Downed

29 Apr, 2025

Another short filler blog. Sugar Riot downed.

Honestly highkey glad to be done with this fight. Nothing's wrong with it, it's just a lot of work when it comes to healing. And the end is all bodychecks. Not only do you get an awful bleed but there's a lot of times that people could just kill others and send it all tumbling down as well. So yeah, it's one of those fights. It's still pretty fun despite all that. I think it's the most unique adds phase we've ever had, but then again I barely remember adds in most fights as is. So idk, maybe I'm biased. Jabberwock scares me though. Really don't like that guy.

I'm not gonna lie, the entire story of this tier is literally me shielding and crying and praying. I think my healing for the earlier parts of the fight aren't bad but like the instant I misstep, it goes to shit. Recovering on SCH is a bit harder than I realized just because to get your heals out you either need Aetherflow stacks or you need your fairy actions. And that means casting a GCD and possibly fucking things over. Also the MP recovery here is pretty rough. I realized how easy it is to prog on WHM in comparison. I almost feel dumb when I'm unable to cast glare and win.

Also, a few victory shots.

I don't want to go too into behind the scenes updates. I'm sure that anyone who's looked has probably noticed quite a few changes. I'm going to save it all for an announcement. For now though, I'm going to get to work on the journal entries that I need to make, which are unfortunately quite a few. But at the very least, even if you see about like 6 articles all go up in the span of a few days at the start of May, just know that they've been in the works for a while. I just put the date as whatever it is when I finish writing. Either way, I'll have more stuff for everyone. Trying to use May to get ahead on everything I plan.

Also a quick note for any collectors, GSC US is halting shipments and also letting people cancel preorders apparently. Hoping that I can cancel a few for right now because unless I open commissions, I'm going to have to foot a ton of stuff. But I'm a bit rusty, so I have freebies requests open. Even if they're just warm ups.

Anyways, see you all in another entry.

New

18 Apr, 2025

I swear I swear I swear I swear I'm working on stuff. I'm just getting to it a lot slower than planned. Since I have raid tonight again, I'll probably be a lot slower than I planned but I have 1 more page to work on before I get to a much bigger journal entry so, there's that. Well, that and I plan to do a little bit of art compression because uhhhhh I'm already using 25% of the 1 GB they allow us here on neocities. So, we definitely gotta change things. But yeah, we're near the light at the end of the tunnel for big updates, and some pages have already been updated in secret. So, have fun finding them in the meanwhile before I put out a formal update. Well, that and before I get mad again and attempt iframes.

Anyways I'm here to bring up one small thing that isn't related to any big updates because I Want To.

アニメ「遊☆戯☆王」シリーズ25周年を記念して、
加々美高浩氏による書き下ろしイラストを公開！
更に、本イラストを元にしたフィギュアをコトブキヤにて制作決定！
詳細は続報を待たれよ！#yugioh #遊戯王 pic.twitter.com/Z0ZkgFsXyr

— アニメ「遊☆戯☆王」公式 (@yugioh_anime) April 18, 2025

Yeah uh, you all should have seen me bringing this up coming a mile away. New Koto YGO figures. And for once, Yugi himself is finally getting his own figure, which is pretty neat. I can't wait for the sculpts to be shown and I really hope that not only are they spaced out enough when they're released so I can maybe get them all depending on how I feel on the sculpts. That and I hope they'll consider rereleasing some of the other figures they've done for YGO because I feel like Malik especially could use a rerelease. If not, I'll just cry.

I think my only gripe so far with the illustration part is that this 3rd Koto Kaiba figure would have a very similar pose to the original one. Image below for reference.

(The thing I have the biggest gripe with in the pose is quite honestly the positioning of the hands but I suppose you can really only do "dueling stance" so different.)

IDK, I'll decide how I feel about it when it's prototyped and painted. Also, I know that this is for the anniversary of the original anime, and they're going with Battle City for this again, but part of me wishes that they would have went with the DSOD embellishments to his outfit to make it stick out a bit more. IDK, I can't really complain. The Battle City fit is good. He's got that shit on. So, I'll take it.

But yeah, tariffs be damned, I will buy another Kaiba figure. Hopefully though, by the time these are ready to go (which, considering all we have is illustrations right now for an event rather than any form of prototyped sculpt or even a release order,) I imagine it'll be well into next year. So, it'll be some time. So, it'll be a while. It's okay though because I'm not too crazy about the idea of buying a bunch of figures right now due to the ongoing situation, but we'll see how things progress over the next year.

That's basically all I wanted to say. Back to work.

