot on without being overbearing. Yes. This is a good one to invest some time in.
Affiliate Link DisclosureMy Five-Year Title
I am currently working through a variety of skillshare classes in order to learn how to make a more productive website and a better overall social media presence.
Today I am working through a class called Productivity with Purpose: Your Foundation for Success. I am going to do one of the lessons on here, which is “Your Five-Year Title”. This is a brainstorming lesson that looks at a wide variety of career opportunities an individual wished to or wishes to pursue.
What I WantedChildhoodI grew up in the 90s. My parents were at the precipice between the Boomer and Gen X generations and both of these firmly entrenched within their millenial offspring the fundamental concept that the world was our oyster, all the while, the world was falling apart. So, while I was still naive and hopeful of the coming years, I dreamed of being an Archaeologist, a Paleontologist, a Vet. I distinctly remember watching documentaries on Otzi, the Ice Mummy in my grandparents house, fighting over a massive green velvet pillow with my cousins. They didn’t care. I gave up the pillow to watch this grainy video footage of this beef jerky looking figure carefully extracted from the glacier.
Most of what I wanted to do with my life came from watching documentaries. Watching what other people did. I didn’t care about becoming an astronaut. I wasn’t given access to video games, so becoming a game designer didn’t show up. Art was cheap and accessible, that and library books. That’s where my exposure came from. Where I got compliments and praise from. Otherwise, I was just another girl. Raised in a religious school, I wasn’t allowed to play with boy toys there, and legos/kinects/technics/and stem toys were too expensive for me at home. Though I did have a hefty collection of My Little Petshop toys. Beanie Babies came in around the age of 8 or 9 for me.
Museums were my world. They felt safe. They explained people. They explained society. The things that people fail at explaining for themselves. They gave me clarity, an overarching explanation, snapshots, nuggets of information that could launch me on the path to discovery I could find in a library. It was what I had. It was what I could reach out and touch.
In the end of it all though, my childhood crumbled when my dreams were smashed on the floor like a Ming vase. Archaeology, curators, paleotology, those careers, they don’t pay. I would be in debt for the rest of my life. And no one wants to be with someone in debt. With a girl who plays in the dirt. I should focus on careers that made money, put me in air conditioning, didn’t I want to be a housewife and raise a bunch of children? Wouldn’t that be the most fulfilling thing?
Teenage YearsI wanted to be so many things at this point. I had been shifted out of religious school to public school, talk about a rude introduction to the realities of life. Also, Fuze TV. Tattoo Artist was way up on my list, followed closely by welding. I wanted to do large art installations. Or custom autobody painting. But those weren’t real art. Those put me in the same field as “tradesmen” (to be read in a sarcastic sneering they-are-lesser-tone). That being a woman, those jobs would guarantee that I’d be passed over for career advancement and that I would just be asking to be catcalled and raped. That the chemicals in those industries would make me infertile, and didn’t I want children? Yeah. You read that right. Talk about another set of dreams cracked like a Classical Greek marble bust.
Ok. Ditch the trade skills. I’ll circle back. I’m older, how about Archaeology again? No, the cost for college wouldn’t work out. So, I need to look at job prospects knowing that the ratio has to make my education worth it? Yep.
International Trade? Translator? Mangaka? Antiquesties Acquisition? Lawyer? Neurologist? Expensive. You’ll hate yourself. You’ll hate your job. You’ll hate working for the people who will want perfection. You’ll never see an 8-5 job. You won’t have time for family. Who will be at your funeral when you grow old if you don’t have a family? Your children will hate that they never see you.
