My eyeballs tried to stage a coup

For about a month now, I've been lounging in my couch while waiting for residency to start on July 1st. I literally have no responsibilities beyond keeping my body and living space clean, and filling out some paperwork. Most of my peers have gone on vacations, but I don't like spending money or going outside. I went on a cruise once and by day three, I was all "I wanna go home and sleep on my bed now".

So I've been writing (on the computer) or playing Fire Emblem on my 3DS. Sure, I've been going to the gym as well, but I'm no Terry Crews. So that's basically an hour every other day. It's not so difficult to keep my apartment clean, and since I'm not doing anything physically or even mentally draining, I don't require much sleep. I didn't do any formal tracking, but I suspect I was spending around fourteen hours a day in front of a screen.

Last week, I got a headache. Frontal, bilateral, throbbing headache, 2/10 on the pain scale, but constant. I didn't think anything of it, besides attributing it to my lack of stable sleeping schedule. Perhaps I'd manage to become sleep deprived while doing nothing.

The headache persisted after a nap, which I found strange, but I decided it must be the beginning of a head cold. I've gotten excited about summer and gone out without a coat/sweater later in the evening, when it's a bit colder. I took an Advil and went to bed "early", whatever that means when you don't have to wake up at any particular time.

Fire Emblem: The Astral Dragon needs to go

I'm in my third playthrough of Fates, this time just trying to get as many supports and finicky special abilities as possible, and I'm at the end of my rope with this thing:

Maid turned dragon that does nothing

At the beginning of the story, one of your maids falls down a canyon with you, turns into a dragon, and takes you to your castle in. . . Streetpass heaven, I guess. The outrealm or something like that. Saving you took so much out of her that you have to feed her in between chapters so she levels up. As far as I can tell, you jump down this canyon again with Azura and it's no big deal, but whatever. This is just an excuse to get the castle deal rolling.

For the most part, I like the castle. There's the convenient shops, the statues (which became way more awesome once I realized they raise character stat caps), the mess hall, and even the arena. The private quarters, I could do without, but at least that helps you with supports.

This astral dragon thing, on the other hand, seems to be there because Intelligent System woefully overestimated how fun it is to see a characters' EXP bar go up in a single whoosh.

The Marvel Critic Conspiracy

As I made clear earlier, I did not like Dawn of Justice. If Rotten Tomatoes is to be believe, neither did most critics. Or youtubers (I would pick a videoreview to exemplify what I mean, but there's just too many).

Well, there's this youtuber, who believes Dawn of Justice is a "rock-hard, rectum-shredding, anus-prolapsing blockage." I thought it was a little over-the-top, but I laughed. Anyway, hatred for this movie took over the world like a zombie virus of disappointment, rage, and sadness. Or so I thought.

It seems that there are people who loved this film (seriously), and they've come to a certain conclusion about why the rest of the world (critics in particular), are trashing it: Marvel Studios payed them off.

Character descriptions - Nora Roberts lets her imagination fly

I'm reading the next installment of the . . . in Death series, and keeping track of the way Roberts describes the characters. Back when I was more active in writing forums, writing character descriptions could get. . . controversial. It seems like the current trend is to describe the characters as little as possible since "the readers don't care", or it's "intrusive" because the reader will imagine whatever they want anyway, and some would be jarred away if their mental image of any character is contradicted.

Except, apparently, for people writing romance. The idea is that romance readers expect character descriptions, especially of hot people and sexy clothes. Maybe that's true. I'm a romance reader, at least sometimes, and while I'm not sure I expect character descriptions, I can live with them. I do wish Roberts would stop describing Roarke as a warrior-angel looking type with an Irish accent (I get it; he's prince charming, good gawd).

Then there are the descriptions of all the other characters. This is Leonardo:

When I was younger, I didn't really know what "sharp cheekbones" were, only that all romance novel heroes had them.

What I get out of this description is that Leonardo is supposed to be tall, very well-muscled, and conventionally attractive. . . but Eve thinks he looks like a cartoon character. Seriously:

Who wouldn't want a man with hot dog fingers touching them?

Which one would you go for, animated T&A or animated zombie dragon?