On the Dancefloor, Everyone's a Star

13 Apr, 2025

So, I said earlier that I would make a blog post with a bunch of stuff, and I only decided to start said blog post 12 hours later, at 4 AM instead of 4 PM. Well, I suppose that's just how things go when you're busy getting maimed by a dragon. Which has way less to do with the title and main focus of this blog and more to do with something I'll talk about further down.

So, where to start? I guess I'll start from the beginning. Remember 2 journals ago where I said I joined a new static on a job that I'm not too familiar with progging on and how I wished the raid tier will be kind to me? Well, after 2 days of prog (as our group started week 2), I realized this tier wasn't going to be kind to me, but neither will my ADHD. Well, going to pray I get better at progging on SCH because I'm rusty as hell. The fact that I got a 21 on a first fight shows how out of it I really was. I haven't done that bad in a while... But it's whatever. It's not like that number means anything past a benchmark of what to start improving on.

The entire time though, I won't lie, I was kinda screaming inside.

Honestly, there's nothing more humbling than getting dragged through fights on a job you're not used to progging on while also being rusty as all hell. It really makes you sit there and feel like the guy with the biggest dunce cap on sometimes, but it's still fun. Despite me shaking off the dust and getting back into it, I'm still enjoying myself. Anyways, here to report that I downed both the EX & M5S.

Honestly, my feelings about XIV in general are a bit of a mess these days. It'll always be a soft spot. Probably my best time in any MMO I've played. And I still think that despite everything that's happened over the last few years, that it's still fun. It sucks that I haven't had as much time to invest in it, but just taking it easy, being in a casual group, is still fun. So I wish for the best for everyone.

Speaking of MMOs though. I've been playing Maplestory PServs again. I don't think I mentioned that in one of the previous blog posts I made. But yeah, I went back to Legends, decided to try out StoryMS and have been sticking around that for a bit, and I think that since a friend is having some issues with pservs, I'mma go back to retail for a little bit until we decide if we're really going to play again or join Artale. I think we'll probably end up on Artale, to be honest. The allure of oldschool Maple is pretty high. Not that I don't like modern Maple as well, but honestly, I think my feelings on Maplestory are best left for a different blog, as I primarily wanted to talk about savage.

Oh yeah, and also, he finally arrived!

Without going into too much, you'll definitely see more of him during reviews. Probably better shots. Well, definitely a lot of shots if anything, not sure if they're necessarily better.

Either way, before I get too sidetracked, aiming to have a few things updated soon and more reviews out, but I did want to note the M5S victory at the very least. Oh, and I'm probably opening freebies soon, because I got a new tablet (Nothing fancy tbh, as my previous drawing tablet wasn't anything fancy either). After I get the pages I want done up though because I'm taking wayyyyyy too long on stuff. Well, see you all soon. Aiming to get a lot done tomorrow, so I can spend Monday focusing on reading a lot for M6S.

Dawntrail Post Patch

06 Apr, 2025

So, I'mma make this post in attempt to rip of the bandaid when it comes to talking about it. After all, I said I would eventually get around to it, and while I would have liked to have made an overview of FFXIV as a whole at some point, I'm going to leave that for when I decide to finally replay the story as a whole. So for now, you're getting my thoughts on 7.1 and 7.2 as well, specifically because it seems like this expac's post patch story has people complaining a lot.

Honestly, when I saw people saying 7.1 was the lowest the story has ever been while simultaneously acting like Stormblood was a "well recieved patch story" (Spoilers: it wasn't. At least not at the time.) I just kind of roll my eyes. I almost find it hilarious that people are trying to overwrite the way that Stormblood was recieved in the moment to further this idea that Dawntrail is "The Worst We've Ever Been." Like, it's honestly just really annoying. I'm not saying you can't dislike Dawntrail. I'm just saying that a lot of the people who are suddenly here from mid Shadowbringers acting like everything was perfect before... It's honestly kind of pathetic. Actually no, I'm just going to say it. It's worse this time. Because tons of people are using "Dawntrail Bad Wah I Play in English" as an excuse to be transphobic ontop of just being racist. And that's not to say that the pacing issues being criticized aren't valid, but the amount of times I've seen people say "Nobody cares about this crap" to something very cultural and rooted in traditions of various real world countries has been too many times to count. And the worst part? I'm still hearing these complaints off of social media. Keep in mind that I'm keeping this vague for a reason. I don't really want to point out any specific things that any one person said, because I'm not here to dogpile specific people in the community for feeling differently than I do. But, I am tired of this kind of stuff. Even if they "don't mean it in a racist way," it's still exhausting considering the current political climate of the United States, where I happen to live. And like, we all know what a shitshow that is.

