mDuo13

My vacation is coming along pretty well. I've had plenty of time to chill out, catch some waves on Kilama Beach, and play Metroid. It's funny: I bought Zero Mission thinking, "This will substitute for that frustratingly difficult classic Metroid in my experience of the series." But when I fired up the game and glanced at the extras, it had the original Metroid available. I decided half-heartedly to try it out, and now I've spent a lot of hours, beaten Kraid and gotten almost all the power-ups, despite how mind-bogglingly difficult the game is.

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First off, a bit of context: this post comes to you from all the way on the island of O'ahu in the great island state of Hawai'i. Well, actually, I'm not all that fond of Hawaii, but for the sake of my cousin's wedding and related business, I find myself sitting in a sweltering room in a rented beach house, pattering away at my Eee's miniscule keyboard, with no internet at the moment of this writing (though if you're reading this it seems safe to assume I've found a wireless point for long enough to upload it). Completely by coincidence, my good friend Spiritsnare is also in Hawaii at this moment, though he's a few klicks west on the map, visiting the island of Kaua'i. Judging from the little compass attached to my bag, this means he's somewhat forward and to the left of my current sitting position.

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Well, I'm now breaking what I think is the longest streak of not writing any blog entries since I updated this site. And it hasn't been for a lack of things to write about; closer to a lack of time to write about them. In the time since my last post I've finished ARIA The ORIGINATION, Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 and a few other anime series, graduated from college, played Metal Gear Solid 3, gone to Fanime Con, started smoking, gotten married, gotten divorced, lost my job, gone to the moon, fought off cancer, climbed Mount Everest, and played a lot of mahjong. Okay, I admit, a few of those were made up. But really, a lot has happened.

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Man, three CGs in a row. You must think I have a major project I'm procrastinating from or something. That's pretty much how it is. A 15-page senior seminar paper is staring me in the face so I'm retreating into a corner with my tablet to draw characters from slice-of-life youkai-befriending anime. But soon, soon I will have to do that project and then I will be DONE with it and basically done with college...

During my conversation with Chloe yesterday, she asked me if I wanted her to draw anything else, so I said, "sure" and asked her to draw Erin here. The result, while not impressive, comes less than 24 hours later. Not a bad pace by the both of us, if I do say so myself.

After about 95 hours of gameplay, my party finally beat the last boss of Tales of Vesperia. Overall, it was a really satisfying game with great characters and lots of good party interactions. I wanted to play as most of the party members, but each character is individualized enough that in order to get good enough with any one, you can't really spend time learning the others, especially later on when each character has a variety of different tricks and commands thanks to the huge array of skills available. Perhaps later on I'll replay the game on the PS3 with different friends, and get to try out something new... or perhaps I'll get to play Estelle again. She's good enough that I don't mind either way. I'm looking forward to hearing her voiced in Japanese and seeing the new story points of the PS3 version. But for now, in celebration of finishing the game, I made a new CG of her even though I've been absurdly busy lately.

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