Fire Emblem: Fates royal siblings are way cooler than the Avatar main character. Out of all the old FE tropes that have been vanishing in the newer entries, the one I miss most is the non-intrusive "Tactician" player Avatar that had next-to-zero impact on the plot. I was ultimately displeased with the player Avatar's prominence in Awakening, and Fates is even worse.

First of all, Corrin's supposed familial relationships with both royal families weren't equally compelling throughout all routes. In Birthright, I would have liked her to be more anguished about going against the siblings that she grew up with. Conquest made more sense from a psychological perspective, but the idiotic plot device regarding the "curse" that didn't let her tell anyone about Valla crippled the storyline. Revelation comes out better story wise, but it's saddled with way too many characters for a mere twenty-something chapters of gameplay.

To make matters worse, Fates can't resist making the royal siblings love interests. My theory is that it has something to do with the meta-game that's undoubtedly cropped up somewhere online (I bet that you get stronger Child Units if Corrin marries one of the royal siblings). I've seen arguments that Japan has "different" views about incest than the West, which. . . I'm no expert in Japanese culture, but I'm pretty sure brother-sister incest is taboo in Japan. And don't give any of that "they're not blood siblings" nonsense. For most of the story, Corrin doesn't know that. And you can marry him or her to the siblings before they find out otherwise in the story.

But fine. I can easily ignore this incest thing by simply not marrying Corrin to her siblings. Which I didn't do. Whatever. You know what's not so easy to ignore? Camilla's status as a creepy fanservice girl. Just look at her boss battle intro scene:

Fire Emblem: Fates is offended that you thought Awakening was easy

As I said before, Awakening is a pretty easy game. Even hard mode is no big deal as long as you pick casual mode (and what adult with a job and limited time wouldn't?). Beat the first couple of chapters, rack up supports, and join characters so their important stats basically double. I can only imagine that someone at Intelligent System didn't like the watering down, and thus came up with new ways to screw with players, even those who picked casual mode, in Fates. 

The first major change is to the Pair Up mechanic, which essentially rendered Awakening into a "press A to win" joke in everything but the highest difficulties. Enemies can now pair up as well, meaning that it's not a good idea to just pair up a Swordmaster with a General and place them at the center of the map so enemy units can rush in for suicide. In that light, it's probably for the best that paired units can now either defend or attack together. I'm not sure I'd want to deal with a paired up set of tanks that not only blocks attacks, but also dishes them back out.

Dragon Veins, which seemed fun in the beginning, serve to further complicate the hell out of some maps. I believe the internet hates Takumi because of that water-draining incident in Conquest chapter ten. There was also a late Hoshido chapter that had the Dragon Veins appear and disappear, which trapped me in some booby-trapped floor with no healing items or healers while the games spammed Faceless units at me.

And then there's the RNG, which delights in screwing with players. More than usual. I hear this was common in the older games, but I started playing way back in high school, and I don't remember stuff like this happening:

Thanks to my friend Jean for capping these.

For those of you not playing this, that 4% on the right is the chances that "Ragnarok" would hit the your unit. I don't know if my friend was playing Classic mode at the time (permadeath mode), but let's hope not.

But that's just a one-time thing, right? Apparently not, because:

Ryoma is literally the strongest character in the game.

Why does music in English rarely sound good?

I don't mean to sound like a hipster here, but the English language just doesn't lend itself to music very well. Spanish lyrics just sound so much better. It's not just for music that's translated from another language to English either. I've noticed that new Spanish music just has . . . deeper meaning than English music.

All my life, I assumed it's because English is not my first language so it never sounds quite as soothing and welcoming to my ear as Spanish. That's a strange feeling since I'm way more eloquent in English by this point (like ninety percent of my formal education as been in Spanish).

To be specific, I think Shakira sounds about a hundred times better in Spanish (I think this is the point where I lose any pseudo-sophistication points I might have gained above). If you happen to be bilingual, or just bored, go listen to "Suerte", then "Whatever, whenever" on youtube. Hell, even if you don't speak Spanish, I think you'll notice that "Suerte" is just a better song.

Also, listen to "Que Me Quedes Tu", my favorite Shakira song ever ("That you are left to me", can't think of a less literal translation that makes more sense . . . perhaps "That I'm left with you", but it doesn't sound right either).