That’s so sad to hear. I hope you can salvage her in some way shape or form eventually!
Happy the to hear the writing is going great. I'm still bummed I have to shelve Elly. Like that revelation recently kind of killed a lot of my writing momentum at the moment because it was the last project I was genuinely excited to work on.
Yeah, switching it up seems like a good idea before going back to BBS. As for coded, I’d still recommend going for the DS game if you can because it’s gameplay is really up there with the series’ best. And yeah, I still like KH2, despite it being one of my least favorite entries now (and the current fandom climate doesn’t make admitting to this any easier). Back when I played it the first time, though I did feel some lingering holes after the excellent story structure of CoM, I was still hyped enough to really ignore any issues I had and just enjoy the ride, and it was definitely a blast. It’s only over time that I started to get upset with the holes, especially when it became clear that KH2 didn’t really have closure of its own and was really only setting up the (much better) games that came after. I still can’t get over the fact that this is a hot take that the incredible majority of the fandom seems to disagree with. Btw, I started writing that novel side story yesterday and it’s been one of my most inspired and fun writing sessions in ages. I can’t wait to see it done.
KH2:FM is finished, technically I still have all the extra content to contend with, but I may be moving on from this game at this point for my own sanity's sake. While the first game was guilty of this as well, I feel one of the issues I do have with KH2 is that the game feels like one giant checklist as opposed to a more involving adventure. I appreciate the extra content, but KH2 has way too much crap to do for my taste and I'm really not going to waste my time to complete all of it just to unlock a few more trophies and a secret ending I can watch on Youtube. Despite that, the extra content is pretty neat. Narratively, I still feel like KH2 loses it's way fairly quickly once Sora arrives on the scene and the pacing and order of events could have really been handled better. Not even going to talk about the serious ending fatigue this game suffers from. I thought KH1 was bad, but KH2 is so much worse and I've heard KH3 makes KH2 look tasteful by comparison. With that said, KH2 isn't necessarily a bad entry, just kind of disappointing overall due to lacking the tight overall design of it's predecessors. The gameplay is stupid fun, but lacks proper escalation. Watching Sora become a badass was pretty fun in the first two entries but KH2 basically starts him at badass and ends with freaking broken. I have no real qualms with Osaka branch nerfing the hell out of the combat system because who wants to play something that can only be enjoyed in the hardest difficulty setting? I'm not sure if I'll get back to this to clear out the rest of the new content. I did challenge Lingering Sentiment and was crushed like a bug as I expected, but I really have desire to continue on this title. Overall, I enjoyed my time with Final Mix, but I really wish I could have played this ten or so years ago when I still cared enough. I may just watch the coded movie as a cleanser before trying to tackle BbS, but I'm also thinking I may spend some more time playing Front Mission 3 to clear my head.
In KH2:FM news, I beat Marluxia, Sephiroth and most of Org XIII. I'm just before the first Xemnas fight and kind of forgot how many things are locked behind him like the last of the Coliseum tournaments. I also reached the end of the Cavern of Remembrance so if I want to, I can challenge the super hard versions of all of Org. XIII though a few members are not available yet which I assume is because I either need to beat Xemnas' first form, or finish the game. I only have three items left to make in synthesis including the Ultima Keyblade, though I actually think it's more eight items since I keep forgetting about the upgrade materials. I'm only missing three puzzle pieces at the moment and I've only completed one of the Mushroom XIII tasks but I'm close to being able to properly attempt most of them. I also need to max out Final Form, which by the way, they slightly altered how you obtain it in this game. It's still randomized when you use a drive form after the Roxas fight, but now you have to have the special keyblade you win from that fight equipped for it to activate. Course the problem is that Two Becomes One's special ability is that when you use a drive form, unless it's Final Form itself, you have a 50/50 chance of either going into Final Form or Anti-Form. Other than that, I'm wrapping things up here, not sure if I'm going to jump straight into BbS or whether I'll play some Front Mission to cleanse the palette before continuing on.
I'm in between projects I want to work on for the moment, I'm kind of gearing up for a short story, but I definitely have time to read a few shorts.
Yeah, I figure it should help me get the world down a little better too. They should be fairly standalone. Do you think you’d like to have a look once I have sonething?
That's always a good idea. When my friend and I worked on Soul originally, we eventually started writing a side book where each page was like a journal entry or military report written by a different character just to get a feel for them. I feel doing a few side stories for each cast member would be a pretty good idea.
So I've come up with this idea that I should, in order to get a better feel of my novel characters, write some side-stories focusing on each of them at some time before the novel takes place. I think it can turn out quite interesting.
Sorry to hear you've been sick, that's never fun. At least it sounds like you survived and nothing escalated so that's an accomplishment in of itself. Glad you're digging into a new book series. My only foray into it was the subpar Studio Ghibli effort which was interesting. I've just finished up Neil Gaiman's Sandman series and now I'm reading Stan Lee's memoir. I highly recommend Sandman, it's really great seeing how Gaiman incorporates his vast knowledge of literature and history into that series. I still feel it's hilarious that the two most approachable members of the Endless are Death and Destruction. I'll see how I feel about KH2. I may back off from the series for a bit after I finish KH2. I'm really bad about doing a marathon of a series. I get burned out too easily. Though I did kind of want to tackle BbS because I meant for it to be another of my Blog articles but I wanted to play it again to refresh my memory. I'm kind of bummed about Elly, I'll likely finish up the short story I had you read because I still plan on sending that to my artist friend, but I've frankly planned out most of her story by now, so continuing any further from here when there is a chance you she may stay in fanfiction hell just feels like a disservice to her. I went back to my novel for a bit, and I may stay there for awhile, but I kind of want to work on something a bit different, so I may either go back through some of my older stories and start working on them again, or I may come up with something new. I keep a list of story ideas I want to work on. I really need to work more on shorter projects that I can work on getting published. There are a few contests I want to enter, but I really feel I should be focusing on sending my work to straight up publishers and just get some exposure. I'm just trying to figure out which ones I want to do.