CollegeFreedom! Well, sort of. I moved out and away, so I figured I could really explore me. But, by now, filled with anxiety and the deeply rooted need for a glimmer of career approval, I fought like mad to get my degree in Asian Art History and Asian History with a goal of pursuing Antiquities Acquisition for museums and private collectors during my first year. I had gotten married to my high school sweetheart who turned into a major jerk. So, goodbye $20,000 scholarship and honors college. I moved back to my home state, and enrolled into the close university to get a degree in hospitality management. I had a vague idea of running a bed and breakfast at that point. Yeah, about a month into that idea, I switched into geology. There was a paleontology path, but it was a subpath under petrology. I loved it. Honestly, I wanted to go further in it. However, I was running out of time at that program had to be done in a very exacting manner and I was already racking up student debt, as I was want to be informed.
When I couldn’t get the classes I need to graduate on time without having to take an extra two years of study that my student loans would not carry, I switched paths once more. I pulled together every Asian Art History class and Asian History class I could find to make my own Asian Arts Degree. At this point though, I had found someone else, someone who treated me right, and had their head on straight. I graduated and became that thing that everyone else had wanted from me: a housewife with a kid – because, honestly, it made better financial sense to give up my career aspirations. And neither of us were grown up enough to be able to walk away from our parents to live the life we wanted. Student loans are scary.
Post CollegeDissatisfied with the mess I’ve made of my life, I sit here, going through Skillshare classes, hoping in vain to find something useful to do with myself. I had made the bargain that we’d have a kid before I went back to get my Masters so that we wouldn’t be in our 30s and set in our patterns and having a baby. 10 years on, the student loans paid off, two cars paid off, and a house refinanced down to a lower rate with 15 years before its paid off, and financially, our life is working really well. It’s safe. It’s what everyone wanted for me.
Life isn’t a video game, and I have 35 more years to live a career before retirement and I feel like I’m wasting it waiting for my turn to finally do something with myself. But, didn’t I do something with myself? I became that thing I was supposed to be. If I upheave this whole rose collored shiny picture of our life, that will put us all in a financial bind. The world doesn’t play nice with people who do that.
I’ve tried desperately to be able to have a career from home. I live way heck and gone in the middle of nowhere with no access to an academic library, no access to creative outlets that meet my desires. I am floating in an empty sea, and I feel empty inside.
Webcomic designer, blogger, freelance artist, author. I’ve tried these. I like doing them as hobbies, but jeez I hate them as career paths. The most fulfilled I ever felt was writing up an academic paper, giving a presentation on it at a conference, and getting it published in a journal. That felt right. That felt like heaven. That was glory and accomplishment and success and all the things I was told at five that I could have because the world was my oyster and I could be an astronaut or a vet or anything I wanted to be when I grew up. Except for this, that, the other thing, and literally anything I was ever interested in doing.
I looked at doing CELTA and teaching English in Japan, in becoming a travel blogger, of going back to school to do Law because I took a practice LSAT at hit a 152 without studying. But I don’t want to teach children what a run-on sentence is. I don’t want to micromanage legalese for companies. I sure don’t want to be a court lawyer.
Here I am. Floudering. Trying to become something, anything. Trying to reach for that fulfillment without ruining my family’s life. We have a good one. One that’s safe. One that is secure. One where if I had absolutely no motivation towards self-improvement, I’d probably be happy at doing. I’m sorry. I’m not digging at people who love being housespouses and raising kids. I personally hate it. It drives me crazy. I feel like a trapped house pet with very little to contribute. When my self esteem comes from achieving academic goals and not from being pretty or baking chocolate cakes every Friday, being a housespouse feels very much like being a wild parrot caught and sold to a pet shop.
What I Currently WantI want to be a professor. I want to go and teach people about history and art and society. I want to show people how trade during the Meiji era and the Impressionist era affected the art market and the development of graphic novels and the whole establishment of manga and anime as a full fledged genre.
I want to go back to school. I want to get my Masters degree and my Ph.D. I want to go live in Japan and have access to first hand materials where I can conduct proper research. I want it so bad it hurts.
But I know I need to account for where my spouse can work. I need to know where I can enroll my kid, because he can’t speak the language. I need for them to have stability. In the end, going on and getting the career I want so I can feel fulfilled really breaks down to how selfish I want to be with not just my life, but two other lives. In the end, I don’t know what to do. And I’m approaching 10 years of standing still in a flowing river, unsure of where to go with my life.
