Lain's Blog

Hello! As you can see, I redid the layout of almost all the pages of the site. Using repth's layouts on the home and blog pages! And I might use another one of their layouts for the gallery index page. Doing a Cardcaptor Sakura theme as I've recently been binge watching it. It's so cute! It's similar to Sailor Moon, but honestly, I like the atmosphere of Sakura and her personality better. She's less hotheaded and aloof than Usagi and the side characters are enjoyable. The plot actually seems to be more intricate as you question some of the things and aren't sure the answer. In Sailor Moon, the answers to questionable things are pretty obvious lol.

In other news, guess what I got! Well, I got it a while back, I haven't blogged about it yet. I got my Zodiac weapon for Warrior! Ragnarok Zeta! It's fucking beautiful. The best warrior weapon by far imo. A lot of the axes are either simple, ugly, or too big/small. This one actually has an amazing glow, perfect size, and it's dyeable!

I also have some screenshots of my girl in the Dawntrail benchmark. They did AMAZING on Au Ra horns! Look at the beautiful textures on them! Au Ra got the best texture updates hands dowm. A lot of people are complaining about the softer shadows and the lifeless eyes. While I can agree with the lifeless eyes (I like having permanent lights in the eyes), we can't judge until we get in game with the update. The softer shadows/brightness is likely because there's no option to change the gamma in the benchmark. My main issue was just that my character's black hair looked more dark grey, but the gamma should be the main culprit of that (hopefully). But due to everyone complaining, they said they'd update the benchmark. I think the lighting definitely needs updated in there. The Limsa Lominsa enviornment I wish would they change completely tbh... It's just a hill and a tree and the grass puts a gross green lighting effect on the character's skin that's especially noiceable on pale characters. Here are the only screenshots I took of the actual benchmark lol.

Can I also just mention how beautiful that weapon looks?

For the last recent news, I've been playing a lot of Dragon Age: Origins! I really enjoy the game so far. Though I wish I had gotten it from EA rather than Steam since a lot of reviews mentioned that it crashes quite often. I've had about 3-4 crashes in about 8-ish hours of playtime. But it's a quick restart, I suppose. It also took me a while to get some mods going... the hairstyles/hair color/override mods are easy enough, but for a lot of he armor ones, I found that they don't all work. I found one that did though! The mage needs it desperately. I was tired of wearings condoms as robes. Here is my character! I'm playing a human mage for my first playthrough. Wanna do an elf next, probably a thief. And yeah... I may have gotten a bisexual mod to romance Morrigan. Do you blame me?

Hello again. So, I watched the Cat Returns. It was good but... had nothing to do with Whisper of the Heart lmfao. Nothing about Louise or anything really related to the first movie besides just the Baron being in it. I guess it's an alternative universe type thing? It wasn't written by Hayao Miyazaki like Whisper of the Heart was. It was really cute though. I mean, I do just love cats in general, so the movie was pretty enjoyable for me, even if no questions were answered from the first movie. I looked on message boards and a lot of people seem to believe that Louise died during the war, which was something that crossed my mind too. I was hoping they'd go more into it though, as just leaving it primarily a mystery is pretty sad. Muta carried the movie though.

In other recent news, I started playing Paladins again. I used to play it every day back when I was in middle school/early high school years. I played it when it was still in open beta since my dad and his friends found it and had me try it out with them. I miss the OG Paladins, mainly when Cassie still had her bow instead of that crossbow... I was always a Maeve main. Love her and her playstyle. I like speedy characters a lot. My favorites are Maeve, Cassie, Evie, Ying, Io, and now Rei. Vora is cool too. I hate playing tank, not my playstyle at all.

I've always been watching more Gintama again! I LOVE Gintama. It's honestly becoming one of my favorite animes. It's comedy is fucking peak, even though a lot of it is Japanese comedy (I watch it in subs, so no clue if dub is any different). Gintama, Asobi Asobase, and Nichijou are best anime comedies. Haven't seen Lucky Star, but I want to. Gintama is just so good honestly. I love Kagura with a passion, she's like my spirit animal. Oh, I also watched Equilibrium for the first time! An amazing movie, loved it a lot. You can expect to see it added to my move list in the media page soon. My dad and I are going to watch V for Vendetta next, as I also have never seen it. I have also started watching the Rookie with one of my friends. I was skeptical since Castle was... well, garbage IMO. Nathan Fillion was amazing in Firefly but I thought Castle was horrible. Honestly, I think Nathan Fillion acts well, it's just his character and Beckett's that I dislike. Just something about the way they wrote their personalities is terrible to me. But the Rookie is actually amazing! Also, was it just me or is his name John Nolan like a reference to Defiance's Joshua Nolan? Maybe it's unintentional, but that was the first thing I thought of. Defiance was another amazing sci-fi that sadly got cancelled. I watched that show when it first came out when I was just a kid. I remember being amazed at how close it was to where I lived since it was filmed in St. Louis.

