The Backbloggery

[archived from a cohost post, originally made on february 25, 2024] we talked about this for an episode of live genre chronicles. I hope you're ok with me recounting a more personal view on games we're playing for the podcast here, on top of the more mediated and measured takes I posit on their respective episodes, because different thoughts will get absorbed differently by the attention I have to give different mediums, and I'm gonna keep doing these little posts for the LGC games. playing final fantasy vii for me happened in a funny way. when I was in middle school, one of my dipshit friends accidentally broke my nintendo ds in a way that sentenced it to a slow and inevitable death (one side of the hinge cracked, meaning it would eventually loosen its wiring and the top screen would slowly lose signal). to make it up to me, he gave me a psp that he had been meaning to sell and some assorted games and accessories and such. I ended up playing the final fantasy

[archived from a cohost post, originally made on february 8, 2024] this game is heavy. heavier than I would've been capable of dealing with over the last few years, I think, and it shows, from my multiple attempts to play the game through only now finally resulting in something resembling an ending. now that I'm in a better (and more stubborn) place, I can appreciate it, but it's not world-altering for me or even like, a masterpiece. it's good! but it felt lacking in some ways. some days, bad days, part of me wants to not exist. to have not existed . I don't want to take my life. rarely has that thought been any part of my brain's calculus for how to deal with the lows in my life, and it's never anything I take any steps toward, even in those, my worst moments. but at times I have thought that... if I could just opt out, let someone new take over my body and my life, things might be for the better. that there was something baked into my history

[archived from a cohost post, originally made on february 6, 2024] I don't really know how to preface this properly to convey how excited I was to hear this game was finally coming out. I was there, caring about the original game when this spinoff was announced. I was playing granblue off and on for several years, eventually deciding to " take it seriously " and join a crew instead of just chilling in a solo crew for guild wars. I then later joined a top-2k crew where I helped out for a few GWs and then ended up ducking out to make room for someone who actually wanted to be there. the franchise has had some irreversible effect on my brain and my general being that I can't really quantify, and while I've quit for too long to ever really get back into the swing of things, I can't ever shake the itch to return to the grind. I started because I saw art of narmaya blowing up on jp art twitter and was just. perplexed? bewitched? something flipped a switc