Needless to say, this all irks me quite a bit, being a Latino person myself.

With that said, how did I feel about 7.1 in specific?

It was just okay. I don't think it's as bad as people are playing it up to be. I don't think it was super needed as main story or anything, but I understand that sometimes a patch is just fleshing something out. After all, we have those awkward 3 patches that resolve everything before setting up for the next expac usually, and some of them aren't always well done. Hell, look at Endwalker's post game. They crammed an entire FF4 subplot in there and went "Okay moving on" in like barely any time. And despite what people will try to claim, I don't think Endwalker's post plot was that good either. But then again, nothing did a post story as well as the Dragonsong War stuff, with the only thing coming close being the Elidibus fight. Sorry, despite what Yotsuyu went through and her vengeance moment as Tsukuyomi being good, the stupid amnesia plot was incredibly bad. And it's not even the worst because I suffered the original ARR post plot, with those large chunks of filler that are all trimmed out of the game now.

Honestly it's just a thing that exists and years from now, if this game is still alive, I think people will find something that they hate more and act like this was well done.

I realize this is a very negative way of me just saying "it's whatever, it's not the end of the world," I know. But like, I think too many people take this game far too seriously. Especially with the notion of "I'D BETTER GET MY 15 DOLLARS WORTH OF SUB EACH MONTH THAT I PLAY." Which is honestly a baffling mentality to me because I've always seen the story as the primary way to unlock expert so I could then gear up and do literally anything else. I dunno, maybe I'm just mean because I can't really understand why people get so pressed over some patch of story not absolutely wowing them. Like, I don't think it was super interesting either, but I also just don't see it as the end of the world. Then again, people actually lead me to think the 7.1 dungeon could be hard and I'm just here like "No it isn't." But I suppose since mentors act like any sort of wipe in casual content that they could also barely do is some sort of End of the World scenario, that it's probably why people think a dungeon boss causing a wipe is some sort of thing to freak out over. I dunno, I've done too much content where I'm faced with wiping over and over again to care all that much if we wipe in dungeon. Like yeah, maybe I gripe in a private discord call to a friend that some random person made a bad choice, but I don't go up to people and start saying that. It's just whatever. If people are pulling slow and making it take a long time without telling me they're new to something, I just take the penalty if it really annoys me. I don't see the point in griefing and getting reported but like I said, I don't think wiping in a dungeon really matters that much. But who knows, I think I've lost my edge with this game and have stopped caring. As far as I could tell, my stuff is probably All Grey on Funny Number Site. And I just am not at the point I care anymore.

Anyways, that was a tangent. I guess the tl;dr of it is just: 7.1 not interesting, but also not the worst and you are all over exaggerating so much. Onto 7.2.

I'm not sure what to say here other than 7.2 feels like they finally picked a direction to go in? It felt a bit easier to read, I won't lie, but it's probably because it was less related to world building and felt a bit more character focused, which tends to be my favorite kind of writing in any given story. The trial was also pretty nice, but other than that, I don't think it was too much more exciting. I'm still unsure of how to feel about it, but I can't really predict what they plan to do with this for now. Seems interesting. Hope it doesn't immediately wrap up in 7.3.

If you're sitting here reading this like "Well, surely you have more to say on these past that considering you're defending them," the answer is "Nope, not really." My general thoughts on both patches is that they're pretty neutral and that people are making it out to be a bigger ordeal than it actually is, as usual with FF14.

For now though, I'm going to go mentally prep for savage which we start on Tuesday, as well as continue to look for a new PServ since SellasMS died a dishonorable death. RIP Sellas. You were kinda goated despite the server crashes. Gonna really miss that NX system they had.

Anyways, aquarium pictures soon, might update a bunch of minor things in the background as well. Also made a new itabag. Dunno what else to put here. Bye for now.

Life

04 Apr, 2025

So, it's been a bit of time since I've gotten around to write a blog entry. And, as always, my brain tells me that I'm not being productive enough with this website. Which is like, well, it's not my main focus of life, and yet my brain is just like this. So, I come bearing a fairly short entry about a variety of things. Some good, some bad. But at the very least, with all of these out here, I suppose I can fend of my brain's need to be productive. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten any of the things I need to do, I just need to sit down and do them.