Remember when I mentioned I was playing Sims 4 again? I recently made a new sim (I know, I know) and she's beautiful. I named her Fiona. She's probably my favorite sim yet. She was inspired a lot by Heather from Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines (and just VTMB in general). I'll add her whole photo album into my gallery page at some point. I have a lot of Sims that I'd like to show off eventually. I could also do CAS videos maybe. The next sim I want to make is Jeanette from VTMB. I found a tumblr post with all her CC and stuff. I'll probably do that tomorrow.

I've been pretty silent for almost a month. Sorry about that! I was busy setting up other pages in my site and playing lots of video games. Oh, I've also been watching Bleach with my dad! I love it a lot! We started watching it like a week ago and already have watched nearly 90 episodes. Ahh, it's so good! The soul society arc was awesome! The bounts arc is a lot less exciting but I love the characters so much. Ichigo is a great protagonist and honestly all of the squad captain are cool as fuck. I really love Momo (poor Momo) and Toshiro. The comedy is also super good!! Especially every scene with Kon and Urahara. Fuck, even the filler episodes with Don Kanonji were enjoyable. I like the bount arc, but I honestly can't wait for it to end so we can get back to the main storyline!

Aside from Bleach, I've been playing lots of games! I play Final Fantasy XIV, Honkai: Star Rail, Honkai Impact 3rd, Snowbreak: Containment Zone every day, and have gotten back into Tower of Fantasy for its anniversary! I played it day one when I was looking for a Genshin Impact replacement. I got bored of it though because the exploration was annoying, the story was okay at best (still better than Genshin story), and the gameplay was starting to feel very repetitive. In Joint Ops, the content either took too long because there was no healer, or the other person was a shit DPS, or a tank that didn't trigger phantasia, or it was too short because there was a whale that just blew through the enemies. In raids, it was mainly idiots ignoring simple boss mechanics.

Like the one double boss raid that had a Romeo & Juiet mechanic but people would still kill the first boss while we're fighting the second and it's just now half health and now we have 2 minutes to kill it and uugghhh. But the game has always been very generous! I had Cobalt and got Ruby 3star since I was running a fire team (I really love King, mainly just because his weapon is a scythe, I always play scythes in games). I wanted Anabelle but I had quit the game. But with the pick-your-own 5star banners, I got Anabelle AND the new fire girl I wanted! I have insane pull luck as well. I was literally getting a 5star back2back. I got Lan 1star but I've been doing story and gonna do exploration soon so I can hopefully get her 3star. Mainly just because I want her skin. I also have 400+ chips saved up for a standard banner weapon exchange so I can 3star Anabelle when she gets added to standard. All in all, been pretty nice to play it again. The story has gotten better but it's still kinda... idk, it just doesn't really keep my attention all that much.

Oh, I also got Kafka and her lightcone in Honkai: Star Rail! I was on gurantee so I was gonna get Kafka no matter what. I had around 109 rolls. Got Kafka within 60 and then pulled for her lightcone cause I didn't think any of the 4star cards were good enough. Had to buy 1 extra roll but I got it! It was my first time rolling on the lightcone banner so that might've been why. People were also talking about how Kafka's banner didn't make as much money as others... Yeah, no shit. Do you know how many people I've seen talking about saving up for Kafka only? Not rolling on anyone else? She's the most anticipated character, everyone literally saved up for her since the beginning of the game. Also, where are the skins?? I hope they don't do two skins a fucking year like Genshin does. Honkai gets like one skin every week! Even if it's just like... Kafka's jacket-less version as a skin, just something. Snowbreak: Containment zone has only been out for about a month and already has like 8 character skins.

