Once I had to skip a night of sleep (so, stayed up 2 days) to finish Odin Sphere. I think I did the same thing with Skies of Arcadia, but Odin Sphere is the time I remember the most clearly because I freaked myself out by accidentally getting a bad ending the first time round. I hadn't read the instructions for the last part of the game. I got more and more emotionally involved in it, it was *real*, I had *screwed up an entire world* and I had to *make amends right now*. Skies of Arcadia was just dragging on a long time and bugging me to the point that I wanted it over and done with.
Entry 2: Post about your favourite musical instrument.
I had an electronic keyboard as a child that I used to learn songs for by listening to them, working out the right keys to play by trial and error and memorising the individual tunes. I still know some of the songs. I can play the Phantasy Star town theme and second dungeon theme, Eight Melodies from Earthbound, Theme of Love from Mother 3, the town theme from Faery Tale Adventure, the Game Over tunes from Virtual Hydlide, Shining Force, Ys: The Vanished Omens, Earthbound, 'Player Dead' from Sword of Vermilion, the sad event theme from Shining Force and the defeat anthem from Gemfire. (I love Game Over tunes. When they work properly, they are full of bittersweet melancholy and kinda soothing... I believe I've written very long essays on LJ before about what the Game Over screen means to me.) I don't know the actual rules for playing the keyboard and I can't play the songs very well, only follow the basic tune. I sometimes made up my own songs or expanded on some of the Game Over tunes that I really liked but were only five second riffs. I don't really have the confidence to play in public, I used to play with headphones on so people couldn't hear me make mistakes when I was practising.
"Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it."
For some reason opening the mail when it arrives is a source of great excitement. You hardly ever see real letters any more so they must be something important and worthy of my attention! And it is such a relief when my parcels arrive and don't end up at the parcel office which is NOWHERE NEAR MY HOUSE so why the eff do they end up at that one?
As a mage, a cat is more practical than a dog, because it can only one-hit kill me if it rolls high, it is intelligent enough to make a good familiar, it is awake at night and can sit and watch me study, and I can pick it up without being over-encumbered. Schnauzers are really cute though. They look a bit like Nova from Shining Force.
OOH, we love introducing ourselves! We're Lucas and Claus! We're twins! That behind us is Terry! He's AWESOME! He doesn't like talking, so you'll have to talk to him through us! We won't even let you talk to him if you bribe us with food! Diggory is grabbing the mouse off us and shoving us out of the chair!
Sorry about that... I'll leave it in, as it expresses who they are so well. I'm Diggory. I'm in charge of this band of reprobates. I'm the oldest, and I've been working this apparatus and keeping everything in order for 15 years. This is my second-in-command, Doran. She's a bit of a dragon and a zealot, but she keeps us all morally in check, and makes sure we don't act like incompetents. That over there in the nice suit drinking my entire tea supply keeps changing his name, but he's mostly called DeBose, and he's sorting out our rather delicate immigration problem. The one asleep on the sofa is Doan. He's been sleeping for a very long time, and I'm kind of worried about how long he's taking to repair. DeBose is tired too, but he's too... too DeBose to go to sleep like a normal person.
By the way, the fact that this question has sparked off a massive controversy is an example of how bizarre humans seem to me. I mean, a lot of people back home have only one. I've met people with more than me, although their minds are a little hard for me to understand. Most people have two or three. I've never met any with none who didn't die from it. I've never been in another world that made such a big deal of it. I respect that people can develop them without meaning to if their minds suffer damage, and that it can make their lives hell because they can't communicate with each other and they get memory loss. We do make a big deal of it when that happens to us as well. Its sad when a personality is lost, or when you find a broken one. You should always take them in! DeBose says 'there's no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker, and you can always kick them out again once they're better if they start trouble'. But a race of people who are offended by the idea of having more than one personality, and that think its rude to even ask others about their personalities? How do they survive if they lose the only one they've got? Considering they're on a planet so mentally taxing that personalities must drop like flies...