So, let's go over the plans on what to do real quick, I suppose. Ideally April will have the following updates:

• More scans (They're mostly already scanned, I just need to clean them up and upload them.)
• Finally cleaning up the rest of my layout and having that up.
• Finishing those stamps I need to make
• And most of all, reviews. (Some I have written that need pictures. Some I have pictures, but need to be written.)

Let's move on though.

I guess I'll start with the bad, it'll make the good seem a bit better than it already is.

First off, there's a shitton of tariffs incoming for the US. I know it's easy for people in the figure collecting community to jump the gun, and I honestly don't blame them for feeling anxious about all this. Prices on a lot of US based anime figure websites have hiked over night and I'm sitting here wondering if I'm going to be able to afford anything I preordered at all and if the prices are locked in. GSC US has already shown how scummy they were, and had I learned about the data breach before I started using their site to preorder, I probably wouldn't have. That combined with the lack of being able to cancel, I think I'm pretty much fucked on select preorders. But I'm at that point where I'm like "Oh well, I guess."

Basically, for me as a hobbyist, it means I probably won't be buying a whole lot anytime soon. Hell, I went so far as to purge my own wishlist as to not tempt me to buy a whole lot. Sucks to feel that way, but a wishlist is more like a giant temptation list anyways. I went down from 200 misc items to a total of 56, which still feels like a lot. It doesn't matter though. Expensive plastic feels like the least of my worries at the moment, outside of my preorders being a thing I have to pay for. It just sucks to feel like being forced out of your hobby while the price of living continues to raise.

Moving on, I finally got my tablet drivers working only to realize that my tablet pen itself is broken. I wanted to aim to get a new one this month, but waking up to tariff news kinda put a huge wrench in that problem. After all, I use kind of lower end tablets. Was going to aim to use my art and get back to taking commissions so I could maybe save up and start aiming for a masectomy at some point, not just because I have the threat of breast cancer looming over me, but because it's something I've always wanted, but considering everything else, I'm feeling pretty robbed of that right now.

I guess the other negative things I've encountered was my weird IRL being a stalker as usual, seeing how she tracked down my bluesky account despite me changing literally all my online names and doing everything to get away from her. And then when I blocked her, changed my name once more, and tried to give the hint that I didn't want to talk to her, someone else found out that she went through and block evaded me and started keeping track of me with an alternate name, which I then went out of the way to block once more. I'm expecting a 3rd name. Or a 4th. Literal weirdo behavior. Either way, I contemplated dumping a large journal with some of the stuff she's done over the years that have just been insane but I decided against it because it really doesn't do anything. TL;DR she stalks people from ages ago and gets mad at them living their own lives. It's weird. She also cares way too much about Zenos and will get into fights with other Yumes over him and has some mad Imperial Garlean Apologist bullshit going on that is really uncomfortable. I'm not here to send people after her, but god, if you're in the XIV community and you know who I'm talking about, honestly just block and don't bother engaging.

That and I guess the other thing I had written up that I hadn't gotten around to was me getting annoyed at Jump fans gatekeeping and being misogynist but let's be real, that's just an average Jump fan.

Let's move on to stuff that's far more positive.

On one hand, with the help of a friend I was able to get my ultimate grail figure! I'm so excited that I was able to get him before he became truly unobtainable to me. Like I'm so happy and so grateful and I can't put it into words how I feel. I'll probably take a lot of pictures when I get him. I also need to make space on my shelves but I'm expecting to rearrange the shelves in general. Whatever though, that's a later issue.

I also got invited to join a static for this tier. I feel slightly better about myself, but it will be a year after not playing, and returning as SCH as well and I won't lie, I am rusty as all hell. Hopefully this tier is kind to me.

Finally, I met up with friends for a few days! We went out to a variety of places, like hot pot, a few arcades, and to the aquarium. It was generally all really fun. We took a lot of pictures, and I honestly wish it could have lasted longer and that more people could have joined us but it was still all so nice. Hopefully later next year we can meet again and plan a bigger trip with more things to do. I took quite a bit of pictures, but I'll wait a bit to put some of them online. I don't really want to go through editing a bunch of them right now.

Also the Bakura plush was baptised in the jelly fish tank.

Either way, I have a lot of cleaning left to do, so I'll get back to that. Going to hope that the stupid tariff situation gets better, not just because of my hobby, but because I don't really think it's great for the prices of everything to go up super insane overnight. People are struggling to make ends meet and this just makes it worse, but then again, with the idiots we have in office right now, I won't be surprised how much worse shit will get while the idiots they have supporting them pretend that this is making things better. God what a fucking shit show.

Anyawys, despite it all, I hope you all have a good day.