I wrote and published 5 books since then, but that isn’t my goal in life. I don’t want to be some famous fiction author who published 1-3 books every year with a traditional press and my name in every book store. I like writing fiction as a hobby. I like drawing as a hobby. I like telling stories as a hobby.
I want to contribute to the preservation of human history. To look at why people’s actions of the past have led to the current experience and seeing where it is going. I just don’t want to destroy anyone in the process.
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February 19, 2021
Bravely Default
That’s where the conversation started one afternoon with Wren while I was waiting for my Instant Pot spaghetti to finish cooking. The noodles came out crispy by the way. I’m still not good at using the thing, but they say cooking takes practice.
“Grant it, I know there is a pandemic going on and it’s not like I can afford to have us jet setting off to who knows where,” I provided the caviote before his eyebrow threatened to meet his hairline.
He pulled plates out of the cupboard and the gears were rolling in his head. I had been daydreaming of going back to walk through Akihabara and enjoy sakura flavored everything like we had done back in March 2019. I had also been stuck in a funk for several months trying to figure out what to do with my blog. I had torn it all down in February 2021 and now desperately needed content.
I had published my books: Fyskar, Subject15, Polaris Skies, Subgalaxia, and The Fire in My Blood during 2020. That had completely trashed my blog, seeing as I had been posting the chapters there for the longest time. I’m still writing books, but I wanted a fresh start, something interesting, something that would return writing stories to my enjoyed hobby rather than my loathed career – I hadn’t sold well, so figured it was a lost cause.
“This might sound funny, but you were talking about writing a video game review blog for newbies seeing as you don’t play much. What about doing a video game travel blog, where you talk about the worlds in the video game until we can travel again?” Wren chuckled.
I loved it. Absolutely loved the idea. I had video games hanging around the house I had barely touched. I had consoles to play them with. Having been raised with a bit of strict upbringing, I always found it difficult to sit down and let myself play video games. The house needed cleaning, the food needed preparing, I should be working on a blog, writing a book, literally anything to try to side hustle and bring in some small amount of income.
This though. This I could handle. This would give me permission to play the games I’ve wanted to and create content for a blog I’ve always wanted to write.
For my 28th birthday I bought myself a used 3ds and a really good friend gave me a used copy of Bravely Default to play on it. I had bought Animal Crossing and Kingdom Hearts 358/2 for it as well. I gave Bravely Default a short run, and I enjoy grinding games, but I couldn’t get comfortable actually grinding, because of this whole “you need to be working” mentality I have built around video games.
Now though, I’m going to get into Bravely Default. I’ll get some following posts put together as I travel through the different lands in the game and talk about what I learn. Not necessarily game mechanics, though those may come in. I’m approaching it as a true video game newb. Observation of graphics styles, dialogue, exchange rates on merchandise, things like that.
I’ve dug out my cord and have the 3ds charging. I’ve found my games and have the cartridge waiting. I even looked through what other games Wren and I have on our gaming shelf. God of War, Bioshock, Borderlands, Breath of the Wild. I think this could be a fun approach.
What do you think? Want to join me on a Video Game Travel Blog experiment?
Affiliate Link DisclosurePlay Baby Guitar
I am taking more time to work on my digital art and add material to my zazzle shop. Today I got this awesome guitar piece done.
Click here if you want to see Play Baby in the store.
I rather enjoy creating these little art pieces. They aren’t drastic and time consuming like some of my massive pieces that have taken hours to make. These little ones I make to be relatable.
The gradient was fun to add in. I like the stylized variance of the guitar where it’s familiar, but different at the same time.
Affiliate Link DisclosureFebruary 17, 2021
Spring Cleaning
I am now remaking this blog into something else. Trying to sell my stories has failed miserably. So, now, it’s time to scrap that concept and start over with something else. It’s hard trying to make yourself into something. It’s a matter of perseverance, right?