Speaking of, I've been really enjoying Snowbreak: Containment Zone recently. I was a Marian Swift main, got her sniper and everything, but now I have Fenny Coronet and I got the limited banner Chenxing! They added a 4star gun for her in the event shop (literally for free). I've seen people on the reddit talk about "should I get the 4star or 5star?" like... is that a trick question?? Obviously get the 5star if you can... The 4star is just a good f2p alternative. I mean, you should purchase the gun anyway because it's literally free — they give you the currency for it — and they may add someone else that could use it as it's the only DPS electric assault rifle in the game currently. Oh, I also got the Chenxing skin! It's nice. My favorite character is Siris though! She's so cute! I'm trying to max out her housing simply because I love the look of her room. Her kit also is really good! It does kinda suck that she's meant for more of a support-skill-only mode but once I get Tiny Grains on her she will be my tank DPS hybrid. I will put all my love into her.

That's about it for now! I wanna make lots of blog entries about video games so keep an eye open for that! Till next time!

I had an oddly comforting dream last night. I've been having trouble sleeping recently. I think it's an anxiety thing — I have issues sleeping alone because of anxiety and I seem to have separation anxiety with certain people. I finally fell asleep around 6am without meaning to/realizing it, and had a strangely comforting dream. I think going in-depth into it is a bit TMI, because it was in an intimate-ish setting (but it wasn't a wet dream lmao). But basically it sort of made me feel a bit more hopeful. I've been in a pretty big drought recently. Every day is the same. It's like I want it to change but at the same time I'm terrified of change. I'm terrified of a lot of things. I hate being so afraid of living. I don't like relying on my anxiety meds, but sometimes I can't help but use them. Especially on days I have to leave the house. Even the idea of visiting friends sometimes has me feeling like I have to throw up and I get shaky all over. I really hate it. I wish it wasn't the case. At least I've gotten better about it. I can go to the grocery store and usually be fine. But the second I see people I know/notice people looking at me, I get paranoid and a little shaky.

Why is that? I don't know, it's fucking weird. I never did do much better in school, but at least I never had too bad of panic attacks. I really wish I knew what it was. I wasn't always this way. I used to enjoy life. I don't know what changed. Maybe that's it — the problem is that I didn't change. The world moves on and change comes and I ignore it, if not avoid it entirely. I guess that's it. I think about the way I'm living and I'm filled with sadness. But when faced with the question of if I would change my current lifestyle, I'm hesitant to say I would. It's like I can't tell if I'm sad or not. I can't tell if I'm upset. I guess I'm just too complacent. Why is it hard for me to know my own feelings? I guess I wouldn't know that either, would I. Sigh. But I'm doing fine I suppose. It could be worse, right?

At the very least, I've got a bit more comfortable messaging people online/talking behind a screen (literally this entire site). When I was a kid I was horrified of that lmao. I remember playing MMO's and crying because someone messaged me/sent a friend request. I guess I've always been this way. My dad said I had separation anxiety as a baby. Something about my mom kidnapping me, I dunno. Although there were the times when I was super young, and I was shittalking people in PVP on Elsword... I don't know why the fuck I did that lmao I was an unhinged child. There was also that time in Terra where I grew an attachment to a random player and we were questing together. I wonder to this day if they knew I was like 9 years old at the time. I'm positive they could tell by my way of typing, but who knows, that was so long ago. I wonder what that person's doing now. I miss old school Terra, man. What the fuck is that mobile UI they got going on now? I remember being so happy that I got Gunner levelled high enough so I could make a Reaper. I loved the Ellen. I wonder if I have my old account still laying around somewhere... Speaking of, I really miss Wildstar. Oh my god, why did that MMO shutdown? It was so good! Maybe I should try to get into one of those private servers. Sigh. All my favorite sci-fi stuff gets cancelled. Wildstar, Firefly, Defiance, Altered Carbon, Dark Matter... Can't have shit, man.

Anyway, thanks for reading through my TedTalk. Have some photos of my cats as a reward because I don't offer cookies (maybe one day).

Today I got lots of work done on the media page! It took a while but I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Other than that, I played FFXIV, Honkai: Star Rail, as it's patch day, and tried out the new Snowbreak: Containment Zone game. The gunplay is actually a lot more fluid than I was expecting. In Star Rail I'm just waiting patiently for Kafka release... In other news, I got the new Majestic Manderville Scythe!! It looks so good. The best of the newest line of relic weapons IMO. I think the Paladin one is also good. Too bad I don't care for Paladin. I took some screenies with my new scythe.

