(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

I've worked overtime the last two weeks at my main job and my occasional moonlighting job, so I've been largely absent from the internet. I haven't even signed on to Facebook in a week.

Yesterday, I took a day to just relax. I worked on my second novel -- I'll be finished version one today, but at 50 pages (100 novel-sized pages) much too short, and there's a lot that can be expanded upon.

I also played Persona 3. I'm far from finished it, but some initial thoughts:

• The main character is an emo kid who gains his powers by shooting himself in the head repeatedly. In other words, it's basically the band Franz Ferdinand done as a video game.
  
  
• The combat system is based on Jungian psychoanalysis. Which is as surreal as it sounds, but it really works, and I'm just glad it's not based on Freudian psychoanalysis. I'm not sure what that would mean, though I imagine the swords and guns would be very big.
  
  
• You build up your personae to fight the shadows through social interaction in daily life. This includes a friendship simulator that's a close cousin of the dating sims that are popular in Japan, but never make it out here. And it's good as far as it goes -- it seems to be teaching the younger portion of the audience how to be a supportive friend without encouraging your friends in self-destructive or outright stupid behaviour -- but I'm not sure I'd want kids taking away life lessons from a game in which you repeatedly shoot yourself in the head.
  
  
• At night, the main character's school transforms into a nightmare tower that spews hellspawn and becomes the site of some truly horrific violence. In other words, a pretty standard high school experience, except for the "at night" part.
  
  
• In many ways, it's a wonderful throwback to the old Sierra games, where conversation and intelligence -- rather than button-mashing -- determined victory. We rarely make games like that in North America now. I also appreciate the turn-based combat. It's an excellent game so far, and I'm really enjoying it.

Today I'm going to work on getting this apartment clean. I've been pretty lazy about it for the last few weeks, but seeing as I goofed off yesterday, I really have no excuse.