In other news, I've seen a lot of people complain about the Manderville relics. I understand the people that complained that you had to do all the Hildibrand quests, it was definitely a bold move on the dev team's part, but I find the quests really enjoyable. Still, I get that it wasn't everyone's cup of tea and it takes ages to skip through the entire side quest chains since they're so long. What I don't understand is why people are complaining that the relics are like that of the Anima relics. It's just poetics/tomestones... something so easy to obtain should make players happy, shouldn't it? Why are people complaining that it isn't enough content? There are plenty of other daily content to do without the need of some relic farming quest added in. Just turn poetics in and get the weapon. Simple. People want another Eureka/Bozja but instance-based zones like that require lots of players to be actively doing the content. That's why I've never done Eureka and only did Bozja when it released. Nowadays you need to get into discords or party finders to do that content. I hated that type of design because I prefer to play solo. People would be complaining for sure if it was something as tedious as Zodiac, where you have to do things that take hours and lots of gil/resources. I just don't understand people complaining about easy content I guess.

Here are my screenshots!! ヽ(｡^ᴗ^｡)ノ

So today I mainly just redid the site graphics/colors/added blinkies/stamps. I made everything purple because I quite like the color purple. I don't really have a favorite color. I think colors are situational. For instance, bright purple looks nice on art and graphics, but horrible on clothes or furniture. I fucking hate orange on me but I quite like orange furniture. I think one of the best colors is brown. It looks good no matter what situation. That's how I view colors anyway.

I also have been watching Firefly! It was on TV and my grandma was watching it. I've seen it damn well four times through and through now but I never mind rewatching it. It's one of the few shows that I can probably rewatch over and over again, right next to Avatar: The Last Airbender, Legend of Korra, Bob's Burgers, Bee and Puppycat, and Camp Camp. They're playing the episodes back to back and it's beautiful. I fucking love Firefly. I heard they're making a reboot, but some sources say it's a comic/book and others say it's an actual TV revival. I'm pretty confused whether it's one or the other. I have been thinking about getting my hands on the Firefly books though. Also, the movie... fucking broke me. I AM NOT considering it canon, thankyouverymuch! I love Kaylee. I have a huge ass crush on her. And to make it better, we got Chinese food for dinner! So I ate sweet and sour chicken with fried rice and egg drop soup while watching Firefly! :D

I didn't do anything today, and that's okay! I'm writing this after midnight so this is technically going on the 12th but it may also count as the 11th. Today I didn't do anything as I was feeling quite lazy today. I just cuddled into the couch all day. Although I did have a small episode today so maybe my mind just needed a break. Now that's it's 3am and I should be sleeping, I decided I wanted to do some coding apparently, so I am writing this as well as adding an updates page while in bed watching the movie Evolution (it's v good)!! :D

I plan on adding many more pages and things to my site tomorrow! I want to add a chatbox, a Tomodatchi page, a few shrines, and a media library thingie! I got some ideas that I wanna add hehe

The directory is labled "blog" but this is really just an online, public diary. Which sounds totally impractical, but meh, this seems fun! You can probably find posts talking about random things I did today/my current thoughts. For instance, recently I've been doing what I swore I would never do again... Zodiac farming in Final Fanasy XIV. I got the Yoichi Zeta for Bard like... last year? Or maybe before Endwalker released? Somewhere around there. Took me a few months and aferwards I disctincly told myself: Never again. Now guess what? I've been doing it again! I'm clearly a masochist.

I plan on getting the ones for Scholar and Warrior. I only want to get Scholar to Amtma, and I plan on using Warrior for FATE farming because it's easier. However... I want that sweet ass Ragnarok Beta for Warrior... I must have it. Oh! I also have almost completed my 4th Anima Weapon! I have the one for Scholar, Black Mage, Astrologian, and now I'm almost done with the one for Dark Knight! Now that I've started levelling tanks, I need to get them their glams. I don't know abou Paladins though... I kinda hate Paladin. They're just so boring compared to the other tanks! Warrior gets a cool axe that they swing around violenly, Dark Knight literally has the best sfx, and Gunbreaker is a fucking gun-sword! And Paladin... are lameos with swords and shields. But I'll think about getting them the Anima weapons when I finish actually levelling them. As for how my Zodiac farming is going... I did like 20 FATEs today and didn't get a single atma drop :(

Also, Pint made a new video!! I love his vids so much. I never really watched FFXIV youtubers/streamers (besides DrakGamesein and Shenpai) but I have to say I really enjoy Pint. Here's a link to his newest video!!